The Fund, Rob Copeland
The Fund, Rob Copeland
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The Fund
Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

Bestseller

Author: Rob Copeland

Narrator: Rob Copeland, Will Damron

Unabridged: 12 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/07/2023


Synopsis

This program features an author's note and epilogue read by the author.

The unauthorized, unvarnished story of famed Wall Street hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio.

Ray Dalio does not want you to listen to this audiobook.

Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles. In The Fund, award-winning New York Times journalist Rob Copeland punctures this carefully-constructed narrative of the benevolent business titan, exposing his much-promoted “principles” as one of the great feats of hubris in modern memory—in practice, they encouraged a toxic culture of paranoia and backstabbing.

The Fund is a thrilling, stranger-than-fiction journey into a rarefied world of wealth and power. It offers an unflinching look at the pain so often caused by the “radical transparency” Dalio has described as a core tenet of his recipe for business success and a meaningful life. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with those inside and around the firm, Copeland takes readers into the room as former FBI director Jim Comey kisses Dalio's ring, recent Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick drinks the Kool-Aid, and a rotating cast of memorable characters grapple with their personal psychological and moral limits—all under the watchful eye of their charismatic leader.

This is a cautionary tale for anyone convinced that the ability to make lots of money has anything at all to do with unlocking the principles of human nature.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

About Rob Copeland

Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for the New York Times. He was previously the longtime hedge-fund beat reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and has also covered Silicon Valley and the hidden worlds of the wealthy and powerful. His front-page investigations into Bridgewater Associates won a New York Press Club award; he was also awarded an honorable mention twice by the Society of American Business Writers (SABEW) and was named a News Media Alliance "Rising Star" (formerly Top 30 Under 30). He has appeared on ABC’s "Good Morning America," NPR and other major news networks.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jill on November 14, 2023

A scorcher of a tale. Orwellian. Let me cut to the chase - everyone is ultimately fired (except Greg Jensen). This is the story of the “revolving ranks of cast-off executives” either unable or unwilling to fulfill the pernicious whims of Ray Dalio. Oh, and no one comes off very well. Everyone in it......more

Goodreads review by Max on November 14, 2023

Not worth reading. The excerpt in The NY Times gives an impression of some of it (fairly inaccurate seeming) being about the investing but it is not, there is almost exactly zero on that topic. Basically it is 300 pages of : Ray Dalio is a bad person and mean and a hypocrite (because he won’t accep......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on December 26, 2023

Wow. I'd mostly forgotten about Bridgewater (as they've become increasingly irrelevant since 2010), but know a few people who worked there. From reading Principles, the idea of (as professed in that book) gathering lots of management information was interesting, but that book was essentially an auto......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on November 11, 2023

An astonishing feat of reportage, one of those efforts that fills you with gratitude for the mettle and ingenuity of the Fifth Estate. Rob Copeland deserves a raft of praise for everything he achieves in these pages.......more

Goodreads review by Julian on January 17, 2024

About ten years ago, when I was working as a product manager for a software startup, I had the misfortune of having to take a meeting at Bridgewater Associates' office in Westport, CT. Signs that Bridgewater was different, not in a good way, started with the NDA (nondisclosure agreement): normally N......more


Quotes

“At last, the era of the billionaire philosopher-king has a defining book. The Fund is a taut, nonfiction thriller."
—Bryan Burrough, author of Barbarians at the Gate

“A classic American story about the most famous man on Wall Street—or the person he seems to be. The Fund manages to both shock and entertain at the same time.”
—Philipp Meyer, bestselling author of American Rust and The Son

"The most explosive, mind-blowing business book I've ever read—and the most fun, too."
—Bradley Hope, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale and Pulitzer Prize finalist