Raymond Dalio was born in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough. He is the son of a jazz musician, Marino Dallolio (1911-2002), who "played the clarinet and saxophone at Manhattan jazz clubs such as the Copacabana," and Ann, a homemaker. He is of Italian descent. Dalio began investing at age 12 when he bought shares of Northeast Airlines for $300 and tripled his investment after the airline merged with another company. Dalio received a bachelor's degree in finance from Long Island University (CW Post) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
After completing his education, Dalio worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and traded commodity futures He later worked as the Director of Commodities at Dominick & Dominick LLC. In 1974, he became a futures trader and broker at Shearson Hayden Stone.[9] In 1975, he founded investment management firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his apartment. The firm opened an office in Westport, Connecticut in 1981, and in 2005, the firm became the largest hedge fund in the world. The firm had $160 billion in assets under management, as of 2017.
Dalio was co-CEO of Bridgewater for 10 months before he announced in 2017 that he would step down as part of a company-wide shake-up. The company had been in a seven-year management and equity transition to find a replacement. Jon Rubinstein, co-CEO of the fund, was announced to step down with Dalio, but would retain an advisory role.
In 2007, Bridgewater predicted the global financial crisis, and in 2008 Dalio published an essay, "How the Economic Machine Works; A Template for Understanding What is Happening Now", which explained his model for the economic crisis.
In 2012, Dalio appeared on the annual Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2011 and 2012 he was listed by Bloomberg Markets as one of the 50 Most Influential people. Institutional Investor's Alpha ranked him No. 2 on their 2012 Rich List.
Dalio resides with his wife Barbara in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is known to practice the Transcendental Meditation technique. They have four sons. Their son Paul Dalio is a film director. Their second son, Matthew A. "Matt" Dalio is founder and chairman of the China Care Foundation, a non-profit that seeks to help Chinese orphans, and CEO of Endless Mobile, a computer operating system company.
In 2011, he and his wife Barbara joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge, vowing to donate more than half his fortune to charitable causes within his lifetime. Through the Dalio Foundation, he has directed millions in donations to the David Lynch Foundation, which promotes and sponsors research on Transcendental Meditation.
The Dalio Foundation has also contributed to the National Philanthropic Trust, to support polio eradication projects, as well as the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The Foundation has also supported the Fund for Teachers, an initiative that supports professional learning fellowships for teachers.
The Dalio Foundation was part of a group of foundations supporting the 2018 launch of TED's Audacious Project, an initiative to fund social entrepreneurs working to solve global issues.