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Dalio unquestionably has had success with investing. But his ideas are often called crazy. (i.e. the bond-heavy nature of his 'All Weather Portfolio'.)

He's also at odds with stalwarts like Warren Buffet, who point out that gold doesn't really have a reason to be a hedge against a crash. It doesn't do anything, it just looks pretty. Once people begin to figure that the emporer has no clothes, gold will just be cheap, pretty metal.

Dalio is worth listening to, but with a large grain of salt, IMHO.



Gold is an asset I don't want to own because it's so useless, but I feel like I should own because people are so dumb.


On gold Dalio has been right for the last 6000 years and Buffet has been wrong.


It's not clear what you're asserting. For raw return on investment, there is a compelling analysis:

https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/news/warren-...

which demonstrates that Dalio has been wrong over time (as long as we have been around, at least).

This does not preclude Dalio from being right about specific small periods of time or decidedly in the future. So far, not so much.


Why now though? Gold has been valuable for about 6,000 years.

We've had plenty of industrial era and information era catastrophes where "gold is useless" , yet a gold ring would still get you smuggled out of the communist regime, a length of gold wire would still get you food, and gold jewelry would still be the best way to move value when the government puts restrictions.

Gold is probably the best thing to hold in economic uncertainty - up until the point where social order breaks down and it becomes the second best thing to hold.




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