Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
by Ray Dalio
Dalio's study of five hundred years of rising and declining empires (Dutch, British, American, Chinese) and the 'big cycle' of debt, internal conflict and external conflict that drives them. It is a macro framework for investors with charts and indices; its predictions are contestable and its history is useful.
Read it if…
you want a big-picture framework for where money and power are moving.
Skip it if…
you want personal finance; this is geopolitics.
Three things you will actually use
- Empires follow a cycle; learn where you are in it.
- Debt, internal conflict and rivalry travel together.
- Diversify across the cycle, not within it.
Do this first
Read the chapter on the big cycle in brief, then the one on the US.
Our verdict
Five centuries, one cycle.
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