Bridgewater Associates

Bridgewater allocates risk, not capital. Its All Weather strategy, launched in 1996, splits exposure evenly across stocks, bonds, gold, and commodities rather than dollars, and that idea, risk parity, spread through institutional asset management from there.

Ray Dalio started the firm in 1975 from a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and grew it into the defining global macro shop, run today from a Westport, Connecticut campus rather than Wall Street. Its other flagship, Pure Alpha, makes directional macro bets through a cause-and-effect model of how economies work. Dalio codified the firm's idea-meritocracy culture in Principles, his 2017 book, then stepped back over several years; an operating board now governs. Clients are institutions only: sovereign wealth funds, central banks, pensions, and endowments.