Quỹ phòng hộ lớn nhất thế giới thực sự kiếm tiền bằng cách nào?

-> lại là một âm mưu lừa đảo Ponzi chăng?

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Bridgewater Associates, a global investing force, had $168 billion under management at its peak (vào thời kỳ đỉnh cao) in 2022, making it not just the world’s largest hedge fund (quỹ phòng hộ lớn nhất thế giới), but also more than twice the size of the runner-up. Bridgewater’s billionaire founder (người sáng lập tỷ phú), Ray Dalio, was omnipresent (có mặt khắp nơi) in the financial media (phương tiện truyền thông tài chính) and said publicly that he had cracked what he termed “the holy grail” (chén thánh) of investing, including a series of trading formulas (công thức giao dịch) bound to make money, “by which I mean that if you find this thing, you will be rich and successful.”

...Bridgewater earned worldwide fame (nổi tiếng trên toàn thế giới) for navigating the 2008 financial crisis (khủng hoảng tài chính), when the firm’s main fund rose 9 percent while stocks dropped 37 percent, making Mr. Dalio a sought-after adviser for the White House and Federal Reserve and attracting new deep-pocketed clients (khách hàng có nhiều tiền) to his fund. Yet the hedge fund’s overall descriptions of its investment approach could be maddeningly vague (mơ hồ đến phát điên).

...What confused rivals (khiến đối thủ thấy khó hiểu), investors and onlookers (người quan sát) alike was that the world’s biggest hedge fund didn’t seem to be much of a Wall Street player at all. Much smaller hedge funds could move the markets just by rumors (tin đồn) of one trade or another. Bridgewater’s heft (sức nặng) should have made it the ultimate whale (cá voi), sending waves rolling every time it adjusted a position. Instead, the firm’s footprint (dấu chân) was more like that of a minnow (cá tuế).

...In early 2015, Bill Ackman, the endlessly opinionated hedge fund manager, took the first whack. The billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital had long found Mr. Dalio’s public pronouncements about his quantitative investment style (phong cách đầu tư định lượng) to be generic and even nonsensical (vô nghĩa).

...Shareholders in Bridgewater’s parent company — a group that includes employees and clients — didn’t automatically receive copies of the firm’s financial statements. Five separate Dalio family trusts appeared to each hold “at least 25 percent but less than 50 percent of Bridgewater, something that seems mathematically difficult,” the newsletter said. Per public disclosures (tiết lộ, vạch trần), the hedge fund lent money to its own auditor, which struck the longtime analyst as precarious (bấp bênh) and unusual. “We will go out on a limb, Bridgewater is not for the ages,”

...Bridgewater, Mr. Markopolos wrote to the S.E.C., was a Ponzi scheme.

source: nytimes,