In Disappointing Year, Bridgewater’s Flagship Fund Returns 0.5%

In a year where the S&P rose 26%, I might add.

 

Don't forget alpha fund is supposed to be low correlation

 

The next time crap hits the fence, gona be interesting times for their perfomance.

08 was great for them, but how did they do in .com bubble i wonder.

 

So it is like parking my money in TIPS? I don't need Bridgewater to do that. If the performance is bad it is bad, they cannot perfume a pig and expect it to come out smelling like rose.

 

People don’t invest in bridgewater to beat the SPX. They invest in bridgewater to have a stable return that beats other stable return options. These are rich people who don’t want the risk of the equity markets for this portion of their wealth or endowments/pensions who have specific liabilities that grow at some pre-determined rate and they can’t underperform that rate.

 

In all fairness to @farmerjohn1324 you are trying to rationalize away a poor performance. Even granting all that you stated sir, in a market like 2019, don't you think they should do a little better than short term treasury?

 

The performance sucks. But not because the SPX rallied 30percent.

 

Let's say your objective is having low volatility low correlation and beating the inflation with 2 or 3 percent in a rolling period of every 5 years.

It's 2019. Every asset class is going up, but volatility is to high to participate. If you only have one criteria and that is net return, like being it all that matters, you are going to have wild swings to your equity. This year it will be missing the big gain of 2019, next time it will be avoiding the downturn like 2008. Stating after the fact that the return could be this or that, if they only had the right position, is hindsight en that is where the professional is leaving the uninformed. The professional makes objectives to what the fund will act in the future. The novice seeks after the fact what they would have done and changes the objective to catch it. Next year they have a 30% loss and do not understand they are trading with hindsight rules.

 

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I understood what you said but I don't think professionals can and should hide behind risks. We pay you well (2/20 & more) to outperform risk or no risk, take your pick.

I don't think you can perfume a pig and expect it to smell like a rose. After so many years it is just poor returns, even if you tried "risk adjusted" it.