Ray Dalio is not a corporate credit officer. If so, he would need to read more about debt-to-income (DTI) ratio and FCF. Your absolute credit and your absolute loan size doesn´t define your ability to pay back the credit. In the corporate world, the free cash flow (FCF) - the cash flow being generated after cash outflows for operations and mantaining capital assets - is defining your corporate credit ability. Just to mention the usual $ Trillions in outstanding debt is as useless as mentioning Donald Trump´s bank loans. It´s worthless without knowing what his income side looks like. Otherwise, his book is a good general view of macro - but the actual micro-structure of debt economics work "a bit differently".
What good is FCF, when maturity's are expiring and credit markets freeze beside Fed ? Tell me, do you think AT&T will be around in let's say even 10 years ? When debt servicing starts to mingle in R&D, along side other growth sectors of a company's budget, then you have a fall to the competition and ability to manoeuvre I think he understands corporate credit just fine, although you make a good point
%% Airlines+[new] housing tend to go down/downtrend. Then they slapped another tariff on Canadian lumber LOL. I dont really have an opinion on WMT; but LUV airlines tend to outperform regardless. SDOW is above its 200 dma, last time i looked NOT a predicition.