Ray Dalio backs gold as a top investment if central banks cut rates
- Ray Dalio has made the case for investing in gold as central banks devalue currencies.
- The hedge-fund boss predicts a "paradigm shift" in investing.
- Dalio said too many investors have been pushed into stocks and other equity-like assets and are likely to face diminishing returns.
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Ray Dalio has made the case for investing in gold as central banks cut interest rates and pump money into economies, devaluing currencies.
In a Linkedin post, the founder and co-manager of Bridgewater Associates wrote about "paradigm shifts" in investing. He said investors have been pushed to buy stocks and other equity-like assets that are likely to face diminishing returns.
"The world is leveraged long, holding assets that have low real and nominal expected returns that are also providing historically low returns relative to cash returns," he said. "I think these are unlikely to be good real-returning investments," he added.
More promising investments are those that "do well when the value of money is being depreciated and domestic and international conflicts are significant, such as gold," he said.
The price of gold jumped 0.7% on Thursday morning to around $1,423 an ounce.
The Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates in about two weeks' time. Under the new paradigm, Dalio said, investors should change their mindsets about what will work after Wall Street's record bull run.
"In paradigm shifts, most people get caught overextended doing something overly popular and get really hurt," he wrote. "On the other hand, if you're astute enough to understand these shifts, you can navigate them well or at least protect yourself against them."
Dalio added that the financial crisis was the last major "paradigm shift" and pointed to unsustainable growth rates as a root cause. Bridgewater "navigated the crisis well when most investors struggled," he said, because it studied the 1929 crash, enabling it to recognise problems early.