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Ray Dalio, who oversees $160 billion in assets for Bridgewater Associates, acknowledged last month that he’s a “dumbshit when it comes to pandemics,” but that’s not stopping him from pressing pause on the coronavirus panic button.
‘What concerns me most if you did have a downturn — we are now 11 years in expansion — whether that’s one, two, three years forward, with the larger polarity that exists, the wealth gap and the political gap. I would be more concerned about that.’
That’s Dalio talking at a conference covered by Bloomberg in Abu Dhab on Tuesday about how he believes the coronavirus, named COVID-19, will ultimately have a short-lived impact on the stock market.
Investor fears over the epidemic “probably had a bit of an exaggerated effect on the pricing of assets because of the temporary nature of that, so I would expect more of a rebound,” the billionaire said. “It most likely will be something that in another year or two will be well beyond what everyone will be talking about.”
The latest tally shows that the death toll has now moved to about 1,000 globally, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.00%, while hovering around record levels, was barely budging in Tuesday’s session.
Meanwhile, Dalio, who’s made more money for his clients since 1975 than any other hedge fund, according to Bloomberg, plans to hedge risk at this point.
“When you don’t know, the best investment strategy is to be smartly diversified across geographic locations, across asset classes, and across currencies,” Dalio recently wrote in a LinkedIn post.
