From Jay at MarketFolly:
Lastly, Dalio made an excellent analogy comparing investing to poker:
“The bets are zero sum. In order for you to beat me in the game, it’s like poker, it’s a zero sum game. We have 1,500 people that work at Bridgewater, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research, and so on. We’ve been doing this for 37 years and we don’t know that we’re going to win. We have to have diversified bets. So it’s very important for most people to know when not to make a bet. Because if you’re going to come to the poker table, you’re going to have to beat me, and you’re going to have to beat those who take money. So the nature of investing is that a very small percentage of the people take money essentially in that poker game away from other people who don’t know when prices go up whether that means it’s a good investment or if it’s a more expensive investment.”