One of the world’s most successful investors of the past 30 years recently recommended gold as a major part of investor’s portfolios.
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund made the recommendation on a podcast appearance this past weekend. He said:
"If you were neutral on everything and optimizing your portfolio for the best return-to-risk ratio, you would have about 15% of your money in gold…”
Dalio has been warning about high US debt levels for years at this point, and his twitter post history is filled with observations about unsustainable debt, like this one:
I don’t think Dalio is wrong… but I do think he’s a little late to the party. By my accounting, we’ve been living through all five of these scenarios for the past few decades at least.
Of course, I also think every one of them is likely to get worse in the coming years.
But more to the point: his advice to load up 15% of your financial assets into gold is astounding to hear from a mainstream personality. Dalio is arguably the most relevant financial persona today. It doesn’t get much more mainstream or prominent than Ray Dalio.
At the same time, the global investment allocation into gold is still scraping along near all time lows.
I work with and around a lot of gold analysts and even in our business, it’s rare to find someone being so outspoken about recommending such a large gold allocation. Ten years ago, if you read some blogger recommending a 15% allocation into gold, most people would probably write them off as a crackpot. Today it’s considered to be a rational position.
In Bridgewater, Dalio’s own gold ownership is still very low, at about 1.5% of the total holdings of the fund. That’s about the same percentage as the global investment allocation chart I posted above… but on the other hand, gold is Dalio’s 6th largest position, and it’s a new one.
If you’re the world’s largest hedge fund, you really can’t go out and just turn 15% of your portfolio into gold without making major waves.
According to Bridgewater’s most recent 13F filing (for the quarter ending in March 2025), the fund added $318 million worth of the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD).
Before Q1, Bridgewater owned zero shares, meaning the fund added its entire stake in the first quarter.
We don’t know if Dalio added more shares for Q2 (yet) but considering his stance, it would be surprising if he hasn’t.
Also consider that not even Dalio is talking about allocating your investment capital into gold stocks. He’s talking about physical gold, or some gold ETF.
We’re still a ways off from a two stage rocket that could boost gold stocks:
- If any significant percentage of capital heads into gold at anything close to 15%, gold will soar higher than you might imagine possible.
- If that happens, every gold stock in the market will be a no-brainer value play that everyone will want to own.
The net effect of much higher gold prices would mean that Dalio would likely be buying dirt cheap gold stocks hand over fist in his hedge fund before going on a podcast a month later to tell people it’s time to buy gold stocks. If he’s not already…
But the value is already here today. It could just get much, much better.
Best,
Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT
Lead Analyst and Founder, Golden Portfolio