원문 보기
Raydalio, one of the world's most respected investors, has just set a date for the next big crisis. On October 6, in an interview with Bloomberg, he shared his outlook for the coming years, and the truth is that he is not very optimistic. According to him, the United States could suffer a debt crisis in the next 2 or 3 years.
And to give you an idea, we're talking about someone who has been in the markets for over 50 years and has lived through practically every crisis since the 70s, so he knows a thing or two. Obviously, this doesn't mean we have to take what he says as absolute truths, but in many things I think he's quite right.
So in this video we're going to see exactly what he said , how we can interpret it, and most importantly, what we should or shouldn't do with our money. Let's begin. Suppose you have a salary of 50,000 euros a year, but your expenses are 70,000. Since you spend more than you earn, you borrow 20,000 euros to survive.
The following year, the same. The next one was more of the same, and the one after that too. Little by little, the debt grows until suddenly, one day, you realize that you already owe 400,000 euros. And the more you owe, the more money you spend on interest, the more your expenses increase, and the more you have to borrow again.
In this situation, do you think anyone will be willing to continue lending you money? Well, that heavily indebted person has a name and surname, and it's called the United States . According to Dalio, the American government takes in $5 trillion a year and spends $7 trillion. That is, it spends 40% more than it takes in.
And as a consequence, it has a debt of over 40 trillion, for which it has to pay one trillion a year in interest alone. With all this on the table, Dalio argues that we may be on the verge of a major debt crisis. But wait, there's more. It's not just that the United States is heavily indebted, but also that borrowing is going to become more expensive every day .
Let's go back to the previous example. Imagine that you took out most of your loans a few years ago and they were granted to you at 1%. As they expire , you'll have to go to the bank to renew them, and at that point they'll tell you something like, "Okay, but with everything you owe now, if you want me to lend you more money, you'll have to give me at least , let's say, 4%," further increasing the interest you have to pay.
The same thing happens with the United States . The market, which is all of us, is not stupid, and in order for us to lend it more money through the purchase of bonds, we demand that in return we be paid more interest. That's why you hear so much lately about US bonds and how much they're paying us right now.
The 30-year bond, for example, is approaching 6%, but how does all this affect us? When the government has to pay more for its debt, money becomes more expensive for everyone. And according to Dalio, the first to suffer the consequences would be mortgages and loans for Y, of course, money is not a finite resource, although it is for central banks.
If families increasingly have to allocate more money to mortgages and cars, it means there will be less money available for consumption. When we talk about consumption, we are referring to products such as clothing, travel, and food. And since almost two- thirds of the American and global economy in general is consumption, if people consume less, companies also earn less, economic growth could slow down and with it the stock market gains.
That covers the sovereign debt aspect, but be aware that Dalio also has something to say about artificial intelligence. What he said was that what we are experiencing reminds him of the 1920s. At that time, homes began to have access to electricity, radio, cars, cinema, technologies that completely changed our lives and in which everyone wanted to invest.
So much so that people were even willing to go into debt to do it as much as possible. According to Dalio, something similar happens with AI. It's such a revolutionary technology that nobody wants to be left out. Everyone wants to invest, and that ends up creating a bubble. In the 1920s it culminated in the crash of 1929.
The Dow Jones, the main index of the American stock market at that time, fell by about 89% until 1932 and did not return to its peak until 1954, 25 years later. And now you might be wondering, "Okay, Dani, so what do I do with all this information?" At the end of the interview, Dalio shares what is most important for any investor right now.
But first, let's delve a little deeper. The first thing I would like to make clear is that we should respect, or at least listen to, one of the best investors of recent years. Both he and Michael Barry, the investor who predicted the 2008 crisis and about whom, if you'd like, we can make an explicit video talking about his career, are getting a lot of flak because they've been saying for several years that a crisis is coming that has n't arrived yet.
But remember, we're not talking about two gurus we see on social media. We are talking about two of the best investors of the last few decades. And in this case, the problem that Dalio raises is pure logic. If any of us spent 40% more than we earned each year and had to allocate more and more money to pay interest, no one would doubt that we were heading for disaster.
Something similar happens with a country, but with the big difference that in this case the United States has the ability to print its own currency. Somehow, he has the tools to kick the can down the road and avoid facing the problem, at least for now. Well, there are people who argue that he should never have to face it.
But printing money doesn't make the debt disappear. If they print more dollars, each dollar is worth less. This is supply and demand, and those who end up paying the price are always the same: the citizens, in the form of inflation. And this can be easily verified. It is no coincidence that right from 2020 onwards the debt skyrocketed and with it inflation.
So yes, Dalio is not saying anything stupid, not at all. The crisis is coming, and it could come in the form of debt, a bursting bubble, or something we can't even imagine today. Since 1928, the S&P 500 has suffered 27 bear markets, that is, drops of 20% or more from peaks. This is one out of every three and a half years.
And they're not exactly small, since the average is around -35%. Therefore, the question we need to ask ourselves is not so much whether a crisis is coming, we already know that. The question is, what can we do if we know it's coming? Let's get to the most important part of the video. As I said before, this is not the first time Dalio has raised a fuss.
In June 2023, in another interview with Bloomberg, he said that the United States was already practically in a debt crisis. At that time, the S&P 500 was around 4300 points. Today, at the beginning of October, it is around 7750, a rise of nearly 80% in just over 3 years without taking dividends into account .
Mind you, I'm not saying he was wrong. It may be that the debt problem he mentioned in 2023 is exactly the same one he is sharing now, and that it is simply taking longer to arrive. But that is precisely the important point. If we had sold everything in 2023 to protect ourselves from that hypothetical crisis, we would still be waiting for it today and we would have missed one of the best stock market streaks of the last decade.
And look at the timeframe they're giving now, the next 24 or 36 months. And it could be, I'm not saying it isn't, but as an investment strategy it doesn't help us know when to exit and especially when to re-enter. Dalio himself acknowledges this; in December 2025, when asked if there was a stock market bubble, he answered yes, but immediately afterwards he also said that one should not sell just because there was a bubble, because before it bursts it could still go up a lot.
So if we stop for 2 seconds to really listen to Dalio, even he doesn't tell us that we have to sell and run away. All it's telling us is that we should prepare. Ray Dalio is probably one of the greatest standard-bearers of diversification. In a recent talk at Tsinghua University, he again stressed the need to combine several unrelated sources of profitability to reduce risk without sacrificing returns.
For him it is a basic rule and as proof of this he designed the famous All Weather wallet, a wallet for all seasons. It basically consists of combining stocks, bonds, gold and commodities with the idea of being able to withstand any economic scenario. If you want to know more about the topic, I have a video about it on my channel .
I've included the link below if you want to take a look after this one. But pay attention because it's worth making a brief digression here. In 2022, Dalio's All Weather fund lost around 22% more than the typical 60/40 portfolio with 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds, which lost around 16-17%. So the wallet supposedly designed for all seasons performed worse than the most basic wallet of all.
Because? In 2022, inflation drove up interest rates, and both stocks and bonds fell simultaneously. And since the All Weather has a lot of weight in bonds, it suffered even more than the 60/40 in this case. With this, I want us to understand that diversifying does not mean eliminating every type of downturn.
Even if they are reduced, there will be years when everything falls at once. But going back to the interview, when the journalist asked Dalio what investors should pay attention to right now , his answer was very "made in Dalio", to the concentration of risk. For him, the biggest risk today is having too much of one thing, especially in something as trendy as artificial intelligence.
And he advises us to diversify our portfolios with 10-15% in gold and a smaller portion in bitcoin. Regarding gold, without making any recommendation whatsoever , I quite agree, I must say. However well it has performed in recent years, precious metals do not exist to make us rich; they exist to help us diversify our portfolios, and history proves this perfectly.
In the 2008 crisis, from the stock market peak in October 2007 to the low in March 2009, the S&P 500 plummeted by more than 50%, while during the same period gold rose by around 25%. And another more recent example is 2022, in which stocks and bonds fell quite sharply and gold ended up virtually flat.
It didn't win, but at least it didn't sink either, which is precisely what we 're looking for by adding this asset to our portfolio. However, be careful because there's also a catch. As short-term protection, it is quite inconsistent. In the 28 years since 1900 in which inflation exceeded 3%, gold suffered losses in 13, practically half.
And if someone bought gold at its peak in January 1980 at $850 an ounce, they lost about 80% of their purchasing power over the next two decades. That's why it's so important to pay attention to weight distribution. Dalio, in this case, advises between 10 and 15%. It doesn't say we should put half our savings into gold because a crisis is coming, but rather that it uses it as a complement to cushion blows.
That's diversification. And what about Bitcoin? You know I'm always pretty honest about this topic. I don't invest in cryptocurrencies. Not because I think they're going to disappear or that they're a scam, but because I have n't taken the time to sit down and study them properly and I don't understand them well enough.
And since I don't invest and I don't understand them, I don't think I can contribute much value . But if you're more involved in the scene and want to allocate a portion of your budget, perfect. Of course. However, what I would say, without again making a recommendation of anything, is that it should be a smaller part of our portfolio, as Dalio himself says .
If you have to take away just one idea from this video, I'd like it to be the following. Dalio may be absolutely right that the next crisis is just around the corner, but even so, the worst decision we could make is not to invest. Crises and sharp declines are part of the journey. They have been present in each of the last 126 years and yet, the stock market has remained the most profitable asset.
What makes the difference, therefore, is not guessing when the storm will arrive, but having a good , solid ship ready that can withstand it. A mattress to avoid selling during the worst times. A truly diversified portfolio . A plan of contributions and the discipline to maintain all of this. If you want us to build it together, you already know that at Método Finanzas that's precisely what we do.
We analyze your personal case and design a strategy tailored to your needs. I've included the link below if you'd like more information. And if you prefer to do it on your own, that's great too. The important thing is that we do it and that we don't let fear decide for us. And that's all for today's video.
I hope you enjoyed it and were able to learn something. If so, I would appreciate a like and for you to share it with someone you think it might help. As always, now it's your turn . Do you think Dalio will be right this time with his prediction about the debt crisis? Do you have gold in your wallet or do you see it more as a fad?
Have you ever stopped investing for fear of a crash that ultimately didn't happen? I'll read your comments. That's all , I hope I've been able to help you. A big hug.
Comments 0