'The Fund' exposed culture problems and scandals at Bridgewater Associates

The culture Ray Dalio created at Bridgewater Associates is often criticized

Despite large returns, former employees report meticulous logs of mistakes, intense public questioning of junior-level staffers, recordings of all meetings being made available to all employees, and highly confrontational meetings—many of which are attributed to the book of more than 100 principles Dalio gives each employee. (Some users may experience a paywall)

Read about the National Labor Relations Board case against Bridgewater Associates

In 2016, The New York Times reported about sexual harassment claims at the hedge fund, which uncovered a large-scale case from the National Labor Relations Board over Bridgewater's employees' contracts. The NLRB challenged their intense confidentiality agreements, but the settlement was ironically deemed confidential.

Ray Dalio allegedly punched one of his early bosses

Before founding his hedge fund, Dalio traded commodities and futures. In 1974, Dalio allegedly punched one of his departmental bosses, causing him to lose his job at Shearson Hayden Stone. He founded Bridgewater Associates the following year. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

A Wall Street Journal podcast examines allegations inside the WEF

In this episode of "The Journal," WSJ reporter Shalini Ramachandran investigates claims from current and former employees that the organization behind Davos fostered a toxic workplace, sparked by an anonymous whistleblower letter in 2025 and internal accounts.

Read about former FBI Director James Comey's time at Bridgewater Associates

Comey worked at Bridgewater Associates for three years before becoming the director of the FBI in 2013. Comey has said the company's tradition of "probing," or intense questioning, can be more intense than government hearings. During his time at Bridgewater, Comey led multiple investigations into employee conduct—particularly that of former executive Eileen Murray. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

In 2007, Bridgewater Associates warned of an impending financial crisis

Ray Dalio even presented his concerns to the US Treasury Secretary. In late 2025, Dalio warned of another recession, in line with models he created in his book "How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle."

A look at the biography of Sam Bankman-Fried by author Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis released a book, "Going Infinite," on the day the subject of the book began his high-profile fraud trial. The book delves into the life of Sam Bankman-Fried, a young billionaire in the cryptocurrency world. Find out what the bestselling author discovered over two years and 100 interviews with Bankman-Fried.

'The Firm' is a book about the influence of top consulting firm McKinsey

The author argues that consulting firms are so valuable to the companies that hire them because the clients don’t have to take the blame for any changes the consulting firm decides to make within the organization.

A star investment banker was fired, launching a decade-long court fight

Star bankers are the core of an investment banking firm's business, so when Perella Weinberg let their restructuring guru Mike Kramer go in 2015, he sued, launching a ten-year legal fight.

In 2025, more than 10 former Palantir employees published a letter condemning the company's partnerships

Thirteen so-called "ex-Palantirians," condemned a $30M deal that gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement near real-time insights on migrants. The letter, named "The Scouring of the Shire" in a nod to "The Lord of the Rings," alleges that the company is violating its code of conduct by supporting this application of its service.

Inside the Sarah Lawrence College sex cult scandal

In late 2010, a middle-aged man, freshly released from prison, moved into his daughter's college dorm and created a group that had all the hallmarks of a cult. Over the decade that followed, he extorted millions of dollars from vulnerable young adults through violence, psychological torture, and forced sex work. Authorities credited his arrest to a magazine article published in 2019 detailing victims' allegations.

WeWork’s S-1 was full of alarming financial and business information that concerned investors and the public

When WeWork’s S-1 came out, investors were particularly concerned about WeWork’s expenses far outpacing its growing revenue and its complex company structure, as well as a few potential conflicts of interest within the company.

Read about the 'gatekeeper' of the stock market, former index chair at S&P Global

David Blitzer, the former index chair at S&P Global, earned the nickname "gatekeeper" of the stock market after helping decide which companies made it into the S&P 500 for 24 years. Blitzer became a legend in the world of indexing and has a reputation for being even-tempered and always wearing a bow tie.

A hedge funds timeline, from the 1940s onward

Since Alfred Winslow Jones formed the first hedge fund in 1949, traders have rolled out an increasingly complex array of investment strategies. They all aim to beat increasingly efficient markets and/or to provide ample downside protection against sell-offs.

Writer Gay Talese has unorthodox practices for researching his stories

Since Talese began working at the New York Times in the 1950s, he has woven eccentric details into his stories about the people he covers. His immersive journalistic methods, such as living in a nudist colony, sparked controversy, but also helped him uncover aspects of people's lives.

The collapse of Archegos Capital Management drew scrutiny to family offices

Archegos, which managed the assets of Bill Hwang, wasn’t subject to the same oversight as traditional investment firms when it collapsed.

The story of Wall Street's Charging Bull statue

In New York City's Financial District, there's a bronze statue of a bull that attracts tourists from all over the world. But how did it get there, and what is it about the statue that makes people line up for photographs, day after day? Journalist PJ Vogt dives into the Charging Bull statue's origin story in a podcast episode (warning: some mature language).

Hear why one short seller thinks short selling is now more important than ever

Carson Block runs an investment research firm and hedge fund, Muddy Waters Research and Muddy Waters Capital. Block is known for being an activist investor focused on identifying fundamental business problems that might cause a stock to be overvalued. Block says a decrease in investigative financial journalism, deregulation, and less oversight of businesses overall have increased the scope and scale of fraud, making short sellers that suss out overvalued stocks incredibly important.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

‘The Giant Pool of Money’ remains one of the most acclaimed accounts of the 2008 housing bubble

This Peabody Award–winning "This American Life" episode traces how cheap global money, subprime lending, and Wall Street engineering inflated the housing bubble. Through vivid reporting and real voices, it became one of the defining works of 2000s financial journalism.

The woman who coined the term ‘girlboss’ now has a VC firm called Trust Fund

In 2006, Amoruso founded the clothing company Nasty Gal, then later wrote a memoir called “#Girlboss” about her company’s meteoric rise. Later, she launched other ventures, including her “Business Class” business coaching series and the venture capital fund “Trust Fund.”

The Wall Street Journal compiled the best parts of Warren Buffett's annual letters

Over the years, Buffett has quoted Yogi Berra and Mae West, as well as country songs and the Bible. Many turn to his letters as a source of inspiration and wisdom.

In 1957, a vice president at JPMorgan became an outspoken evangelist for psychedelic mushrooms

R. Gordon Wasson wrote "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" for Life magazine in 1957. It was a groundbreaking piece of journalism that introduced mainstream society to psychedelic mushrooms. He retired from JPMorgan in 1963 and continued researching and writing about psychedelic experiences for the rest of his life.

The Yale model of investment allocation, explained

College endowment managers long held to the traditional allocation of 60% domestic stocks and 40% bonds. But Yale’s David Swensen developed a new approach: deprioritizing low-risk fixed income and liquid assets in favor of alternative investments to leverage endowments' long-term investment horizons and capture the “liquidity premium.”

How the New Yorker went from poker game to powerhouse

After 100 years in print, the New Yorker is still going strong, publishing weekly issues featuring the best in long-form journalism, cultural criticism, and short fiction. This history of the magazine's founding and early years shows how its balance of high and lowbrow culture, along with a fortuitous game of poker, led to its longstanding success.

Listen to a 2026 interview where Bumble's CEO said its stock is down 96% since its IPO 'for no reason'

CEO and Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd said the company is still performing very well. She added that the business makes $1B per year and referred to it as profitable. She went on to say "who knows what people trade stock on?" and that she believes the stock market has written Bumble off as if it were debt

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.