Ray Dalio Warns Internal Conflicts Have Precipitated To Pre-Civil War Stage: ‘2024 Will Almost Certainly Be A Pivotal Year’

The year 2024 is poised to be pivotal, according to billionaire and hedge-fund veteran Ray Dalio. 

Dalio’s Take: In a LinkedIn post, Dalio compared 2024 to previous years marked by events of varying significance. 

While he doesn’t anticipate “seismic shifts” jeopardizing U.S. democracy or pushing the world into war (with a 20% chance, which he deems uncomfortably high), he emphasized that 2024 will likely be a crucial year.

“To clarify, I don’t mean that 2024 will necessarily be a year of seismic shifts that will end democracy in the U.S. and/or take the world over the brink into a war (like 1914, 1929, 1939, 1941, etc.)—I think that there is only a 20% chance of that, which is still too high for comfort,” Dalio wrote.

Dalio identifies the upcoming U.S. elections on Nov. 5 as a significant factor. Despite legal challenges, former President Trump leads in polls, winning the Iowa Republican caucuses.

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Dalio’s macro model identifies five major interconnected influences shaping the changing world order. He explores how these factors will unfold in 2024:

1. Debt-Money-Markets-Economy: Dalio said the riskiness of the force of debt, money markets, and economy is moderately low in the near term but turns moderately higher when considering the effects of the other four forces.

The current market pricing is now roughly in line with the current fundamentals, although a bit expensive for U.S. bonds and stocks, he said.

“I don’t see any really big debt/money/economic problems on the horizon (like in 2008) that can’t be well-managed,” the billionaire said.

“At the same time, the internal conflict force in conjunction with the 2024 elections, the external conflict force that will determine how international conflicts unfold, and the climate force that will certainly be costly (but how costly is as unpredictable as the weather) all add risks for markets and economies in 2024.”

He also sees technology evolvement producing great and risky investment opportunities ahead, while also providing a big productivity boost.

Inflation will unlikely fall as much and growth won’t be as much and interest rates won’t be cut as much, the founder of Bridgewater Associates said.

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2. Internal Conflict: The biggest single risk…