Animal Spirits Podcast Talk Your Book: Investing in the All Weather Strategy
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Sep 29, 2025 Matt Bartolini from State Street Investment Management and Chris Ward, the lead architect for Bridgewater's All Weather strategy, dive into the world of investment strategies. They unpack the origins and goals of the All Weather approach, designed for resilience across economic climates. Chris explains how growth and inflation shape asset behaviors, while Matt discusses transforming this strategy into a tax-sensitive ETF. They also explore the use of leverage, the challenges of DIY replication, and the conditions under which the All Weather strategy outshines traditional models.
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Purpose Of The All Weather Strategy
- All Weather targets similar long-term returns to equities while reducing boom-bust volatility via risk-balanced assets.
- Bridgewater built it to perform across economic environments by allocating risk, not capital, across assets.
Four-Box Growth vs Inflation Framework
- All Weather uses growth and inflation as the two axes to categorize asset behavior across four boxes.
- It allocates ~25% of risk to assets that win in each growth/inflation scenario to reduce vulnerability.
Timeless Relationships, Strategic Adjustments
- Core asset relationships to growth and inflation are timeless, though implementation must adapt to market regimes.
- Bridgewater adjusts instruments strategically when pricing or effectiveness of assets changes, not tactically.