Ray Dalio’s 2026 Warning – The Financial Reset No One Is Ready For

Ray Dalio says the United States could be on the verge of a financial reset, the likes of which we haven't seen in nearly 100 years. And according to Ray Dalio, this isn't a recession, he's worried about something worse. What is it? Well, he calls it a financial heart attack because of the multiple economic factors coming together at the same time. That's why in this video, I want to break down what Ray Dalio is seeing, that way you can understand different people's philosophies on where the economy is going, that way you can win whether the economy goes up, down, or sideways. Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater, which is the largest hedge fund in the world. And in 2018, Ray Dalio began warning Americans about a debt crisis, which we obviously haven't seen just yet. Well, after the 2020 pandemic, Ray Dalio's warnings didn't go away, they got more amplified. In 2022, Ray Dalio published this on his LinkedIn. The changing world order is approaching stage 6, the war stage. In Ray Dalio's book, The Changing World Order, which by the way is a great book, I recommend everybody read it. He highlights the seven stages that every empire goes through that his firm has studied over the last number of centuries, including the United States dollar, including the British pound before that, including the Dutch guilder before that, and how every empire has risen and fallen following the same seven patterns. He says that they always start here in stage one when the new world order is established. And generally what that means is that there is a new world reserve currency, like in 1944, that was when the United States dollar became the world's reserve currency after World War II. After that comes stage two, which is an era of peace, prosperity, and productive debt growth. Usually this new world order comes after some sort of war, like we saw with World War II here. And after that time you see peace because now there's this new currency and the world respects this new world order. And this creates an opportunity for productive debt growth because now you have this new strong economy, this new strong currency. So this country can then borrow dollars productively and invest it into the country and produce more growth, more economic growth and see productivity increase. That's when you enter stage three, the debt bubble and the growing wealth gap. In the beginning, when the government is borrowing money, it's doing it sustainably and is creating more productivity. Well, then as you start to see more growth, you want to keep fueling that faster and faster growth. And to keep fueling more faster growth, you have to keep borrowing more money, which then creates more of a debt problem and that starts to create more of wealth inequality because you start to see more inflation and then inflation disproportionately benefits the financially educated and the wealthy, making everybody else poorer. You might've heard that 50 years ago, you didn't need as much money to buy a house. You don't need as much money to buy a car because the wealth gap and the income to asset gap wasn't as wide as it is today. And this is a common trend that Ray Dalio has noted through civilizations for centuries. This then leads to stage four, the debt bubble bursting leading to an economic downturn. We saw this happen in 2008 when the debt bubble burst leading to the great financial crisis leading to a severe economic downturn, the worst recession that we have seen since the great depression. And then we saw something similar happen during the pandemic. Although during the pandemic, it wasn't because of really the economy. It was a shutdown of the economy, which then led to a collapse of the debt problems, which was then solved through more money printing. Although solved might not be the right answer, but it mitigated the pain of that recession. This then leads to stage five, which is printing money and credit as a way to stimulate the economy. You see this downturn happen. We saw it happen in 2008 and now the Federal Reserve Bank started printing quantitative easing. They printed a trillion dollars to stimulate the economy. In 2020, we saw the same thing happen. We saw trillions of dollars printed and injected into the economy to save the economy, which created that bandaid, but it creates a problem. And the problem is the debasement of our currency, the devaluation of our currency, meaning the dollar losing value, inflation going up, the wealth gap widening, the average person becoming poorer, the wealthy becoming wealthier. That's stage five. And that's a problem that we've been seeing happen. And this is where Ray Dalio on his LinkedIn says that we are entering stage six. Stage six, according to Ray Dalio, is revolution and wars. And this is where what Ray Dalio says is people become fed up with this larger wealth gap. So you start to see more unrest inside of the country, which means more of the country's resources are being used to keep the country united as opposed to protecting the country against foreign threats. And this then creates opportunities for foreign countries to then attack and take over that leading country, the leading empire, because the country is becoming weakened because its own country is not united anymore. This then leads to stage seven, which is debt and political restructuring. Ray Dalio calls this the final stage of an empire, because after this, the whole thing restarts again, and then you have a new world order, and then you start to see the same cycle happen again. And generally in the past, Ray Dalio says that these types of cycles take anywhere between 50 to 150 years, which is why we don't really notice them because they only happen once in a lifetime. Now, for full transparency, Ray Dalio does say that there are things that an empire can do to extend its lifespan, kind of like there are things that you can do to extend your lifespan by eating healthy and exercising. There are things that countries and empires can do to extend their own lifespan, like by managing your national debt and by managing inflation and by keeping the country united. These are things that can be done to extend the lifespan. But there are three things that Ray Dalio and his firm have been highlighting recently, which can indicate where the economy and the world order is going to be moving next, which I want to highlight for you. Again, I make these videos from different viewpoints because financial opinions are like armpits. Everybody's got a couple and some stink more than others. But the smartest thing that you can do is to understand differing points of view. That way you can be a smarter investor. And the three things that Ray Dalio is talking about right now is a potential policy-induced recession. I'll explain what that means. Number two are risks to the United States assets. And number three is artificial intelligence. Let's break this down. One, two, three. And I want to remind you that for those of you that are investors or want to become investors, I've put together a new investing masterclass where I walk you through how you can start investing and find hidden investment opportunities before everybody else. And I'll show you the exact system that my firm and I use to research investment opportunities before they hit the headlines. There's a ton of value in this masterclass. It's completely free. And when you register for the masterclass, we're also going to give you access to market briefs, which is my newsletter for investors, complimentary for free at no cost. So if you want to get the investing masterclass and market briefs all for free, all you have to do is click the link down in the description below. Now starting with this policy-induced recession, what Ray Dalio says is that the tariffs that the United States is imposing on countries around the world will cause a delayed slowdown in our economy, which could put us in a recession. Now up until now, we really haven't seen much inflation because of the tariffs. But at the same time, you have people saying the price hikes from tariffs are coming. Companies have been holding off raising prices as long as they could. But by 2026, you'll actually see these price hikes in your wallet. Again, nobody knows what's actually going to happen. We're going to ultimately have to wait and see, but we know that the United States has imposed tariffs on many countries around the world, which means that companies that are importing products from those foreign countries will either have to pay a fee to bring that product into the United States, which means that profit margins get smaller, or they will have to raise their prices to maintain the profit margins, or those same companies will have to import those products from a different foreign country that doesn't have those tariffs, or they're going to have to bring that manufacturing, bring that product into the United States to make it here, which might have higher costs because producing a product in the United States is more expensive than producing the same product in China or India. So there's a few things that are happening at the same time and companies are trying to find ways to manage those higher costs. But over the next three to six to nine months, we should really understand if these tariffs are going to lead to higher prices or if they're not. The second risk that Ray Dalio's firm talks about are risks to United States assets because foreign investors are investing less aggressively in the United States. Read this. We see exceptional risks to United States assets, which are dependent on foreign inflows. Again, that's a quote from Bridgewater, which is Ray Dalio's hedge fund. And the price of any asset ultimately depends on supply and demand. When you have more buyers than sellers for an asset, whether it's a house, a stock, a piece of gold, when you have more buyers than sellers, the price of that asset goes up. When you have more sellers than buyers, the price of the asset goes down. Because when you have more buyers than sellers, the buyers are fighting against each other to get that asset. So what do they do? Bidding wars. And they bid the price of that asset up. When you have more sellers than buyers, now the sellers are competing against each other to sell their asset. And how do they compete? By cutting the price of their asset. Now, the reason why this matters is because since 2021, we've been seeing a steady decline of foreign investment into the United States. On one hand, that's good because that means you're not having to compete against foreign investors if you're in the United States. But on the other hand, that's bad because if there's less buyers, less investors in the United States, that means less demand for those same assets, which is less upward price pressure because you have less potential buyers. Now, we don't have a final report on what's going on in 2025 just yet, but some investors have been hinting that 2025 was even worse as investors got worried about tariffs and the reliability of the United States dollar. So foreign investors might be looking for alternative assets outside of the United States, which again means less demand for those United States assets. If that trend continues, that is, if foreign investors want to put less money inside of the United States, that could mean less demand for those United States assets and less upward pressure for those United States assets if there's less dollars flowing in. And then we have number three, which is arguably the most important factor right now, which is artificial intelligence, because there are trillions of dollars flowing into AI companies and countries are fighting to be the leading world AI expert. The reason why is because AI is going to change the trajectory of the world's economy and whichever country owns the biggest piece of the artificial intelligence market share, well that country is going to see its economy boom and you bet that that can extend this lifespan a lot because this is the biggest shift that we've seen in our economy since the internet, but it's being adopted at a much faster rate. It took the internet about three decades to have 1 billion users of the internet. We're talking about 30 years. It took chat GPT about three years to hit the same 1 billion user mark. The internet was the biggest shift to our economy in modern history and the United States of America was the home for the biggest piece of this internet shift. I mean, we have meta, we have Amazon, we have Netflix, we have Uber and second place is China with Alibaba and TikTok, but the United States was a clear winner. Today, AI is leading the next wave of the global economic shift and the countries that control the largest piece of that AI shift are going to own the piece of the world economy. This is why you've seen Dubai pouring money into artificial intelligence startups. China has been doing everything they can to win the AI war and the UK is dumping money into AI, hoping that they can get a piece of this action as well. Well, as of 2024, the winner of the investment into AI is the United States by a long shot, but the winner of this race still has to be crowned. Now, I know all this can seem very overwhelming, very intimidating, and the ultimate question is what the heck does this mean for you? Should you panic and get scared? No. According to Ray Dalio, what this means for you is this creates opportunity, but this creates opportunity for the financially savvy and this is where what he says is having real asset diversification can be very helpful. This includes investing your money into things like the United States stock market, investing into things like foreign stocks, which by the way, you can invest in foreign stock ETFs on the United States stock market. That includes investing your money into things like United States treasuries. This includes investing your money into things like commodities, physical gold, oil. This includes investing your money into things like cryptocurrencies. This includes investing your money into things like physical real estate. This way now you have protection. So if one asset goes down, you're protected because another asset might be rising during that exact same time. This is the way that you can protect yourself from whatever might be coming in the economy because we know that volatility is coming. 2025 has been one of the most volatile years for the stock market really in history, partially due to the tariffs. But now with all these shifts happening with things like changes in policies, with tariffs, we have risks to United States assets with dollars maybe not coming into the United States as fast as they were before, with changes in the global economy, with things like AI. All of these things can create volatility, but that also creates opportunity for the financially savvy. And this is where having just a simple portfolio where your money is invested in just one asset is more risky now than it was 50 years ago. But with the financially savvy, this actually creates more opportunity. And if you understand this, well now you can build a more diversified portfolio and see more potential upside now that you understand what's going on. Again, if you want some additional resources, that's why I put together the free investing masterclass, which you can walk through and see how you can research investments to stay ahead of investment opportunities, I have that link for you down in the description. The United States government owes more than $37 trillion. That means your tax dollars are being used to pay interest on all that debt. And this is where President Trump has been proposing a new plan to help pay off this debt involving gold and involving crypto. And most people have no idea of how this plan works or the implication of this new plan on your money.