In his book Principles, Dalio talks about mistakes he made early in his investing career.

In August 1982, Mexico defaulted on its debt. Dalio had been one of the few people to see this coming, and as a result he received press coverage for his successful forecast. Congress invited him to testify on the crisis.

He publicly and confidently stated to anyone who would listen that the market was headed for a depression, and he explained his reasoning. His hedge fund made a massive bet on this stock market prediction. He went on Wall $treet Week, then the must-watch show for anyone in the markets, and declared:

"There'll be no soft landing. I can say that with absolute certainty, because I know how the markets work."

As Dalio would say in this book, "I was dead wrong." It was devastating for him - not only did he feel incredibly humbled for being so publicly wrong, but it cost him everything at his fund. After 8 years in business, he had to let go of his staff and became the only employee at Bridgewater. He had to start over again from scratch.

The biggest lesson Dalio learned was that no matter how sure he was, he would never again be certain enough to make any forecasts with absolute certainty. He was reminded of how difficult it is to time the markets. In the future, he would learn to balance risks in ways that would keep the big upside, while reducing downside.

"Truth be known, forecasts aren't worth very much, and most people who make them don't make money in the markets...This is because nothing is certain and when one overlays the probabilities of all of the various things that affect the future in order to make a forecast, one gets a wide array of possibilities with varying probabilities, not one highly probable outcome."

No matter how confident he was in any single bet, Dalio knew going forward that he could still be wrong, and that he needed to be properly diversified to reduce risks without reducing returns. Dalio would build portfolios that incorporated high quality return streams that balanced each other out, providing a more consistent and reliable return, and not risking ruin on any single stock market prediction.

"You need to diversify by holding assets that will do well in either a rising or a falling growth environment, or a rising or falling inflation environment, and [you] should diversify by holding international as well as domestic asset classes."

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