The ‘gifts’ Ray Dalio and Michael Burry are encouraging followers to consider this holiday season — it's not stocks

Billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates Ray Dalio and celebrated Wall Street investor Michael Burry have in separate posts announced their intentions to donate to charities, especially amid the holiday season spirit.

The posts came days after billionaire and world's richest man Elon Musk on podcast with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath said he thinks philanthropy is important but finds it hard to give away money in a way that is “truly beneficial to people”.

What did Ray Dalio say?

In his video post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), on 2 December, Ray Dalio wrote, “This year, I’d encourage you to consider a unique kind of holiday gift — a donation your friends and family can give to the charity of their choice. This kind of gift is far more meaningful, and it's simple. Anyone can do it.”

He tagged the post as Giving Tuesday and Redefine Gifting and added that he believes “gifts like these are more in keeping with what the holiday season is really about”.

Explaining his decision, Dalio said that he began substituting giving “junky and wasteful” gifts to friends who did not need it and instead began asking them about their charity of choice 20 years back. And since then, would give $20-100 to a charity of their choice. “And that was joyous because it was very much more in keeping with the holiday spirit. We felt together that we were doing something good for others,” he added.

Dalio also shared in the video that the money spent on candy during the holidays “is greater than the annual budgets for the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and Habitat for Humanity combined” and asked followers to “think about it” and consider donating instead. He also recommended two organisations — Tisbet and DonorsChoose, where you can specify who's the recipient and amount.

Not just holiday season, Michael Burry promises 12-months of giving

Meanwhile, popular as the hedge fund portfolio manager Michael Burry, who is known around the world for bet against the United States housing market in 2008, has promised to donate 5% of all subscription amount from his paid blog (Cassandra Unchained) to a “selected and vetted charity” each month for 12 months.

In a post on X on 3 December, the legendary investor, who's experiences were biographed in Michael Lewis's 2010 bestselling book ‘The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine’ and later also made into a 2015 Hollywood blockbuster starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carell, named Bale's charity as the recipient for December.

“Twelve months a year, Cassandra Unchained will donate 5% of subscription revenue during that month to a selected and vetted charity. This is also an opportunity to spread the word about charities truly making a difference,” he wrote.

“December’s charity is TogetherCalifornia, which was founded by Christian Bale and his wife Sibi to attack the foster care problem with real world action,” he wrote and linked the official page in his post — https://togethercalifornia.org/

Elon Musk says donating money is ‘extremely challenging’

Billionaire Elon Musk last week told Nikhil Kamath on his WTF Podcast that while philanthropy is necessary to help fellow humans, the art of giving is “very hard” and full of challenges.

Kamath asked about his views on philanthropy and charity, to which the world's richest man responded: “I think we should. I agree with the love of humanity, and we should definitely strive to do things that help our fellow human beings. But it’s very hard.”

“If you care about the reality of goodness rather than simply the perception of it, it’s extremely difficult to give away money well,” he said, adding that the biggest challenge is to give the money away in a way that actually benefits people.

“I have a large foundation, but I don’t put my name on it. In fact, I’ve said I don’t want my name on anything. The biggest challenge I find with the foundation is trying to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people. It’s very easy to give money away in a way that creates the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult—extremely difficult—to give money away for the reality of goodness,” he added.