How Billionaire Ray Dalio Helped Launch McDonald's Chicken Nuggets

Key Takeaways

you were a Commodities Trader and an advisor earlier in your career and in the early 80s McDonald's has this new idea for a product but there's obviously a big problem and they come to you for help what was the issue there so I was on Bridgewater I was my company and I traded Commodities and I had um a large chicken producer as a client and I had McDonald's as a client and McDonald's wanted to come out with the McNugget but the problem with the McNugget is if the cost of the buying McNuggets varied a lot they can put it on the menu the price could go up a lot and they'd have big losses and then they'd either have to change the menu price which would be a mess or they would have to take these losses so that was their problem that was the challenge and I um and I knew the chicken producer and I know that um the cost of a chicken producing a chicken is very little the little chicken the check it's most mostly the feed that you feed the chicken corn and soy meal and I knew that I could hedge that by being able to buy corn and soy meal Futures so that they would lock in a chicken price so I showed the chicken producer how he could do that and then give a fixed price to McDonald's so they wouldn't have that risk [Music]