ahead, ray galeano o's why he is increasing his various bets on italy.is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ vonnie: this is bloomberg markets. i am vonnie quinn in new york. mark: from london, i am mark barton. bridgewater associates is betting against italian banks, they have boosted its that's against the italian banking sector since $3 billion as the italian election looms in early march. what is he betting? >> mostly a tie in financial banks -- italian financial banks. the elections in march, although he has been running these bets over the last three months, he had $1 billion once -- worth of shorts. mark: is this the time to do this when you look at how the italian banking industry has fared? >> if you look at italian indexes, one of the best performers in europe. bank indexes up 14%. some of the bets may be painful for bridgewater but it looks to be a top-down macro call on the country. we will see how it performs over the next couple of months. vonnie: let's put it into context, bridgewater has $160 billion in assets, $3 billion, $4 billion bet, in the context of th