Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said investors had priced in the outcome of a divided Congress in the midterm elections, but believes that politics is now playing a greater role in financial markets across the globe.

"We're in a world now where politics and choices made have a much bigger effect on the markets," Dalio said in a conversation on stage at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday.

Dalio, who founded the world's largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, said populism is a phenomenon not just in the U.S. but around the world. The question, Dalio said, is whether the next downturn will happen before the next presidential election in two years.

"I would be surprised if it was more than three years down the line and it could be one or two years," Dalio said.