Jeff Gundlach locks swords with former fixed-income investor Bill Gross, a renowned bond investor, over being crowned as the bond king.
The two heavyweight fixed-income investors, at different times in their careers, held the bond king title.
Bill Gross mocked Jeff Gundlach’s kingdom as too insignificant for the current bond king to warrant the throne.
“Bill Gross mocked Jeff Gundlach’s kingdom as too insignificant for the current bond king to warrant the throne”
WEALTH TRAINING COMPANY
Jeff Gundlach locks swords with Gross over size
Does size really matter?
Bill Gross triggered the foray and launched his blade directly at his rival, claiming that Jeff Gundlach’s firm, DoubleLine, has just $55 billion of assets under management AUM.
“…that’s not enough to be king,” ranted Bill Gross in a recent interview.
Jeff Gundlach locks swords with Gross by saying, “I never wanted that title, I never embraced it, I really don’t know what it means.”
Jeff Gundlach was speaking at Future Proof, the world’s largest wealth festival four-day event held September 10-13, 2023, in Huntington Beach, California.
“It’s sad for somebody that’s been out of the business for 10 years and is still trying to exorcise the demons,” adding, in a wonderfully patronizing manner:
“But I hope he’s doing fine.”
“I never wanted that title, I never embraced it, I really don’t know what it means.”
JEFF GUNDLACH
Jeff Gundlach continued;
“We’re doing great, our five-year numbers are great, things are good. And we manage a lot more than $55 billion,” he added, noting that he doesn’t want to manage more money than he already does, citing roughly $100 billion in assets under management for his firm.
Jeff Gundlach pointed out that he no longer marketed his largest fund more than a decade ago.
“This idea that your AUM defines you, it’s just weird. I’ve capped many of my strategies that I could have raised twice, three times as much money but I didn’t think there’d be fun, I didn’t think I’d be happier doing that,” added Jeff Gundlach.
“I actually thought it would be more difficult. Because along with that is more clients, more hassles and probably incrementally less rewarding because you’re less successful in terms of results.” – Jeff Gundlach
“I actually thought it would be more difficult. Because along with that is more clients, more hassles and probably incrementally less rewarding because you’re less successful in terms of results.”
Jeff Gundlach’s DoubleLine then took a defensive fencing posture with the following concluding remarks:
“I hope he retires and feels better about himself,” Gundlach said, referring to Bill Gross.
In a previous post entitled, “Jeff Gundlach Sees Challenging Times,” dated Fed, 2023 the fixed income heavyweight noted that the investment environment was tough, to say the least.
Since then the Fed has gone guns blazing with its monetary restrictive policy to put out the inflation fire and is now crushing aggregate demand.
Eleven Fed rate hikes and billions of dollars of quantitative tightening, and money is now tight for everyone. Household child poverty is soaring, banks are not lending, bankruptcies are at an all-time high, and unemployment is starting to shoot higher.
So as Jeff Gundlach locks swords with Gross in a bitch fight over AUM size, perhaps the real story of the year, the century, for bond investors is that the 30-year treasury has lost more than 40% of its value since the Fed started tightening in August 2020.
If inflation continues, those fixed-income losses on long-maturity bonds could worsen, which could have a wider detrimental impact on finance and the economy in general.
