On the heels of Jeff Gundlach‘s “there’s going to be a buyer’s remorse period” warnings yesterday, the other ‘bond king’ has raised similar fears that the Trump rally is overdone (as are the prospects for growth behind it). Putting aside the book-talking as their bond portfolios suffer, Gross echoes Gundlach’s “Trump’s not the wizard of oz” comments, noting that the next president faces serious structural headwinds and warns investors “should move to cash,” as any fiscal stimulus gains will be temporary at best.
As we noted yesterday, speaking to Reuters, Gundlach, who went “maximum negative” on Treasuries on July 6 when the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note hit 1.32 percent and bottom-ticked what may have been a generational low in rates, said that markets could reverse the recent momentum in equities, and at the very latest by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration.
The “new bond king” said that the strong U.S. stock market rally, surge in Treasury yields and strength in the U.S. dollar since Trump’s surprising presidential victory more than three weeks ago look to be “losing steam,” Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“The bar was so low on Trump to the point people were expecting markets will go down 80 percent and global depression – and now this guy is the Wizard of Oz and so expectations are high,” Gundlach said. “There’s no magic here.”
Gundlach had warned last month that federal programs take time to implement, rising mortgage rates and monthly payments are not positive for the “psyche of the middle class and broadly,” and supporters of defeated White House candidate Hillary Clinton are not in a mood to spend money.
“There is going to be a buyer’s remorse period,” said Gundlach, who voted for Trump and accurately predicted in January the winner of the presidential election.
And now, as Bloomberg reports, “the old bond king” Bill Gross is less than enthusiastic about the future under Trump…
Investors are misguided in betting that promised tax cuts, infrastructure spending and deregulation will spur faster growth, according to an e-mail Thursday from Gross, the billionaire bond fund manager. He said the benefits from such fiscal stimulus likely would be temporary.
Gross said future growth is primarily a function of productivity, which has flat lined for the last several years and shows little promise of accelerating.
“A strong dollar and continuing structural headwinds including aging demographics, de-globalization trade policies, and accelerating debt-to-GDP in almost all countries at now higher interest rates, promise to contain productivity at perhaps 1 percent annual growth rates and therefore real GDP growth at 2 percent,” he wrote.
“An investor should move to cash and cash alternatives, such as high probability equity arbitrage situations,” Gross, who runs the $1.7 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, said. “Bond durations should be far below benchmarks.”
With bonds bid this morning (and stocks suffering broadly the last two days), perhaps they are just talking their books, as Gundlach offers his opinion on what happens next: “The dollar is going to go down, yields have peaked and will move sideways, stocks have peaked as well and gold is going to go up in the short term.”
