Bill Gross, co-founder of the world’s biggest bond firm, Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), has bet almost $200 million of his own money on his belief that interest rates will stay low. According to Bloomberg, he recently added $60 million to his already substantial $140 million bet though closed-end funds like the Pimco Corporate Opportunity Fund (PTY), which he manages. (The fund gained 14 percent through June 30, 2014.) Gross’s flagship bond fund–the Pimco Total Return Fund–seems on the other hand is leaking capital. Investors pulled out $4.5 billion in June, the 14th straight month of outflow, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There’s been a lot of negative (alright, weird) press about Gross, particularly after PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian left the firm in January. Wall Street Journal writer Greg Zuckerman has sources who say Gross compares himself to the race horse Secretariat and “discourages employees from making eye contact with him, especially in the morning.” Well, Gross was a professional blackjack player in Vegas. Or maybe avoiding eye contact is a new technique used via Transcendental Meditation, a trademarked mental chilling method that Gross–and other high powered bankers–now swear by as an effective way to reduce stress.
