This afternoon Jeffrey Gundlach held one of his periodic interviews with Reuters’ Jenna Ablan in which he said that the selloff in Treasuries is over and that investors looking to purchase Treasuries in the wake of the bond market’s sell-off – if one can call a move in the 10Y to 1.91% a selloff – are making a prudent move. “I think it is a reasonable strategy to start legging into the Treasury market.”
To be sure, he is talking his book, but at least he is honest about it: “We’ve been buying a little bit today … we bought a small amount of guaranteed mortgages, particularly Freddie Mac MBS.”
What about equity investors? Gundlach said that investors who want to purchase equities at this juncture should consider non-U.S. stocks. “They are down more than U.S. stocks. If U.S. equities go higher, it would seem very implausible that other markets would not participate in the rally even more.”
Gundlach, who runs $95 billion at DoubleLine, said he does not expect much from the latest Federal Reserve meeting but does expect somewhat “hawkish” language about the potential for hikes at meetings later this year. Instead he believes, as do we since 2013, that the next major easing step is also the final one: Gundlach suggested that a “helicopter money” drop could be the government’s next big monetary and fiscal move to stimulate the U.S. economy.
“Helicopter money is going to happen,” he said.
Gundlach’s track record has so far been mostly impeccable: last year, Gundlach correctly predicted that oil prices would plunge, junk bonds would live up to their name and China’s slowing economy would pressure emerging markets. In 2014, Gundlach correctly forecast U.S. Treasury yields would fall, not rise as many others had expected.
So if it is not the Fed, then what does spook him?
Last month, Gundlach told Reuters that he foresees a “global growth scare” between now and the end of the summer, triggered by a presidential nomination of Donald Trump.
Trump’s protectionist policies could mean negative global growth, Gundlach warned. “As he gets the nomination, the markets and investors are going to worry about it more. You will see a downgrading of global growth based on geopolitical risks. You must factor this into your risk-management.”
Which is ironic because as we reported last Friday, Gundlach also sees Trump as being the next president, and a good one at that.
Trump is going to win. I think Clinton and Sanders are both very poor candidates. I know the polls are signaling the opposite. But the polls said the opposite four years ago, too.
In the short term, Trump winning would be probably very positive for the economy. He says a lot of contradictory things and things that are not very specific. But he does say that he will build up the military and that he will build a wall at the border to Mexiko. If he wins he’s got at least to try those things. Also, he might initiate a big infrastructure program. What’s his campaign slogan? Make America great again. What that means is let’s go back to the past, let’s go back to the 1960s economy. So he might spend a lot of money on airports, roads and weapons. I think Trump would run up a huge deficit. Trump is very comfortable with debt. He’s a debt guy. His whole business has had a lot of debt over time and he has gone bankrupt with several enterprises. So I think you could have a debt-fuelled boom. But the overall debt level is already so high that you start to wonder what would happen after that.
It remains to be seen if Gundlach is right about bonds or stocks, but when it comes to Trump, as of moments ago, he is well on his way with a clean sweep in the entire “Amtrak Primary”, winning all five contested states.
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