‘China Is Uninvestible’ Bond King Jeffrey Gundlach Says

Jeffrey Gundlach is warning investors about the dangers of investing in China.

“China is uninvestible, in my opinion, at this point,” Gundlach said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “I’ve never invested in China long or short. Why is that? I don’t trust the data. I don’t trust the relationship between the United States and China anymore. I think that investments in China could be confiscated. I think there’s a risk of that.”

Gundlach is the founder and chief executive of Doubleline Capital, an investment management company with over $130 billion of assets. He’s often referred to as “the Bond King.” In May of 2016, he predicted Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton. He was one of the few titans of finance to forecast Trump’s victory. Gundlach also predicted Trump would win in 2020.

Gundlach was raised in Amherst, New York, just outside of Buffalo. He majored in philosophy and mathematics at Dartmouth and was accepted into a PhD program in Applied Mathematics but dropped out after two years, according to Business Insider. He went on to play drums in a punk band in Los Angeles while working for an insurance company. He entered the investment management profession after watching an episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and deciding he wanted to be wealthy.

CNBC reported:

One night he caught an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous that was dedicated to the “best paying professions.” The number one best paying profession: investment banking.

“I didn’t know what it was, but I figured number one was good enough for me,” he says.

He pulled out the yellow pages to look for all the ads for investment banks, planning on sending them his resume. To his surprise, there weren’t any ads for investment banks in the yellow pages.

“I ended up sending them to investment management companies. I figured they were the same thing,” he said.

Gundlach went on to become the chief investment officer at TCW but was fired in 2009.

Yahoo Finance’s Julia La Roche tells the story:

On Friday, December 4, 2009, a shockwave rippled across the trading floor at Trust Company of the West (TCW). A firm-wide email hit inboxes that informed the staff of Gundlach’s termination, and that the firm was acquiring fixed income investment manager Metropolitan West Asset Management (MetWest).

Gundlach, who was TCW’s chief investment officer, was also a nominee for Morningstar’s Fixed Income Manager of the decade at the time. He was viewed as the leader and the moneymaker.

As one DoubleLine employee put it, TWC “killed the Golden Goose” that day. Gundlach was one of the few who accurately called the credit crisis and played defense for his clients, calling subprime in June 2007 a “total, unmitigated disaster and it’s only going to get worse.” In 2009, he went on offense, buying up the beaten-down mortgage bonds, and subsequently put up stellar returns.

He started Doubleline shortly afterward, with many TCW employees resigning to join the new firm. He later sued TCW and was awarded $66.7 million by a jury.