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> Gross, who oversees the $1.5 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, recommended Bitcoin and gold for investors who are looking for places to preserve c

> Gross, who oversees the $1.5 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, recommended Bitcoin and gold for investors who are looking for places to preserve capital. Because wild Bitcoin fluctuations are somehow less akin to gambling than the securities market? Glad he also threw in some "buy gold" scaremongering too. Does Janus benefit somehow from this kind of talk?

tedunangst 10y ago
Janus benefits from being run by a thought leader.
duaneb 10y ago
> Glad he also threw in some "buy gold" scaremongering too. I'll bite; why is gold a bad investment? Does it not have low risk and stable value? Hell, these days it even has REAL value as a special metal.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  It's value isn't that stable... It's just another commodity. It trades like a commodity, its not anything special, it's not currency, it's metal dug from the ground. People attribute way more importance to it than they should.
  - jklontz 10y ago
    True, but unlike other commodities it's easy to take a long position on gold with ETFs like GLD which actually store the physical gold. For other commodities (like oil with ticker USO) it's not so simple to take a long position. The best you can do is trade options, with the added risk of a contango market.
    - kasey_junk 10y ago
      You are potentially overselling the "store physical gold" component of GLD depending on what you think the redemption rules of the fund are. As per usual Kid Dynamite is my favorite writer on the subject: http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-is-gld-so-hard-for-people-to-understand-an-etf-lesson-part-iii/ http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-is-gld-so-hard-for-people-t...
  - endswapper 10y ago
    I'm no gold-bug. It's value is relatively stable. The fact that it is a commodity, or that it is not a currency, has nothing to do with its value. It is special, in the sense that is is both a precious metal and an industrial metal, and it is also a common store of value, i.e. gold reserves. Many incredible, valuable things are "dug from the ground." Gold is not a bad investment as part of diversified portfolio. To justinlardinois's point, the stability and risk duaneb refers to, are reasons fearmongers encourage divesting other holdings in to gold in times of instability.
    - nradov 10y ago
      The value of gold is not at all stable. It has higher variability than the S&P 500 index. http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/GLD#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 http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/GLD#eyJjb21wYXJpc29ucyI6IlZGS...
      - endswapper 10y ago
        "Relatively stable," appropriately qualifies the statement and your link to a chart for a gold ETF is not support for your claim that, "The value of gold is not at all stable."
  - Gustomaximus 10y ago
    You dont buy gold as its stable. You buy it as it's; 1) A generally appreciating asset 2) It physically exists (or is backed by exiting material). And most importantly: 3) It is a flight to safety commodity so when things go bad you expect to make money. So I would argue it is something special as a commodity. People dont rush to iron ore in a market crash. Maybe people do attribute more to it than it deserves but its disingenuous to pretend it doesn't have a special place in financial markets.
    - Mikeb85 10y ago
      > 1) A generally appreciating asset It's down in the last 5 years. Also, all assets are generally appreciating because of inflation. > 2) It physically exists (or is backed by exiting material). This doesn't actually matter. All prices are set by what buyers will pay. Some things, like currencies or bonds, are backed by governments or physical assets like real estate, other commodities, land, etc... > 3) It is a flight to safety commodity so when things go bad you expect to make money. As are other assets and securities. Again, nothing inherent to gold. > Maybe people do attribute more to it than it deserves but its disingenuous to pretend it doesn't have a special place in financial markets. You could argue every commodity has a 'special' place in financial markets. I'm not arguing gold isn't real or is worthless - it does have value because of its use in electronics as well as in adornment and its historical use as currency. What I am arguing is that: > Maybe people do attribute more to it than it deserves
- iambateman 10y ago
  Warren Buffett on gold [1]: "I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today's market prices about $7 trillion – that's probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (NYSE:XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67 foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I'll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils." [1] http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/commodities/articles/Warren-Buffett-brka-gold-investing-investing/10/3/2012/id/44617#ixzz4MAd3l9GE http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/commodities... Gold has no utility. This quote changed the way I think about gold when I first heard it.
  - underdown 10y ago
    Gold has lots of utility - just not enough to justify the speculative price.
  - downandout 10y ago
    I don't often say this about Warren Buffett quotes, but that is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard anyone say. If you owned this 67 ft. cube - all of the gold in the world - you would be able to extract any profit you wanted from the vast majority of all electronics sold in the world, along with a long list of other products. Your $7 trillion would turn into...whatever you wanted it to. Buffett is showing his age and publicly admitted lack of understanding of technology.
    - fooker 10y ago
      People would just switch to some other material for industrial uses if you demamd an exorbitant price. Gold, while useful is not indispensable.
      - downandout 10y ago
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  All things being equal, it's no worse than other commodities and better than many. However, there are alot of less than scrupulous people who keep pushing it onto less sophisticated investors. And many of those people are paid by various companies to herd those less sophisticated investors into buying their product. Not saying that Bill Gross is one of those by any means, just pointing out why it has a bad rep. And if the non-GOP candidate wins, they'll be another round of "buy gold" and/or "buy guns" or another TFH approved product come January.
endswapper 10y ago
His argument is that economies that rely too heavily on monetary policy are unsustainable. Furthermore, he is suggesting that we are nearing a tipping point when there is abundant competition for meager returns that should be temporary. The traditional roles and functions of the bond market in economies around the world have been perverted by policy. At some point investors will exhaust the risk threshold in bond markets, and arguably, tap less traditional markets like Bitcoin simply because they are a counterpoint to the bond markets.
- michaelchisari 10y ago
  How are economies that literally have no monetary policy a better alternative, though?
  - jbarham 10y ago
    Quoting from the article: "At some point investors – leery and indeed weary of receiving negative or near zero returns on their money, may at the margin desert the standard financial complex, for higher returning or better yet, less risky alternatives."
  - endswapper 10y ago
    I'd argue that they are not. It's more about the proper measure. Monetary policy is a tool attempting to hit a moving target.
    - mattnewton 10y ago
      > Monetary policy is a tool attempting to hit a moving target By sweeping the ice in front of the economy-puck with a toothbrush. There is an effect, just a lot of other stuff has a big effect too...
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    The US had no monetary policy for the first 100 years of its existence, going from subsistence farming to superpower.
woodpanel 10y ago
> Does Janus benefit somehow from this kind of talk? Maybe in terms of marketing itself as having sway in how to interpret things. Lets call it PR. These kind of statements show a helplessness from old thought leaders. It shows that we can't continue to explain today's world by 1929 analogies. It smells like Black Swan. But maybe the Black Swan is just that we at some point realize, that we were cargo culting for the next gloom and doom to happen. Edit: if you downvote please have the sophistication and argue why.
Bud 10y ago
Gross also recommended that folks tune in to Glenn Beck for even more savvy financial advice.
candiodari 10y ago
Here is the source: https://www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook https://www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook How does he benefit ? The way to win on the stock market is sometimes and somewhat cynically referred to as OPM (other people's money). Bill Gross has managed to convince a few large clients to invest in bonds through him (their money - his decisions) and has made quite a bit of money because of a sustained streak of good decisions. How does he benefit ? By convincing more people to put their money in one of his funds. A more balanced report of what he's talking about is possible. Right now he feels that it is a necessity for capital preservation to be well protected against a large downside (which would translate into a big surge in interest rates). On the one hand "past performance is not an indicator of future performance", on the other hand, it would be foolish to ignore this voice. People should realize what the cost of "stimulating the economy" has been : long-term low-risk investments have done extremely poorly for 10, even up to 15 years in some cases. High-risk investments have done well, but with several big "oops" moments that challenge capital preservation. Combined with this, regulation of pension and bank investments across the globe have emphasized capital preservation and forced these organisations to put significant investments in low-risk-and-now-extremely-low-yield investments. This currently means, if you're under 35-40, you effectively don't have a pension if you're not in the 0.1% (ie. you're not a director at least ? You don't have a pension). That age is going up, and it's not like it's doing any favors for people who are older. In other words: we've forced banks and pension funds to move away from "more risky" things, nonzero odds of failure for certainty of far-off failure. We have decided to have an almost-certain failure of our pension systems, so governments can spend more today "to save the economy". That save part is in quotes because while people were quite certain that was what they were doing 8 years ago, let's say that the enthousiasm for this viewpoint has gone below freezing in the past year or two. A more cynical person might say that governments have decided that while they will constantly loan money, they will no longer pay interest. Bill Gross' critique is that this is the feedback mechanism that balances governments spending against private sector growth spending (because the government is a negative for the economy. It's a necessity, roads, healthcare, etc, but a negative. If the public sector grows "too much", as history has proven time and time again, a total crash follows). Assuming there's no total crash (because you don't prepare for that. If that happens, it's over and what you did or did not do doesn't matter. So you prepare for the other options), what people are predicting will happen, given the models of 1972, 2001, 2008 and even before 1929 and the like is that a sudden massive inflation spike will occur coupled with a fall in asset prices (like houses and ...), and especially a fall in stock prices.
roymurdock 10y ago
It's called talking your book. See this thread [1] from the last time Bill Gross said that banking and finance are "permanently damaged" a little under a year ago. He's bombastic and clickbaity and it attracts money from likeminded, bearish investors. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217860
- Steko 10y ago
  Gross's fund at PIMCO had terrible years in 2011 and 2013 and his new fund at Janus is underperforming the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index, so he needs both a scapegoat and a class of marks who will still buy in despite the performance. The Fed provides a convenient target to blame bad performance on, especially for Gross given his 2013 misread of Fed unwinding. As far as potential investors go, much of the country club set are sympathetic to the broader narrative of the capitalist hero (the guy literally refers to himself as 'Secretariat' and Justin Bieber of the bond market) beset by meddling bureaucrats and there's a smaller but much more enthusiastic group of devoted monetary cranks who really eat this stuff up.
ddeck 10y ago
That was a surprisingly sensational interpretation by Reuters of the original quote. Looking at the source, he didn't recommend these assets. What was actually wrote was: "At some point investors — leery and indeed weary of receiving negative or near zero returns on their money, may at the margin desert the standard financial complex, for higher returning or better yet, less risky alternatives. Bitcoin and privately agreed upon block chain technologies amongst a small set of global banks, are just a few examples of attempts to stabilize the value of their current assets in future purchasing power terms. Gold would be another example — historic relic that it is. In any case, the current system is beginning to be challenged"
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  That's certainly a different sentiment that the Reuters quote. But even if it's not an endorsement of Bitcoin and gold, it's still problematic because he's saying that scarcity implies stability, which simply isn't true.
  - solotronics 10y ago
    Already bitcoin has been more stable (and increased in value) over the last year compared to many central bank issued currencies.
    - mark_edward 10y ago
      You understand stable and increased in value form a contradiction?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - Luc 10y ago
        Stable in purchasing power hence increased value vs currencies that lost purchasing power.
3327 10y ago
Yes Equity markets go down and money typically moves into bonds via large funds. And bond ASK prices go up since quality bonds like IBM, GOOG or gov't become high demand.

tedunangst 10y ago

Janus benefits from being run by a thought leader.

duaneb 10y ago

> Glad he also threw in some "buy gold" scaremongering too. I'll bite; why is gold a bad investment? Does it not have low risk and stable value? Hell, these days it even has REAL value as a special metal.

Mikeb85 10y ago
It's value isn't that stable... It's just another commodity. It trades like a commodity, its not anything special, it's not currency, it's metal dug from the ground. People attribute way more importance to it than they should.
- jklontz 10y ago
  True, but unlike other commodities it's easy to take a long position on gold with ETFs like GLD which actually store the physical gold. For other commodities (like oil with ticker USO) it's not so simple to take a long position. The best you can do is trade options, with the added risk of a contango market.
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    You are potentially overselling the "store physical gold" component of GLD depending on what you think the redemption rules of the fund are. As per usual Kid Dynamite is my favorite writer on the subject: http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-is-gld-so-hard-for-people-to-understand-an-etf-lesson-part-iii/ http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-is-gld-so-hard-for-people-t...
- endswapper 10y ago
  I'm no gold-bug. It's value is relatively stable. The fact that it is a commodity, or that it is not a currency, has nothing to do with its value. It is special, in the sense that is is both a precious metal and an industrial metal, and it is also a common store of value, i.e. gold reserves. Many incredible, valuable things are "dug from the ground." Gold is not a bad investment as part of diversified portfolio. To justinlardinois's point, the stability and risk duaneb refers to, are reasons fearmongers encourage divesting other holdings in to gold in times of instability.
  - nradov 10y ago
    The value of gold is not at all stable. It has higher variability than the S&P 500 index. http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/GLD#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 http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/GLD#eyJjb21wYXJpc29ucyI6IlZGS...
    - endswapper 10y ago
      "Relatively stable," appropriately qualifies the statement and your link to a chart for a gold ETF is not support for your claim that, "The value of gold is not at all stable."
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  You dont buy gold as its stable. You buy it as it's; 1) A generally appreciating asset 2) It physically exists (or is backed by exiting material). And most importantly: 3) It is a flight to safety commodity so when things go bad you expect to make money. So I would argue it is something special as a commodity. People dont rush to iron ore in a market crash. Maybe people do attribute more to it than it deserves but its disingenuous to pretend it doesn't have a special place in financial markets.
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    > 1) A generally appreciating asset It's down in the last 5 years. Also, all assets are generally appreciating because of inflation. > 2) It physically exists (or is backed by exiting material). This doesn't actually matter. All prices are set by what buyers will pay. Some things, like currencies or bonds, are backed by governments or physical assets like real estate, other commodities, land, etc... > 3) It is a flight to safety commodity so when things go bad you expect to make money. As are other assets and securities. Again, nothing inherent to gold. > Maybe people do attribute more to it than it deserves but its disingenuous to pretend it doesn't have a special place in financial markets. You could argue every commodity has a 'special' place in financial markets. I'm not arguing gold isn't real or is worthless - it does have value because of its use in electronics as well as in adornment and its historical use as currency. What I am arguing is that: > Maybe people do attribute more to it than it deserves
iambateman 10y ago
Warren Buffett on gold [1]: "I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today's market prices about $7 trillion – that's probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (NYSE:XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67 foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I'll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils." [1] http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/commodities/articles/Warren-Buffett-brka-gold-investing-investing/10/3/2012/id/44617#ixzz4MAd3l9GE http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/commodities... Gold has no utility. This quote changed the way I think about gold when I first heard it.
- underdown 10y ago
  Gold has lots of utility - just not enough to justify the speculative price.
- downandout 10y ago
  I don't often say this about Warren Buffett quotes, but that is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard anyone say. If you owned this 67 ft. cube - all of the gold in the world - you would be able to extract any profit you wanted from the vast majority of all electronics sold in the world, along with a long list of other products. Your $7 trillion would turn into...whatever you wanted it to. Buffett is showing his age and publicly admitted lack of understanding of technology.
  - fooker 10y ago
    People would just switch to some other material for industrial uses if you demamd an exorbitant price. Gold, while useful is not indispensable.
    - downandout 10y ago
nikdaheratik 10y ago
All things being equal, it's no worse than other commodities and better than many. However, there are alot of less than scrupulous people who keep pushing it onto less sophisticated investors. And many of those people are paid by various companies to herd those less sophisticated investors into buying their product. Not saying that Bill Gross is one of those by any means, just pointing out why it has a bad rep. And if the non-GOP candidate wins, they'll be another round of "buy gold" and/or "buy guns" or another TFH approved product come January.

endswapper 10y ago

His argument is that economies that rely too heavily on monetary policy are unsustainable. Furthermore, he is suggesting that we are nearing a tipping point when there is abundant competition for meager returns that should be temporary. The traditional roles and functions of the bond market in economies around the world have been perverted by policy. At some point investors will exhaust the risk threshold in bond markets, and arguably, tap less traditional markets like Bitcoin simply because they are a counterpoint to the bond markets.

michaelchisari 10y ago
How are economies that literally have no monetary policy a better alternative, though?
- jbarham 10y ago
  Quoting from the article: "At some point investors – leery and indeed weary of receiving negative or near zero returns on their money, may at the margin desert the standard financial complex, for higher returning or better yet, less risky alternatives."
- endswapper 10y ago
  I'd argue that they are not. It's more about the proper measure. Monetary policy is a tool attempting to hit a moving target.
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    > Monetary policy is a tool attempting to hit a moving target By sweeping the ice in front of the economy-puck with a toothbrush. There is an effect, just a lot of other stuff has a big effect too...
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The US had no monetary policy for the first 100 years of its existence, going from subsistence farming to superpower.

woodpanel 10y ago

> Does Janus benefit somehow from this kind of talk? Maybe in terms of marketing itself as having sway in how to interpret things. Lets call it PR. These kind of statements show a helplessness from old thought leaders. It shows that we can't continue to explain today's world by 1929 analogies. It smells like Black Swan. But maybe the Black Swan is just that we at some point realize, that we were cargo culting for the next gloom and doom to happen. Edit: if you downvote please have the sophistication and argue why.

Bud 10y ago

Gross also recommended that folks tune in to Glenn Beck for even more savvy financial advice.

candiodari 10y ago

Here is the source: https://www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook https://www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook How does he benefit ? The way to win on the stock market is sometimes and somewhat cynically referred to as OPM (other people's money). Bill Gross has managed to convince a few large clients to invest in bonds through him (their money - his decisions) and has made quite a bit of money because of a sustained streak of good decisions. How does he benefit ? By convincing more people to put their money in one of his funds. A more balanced report of what he's talking about is possible. Right now he feels that it is a necessity for capital preservation to be well protected against a large downside (which would translate into a big surge in interest rates). On the one hand "past performance is not an indicator of future performance", on the other hand, it would be foolish to ignore this voice. People should realize what the cost of "stimulating the economy" has been : long-term low-risk investments have done extremely poorly for 10, even up to 15 years in some cases. High-risk investments have done well, but with several big "oops" moments that challenge capital preservation. Combined with this, regulation of pension and bank investments across the globe have emphasized capital preservation and forced these organisations to put significant investments in low-risk-and-now-extremely-low-yield investments. This currently means, if you're under 35-40, you effectively don't have a pension if you're not in the 0.1% (ie. you're not a director at least ? You don't have a pension). That age is going up, and it's not like it's doing any favors for people who are older. In other words: we've forced banks and pension funds to move away from "more risky" things, nonzero odds of failure for certainty of far-off failure. We have decided to have an almost-certain failure of our pension systems, so governments can spend more today "to save the economy". That save part is in quotes because while people were quite certain that was what they were doing 8 years ago, let's say that the enthousiasm for this viewpoint has gone below freezing in the past year or two. A more cynical person might say that governments have decided that while they will constantly loan money, they will no longer pay interest. Bill Gross' critique is that this is the feedback mechanism that balances governments spending against private sector growth spending (because the government is a negative for the economy. It's a necessity, roads, healthcare, etc, but a negative. If the public sector grows "too much", as history has proven time and time again, a total crash follows). Assuming there's no total crash (because you don't prepare for that. If that happens, it's over and what you did or did not do doesn't matter. So you prepare for the other options), what people are predicting will happen, given the models of 1972, 2001, 2008 and even before 1929 and the like is that a sudden massive inflation spike will occur coupled with a fall in asset prices (like houses and ...), and especially a fall in stock prices.

roymurdock 10y ago

It's called talking your book. See this thread [1] from the last time Bill Gross said that banking and finance are "permanently damaged" a little under a year ago. He's bombastic and clickbaity and it attracts money from likeminded, bearish investors. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11217860

Steko 10y ago
Gross's fund at PIMCO had terrible years in 2011 and 2013 and his new fund at Janus is underperforming the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index, so he needs both a scapegoat and a class of marks who will still buy in despite the performance. The Fed provides a convenient target to blame bad performance on, especially for Gross given his 2013 misread of Fed unwinding. As far as potential investors go, much of the country club set are sympathetic to the broader narrative of the capitalist hero (the guy literally refers to himself as 'Secretariat' and Justin Bieber of the bond market) beset by meddling bureaucrats and there's a smaller but much more enthusiastic group of devoted monetary cranks who really eat this stuff up.

ddeck 10y ago

That was a surprisingly sensational interpretation by Reuters of the original quote. Looking at the source, he didn't recommend these assets. What was actually wrote was: "At some point investors — leery and indeed weary of receiving negative or near zero returns on their money, may at the margin desert the standard financial complex, for higher returning or better yet, less risky alternatives. Bitcoin and privately agreed upon block chain technologies amongst a small set of global banks, are just a few examples of attempts to stabilize the value of their current assets in future purchasing power terms. Gold would be another example — historic relic that it is. In any case, the current system is beginning to be challenged"

justinlardinois 10y ago
That's certainly a different sentiment that the Reuters quote. But even if it's not an endorsement of Bitcoin and gold, it's still problematic because he's saying that scarcity implies stability, which simply isn't true.
- solotronics 10y ago
  Already bitcoin has been more stable (and increased in value) over the last year compared to many central bank issued currencies.
  - mark_edward 10y ago
    You understand stable and increased in value form a contradiction?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - Luc 10y ago
      Stable in purchasing power hence increased value vs currencies that lost purchasing power.

3327 10y ago

Yes Equity markets go down and money typically moves into bonds via large funds. And bond ASK prices go up since quality bonds like IBM, GOOG or gov't become high demand.