Unfortunately, Jeff Gundlach held another one of his webcasts on Tuesday and as usual, it was a state-the-obvious-a-thon.
I guess I wouldn’t be so hard on Jeff were it not for how incorrigible he is and were it not for the fact that he has an extremely pernicious habit of showing up on TV and basically just rehashing what’s been going on, only in an overtly condescending tone.
Every, single time he’s on CNBC it feels like you’re watching the news only with an anchor who is talking down to you and otherwise berating you for no discernible reason.
The other thing about Jeff is that he never – ever – says anything that is any semblance of profound. And that’s aggravating because you know the guy has something to offer – if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be who he is. So when he just recaps recent market events or otherwise states the obvious, you feel like he’s holding back on you, which makes the condescension even more irritating.
And look, you guys, I’m not making this up. Here’s what he said on Tuesday’s webcast:
I mean, what the hell, right? Basically, Jeff told you that the Fed is thinking about the flattening yield curve, that stocks look like they may want to go lower, that it’s at least possible that EM stocks could outperform at some point, that the dollar is likely to go lower, that corporate bonds are cracking, and then he hung up on everybody.
The dollar call is mildly interesting, but only because he was kinda, sorta first to it back in September before it became consensus on Wall Street, but the rest of that is just him reading to you from the business section.
See that part where he says the market sees no Fed tightening in 2019-2020? Yeah, so you could get that from Jeff’s webcast, or you could just look at a chart like the one below which shows pricing for 2019 is just ~13bps worth of tightening (top pane) and markets are now increasingly pricing in Fed easing in 2020 (bottom pane).
(Bloomberg)
As far as that bit about the bond market rally being “unimpressive”, that makes virtually no sense. Below is a chart that shows 30-year yields (white) and the daily change (blue). There isn’t much that’s “unimpressive” about last Tuesday’s mammoth rally.
(Bloomberg)
On the 10Y, yields are down 40bps from the highs. Here, look:
(Bloomberg)
It feels like the “Bond King” is being a little hard on his “subjects”. What else does he want from them here?
I’ll just give the last word to Brian, who is more polite than I’ll ever be…
30-year Treasuries have returned 6.64 percent since Nov. 2, which seems pretty good to me.
— Brian Chappatta (@BChappatta) December 11, 2018
