Jeffrey Gundlach & Other Money Managers Saying: “Sell Everything!”

“The artist Christopher Wool has a word painting: ‘Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids.’ That’s exactly how I feel — sell everything. Nothing here looks good” … “The stock markets should be down massively but investors seem to have been hypnotized that nothing can go wrong.” –  Jeffrey Gundlach

The comments above and below are excerpts from an article by Mike Larson (moneyandmarkets.com)which has been edited ([ ]) and abridged (…) to provide a faster and easier read.

I always like bold calls so I couldn’t help but take notice when Jeffrey Gundlach, the outspoken chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, made the above comments a few days ago – and he is not alone!

That’s powerful stuff for sure, especially true when you consider Gundlach oversees a pool of more than $100 billion in capital at his firm. Just about the only thing he does like is gold and gold miners. He added that he thinks the Fed is “out to lunch” in its analysis of the economy, and that the Bank of Japan is out of bullets because, “You can’t save your economy by destroying your financial system.”

Of course, Gundlach is far from alone. Janus Capital’s Bill Gross just released his latest Investment Outlook, and he rained on Wall Street’s parade, too. His take on today’s markets:

“I don’t like bonds; I don’t like most stocks; I don’t like private equity. Real assets such as land, gold, and tangible plant and equipment at a discount are favored asset categories but those are hard for an individual to buy because wealth has been ‘financialized’.”

You probably also remember my columns from this spring, the ones that noted how many of the nation’s billionaires were the most bearish on stocks they’ve been in years. The list includes everyone from Carl Icahn and Stanley Druckenmiller to Sam Zell and George Soros.

Also read this Financial Post article for more extensive coverage of the subject.

What accounts for the bearishness? I mean, didn’t the major averages just hit all-time highs? I think it all goes back to valuations and to where we are in the economic and credit cycles.

• Valuations on all kinds of assets are completely ridiculous. They’ve been inflated to some of the highest levels ever by too much funny money from the world’s central banks.
• Almost nothing is cheap anymore, especially taking into account how far into the economic cycle we are.

Billionaires know this. Gross and Gundlach know this and, judging from the incipient tightening of lending standards…an increasing number of bank executives are now seeing the writing on the wall.

On the flip side, you have a handful of government bureaucrats and Ivory Tower economists trying to hold back the tide. Their latest Hail Mary idea is fiscal spending, particularly in Japan but it turns out that, just as I suspected, the “massive” stimulus over there is mostly smoke and mirrors.

We’re at the tail end of the biggest “Everything Bubble” in history. That means you have to stay cautious with your stocks, own gold, avoid taking too much credit or duration risk in bonds, and hold more cash now than you have at any time since the bull market began in 2009.

Disclosure: The above article has been edited ([ ]) and abridged (…) by the editorial team at munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!) to provide a fast and easy read.

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