The Tell: Bill Gross’s fund has lost more than 40% of its assets over the past year, Morningstar data show

The Tell: Bill Gross’s fund has lost more than 40% of its assets over the past year, Morningstar data show

Markets 21 Aug, 2018

Bill Gross’s signature fund at Janus Henderson has shed more than 40% of its assets, in a humbling period of redemptions and wrong-way bets for the fixed-income luminary, data from Morningstar show.

Gross’s Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund JUCAX, +0.23%  saw redemptions for a fifth consecutive month, totaling about $232 million between June and July, bringing the fund’s total assets to $1.249 billion, according to the most recent report from Morningstar obtained by MarketWatch. The unconstrained fund began the year with total assets of $2.217 billion but has lost about 44% of those assets, or $968 million, year-to-date (see table below).

Date Total net assets (in millions) January 2018 $2,217 February $2,237 March $2.187 April $2.078 May $1.685 June $1.481 July 31 $1.249 Source:Morningstar

The losing stretch for the 74-year-old Gross comes amid bets on U.S. Treasurys and German bunds, among other assets, that haven’t quite panned out for the bond pro. Gross has wagered that the yield spread between 10-year Treasury notes TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.54% and comparable German bonds TMBMKDE-10Y, +9.34% known as bunds, would converge, but that has failed to happen thus far.

Read: So-called bond king Gross has been ‘wrong and wrong badly,’ his boss at Janus says

Gross’s unsightly performance has a elicited less-than-ringing endorsement from his boss, Janus Henderson CEO Richard Weil, who last week told CNBC during an interview that Gross had been “wrong and wrong badly.”

The market maven’s disappointments on Wall Street come against the backdrop of a stock market that has mostly gained after stumbling in February, and amid geopolitical volatility. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.25%  is up about 4.5% so far in 2018, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.21% has climbed by 7.1% thus far, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.49% has returned nearly 14% in the first eights months of the year, according to FactSet data, as of Tuesday’s close.

Gross’s issues go well beyond Wall Street. The former Pimco luminary, who left that firm in high dudgeon back in 2014, is also battling through an ugly divorce.

A call to Janus wasn’t immediately returned.

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