Jeffrey Gundlach not impressed with robo advisers
He says 'one-size fits all' portfolios are a dangerous bet, especially in a market decline
In the financial industry’s battle of humans versus machines, billionaire bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach is betting people will prevail.
“I don’t believe in machines taking over finance at all,” Mr. Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, said Thursday night in a cocktail-hour interview before his induction into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Inc.’s Hall of Fame.
Mr. Gundlach, 57, is a top-ranked money manager whose $54 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund has outperformed 90 percent of its Bloomberg peers over the past five years. He co-founded the Los Angeles-based firm, which managed more than $100 billion as of March 31, after being ousted by TCW Group in 2009.
Mr. Gundlach singled out so-called robo-advisers, which provide online portfolio management using little human intervention, as a dangerous bet.
“It’s a one-size-fits-all financial solution,” he said. “Everybody gets the same portfolio, which means everybody owns the same stock, which means when they all decide to get out you cause a crash.”
What’s Mr. Gundlach’s advice for beating machines?
“Work hard,” he said.
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