Bill Gross Talks About Getting Fired, The End of 35 Year Bond and Stock Market Runs, Retirement

Andrew Ross Sorkin talked to bond guru Bill Gross, for NYT Magazine. Here are snippets:

ARS:You had a tough 2014. In September, you left Pimco, the investment firm you founded in 1971, where you became known as “the bond king.” What was the hardest part about the past year for you? 

Bill Gross

BG:The fact that I was fired. That was hard — very hard — for me, because I’m sensitive. I’m just sensitive to negative criticism — which I think was unfair and unjust.

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ARS:Is the bubble in stocks or in bonds? I think both. I sort of have a sense of an ending.

BG: I think that the 35-year bull market in bonds and in stocks is ending. Now, when you say something like that, it conjures up a crash. It doesn’t have to be that way. It probably ends, like T. S. Eliot said, with a whimper and not a bang.

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ARS: Why do you wear your tie like that? 

BG: I came down here to Orange County in ’71 from L.A., and Pimco had this brand-new, beautiful building, but they didn’t have a gym or showers. I was an exercise nut. At noon, I’d change in the bathroom and then run for about five miles. Since there wasn’t a shower, I’d towel off as best I could, but I’d be sweating and hot for an hour or two. So in the afternoon, I began to just not tie my tie. Then a year or two later, I said: “Well, what the hell, I guess I’m not tying it in the afternoon, I’ll just not tie it in the morning either.”

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ARS: Are you going to do this forever? 

BG: Well, my wife tells me she married me for better or worse — but not for lunch.