Speaking yesterday on the recently resurrected television show Wall Street Week, DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said he fears that the next major financial crisis could be the junk bond market.

Gundlach noted that the entire “life of the junk bond market occurred” during an era of rising interest rates. Prior to the early 1980s, what was the junk bond, or fallen angel, market was so tiny and fragmented it really wasn’t a market.

Gundlach believes interest rates are likely to remain quite low for the next 18 to 24 months. That gives investors time to prepare for the coming rise in rates that looms. “It’s OK to stick” with junk bond and emerging markets bonds for now, he says.

The reason is that there aren’t a lot of bonds maturing with a need to be refinanced between now and 2017. All that is likely to change in 2018, when more than $300 million each in junk bonds and Treasury bonds come due.

Gundlach speculated that because junk bonds held up fairly well during the taper tantrum, investors may be lulled into thinking they can handle a big increase in overall interest rates. That could be a mistake.

Huge amounts of investment-grade debt and bank loans will also mature in 2018 through 2020. Coincidentally, this will occur at exactly the same time as the big bulge of baby boomers start turning 65, throwing the federal government’s entitlement problems into full view.

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