Because of its size, the fund’s trades were always large, which attracted attention, so “the street would always know what Pimco was doing,” Gross said in the interview today.
Paid Price
“Any trade we did obviously had to be an enormous size relative to the rest of the market and we affected the markets,” he said. “We paid a price for that, in terms of in and out, and ultimately in terms of the street being well-informed and in some cases working against us.”
The relative small size of Gross’s new vehicle at Janus, which has $1.4 billion in assets, allows more flexibility than the bigger funds at Pimco, he said in a Bloomberg Surveillance interview with Tom Keene last month.
Gross said he visited a neighbor, a retired U.S. Air Force general, after his exit from Pimco. As he was leaving, the retired general said Gross should have visited six months earlier because he could have taught him the first rule of the military.
“I said, ‘what’s that?’ and he said: ‘watch your back,’” Gross said.