“To get to $300 billion, I think you need a thousand people," he said. "You need offices in Beijing and Mumbai and London, because you really have to go big on sovereign wealth funds and a lot of wholesalers in the retail industry. And it just becomes a very big company, and I don’t want that."

Tokyo Office

Currently, DoubleLine has only two corporate offices, its headquarters in Los Angeles and an outpost in Tokyo, where the firm oversees about $1 billion in assets. Gundlach said his strategy has Oaktree’s full support.

The challenge right now is figuring out how quickly to dump lower-quality but higher-yielding assets in favor of safer securities that return less. In the meantime, Gundlach said he recently bought five-and eight-month put options on the S&P 500, positions that could generate returns of 400 percent if the index drops by enough.

"Volatility is about to go up," he said. "That’s my highest-conviction trade right now."

Gundlach took such concerns to Twitter last week, cautioning his some 32,000 followers that bond investors were buying into “riskier and riskier" strategies. More recently he’s been tweeting about a potential news story -- a “fake news ruse" -- he expects will be critical of DoubleLine and which he believes is being motivated by a competitor. He declined to identify the rival firm in the interview.

The complacency in markets is understandable. Gundlach acknowledges that there are no obvious signs of a recession within six months, the only thing he says would bring about a major correction in asset prices. Everything from consumer confidence to employment to gauges of manufacturing health are strong.

He expects the Federal Reserve to raise rates again in December and in successive quarters so long as the data are supportive. He doesn’t see the unwinding of the Fed’s balance sheet as a threat because Chair Janet Yellen and others have communicated their plans “extremely well.”

Also, while optimism for tax reform and infrastructure spending have faded, Gundlach said it’s not clear when doubts about the Trump presidency will start to weigh heavily on investors.

“I don’t see the big drop, unless there’s something out of left field, like some sort of really escalating conflict,” he said. “I think you’re supposed to be gradualistically moving toward the exits.”