“Jeffrey didn’t gather $50 billion in assets in three years because he’s some little noodge in the corner with his eyeshades on,” says Tania Modic, a DoubleLine investor at Western Investments Capital LLC in Incline Village, Nevada. “Jeffrey wants to be an outstanding thought leader, and you’re not going to get it by just being a bland personality.”
Gundlach also isn’t shy about touting his own exploits and expertise.
On art: “I seriously doubt there’s anyone who knows more than me about Mondrian.”
On the New York Times Saturday crossword puzzle, the hardest one of the week: He completes them in pen and often skips Sunday because it’s too easy, like counting Cheerios in a box. “You can do it, but what’s the point?”
On his Total Return Bond Fund, which attracted the most deposits of all U.S. mutual funds in 2012 through Oct. 31, according to Morningstar: “I have the most popular fund in the world.”
J. Alfred Prufrock
Those who work for Gundlach are intensely loyal to him. As he was starting DoubleLine in December 2009, more than 40 people from TCW -- including Barach, his right-hand man -- joined him at the new firm. Bonnie Baha, who followed Gundlach from TCW and now oversees DoubleLine’s investments in corporate bonds, says her boss’s eclectic mind is part of his charm.
One time, Baha cited a line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” during a meeting, and Gundlach began reciting the first stanza of the poem from memory. He peppers his unscripted investor presentations with references to James Bond movies, William Shakespeare, Karl Marx and rock songs from Nirvana and The Who.
And in addition to rooting for his hometown Buffalo Bills football team, he likes to garden, pruning back his Betty Boop and Gemini tea roses.
“He’s a much more complex human being than an egotistical blowhard,” Baha, 53, says. “The guy is a paradox. He is crazy about football. Then he recites a T.S. Eliot poem.”