Back in early, DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach made a prediction that was viewed as anathema in “serious” circles: he said that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. And much to the chagrin of all his “serious” colleagues, he was proven correct which is why earlier today we said that the one thing we were most curious about from Gundlach’s latest webcast was who he thinks would win this time around.
Well, we got the answer, and once again if Gundlach is correct a whole lot of “experts” (not to mention pollsters) will again be humiliated on Nov 4, because according to the bond king Trump will once again emerge victorious.
One would know it based on such online betting sites as PredictIt (which incidentally are remarkably illiquid, and extremely easy to manipulate by anyone with modestly deep pockets), which show Biden as a clear favorite with a roughly 15 point lead…
… but then again the “experts” and odds in 2016 also said Trump had no chance of victory.
So it makes sense to ignore the pollsters, the online bookies and the exports who were dead wrong in 2016, and focus on those who called it right.
With that in mind, during a Q&A on his Tuesday afternoon webcast, Gundlach said that “my base case is actually that Donald Trump will win re-election,” adding that he’d “bet against” former Vice President Joe Biden defeating Trump in November.
“I think polls are very, very squishy right now because of the highly toxic political environment in which we live,” the 60-year-old billionaire said. Gundlach said he’s come across data suggesting that about “two-thirds of conservatives or moderate conservatives say that they have lied about their support for Donald Trump either directly or by omission.”
“I just think there’s a lot, a lot of time here. There’s going to be twists and turns,” Gundlach added.
Gundlach also voiced another contrarian view when he said that he expects “significant” volatility for markets, something which markets generally don’t as it is now conventional wisdom that whoever wins will be good for risk assets.
“This go-around, I expect much greater volatility around the election as the progressive policies, so-called, of tremendous increased deficit spending for basically wealth manipulation, that could get pretty heated, and we’ll see what happens.”
Finally, Gundlach did not spare criticism for Biden’s just announced running mate, saying said he didn’t think Kamala Harris was a “good pick,” adding that Harris is “maybe a little too charismatic.”
“She might be a little bit dominant with her personality, but I don’t have any particular thoughts on Kamala Harris. I’m not surprised that she’s the pick.”
Needless to say, if Gundlach is right again, there will be a whole lot more of this from the “resistance” who will then have another 4 years – in collaboration with the deep state – to come up with bizarre conspiracy theories “explaining” why they were dead wrong yet again.
One final observation non-political from the bond king: with the S&P now trading at all time highs, and more than 1,000 points above the March low, Gundlach remains confident that in the remaining 4 and a half months, the market will crash again, and that “we will see the March lows again this year.”