Gross, Dalio, Gundlach...Minerd?

To see this article in digital magazine format,  click here. 

It’s 4:45 a.m. in Los Angeles, and the Scott Minerd Show has already started—15 minutes ago. As I’m led into the room where Minerd—the global CIO of Guggenheim Partners—is holding court, he finishes his sentence before turning to greet me with a grin. 

“Who’s gonna buy that freaking stuff?” 

And with that, he’s off—and few things can match Scott Minerd on a roll. 

Minerd holds this meeting every Monday, often from the firm’s Wilshire Boulevard offices. It’s his pre-game talk, of sorts, to his key troops. On this morning, he sat at his desk overlooking the Pacific—which is pitch black at this hour—surrounded by four computer screens, one television, a picture of a private jet, a large Charles Schulz-themed birthday card, various war-bond posters, and eight slightly tired looking men—and for nearly two hours discusses everything from fiscal policy to bond spreads to upcoming travel to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Throughout the meeting various people, ranging from his ex-military chief of staff to his marketing head, rotate to the seat in front of him. Whether the meeting is for his benefit or the others is unclear—but the amount of information streaming through the room is immense. 

“The US economy has had a good September,” he says at one point. “Nearly every piece of data is a positive. Part-time unemployment is up, and that’s one of the best leading ­indicators of future employment. Home prices have appreciated; Bernanke’s policy of ­propping up home prices is working.” 

A few minutes later: “I’m almost happy if we drive over the fiscal cliff. It’s not likely, but the economy is strong enough that it could power right through, and we could fix some things. We will get some policy compromises.” 

And then: “The number-one best predictor of Christmas sales, as we all know, is the stock market. Some indicators are more than tarot cards and tea leaves—and this might be one of them.” 

And: “Long-term rates are like a balloon being held underwater. They are there as long as you hold them there. When you let go, they shoot up, which the Fed will one day do.” 

Then: “From Europe to China to US retail—green shoots in the US are showing up.” Just then, on the muted television behind him—where fellow bond-house Californian Neel Kashkari of PIMCO is speaking on CNBC—the telltale red band comes onscreen, indicating breaking news. As it does, a robotic female voice from Minerd’s Bloomberg terminal chimes in: “September retail sales rise 1.1%.” 

“That’s an annualized rate of 13%,” Minerd says without pause. “Obviously positive news.” 

Minerd hasn’t always been so positive—and he reminds the men in the room of this. “I’m not one of those guys who is always saying the next crash is coming or that everything is always positive,” he says. The historical record supports such a claim: Before the crash, Minerd was one of the few voices predicting a global calamity “of biblical proportions. I only used that phrase once in public,” he says. “People labeled me a nut. But I continued to use it internally, because it was accurate. I said, ‘Imagine how bad it could be. It will be that bad.’” 

By now, nearly two hours later, the October sun has started to arc over 100 Wilshire Boulevard onto the Pacific. The discussion moves to Minerd’s upcoming travel schedule, which will bring him to Chile, Europe, and New York in the next 10 days. “I’m going all the way to Santiago to answer two questions?” he jokes with his chief of staff. The meeting winds down, but as we stream out of the room, he has one more idea.

“I just want to be clear: I’m not one of those guys who think everything’s fine now,” he says. He then tells a story—one that, he admits, is one of his favorites. 

“It was 1968, and my father would buy a new Buick every year,” he says. “He’d place an order with the dealer, and they’d build it at the factory. It would take three to four months.” He smiles while he tells it. 

“This was 1968, remember. The US was a global superpower. I said, ‘Dad, why did you buy a new car? We have a ’68 already, why do we need the ’69?’ He said, ‘That is just the way things are now.’” Minerd’s pace quickens. “I said, ‘Why not save the money? What if there is another depression?’ He said, ‘Scott, there will never be another Great Depression like before. Next time, everyone will have money, but it won’t buy a thing.’ He was right. This time, there was no mass unemployment. There was no price collapse. But there was explosive money growth, and huge deficits. So where does this lead us?” 

 Scott Minerd is a syphon through which reams of numbers and possibilities run to emerge, on the other side, as bets in the world’s fixed-income markets. Will the European Union splinter? Will American politicians force the US economy into chaos? Will corporate pension contributions prop up the stock market in the fourth quarter? All these issues and answers pass through the syphon in order that Scott Minerd, at his most basic, can tell when and where bond spreads are headed—and, by and large, this syphon has proven accurate. Since its inception in 1999, Minerd’s flagship core fixed-income fund has returned 7.31% annually, placing it in the top 1% of its peers, according to data firm eVestment Alliance. By some measures, PIMCO’s Bill Gross, Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach, and Loomis Sayles’ Dan Fuss—a group thought by many to be the world’s greatest fixed-income investors—all trail Minerd’s performance since the turn of the millennium. Yet he is much less well known. 

His performance is not the only measurement suggesting he belongs among these hallowed names. The truth about many of the men and women who manage large amounts of money is that they are different—and not just because many of them are phenomenally wealthy. Ray Dalio’s youthful workplace indiscretions are well documented; Jeffrey Gundlach’s alleged more recent ones are almost too sordid to describe in print; Bill Gross, although perhaps more adept at keeping his private life private, is known to have his own quirks—including being an obsessive stamp collector, a habit inherited from his mother. (Dan Fuss, alone among this group, seems remarkably normal.) To be a great fixed-income investor, one could argue, requires behavior slightly outside of what society deems “normal.” Oftentimes, the path taken to join this group is far from straightforward. And while perhaps less meandering than Dalio (punching a boss, hiring strippers for a work event) and Gundlach (punk rock band, alleged drug use), Minerd’s journey to his current position was equally nonlinear. 

“Retirement was great for six months,” Minerd said when we met for lunch a few hours after his morning performance. The 53-year old, it turns out, had retired in the late 1990s after a relatively short 15-year career on Wall Street. He then moved to Venice Beach, California, to pursue an enduring passion: bodybuilding—which is why we were having lunch on the patio of The Firehouse, known within this community as the go-to restaurant for the world’s most muscular men. 

“I was burned out on Wall Street,” he said. “I didn’t need 10 houses and 25 automobiles. Wall Street is a grind. It sucks the life out of you if you let it. I didn’t want to go back, so I quit. I travelled.” 

But he soon tired of retirement—as any 39-year-old retiree might. “A year after I moved out here a friend and I had dinner. We talked about a deal he was working on. I had been lifting, playing volleyball, but it turned out I was dying to do the deal he was working on. I missed it.”

Luckily, people remembered Minerd—which isn’t surprising, considering that his lifelong obsession with bodybuilding has left him with, well, a bodybuilder’s body. “I had helped Mark Walter”—the founder and CEO of Guggenheim Partners—“finance a company once. He had tried to hire me earlier. I was frustrated and it hit me during my time off that I wasn’t done working—so I called him. I proposed opening a Los Angeles office of Liberty Hampshire.” Minerd became employee #14 of the burgeoning firm, which eventually became what is now Guggenheim Partners and manages upward of $160 billion in client capital, largely in the insurance sector but with a growing pension and endowment and foundation base. 

The move into pension assets specifically makes sense, Minerd thinks. “Insurance assets are regulated to manage to a liability,” he said as the waiter, who clearly had served Minerd before, took our order. “You can’t mismatch. As pension funds become more cognizant of this, the insurance model is a better fit.” Guggenheim, however, is only now truly ramping up its institutional business. While Minerd’s record speaks volumes about his ability in asset management, the firm’s ability to asset gather is less clear. “Mark Walter likes to say we have four things that matter: ‘Performance, performance, performance, and risk management.’ Asset gathering, really, hasn’t been a primary focus. We have never focused much on the consultant world. We only really started marketing in 2006, but still our main focus continued to be on performance.” 

This is changing—not least because of Minerd’s, and the firm’s, phenomenal crisis. As he had said in the morning meeting, people had labeled him crazy when he predicted a financial crisis, but he stuck to his guns, and it paid off. Asset growth accelerated through the crisis (going from $35 billion to $131 billion from 2007 to 2012) as Minerd kept a cool head. “The key was to identify the big macro drivers. As the world was crumbling, I looked at the data. History shows us that 18 months after the Federal Reserve intervenes a recession is usually over. People thought I was crazy, but it was right.” 

“In an avalanche, they say to do one thing first,” Minerd said, squinting in the California sun. “What is it? Spit, so you know which way is down. Otherwise you end up digging in the wrong direction. It’s important for asset managers to spit once in awhile.” 

And yet like Dalio (transcendental meditation, The Principles), Gross (yoga, stamps), and Gundlach (allegedly, pornography and sex toys at the office), Minerd’s life outside the lines of investing is arguably more fascinating than inside them. As lunch arrived—we each ordered (from The Bodybuilder Menu) a “Bob Bowl,” which is two large steaks in a pile of peppers, onions, and rice—conversation naturally turned to life outside work. 

“Bodybuilding’s been a long-term interest,” he said, fork-in-hand. “When I was young, I saw a picture of a bodybuilder and thought, ‘That’s what I want to look like.’” He wasn’t allowed weights when he was young (“‘You’ll get too big,’ my dad said”), but in college he got serious. “I trained twice a day at Penn, and I laid railroad track in the summer—a great way to train.” Minerd throwing railway ties around some flat plain in the middle of America is not at all hard to imagine. 

Upon moving to Los Angeles and Gold’s Gym—the mecca of muscle, the place that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous—he got even more serious, competing twice in the city championships. “But I just didn’t have the time,” he said when asked why he stopped. “Now, I train because I love it. It’s a great outlet. It’s rigorous. Intense. Disciplined. My dream would be to just workout for two weeks, if I ever had a vacation. It clears my head. My partners encourage me to train.” Talk naturally turned to the Governor himself, who likely has eaten many times at the table at which we sat. “I’ve met the Governor a number of times,” Minerd said at one point, a smile creasing his face. “He’s smaller than me now.” 

But bodybuilding is far from his only extra-work obsession. As I suspected from his office décor, there was something else. “I’m actually the largest private collector of Charles Schulz’s artwork in the world, I believe,” he said. Visions of AQR co-founder Cliff Asness’ epic comic book collection popped into my head. “I consider Schulz to be in the same class as [Norman] Rockwell—it’s great art in many ways. I own comic strips and drawings, including some of the work from A Charlie Brown Christmas.” He also owns numerous Dr. Seuss originals, including art from The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, as well as less eclectic works from Old Masters such as van Dyck. 

Like the bodybuilding that clears his head, Minerd doesn’t view art as entirely separate from his investing. “Art is a great diversifying asset—and incredibly nice to live with. Great art is ubiquitous and iconic. The more recognizable it is, and the more rare, the more valuable it is.” Minerd’s collection is curated with this squarely in mind. “With Schulz, for example, I look for earlier strips with Pig-Pen in them.” That character, whose popularity Schulz came to regret because of his one-joke nature—he was the perpetually dirty one—was phased out in the later years of the comic strip. “Because of that, there are fewer strips with Pig-Pen in them, which makes them more valuable.” Always the investor—but one gets the sense that Minerd holds a deeper attachment to relics of America’s childhood. 

As the discussion of Pig-Pen wound down, he finished the Bob Bowl. I didn’t. And then he was off again.

Nine days later, I met up with Minerd and his entourage on the corner of 57th and Lexington in Manhattan. He was on his way to a presentation for tri-state financial advisors, hosted by Barron’s at the Guggenheim Museum, of all places—and offered me a ride. “Who has some nuts? I need some food,” he asked as he folded his frame into the middle seat of a typical New York blacked-out suburban. An assistant handed him a bag as we made our way north through midday traffic. 

“This will be more sales-y than I like, but so be it,” he said, finishing the snack. “You’ve heard a lot of this before. I only have so many good jokes to use.” We arrived at the museum and Minerd unfolded out of the car. He was soon mobbed by financial advisors, many of who looked the size of Minerd with about 10% of the muscle. After five minutes, he was able to make it the ten meters from car to museum door. He prepared for his remarks, alone, in a quiet hallway. 

His presentation—Fixed-Income Investing For a Rising Rate Environment—was, as he predicted, a more sales-y version of his early morning remarks in Los Angeles the week before. The no-bullshit positivity was interspersed with nuggets of caution. The Buick story makes a reappearance, along with talk of how the American economy could theoretically survive the fiscal cliff. After 35 minutes and applause, he walked off stage and out of the room, entourage in tow. 

I followed him, because I have one more question. In the intervening time between our first and this visit, I had asked around about him and Guggenheim Partners. The most common response I had gotten wasn’t what Minerd and his team would call entirely encouraging. “What exactly is Guggenheim?” one California-based asset owner had asked. “Their CEO is out buying the Dodgers. Why do I need to take a risk on when core fixed-income, really, is pretty much commoditized?” The asset owner had briefly considered investing because of Minerd’s purported skill, but had passed. He was not alone in expressing this view—that Minerd was a powerhouse of talent, but that they were unsure of the firm he worked for. 

So, in the bowels of the Guggenheim Museum, with his marketing and public relations team surrounding him, I asked Minerd the somewhat uncomfortable question: While his track record speaks for itself, is Guggenheim Partners actually ready to ramp up its institutional asset management infrastructure in the way that PIMCO and Bridgewater are now famous for? He seems to be the real deal—but is his firm? 

“It’s a valid question—but we’re answering it,” he said. His entourage was listening intently—and tensely. “I’m hesitant to put this in so many words, but this group—the asset management group—is meant to be a bit of a crown jewel of the organization. We’ve had 25 new hires in the CIO office recently. Five to ten years ago, I think what you ask—‘are we serious about this?’—was an issue. But that was then. Now, we’re hiring, and we’re looking for an El-Erian type.” 

It’s true. Bill Gross has Mohamed El-Erian. Ray Dalio has Bob Prince. Even Warren Buffett is busy hiring numerous number-twos. Who will be Minerd’s second-in-command? 

Minerd paused, then spoke. “Look, if I’m hit by a bus…” 

“…Poor bus!” one of the entourage intoned, the group’s tension breaking slightly. 

“If I get hit by a bus, we want someone who is there. I’ve identified some interesting candidates.” It’s not so much that he needs another deputy, he said—he already has assistant CIOs who are responsible for fixed income, alternatives and equities—but that he needs another syphon. “I want someone I can bounce ideas off of. I know that it can come across like I talk and people just listen—but I, like everyone else, need a sounding board.” Here, for perhaps the first time in our hours of speaking, he resorted to clichés. “I need someone who can prove to me when I’m wrong. I want to foster a dialogue.” 

And with that, we were done. Minerd had a slew of afternoon meetings to attend before dinner with Alan Schwartz, the ex-Bear Stearns chief who now joins Minerd, CEO Walter, and President Todd Boehly in running the firm. He said his goodbyes, took a bottle of water from an assistant, and bounded up the stairs of the museum to the exit, entourage in tow. The Scott Minerd show, for now, had ended. The question is whether Guggenheim’s is just beginning.