Brian Chappatta, Columnist

Bill Gross Is Right That It’s Tougher to Outperform

An analysis of mutual-fund performance paints a grim picture for stock and bond pickers.

March 4, 2019 at 5:13 PM UTC

Brian Chappatta is managing editor of Bloomberg News' leveraged finance and distressed debt teams. He was previously managing editor and team leader of its wealth group. Before that he was a Bloomberg Opinion markets and finance columnist and a bonds reporter for Bloomberg News.

Performance is becoming tougher.
Photographer: Misha Friedman/Bloomberg

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Bill Gross, the former bond king, may be officially retired, but he had one final warning for those still managing money: You’ll never outperform the way he did in his heyday at Pacific Investment Management Co.

To be clear, this isn’t his ego talking. In a conversation with Bloomberg News’s Erik Schatzker, Gross said that markets have changed, becoming so much more efficient that virtually no wagers are surefire ways to get ahead and generate so-called alpha. Here are a few ways he said he outperformed both his benchmark and his peers over the years, without necessarily any “brilliance” on his part: