DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach offered a dire long-term assessment on the U.S. dollar Thursday, telling CNBC in an interview he thinks the greenback is “doomed.”
“Ultimately, the size of our deficits — both trade deficit, which has exploded post-pandemic, and the budget deficit, which is, obviously, completely off the charts — suggest that in the intermediate term — I don’t really think this year, exactly, but in the intermediate term — the dollar is going to fall pretty substantially,” Gundlach said on “Halftime Report.”
“That’s going to be a very important dynamic, because one of the things that’s helped the bond market, without any doubt, has been foreign buying, with the interest rate differentials having favored hedged U.S. bond positions for foreign bond investors,” he added.
The so-called bond king made his remarks as the U.S. dollar index traded around 92.64 on Thursday, up about 0.25% on the session. The dollar index, which measures the world’s reserve currency against a group of six currencies, was up 3% year to date.
“When it was below about 89, we announced very publicly that we were positive on the dollar for the near term,” said Gundlach, whose Los Angeles-based investment firm has more than $135 billion in assets under management as of March 31.
“It’s a question of what your horizon is,” Gundlach said. “In the short term, the dynamics have been and will continue to be in place for the dollar to be marginally or moderately stronger.”
“In the longer term, I think the dollar … [is] doomed,” he added.
