3 Reasons I’m Excited For Inside Fixed Income

Our annual fixed-income conference is coming up in a little more than a week and I can’t wait.

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Reviewed by: Matt Hougan
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Edited by: Matt Hougan

Our annual fixed-income conference is coming up in a little more than a week and I can’t wait.

Our annual fixed-income conference is coming up in a little more than a week and I can’t wait.

While most people know ETF.com for its flagship Inside ETFs conference, which takes place each January in Hollywood, Florida, we put on a series of events throughout the year. One of my favorites is our Inside Fixed Income conference, which is taking place in Newport Beach, California, next week on Oct. 22.

Inside Fixed Income is great because it’s intimate—200-300 people will attend—but the content is superb. We are able to tap in to our contacts to bring some of the biggest names in fixed income to the table for meaty discussions on what to do with their fixed-income portfolios.

With the 10-year Treasury yield plummeting, I want to know what they have to say.

Here are three things I’m most looking forward to on Oct. 22:

1) Hearing What Scott Mather Plans for PIMCO’s Total Return Bond Fund

When Bill Gross left PIMCO for Janus two weeks ago, it shook the investing world. Everyone wanted to know what happened and what Gross would do with the tiny Janus Unconstrained Bond Fund.

I did too. But more than that, I wanted to know what his replacement would do with PIMCO’s marquee Total Return Bond Fund. After all, the Janus fund had about $20 million in assets at the time; Total Return had about $200 billion.

Scott Mather is the new lead portfolio manager at Total Return, and I couldn’t help imagining myself in his shoes on the day the Gross news broke. One minute you wake up and you’re making coffee; the next minute you have $200 billion to manage. What’s more, you’re taking over the reins from one of the legends of investing, and the fate of a massive firm rests in no small part on your shoulders.

Fun times.

Mather will deliver a closing 30-minute keynote address at Inside Fixed Income, followed by 20 minutes of Q&A moderated by yours truly. I can’t wait to ask him what the plan is.

 

2) Tapping In To Jeff Gundlach’s Mind

DoubleLine CEO and CIO Jeffrey Gundlach will also deliver a keynote address at the conference. If you’ve never heard him speak, you should book a flight to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport today.

Gundlach is, perhaps, the pre-eminent fixed-income investor of our time. He oversees the fastest-growing mutual fund company of all time, and has been posting incredible returns for investors for more than a decade.

Not all great investors are great speakers, but Gundlach is. A polymath by nature, his diverse interests shine through in his talks. The last time I heard him speak, in between lessons on art history, Dutch financial crises and more, Gundlach managed both times to give me some novel insights into the outlook at the Fed and into both the equity and fixed-income outlook. He speaks with a common-sense wisdom that is refreshing.

His talk next week is called “This Time It’s Different.” I, for sure, want to know why.

3) Rick Rieder, Matt Tucker, Mark Dow and Many Others

The amazing thing about the conference is that Jeff and Scott don’t even dominate the headliners giving talks. There is Rick Rieder, a legend at BlackRock, where he is the CIO of Fundamental Fixed Income; Mark Dow, the iconoclastic hedge fund manager, offering insights on emerging market debt; and a cavalcade of excellent speakers from the ETF industry, the advisory community and more.

When we start planning out these conferences, I draw up a wish list of people I’d like to have speak. Never in my wildest dreams do I think I’ll get even half of them to come. This year, I got almost all of them: Gundlach, Mather, Rieder, Dow, Matt Tucker, Bob Smith … I’m fired up.

The 10-year Treasury fell 15 basis points at one point today. I can’t wait to ask these guys what to expect in the next 12 months.

The full agenda is available here.


Contact Matt Hougan at [email protected].

 

Matt Hougan is CEO of Inside ETFs, a division of Informa PLC. He spearheads the world's largest ETF conferences and webinars. Hougan is a three-time member of the Barron's ETF Roundtable and co-author of the CFA Institute’s monograph, "A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Trade Funds."