Gross to advisors: use my fund!

I about spit my coffee onto my screen when I read this gem of a headline from IndexUniverse.com:

“Bill Gross: Dump BND & AGG; Buy BOND “

(full story here, published 9/20/12)

This is just too good to pass up.  At IndexUniverse’s Inside Fixed Income conference, Gross stood up and declared that his strategy ($BOND, the PIMCO Total Return ETF) was, of course, better than the two leading broad-benchmark ETFs (Vanguard’s $BND and Blackrock’s $AGG).

He would know, right?

Interestingly, Gross acknowledged that he was weighting his fund towards less conservative positions in an effort to boost yield.  It didn’t sound as if he mentioned that he was inherently  increasing his fund’s risk by doing so. He also took the opportunity to throw in a fan favorite that the Fed is “running out of ammunition” but at the same time acknowledged that the Fed had successfully avoided a serious risk of deflation.

Thank you for your clearly unbiased opinion, Mr. Gross. Duly noted.