Jeff Gundlach Net Worth - Pulptastic

What is Jeff Gundlach’s net worth?

Jeffrey Gundlach, worth $2.3 billion, is an American investor and founder of DoubleLine Capital LP. With over $140 billion in assets under management, he is widely recognized as the most knowledgeable investor in bonds and fixed income investments. Gundlach gained notoriety as head of the TCW Group’s Total Return Bond Fund and later founded DoubleLine Capital after being fired from TCW in 2009. He is often referred to as “the bond king” or “the king of bonds.”

Early Life and Education

Jeffrey Edward Gundlach was born on October 30, 1959, in Amherst, New York. His father worked as a chemist for Pierce and Stevens Chemical Corp. As a child, Gundlach’s mother would take him to art shows in Buffalo and Manhattan, which sparked his lifelong appreciation for fine art. Today, he has a personal collection that includes works by Mondrian, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and Warhol.

Gundlach graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1981 with dual degrees in Mathematics and Philosophy. He then attended Yale University as a PhD candidate in Mathematics but dropped out to pursue a career in the business world.

Work at TCW Group

Jeff Gundlach spent several years working for the TCW Group in Los Angeles, a major investment firm catering to high net worth individuals and institutions. As head of the fund, he consistently ranked in the top 2% of all funds invested, and at his peak, managed the firm’s $12 billion TCW Total Return Bond Fund.

Gundlach was one of the few fund managers at TCW who predicted the housing crash, publicly calling the subprime mortgage market an “unmitigated disaster” in June 2007, a full year before the worst aspects of the bubble burst. However, he was fired from TCW in 2009 after news spread that he planned to launch his own firm.

Jeffrey Gundlach Launches DoubleLine Capital LLC

After being fired from TCW, Jeffrey Gundlach launched DoubleLine Capital LLC with Philip Barach and 14 other senior staff. The company had 45 employees and $1 billion in assets under management within a month of being founded.

The firm is named after a series of paintings by Piet Mondrian and has $141 billion in assets under management as of September 2020. Its LA offices feature valuable works of art, and conference rooms are named after artists and feature their work.

Jeff personally painted the DoubleLine logo, which references a Mondrian. The firm’s largest conference room, the “Warhol Room,” features a Warhol painting.

Jeff Gundlach’s Mansion Burglary

In September 2012, Jeff Gundlach’s mansion in Santa Monica, California was burglarized, and the thieves stole a dozen works of art, valuable bottles of wine, five extremely valuable watches, cash, and Jeff’s prized 2010 red Porsche Carrera 4s. The total value of the stolen haul was at least $10 million.

Gundlach offered a $1 million reward for the return of a painting by Piet Mondrian and a $500,000 reward for the Jasper Johns. Most of the paintings were recovered within a few weeks at an automobile stereo shop in Pasadena, California after Santa Monica police received a tip. Six people were eventually charged in connection to the robbery, and the mastermind was sentenced to six years in prison.

In a bizarre twist, Jeffrey claimed that he actually had a hand in catching the thieves. One of the stolen paintings was by an artist named Helen Fuchs, who was Jeffrey’s paternal grandmother. According to Jeffrey, he tipped law enforcement of his grandmother’s painting, which featured her signature in the bottom right corner. He believed that the artist would eventually Google the name “Helen Fuchs” to learn the value of the piece.

Jeffrey then claims law enforcement was somehow able to access all the search history in the LA area for the name “Helen Fuchs” and were able to find two matches. One of the matches was a search Jeffrey had done, and the other was the thief. A dubious claim, but a fun cocktail party story for Mr. Gundlach.

Jeffrey Gundlach’s Real Estate Investments

Jeffrey Gundlach purchased a Santa Monica home that had been burglarized in 1997 for $1.56 million. He sold the home in 2014 for $4.2 million. The home was featured in a video tour when it was owned by the previous owners.

In 2013, Jeffrey moved to an 11,500 square-foot mansion in Pacific Palisades, which he purchased for $15.35 million. The mansion is estimated to be worth $20-$30 million today.