Summary of Mary Childs' The Bond King

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Mary Childs' The Bond King in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. $10,000 and countless casino bans later, he was hooked: so he enrolled in business school.

The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino. Over the course of decades, Bill Gross turned the sleepy bond market into a destabilized game of high risk, high reward; founded Pimco, one of today’s most powerful, secretive, and cutthroat investment firms; helped to reshape our financial system in the aftermath of the Great Recession―to his own advantage; and gained legions of admirers, and enemies, along the way. Like every American antihero, his ambition would also be his undoing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Dec 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350063110

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Summary of Mary Childs’ The Bond King

Contents

Overview

The Housing Project

In the Beginning

The Turn

The Crisis

Constructive Paranoia

New Normal

A Bad Call

Back on Top

Grow or Die

The Williams Lawsuit

Taper Tantrum

Exit El-Erian

Inside the Showdown

Changing Dynamics

Time’s Up

Shifting Tides

Looking Back

About the Author

Overview

The Bond King (2022) chronicles the rise and fall of Bill Gross, the notoriously eccentric founder of investment management firm Pimco. In 2013, finance reporter Mary Childs learned that Gross had called her out on international radio for a mistake in an article. Gross also phoned Childs, and they began a series of many conversations over the next years. Gross played a crucial role in making the bond market what it was: fascinating, but also male-dominated and self-obsessed. Childs wrote The Bond King, which is based on extensive research, to provide an inside look at the world of bonds through detailing the history of Pimco.

The Housing Project

In August 2005, Dan Ivascyn was one of ten financial analysts sent by Bill Gross to gather data on the US housing market. A year later, Pimco published The Housing Project based on the analysts’ findings. Low interest rates had people taking out loans to buy more expensive homes. When home buyers found themselves too deep in debt, they sold their houses for more than they paid. The number of homes sold was decreasing while the number of homes for sale was increasing.

Pimco predicted that if housing cooled, consumers would slow their spending, thus cooling the whole economy. Hence, Pimco should steer away from buying too many things linked to home prices. This was good news for Pimco and its executives because as a bond investor, predicting catastrophes worked in the company’s