Billionaire bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, the founder and CEO of $137 billion DoubleLine Capital, says his number one conviction over several years is that the U.S. dollar will decline as a consequence of current economic policies, resulting in the U.S. losing its sole reserve currency status.
"My number one conviction looking forward a number of years — I'm not talking about the next few months at all, I'm talking about several years — is that the dollar is going to go down," Gundlach told Yahoo Finance Live in an exclusive interview on Monday afternoon.
It's Gundlach's view that the "places to be in the long-term" are emerging markets and "non-U.S entities." While Gundlach has already rotated into European equities, the investor expects to "aggressively rotate into emerging markets," but notes it's "too early for that right now."
"So the dollar is going down is another reason why ultimately — we touched on gold — I think ultimately gold is going to go a lot higher, but it's really in hibernation right now," he added.
The 61-year-old "Bond King" later highlighted that the United States' status of the global reserve currency is in jeopardy.
"[The] U.S. has enjoyed the status of sole reserve currency globally for decades, and it's an incredible benefit," Gundlach said.
He pointed that in the aftermath of the global coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns, China's economy has been "the strongest economy in the world by far." While U.S. GDP has "bounced back with a lot of consumption, a lot of that consumption is going to China," he added.
"That's one of the reasons why China has such a strong economy. So, what we're seeing in the United States is starting to fall behind in economic growth. That's not a new thing. That's been going on for a generation, the U.S. falling behind," Gundlach said.
The investor also pointed out that estimates for when China's economy will be the largest "keep getting pulled forward," noting some economists' projections show China's economy will surpass the U.S. by 2028.
"We have debt-to-GDP that is fueling the majority of our so-called economic growth. So, is it really economic growth when you borrow money or print money, send checks to people who turn around and buy goods on Amazon in addition to maybe paying down debt and speculating and these goods come in from China?" Gundlach said.
He added: "We're running our economy in a way that is almost like we're not interested in maintaining global reserve currency status or the largest military or global call it superiority or control. As long as we continue to run these policies, and we're running them more and more aggressively, we're not pulling back on them in any way, we are looking at a road map that is clearly headed towards the U.S. losing its sole reserve currency status."
According to Gundlach, with the current economic policies in place, it's "almost certain" the U.S. dollar should be going down.
"The value of the dollar is so high because we enjoy global reserve currency status, and we don't really respect it enough. We take it for granted, I guess. We seem to take a lot of things for granted these days in the United States relative to how we thought about things in prior decades and generations. And, I believe we are setting the stage for us to, unfortunately… experience the consequences of our actions the way we have been running a non-serious economic program now, really since 1980, but it's really accelerated so much in the past decade and there's no signs of it abetting," he said.
It's Gundlach's view that the U.S. dollar has "already peaked" when the U.S. Dollar Index hit 103.
"I believe the dollar will take out the lows of the past down cycle. The dollar has been in a series of declining highs for decades — it goes back to the '80s. For that reason, I think when we get to the next break to the lower level, the dollar will go past the most recent low of around 80 and even take out the low of 70. So, I think there's easily 25% downside in the U.S. dollar."
