‘China is uninvestable,’ says Bond king Jeffrey Gundlach

Investors may want to think twice about putting their money to work in China, contends DoubleLine founder Jeffrey Gundlach. 

“China is uninvestible, in my opinion, at this point,” the bond king told Yahoo Finance in an interview at his California estate. “I’ve never invested in China long or short. Why is that? I don’t trust the data. I don’t trust the relationship between the United States and China anymore. I think that investments in China could be confiscated. I think there’s a risk of that.”

Gundlach’s comments came ahead of DoubleLine’s third annual Roundtable Prime investor event on Tuesday.

Some of Gundlach’s concerns on China played out in grand fashion last year. 

The ongoing crackdown on the operations of big Chinese internet companies such as Didi by the government has rocked investors in the space. The clamping down on the country’s biggest tech names has now led to a tightening of listing requirements by the Chinese government. 

To that end, Didi plans to delist from the New York Stock Exchange later this year not too long after a disastrous IPO (in large part because of Chinese authorities). 

Meanwhile, the long reach of China’s government also hammered after-school tutoring companies such as TAL Education Group — shares of the name plunged about 95% in 2021. 

All of this is in addition to China’s ongoing fight against the rise of cryptocurrencies. 

The investing headwinds in the country show up in how the country’s key indexes performed in 2021. 

For instance, the Golden Dragon Index — which tracks the performance of mid- and large-cap Chinese stocks — plunged about 49% in 2021. The Wall Street Journal points out the total value of China’s onshore stocks rose 20% in 2021, underperforming the S&P 500’s advance. 

Gundlach is increasingly more optimistic on emerging markets, minus China (which he doesn’t think is an emerging market anymore). 

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“I kind of think the next move, the big move is to enter emerging markets. We’ve been in zero emerging market equities this whole time. And, we’ve been underweight until very recently emerging market debt as well,” added Gundlach.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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