Bill Gross, co-founder and co-CIO of PIMCO, is to my mind one of the shrewdest money men around. His monthly newsletter, this month entitled “Anything but .01%”, therefore always makes for thought-provoking reading.

The following are a few excerpts from the report:

“Almost all money market accounts - totaling over $4 trillion dollars, yield close to nothing, so close to nothing that I mistakenly did a double take when reviewing my monthly portfolio statement. “Yield on cash”, read the buried line on page 15 of the report, “.01%”.

“Well now, I say to myself, this is very interesting from a number of different angles. If I was hoping to double my money, it would take approximately 6,932 years to get there at that rate! Secondly, being a savvy professional investor and all, I knew that money market funds actually earned 20 basis points or so

The dollar is likely to continue depreciating and the “new normal” will see consumers shedding debt in an attempt to balance their books, Bill Gross, the influential manager who runs top bond fund Pimco, told CNBC Wednesday.

“I think the dollar is an over-owned currency. The Chinese, the Asians have basically owned too many dollars for too long,” Gross told “Squawk Box”.

The government has increased borrowing and this will make the dollar “more and more owned and less and less desirable” but this is necessary for balancing the world economy, as it may result in higher production in the US and lower production in China.

Source: CNBC, October 28, 2009.

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Bill Gross, co-founder and co-CIO of PIMCO, is to my mind one of the shrewdest money men around. His monthly newsletter, this month entitled “Midnight Candles”, therefore always makes for thought-provoking reading.

He concludes the newsletter as follows:

“Asset appreciation in US and other G-7 economies has been artificially elevated for years. In order to prevent prices sinking even lower than recent downtrends averaging 30% for stocks, homes, commercial real estate, and certain high yield bonds, central banks must keep policy rates historically low for an extended period of time. If policy rates are artificially low then bond investors should recognize that artificial buyers of notes and bonds (quantitative easing programs and Chinese currency fixing) have compressed almost all interest rates.

“But while this may support asset prices - including Treasury paper across the front end and belly of the curve, at the same time

Bill Gross, co-founder and co-CIO of PIMCO, is to my mind one of the shrewdest money men around. His monthly newsletter, this month entitled “On the “Course” to a New Normal”, therefore always makes for thought-provoking reading.

He concludes the newsletter as follows:

“The investment implications of this New Normal evolution cannot easily be modeled econometrically, quantitatively, or statistically. The applicable word in New Normal is, of course, “new.” The successful investor during this transition will be one with common sense and importantly the powers of intuition, observation, and the willingness to accept uncertain outcomes. As of now, Pimco observes that the highest probabilities favor the following strategic conclusions:

1. Global policy rates will remain low for extended periods of time.

2. The extent and duration of quantitative easing, term financing and fiscal stimulation efforts are keys to future investment returns across a multitude of

Pimco is ready to launch the first short-term TIPS ETF in the U.S.

Pimco is set to launch its second exchange-traded fund on Monday, again sticking with short-term Treasuries.

This time, however, the world’s biggest bond fund manager is moving into Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. It’s a market with two entrenched competitors already vying for investment dollars. But TIPS have been hot attractions so far this year, and if inflation hawks are correct, could heat up even more in coming years.

New Competition

The Pimco 1-5 Year U.S. TIPS Index Fund (NYSE Arca: STPZ) will be the first to focus on the short-end of the yield curve. The two others already on the market take an intermediate tilt: the iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (NYSEArca: TIP) and the SPDR Barclays Capital TIPS ETF (NYSEArca: IPE).

State Street Global Advisors also sponsors a global TIPS ETF, the SPDR DB International Government Inflation-Protected Bond ETF (NYSEArca: WIP). It

Mortgage delinquencies move higher…Euro pushed higher by European data…Economist predicts Norway will be first to raise…Mexico to leave rates unchanged…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And happy Friday! The data released yesterday morning was a mixed bag, as the leading indicators climbed for a fourth straight month and the Philadelphia fed reported a big jump in their gauge of activity, but the initial jobless claims unexpectedly rose. Unemployment in the US will continue to be a drag on the economy, slowing any recovery and possibly pushing the US back into recession (or as some predict a depression). Today we will get some news on the housing market, and while the media will pump up the fact that month on month sales continue to rise, another report released yesterday showed mortgage delinquencies hit a record high in July. The proportion of homeowners delinquent on their mortgage or in foreclosure rose to its

I yesterday published a short post on Chinese equities and said: “… it looks if more downside is in store for the Shanghai Composite Index and it would not come as a surprise if lower Chinese equities serve as the catalyst for a well-deserved pullback in global stock markets.” With the MSCI World Index, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and the major US indices coming off the boil yesterday, China may already have started leading world markets lower.

On a number of occasions recently I have asserted that the stock market has become disconnected from the economy. Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of Pimco, yesterday shared this view in an interview with CNBC. He said: “The stock market has gotten way ahead of the reality on the ground.” Arguing that markets are on a “sugar high”, he added: “Stock investors are making overly optimistic assumptions. The key

Our issue is how to reconcile the opposite views of experts in the bond world versus experts in the stock world.  The market is always full of opposing views.  One stock guy predicts UP and the other predicts DOWN.  However, when the bond guys and the stock guys disagree, that is a more fundamental problem for us.

We have a tendency to think of bond guys as more detailed and more fundamental in their thinking and process than stock guys, so maybe a bit more right.  That could be entirely wrong and unfair, but one thing is sure — they can’t both be right if they predict opposite outcomes, unless the are predicting based on different time frames — then they can both be right.

Anyway, this is the kind of headlines day that makes us want to toss our hands in the air and go fishing.

First you see this:

July 13 (Bloomberg)

In this first edition of a new WealthTrack series on great investors, Consuelo Mack sat down with “Bond King” Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of bond giant Pimco, and discussed how he was reconciling his big-picture, secular views of lower investment returns with his higher-return-oriented investment goals. Amongst others, he told her why he was backing away from his investment strategy of making the government his investment partner - a key theme of Pimco’s over the past year - and what he was focusing on instead. Gross also shared what he is doing with his own money.

Gross’ flagship Total Return Fund was up 4% plus last year, nine full percentage points better than its peers. It is up more than 6% for the year to date, again outstripping the competition. Not too shabby!

Do not miss any of this great interview.

This week’s video-o-rama comes to you a day late as I make my away from Cape Town to Europe. Notwithstanding terribly slow broadband at South African airports, I have managed to compile an interesting potpourri of clips.

Topics ranged from another round of discussions about the proposed regulatory reform to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke facing a grilling on Capital Hill over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch deal to the usual dose of debate on the outlook for the economy and financial markets.

The stars of this week’s round-up include Steven Pearlstein, Pete Peterson, Warren Buffett (US economy in “shambles”), Nouriel Roubini (US economy “sort of stabilizing”), Puru Saxena, Edmund Phelps, Mohamed El-Erian, Robert Prechter (a “lot more” bear market) and T. Boone Pickens.

The compilation kicks of with Barry Ritholtz, author of must-read “Bailout Nation” and editor of The Big Picture blog, sharing his views on