Jeffrey Gundlach (Photo: Alex Flynn/Bloomberg)
After a brutal first quarter in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked 23% — the biggest first-quarter drop in its history — and the S&P fell 20%, DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said late Tuesday that the markets' March 23 lows will not be their worst.
"The low in mid-March — I would bet dollars to donuts that the low is going to be taken out," he said during a webcast. "Will it happen in the near term? Who knows. I think it might.
"The market has really made it back to a resistance zone, and [it] continues to act somewhat dysfunctionally in my opinion," Gundlach explained, adding that after it takes out its earlier low, we should "get a more enduring [one]."
Investors could become panicky again at some point in April, he said.
Economic Snapback
Looking at the expectations of some analysts, who see a "V-shaped" U.S. economic recovery in the third quarter following a tough second quarter, Gundlach cautioned that such views are "highly, highly optimistic" and are simply "too much to hope for."
Likewise, estimates of U.S. GDP for 2020 that aren't in negative territory are "outrageously improbable," he said. As for Goldman Sachs' view that GDP will be down -3.1% for the year, Gundlach said he'll "take the under."
"We're looking at a massive, massive reduction in GDP," Gundlach explained. The effects of the coronavirus and its related economic fallout, coming on top of the sharp drop in oil prices "will be more far reaching" than are appreciated today, he added.
Goldman Sachs said Tuesday that it expects U.S. GDP to be down 9% in the first quarter of 2020 and 34% in the second, while the unemployment rate could be around 13% or even 15% by midyear.
"It looks like a depression scenario," the DoubleLine executive said.
Long-Term Pain
Gundlach reminded those on Tuesday's webcast that the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis expected job losses could total 47 million — representing a 32% unemployment rate.
