DAVID TEPPER: The Market Is Too Big For Bill Gross To Mean Anything

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David Tepper

Bloomberg TV

David Tepper

Bill Gross shocked the financial world when he announced he would be quitting his job as CIO of PIMCO, the $2 trillion California-based asset management firm. This meant that he would be stepping down as manager of the $200 billion PIMCO Total Return Fund.

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Analysts speculated that this would mean PIMCO could lose anywhere from tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars in client assets.

Of course, this doesn't mean people would be dumping bonds outright. If anything, resulting outflows would be going from PIMCO to some competing bond fund manager.

Gross is expected to have a much smaller influence in the markets as he is now taking over the tiny $12 million Janus Unconstrained Bond Fund.

Regardless money is already moving.

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Bloomberg TV's Stephanie Ruhle asked influential hedge fund manager David Tepper what this means. Here's the script:

RUHLE: What does this Bill Gross exit mean for the market?

TEPPER: Nothing. Who cares?

RUHLE: Really?

TEPPER: You saw it the other day. The - the little bit that was done with the corporate markets. He's there. He's here. It's not going to mean that much. Really what means things are fundamentals. So you talk about a day, two days, three days. But long term, it doesn't mean anything. The market is the market. It's bigger than anybody.

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Indeed, the bond market hasn't seen too much movement in the days since Gross announced his resignation.

Regarding scale, it's important to keep things in perspective. While the billions and trillions mentioned above seem big, the global financial markets are almost unfathomably big.

Below is a chart of global financial assets. Deutsche Bank estimates it was worth $242 trillion in 2013.

global financial assets

Deutsche Bank