The Fabulously Eccentric Life Of Billionaire Bond Guru Bill Gross
Getty Images/ Jeff Gross
That's a lot of money, even for someone who's estimated net worth is $2.3 billion.
Gross, who co-founded PIMCO and managed its massive Total Return bond fund before heading to Janus in September, is also known for his character and eccentric lifestyle, which some have attributed to his successes in money managing.
Gross has a unique management style.
Gross' work habits have bred many successful traders and portfolio managers - he is known to leaves notes on his employees' desks questioning their portfolio positions by the time they come in to work at 4 am and to admonish his traders when they attend investment conferences, saying instead they should be speakers at these conferences.
REUTERS/Lori Shepler
It goes without saying that Gross is a workaholic. During the height of the financial crisis, Gross was tapped by several Fed and Treasury officials for advice, and said he worked 18-hour days as PIMCO was in "crisis management mode."
He also has a unique personal style.
With long hair, an informal fashion and casual attitude, Gross isn't like many other Wall Streeters. Indeed, he often refers to himself as the antithesis of a Wall Street "alpha male," according to the New York Times.
REUTERS/Jim Young
Gross also isn't prone to schmoozing or traveling to network. Even when more publicity shone on him after the financial crisis as government officials began asking for his counsel, he says he never met Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner until Oct. 2010.
Gross has some eccentric hobbies and personal habits, too.
Gross is an avid practitioner of yoga.
Many have pointed to Gross' yoga habit as a symptom of his West Coast surroundings; he lived in Beverly Hills while working at PIMCO. But the exercise is not uncommon among many financiers-Dan Loeb of Third Point and former BofA exec Sallie Krawcheck are also yoga practitioners.
Courtesy of Jade Mills Realty/AP Images
Gross has also said he gets investment ideas from standing on his head during yoga, the New York Times reports.
He's also a huge stamp collector.
Gross got into stamp collecting when his mom saved up old stamps in hopes to eventually selling them off to help pay for his college tuition. When it came time to sell them, dealers told Gross that the stamps were worth less than what his mom had paid for them originally.
But Gross held onto the stamps and continued collecting, saying he knew it wasn't a good investment but wanting it to be a successful hobby. He's spent as much as $3 million collecting every stamp produced by the US from 1847 to 1869.
Some of his collections have sold for as much as $500,000.
And Gross was once a professional blackjack player.
After college, Gross hopped a train to Las Vegas with $200 sewed into his pant leg. Within four months of playing 16 hour days, he had turned that $200 into $10,000-money that he used to pay his tuition as UCLA's business school, according to Reuters.
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