--- title: What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do? | TIME description: Bill Gross is perhaps the world's most famous bond fund manager. But what exactly does he do? canonical: https://time.com/video/f0jdH5UP/ og:title: What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do? og:description: Bill Gross is perhaps the world's most famous bond fund manager. But what exactly does he do? og:url: https://time.com/video/f0jdH5UP/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/f0jdH5UP/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do? twitter:description: Bill Gross is perhaps the world's most famous bond fund manager. But what exactly does he do? twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/f0jdH5UP/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do? [Watch (HLS stream): What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/f0jdH5UP.m3u8) (2:07)  _Published 2014-10-02. Bill Gross is perhaps the world's most famous bond fund manager. But what exactly does he do?_ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Hedge Fund Manager Jim Chanos Betting Against Tesla](/video/SU673IRi/) ### Hedge Fund Manager Jim Chanos Betting Against Tesla [A Mutual Fund Manager Shares His Best Financial Advice](/video/BO5MmtCw/) ### A Mutual Fund Manager Shares His Best Financial Advice [Why Bill Gross Leaving PIMCO is a Big Deal](/video/vtMBAXiX/) ### Why Bill Gross Leaving PIMCO is a Big Deal --- ## Transcript Recently an investment manager named Bill Gross captured headlines by leaving his job at Pimco total return, the biggest bond mutual fund in the country. You might have the Pimco fund as part of your 401k. Gross was a star and after he left money poured out of Pimco. Some people may follow Gross to his new fund. Others are running to another famous bond manager Jeffery Gunlock of Doubleline. That's big drama by Wallstreet's standards, but if you're like most of us, you might be wondering right now, and might be a little afraid to ask, what is a bond fund manager actually do? You probably know how professional stock investors make money. They try to buy shares in a company when its cheap and profit if the price of the stock goes up. A bond is a bit different, you buy a bond from a company or from the US Treasury and they promise to give you all your money back at a future date. In the meantime, they pay you interest each year. Right now, a treasury bond that pays you back in ten years, will earn about 2. 5 %. That's a close to guaranteed return. But if you know you'll earn 2. 5 % on a bond, why does anybody need a fund manager? Here's why. Much like a stock on the stock market, bonds are swapped among investors and they will constantly rise and fall in price. The prices of existing bonds rise when prevailing interest rates fall. They fall when rates go up. You'll still get your money back if you hold to maturity but, in the meantime, you may get less if you try to sell the bond today. The perceived credit worthiness of a bond issuer. The chances they'll pay you back can also effect a bond's price. So a bond manager tries to make money not only by collecting the interest on a bond, but also by guessing future changes in interest rates and the effects on the prices of different kinds of bonds. Gross was famous because he was better at this than almost anyone else in the business. In recent years though his touch seemed have faded. Today, many investors have decided not to bother looking for the next smart interest rate guesser. Instead they are putting money into bond index funds, which simply hold the representative slice of the entire bond market. Bonds in an index fund rise and fall in value, too, but you know you'll get the market's average return without depending on one star's skill. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"What Does a Bond Fund Manager Do?","description":"Bill Gross is perhaps the world's most famous bond fund manager. But what exactly does he do?","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/f0jdH5UP/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-10-02T21:03:51.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/f0jdH5UP.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/f0jdH5UP/","duration":"PT2M7S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/f0jdH5UP/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```