Gundlach Sees Recession Sign in U.S. Consumer Confidence Spread

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. consumer confidence still looks relatively high even with recent declines, but billionaire investor Jeffrey Gundlach says the underlying data suggest a recession is coming.

Gundlach tweeted Tuesday after the Conference Board’s confidence survey for January showed the widest gap between current sentiment and expectations since March 2001, the first month of the U.S. recession that year.

Gundlach, chief investment officer of DoubleLine Capital, which oversaw about $121 billion as of Dec. 31, tracks confidence as a leading indicator of recession. In a Jan. 8 webcast, he said consumer expectations were “flashing yellow” for recession.

Known as a contrarian, he was one of the few money managers to predict that Donald Trump would be elected president and that stocks would fall last year.

To contact the reporters on this story: Scott Lanman in Washington at slanman@bloomberg.net;John Gittelsohn in Los Angeles at johngitt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Lanman at slanman@bloomberg.net, ;Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Jeff Kearns

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