William H. Gross

William H. Gross (born 1944) is an American financial manager and investment author.

He was born in Middletown, Ohio, and graduated from Duke University. He served in the Navy, and earned an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Gross briefly played blackjack professionally in Las Vegas, and has said that he applies many of his gambling methods for spreading risk and calculating odds to his investment decisions. In the 1990s he authored two popular-market books on investing, "Bill Gross on Investing" and "Everything You've Heard About Investing Is Wrong."

Gross is one of the world's largest mutual fund managers, focusing mostly on bonds. Called "the nation's most prominent bond investor" by the "New York Times" [Danny Hakim. " [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE4DF1538F93BA35754C0A9679C8B63 A Quarter of Gains, But Doubt Persists] ," "New York Times". 07/08/2001.] , he manages Pacific Investment Management's Total Return fund (the world's largest bond fund and fifth largest mutual fund) and several smaller ones. [ [http://www.pimco.com Pimco] Nonspecific|date=September 2008]

Gross is also a prominent philatelist. [" [http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/04/25/the-billionaire-stamp-collector/ The Billionaire Stamp Collector] ," "Wall Street Journal". 05/25/2007.] As of November 2005, he became the second person (after Robert Zoellner in the 1990s) to form a complete collection of 19th century United States postage stamps. In October 2005, he purchased at auction for $2.97 million a unique plate block of the famous 1918 24-cent U.S. airmail stamps known as the "Inverted Jenny," featuring an engraving of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane printed upside-down. He then traded the Inverted Jenny Plateblock to Donald Sundman, President of Mystic Stamp Company, a stamp dealer, for a 1-cent 1868 "Z Grill" depicting Benjamin Franklin, thus completing Gross's 19th century collection. [Neil Irwin. " [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052601738_pf.html Lessons Learned, Investor Builds Portfolio of Stamps] ," "Washington Post". 05/27/2006.]

In 2006, Gross donated $9.1 million to Doctors Without Borders. [http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/form990_2007.pdf]

According to the Forbes 400 in 2007, he is the 380th richest person in America [ [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/54/richlist07_The-400-Richest-Americans_NameProper_6.html The 400 Riches Americans] , "Forbes", 20 September 2007] and the 897th richest person in the world, [ [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_The-Worlds-Billionaires_NameProper_15.html The World's Billionaires] , "Forbes", 5 May 2008] with a net worth of $1.3 billion.

Bibliography

*cite book | author=Bill Gross | title=Everything You've Heard About Investing Is Wrong! | publisher=Crown Business | year=1997 | id=ISBN 0-8129-2839-3
*cite book | author=Bill Gross | title=Bill Gross on Investing | publisher=Wiley | year=1998 | id=ISBN 0-471-28325-8

References

External links

* [http://www.fiasi.org/hall/1996/wgross.shtml Speech inducting Bill Gross into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/02/national/02stamp.html New York Times article on Gross's stamp collecting]
* [http://www.marketthoughts.com/z20051020.html The Bill Gross' Way of Making Money]
* [http://www.williamhgrosscollection.com The William Gross Collection of Great Britain]
* [http://www.shreves.com Shreves Philatelic Galleries, Inc. Auctions Gross Collection]