Bill Gross on His Asperger's Diagnosis and its Advantages

for better for worse bill we've all read and heard things about your personal life were you able to compartmentalize all of that or did it distract from your focus I think so but you know you never know I mean my personality not to get personal I'm an Asperger and Asperger's can compartmentalize they can operate in different universes or without the other universe is affecting them as much and so yeah I had a nasty divorce and I still had you know feelings about PEMCO but I think he did pretty well in compartmentalized them not that I didn't wake up in the middle of the night and and start damming one side or the other but but when I came to work it was all business and I don't think it affected me was that much but you know it's hard to know yeah you are not your best witness when it comes to trying to figure out whether something is affecting you or not and so that's a possibility I didn't know you have Asperger's is that what you meant in February of 2016 in one of your outlooks you wrote about Michael Lewis's book and the movie it spawned the big short and you said that you shared an attribute or an affliction I think yes with one of the heroes if you will of that book Michael burry dr. Michael Bernie and it wasn't his glass eye exactly if he got a minute and a half is a fascinating story and so I read that book and and Lewis is a great writer and he he and within that chapter about like a weary he listed ten things that Asperger's have that Michael had as well them and I go and some of them were not being able to look somebody in the eye which I'm not doing very well at the moment you know singular hobbies like stamp collecting etc etc etc I go alright that's me I go and so I took the book out to my ex-wife I said I read this and she read it I think house burgers and she said you do not not you do but she said you do I said how would you know that she said well you know when we were having dinner with Bill Gates and Melinda and that was like five years before at a Duke reunion fundraiser it is home she said we were sitting at the table and I looked at gates and I looked at you and I look tickets and I look at you I said you were doing exactly the same thing at the same time your mannerisms were all the same and so I had heard that he had Asperger's a mild form so I went to a psychologist and he described it and said God just said he has Asperger's so I said why didn't you tell me and she said because I thought it might hurt their feelings you didn't know this about yourself mm-hmm until I read it in that book until you were in your early 70s yeah but it explained a lot not that and I'm sort of proud of it hurts I wouldn't be telling you I'm sort of proud of it because it explains a lot about me not that you know all Asperger's are not geniuses some you know the intelligence thing is not necessarily a big part of it but you know my personal behavior and ability to relate to people my singular hobbies stand collecting this and this and this and this yeah it said hey so-and-so maybe I do and so I did go to a psychiatrist and I'm the first meeting that the end of it is just through I said do you think I have Asperger's and she said oh yeah there is a line of thinking I'm sure you're familiar with it that says people with that condition I wouldn't call it an affliction do better as investors do you think that's true I think so why well because it as as I've understood it and in my experience it's allowed me to stay at 30,000 feet as opposed to be on the ground I'm you know basically the condition is one in which I'm sort of up here and you know is that other people will know when I come into a room and they they say bill I'll go oh you know I'm up here and so that's not necessarily good in terms of 1 to 1 people think you're angry or an a-hole or whatever but it helps you to focus on longer-term things without getting mixed up in the details and so I think it yeah I think it was very important because it allowed me to take what we called the secular approach at PIMCO to a long-term view and it was it was a good view to take as an ass burger now if if I was a quantitative trader hedge fund manager day to day minute to mean a quibble boom not so good interesting do you think it helped you identify patterns better probably but I never thought about it and in those terms but probably from the standpoint of again of 30,000 feet yeah it yeah because it allows me to just forget about minutiae and to focus on one big thing whatever it is at the moment as opposed to five different things do you think finding that out recognizing it and perhaps coming to terms with on a personal level helped her hurt I think it helped personally yeah it explained a lot but because of you know I'm introverted basically I'm pretty good here but you know I've always had problems and going up to somebody saying hello I expect him to say hello to me not because I'm a wheel but because I'm an ass burger and so it explained a lot and and you know like you say it it's a mild condition of autism right on the border nothing to be ashamed of like I said I'm proud of it and and because it explained why and in part why I was who I was you know not to negate my upbringing my family background my and how I came out of the oven we all come to the oven with a personality as you as a parent know you've got to and I'll bet you they're different right they certainly are so you know there's all of that but I yet I think it helped a lot and relieve the burden for me that sort of said hey it's not necessarily my fault I'm trying but I just can't compete with the extroverts like it would be nice to be able to do as someone who now knows about it and can look back on your career and identified what it didn't didn't do for you what would you say bill to other people younger people who find themselves with the same condition who are entering the financial markets as you once did is there any is there any benefit of experience that you would offer them well if it was the same condition as mine and I assume everybody's different I you know Gates is you know sure substantially different than me if he indeed isn't Asperger I don't know but you know I'd say it's a positive that can be used in terms of couriers to be able to look forward and to to not get dragged down in the day-to-day to have a plan to you know to succeed and if you're down you can get back up etc etc but you know I'd also say that the markets are substantially different today than they were when I started and you know it is more day-to-day this more robotic it is more machine dominated and so it's not a negative but it's probably not as much of a positive because it doesn't it it gives you time to to to work to work you know given market conditions and I think today it's it's so staccato like as opposed to when I started

Channel: Bloomberg Markets and Finance

Views: 52,188

Rating: 4.9345455 out of 5

Keywords: Bloomberg

Id: 34m0sXqfDxU

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 28 2019