The Drama In The Bond World Just Won't Stop

In this week's edition of Barron's, Joe Mansueto, CEO of investment firm Morningstar, published a letter to the editor firing back at the magazine following its story a week ago about the firm's supposed feud with bond king Jeff Gundlach.

Mansueto wrote:

Jonathan R. Laing's column about Morningstar and bond-fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach ("Blood Feud," Streetwise, Sept. 29) painted a false portrayal of Morningstar and our analysts' coverage of Gundlach's DoubleLine Total Return Bond fund.

Despite several interviews and e-mail exchanges with Laing over the course of two years, he didn't quote anyone from Morningstar and left out 99% of what we shared with him.

Ouch.

In last week's Barron's, Laing wrote that Morningstar and Gundlach were locked in a "blood feud" over Morningstar's decision to put a "not ratable" rating on Gundlach's DoubleLine Total Return Bond fund.

Laing outlined what appeared to be a checkered history between Gundlach and Morningstar, which included an apparent fixing of Morningstar's 2009 vote for its Bond Manager of the Year award, which Gundlach apparently won on a first ballot, but was later defeated by Loomis Sayles' Daniel Fuss in a second vote.

Mansueto concluded with: "Laing's conclusion that our analysts have a foot on the scale when it comes to DoubleLine is inaccurate. We hold every manager we cover to the same standards of transparency. If we tip the scales, it's on the side of the investor."

And this spat between Barron's, Morningstar, and DoubleLine is all just background noise to the still-shocking departure of Bill Gross from PIMCO last week.

In this week's Barron's, the magazine published a big interview with Gross that is a must-read. Gross explained that managing money is "in his blood," and also gave a quick overview of how he sees the current economic and investment landscape and what interests him as he gets set to start at Janus on Monday.

And you thought bonds were boring.