The Wall Street Journal's Min Zeng today called out Bill Gross' laggard performance his year based on his bearish views on Treasurys, which have endured a bull run of the past few months.

Zeng notes that Gross' $245.5 billion Total Return Fund has returned 2.99 percent this year through Wednesday, placing it 157th out of 179 funds in the intermediate-term bond fund category monitored by Lipper. Over the past three months, the fund has a return of -0.04 percent, versus 2.7 percent from the benchmark Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index, according to Morningstar data.

Zeng points out that in February, when the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield was as high as 3.77 percent, from 3.278 percent at the end of 2010, and in the same month Gross emptied all the Treasury holdings in the fund.

In the ensuing months, the earthquake in Japan and euro zone's sovereign-debt crisis had investors moving back into Treasurys. To cap it all off, fears of another U.S. recession prompted the Federal Reserve to extend its monetary policy out until 2013, a move that provided the Treasury market with another boost. 

Edited by: Hung Tran


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