From $200 to the Bond King
Bill Gross started at a $200 blackjack table, took the discipline to the bond desk, and grew PIMCO to ~$2T — his '2% rule' is the essence of Kelly.
— Robert B.
Bill Gross started from a $200 blackjack stake in Las Vegas, carried the betting discipline he learned there to the bond desk, founded PIMCO and grew it to roughly $2 trillion — the 'Bond King'.
His famous '2% rule' (no single position risks more than 2% of capital) looks empirical, but its mathematical root is Kelly: a bond's default probability is low yet its tail loss is large, so the theoretical optimum computes a very high position — and practice must scale it down with fractional Kelly.
"My 2% rule — I learned it at blackjack."
From the table to the world's largest bond fund, the edge was never one big bet — it was pinning the bet fraction to a survivable range. F-Star's risk-cap constraint does exactly the same.