Jim Rogers 01 (May 08 - May 10)

[winston]

Investment superstar Jim Rogers urges investors to stay away from U.S. government bonds as the nation sees its worst recession since World War II.

"I was shorting the long bond in October and November, which obviously went badly," Rogers told Bloomberg TV. "I covered and plan to short more of the long bond somewhere down the line."

"Treasuries are clearly a bubble," Rogers maintains.

"Why anyone would give money to the U.S. government for 30 years at an interest rate of 3 percent to 4 percent is beyond comprehension."

"The American government is printing gigantic amounts of money," he notes.

"That's going to be the worst problem. They're propping up everyone in sight. Historically, when you've done that, it's led to inflation, sometimes runaway inflation."

– Newsmax

[winston]

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=M3WhlddSB ... ory/video/

Big Names: Rogers "Prepared For The Worst"; Rogers On His Mettle; Cultivating Growth

[b0rderc0llie]

Shorting the 30 year bond is like borrowing money for 30 years at an interest rate of 3-4%. Sounds like a pretty good deal. My USD loans are all in one-month tenors, which I roll-over every month. Wonder if I should increase the tenor to say 1 year or 30 years?

[winston]

US guru sees future in China

HONG KONG - WHEN asked for his advice on how to survive the financial crisis, global investment guru Jim Rogers often tells his interlocutors: 'Teach your children Mandarin.' The 66-year-old financial commentator has practised what he preaches, in 2007 selling his mansion in New York and moving his family to Singapore.

'I am (in Asia) because this is the exciting part of the world. This is the future, and I want my children to grow up knowing Asia, and knowing things Chinese,' he said during an interview from his exercise bike.

Indeed, he said his five-year-old daughter is now a fluent Mandarin speaker.

He had thought about moving to China or Hong Kong, but decided against it because of air pollution, adding: 'I don't want to breathe Hong Kong air.'

Mr Rogers, who is due to speak on regional investment opportunities at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong on January 19-20, made his name and fortune with investment legend George Soros. In 1970 they co-founded Quantum Fund, which saw its portfolio gain 4,200 percent in 10 years.

In recent months, Mr Rogers said, as the global financial crisis has unfurled, he has been buying shares in Chinese firms, his top choices being agriculture, water, infrastructure and tourism.

'Mao Zedong ruined agriculture. China has to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to repair and revitalise it,' he said, referring to the Chinese communist leader's rural reforms in the 1950s, which led to famine, poverty and environmental destruction on a massive scale.

The political and economic mess that followed the communist revolution in 1949 created abundant opportunities that Rogers said Chinese people jumped at as soon as they got the green light from the reformist leader Deng Xiaoping.

He said this was clear during a long motorcycle journey he made across the country in 1986 - less than a decade after Deng launched economic reform policies in 1978 aimed at bringing China into the modern world.

'I was dumbfounded at how much work, initiative, excitement and investment there was,' Rogers said of his trip. 'I went back realising that all of that propaganda that the American government was saying was wrong.'

The reality, he said, was that many Chinese people did not care about Mao and his communist ideals because 'they were too busy trying to make money'.

In 1990-92, he motorcycled 100,000 miles (161,000 kilometres) across the world, a feat that landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest motorcycle journey.

In subsequent best-selling books based on his journeys, including 'Investment Biker: On the Road with Jim Rogers' and 'Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip,' he analysed the countries he rode through as investment destinations.

Turning to the current crisis, Mr Rogers believes that Beijing has coped better so far than the US and Europe, but says efforts by the communist government could be stymied by the fact that the Chinese yuan is not fully convertible.

'You need the free flow of capital to become a fully developed major world currency. That is a mistake the Chinese are still making,' he said.

Despite his optimism, there is growing concern about how resilient the Chinese economy really is with its heavy reliance on exports and foreign direct investment.

Francis Lun, general manager and financial analyst at Fulbright Securities, noted that China's exports had halved since September last year as demand from the US and Europe plunges.

Loss of export businesses has led to massive layoffs and factory closures in China's all-important export-oriented manufacturing sector, he said.

'The number of jobs lost in the Pearl River delta alone is in the millions.

And we are talking about low-skilled labourers from the poor rural areas of the country who will find it extremely difficult to get a new job over the next few months,' Mr Lun told AFP.

While the Chinese authorities have expressed confidence in their new measures for encouraging domestic spending, some recent economic data suggested the reality might be harsher than expected, Lun said.

The volume of property sales in Shenzhen plunged 50 per cent in 2008, compared to the year earlier. The growth in car sales, another cogent indicator of economic health, kept plumbing new lows, he said.

The analyst said that, unlike Rogers, he had no confidence in water and agricultural firms in China. 'None of those companies has a strong foundation or credibility, despite a clear demand for work in those two areas,' he said.

Despite the gloomy projections for China as an economy closely enmeshed with consumption in the United States and Europe, Rogers spares his pessimism for US president-elect Barack Obama's plans to help remedy economic woes, He derides Mr Obama's tax plans, and is equally critical of the economic advisers Mr Obama has brought into his cabinet, saying they 'are the same people who caused the problems. They are going to make things worse'. -- AFP

[winston]

Jimmy was on TV recently and said the following:-

1) Buy companies whose fundamentals are improving ( at a good price )

2) Sell / Short companies whose fundamentals are detiorating

Very simple But how many people actually follow it ?

[winston]

Grace Cheng (Daily Markets): Exclusive interview with Jim Rogers

Do you think the period of forced liquidation has ended or does it still have a ways to go?

Rogers: I’m sure it has not ended. It certainly has not ended for many asset classes and it probably has not ended for most. It may be over for a few things but it still has a long way to go.

As you’ve said many times, the US government is printing a lot of money right now, when do you think inflation will come around and bite us?

Rogers: Well there is inflation now in many things. There’s temporary deflation in raw material prices and in some property. But throughout history, whenever you’ve had gigantic printing of money and spending of borrowed money, it has always led to higher prices. Unless something is dramatic, it’s going to happen again. When I don’t know. It’s already happening in some things. I don’t know if you’ve bought any sugar recently or some other things, prices are up and that will continue and it will get worse.

You’ve been bullish on commodities for a long time, recently you said you’re buying the Rogers Metal Index. Do you think that the Obama stimulus plan will create more demand for commodities?

Rogers: Well of course, anything that causes a revival of economic activity causes a revival of demand for everything including commodities. I mean if you’re gonna build bridges you’ve got to build them out of something you cannot build virtual bridges you have to build real bridges, etc.

You’ve said that over the long term, the US dollar is doomed. What are your thoughts on the British Pound?

Rogers: More doomed. It will disappear sooner. If it weren’t for the North Sea, the British Pound would have already disappeared. It’s more doomed. The UK has been exporting oil for 26 years; within the decade, the UK will be a net importer of oil again, and they have nothing else to sell to the world once the oil dries up.

Do you think China will scale back on buying US bonds? And if that happens, how will it affect the US economy and the US dollar?

Rogers: Well if I were China, I would scale back. If I were everybody, I would scale back. The US bonds yield virtually nothing, the dollar is a flawed currency, inflation is coming, higher interest rates are coming. I would think everybody would be scaling back including China. We’re going to have higher interest rates down the road because somebody’s gonna scale back. If not China, Japan or Korea, or who knows, somebody.

Source: Grace Cheng, Daily Markets, January 15, 2009 (hat tip: Investorazzi).

[winston]

Jim Rogers Says He’s Worried About Dollar, Favors China Stocks
By Chua Kong Ho and Nipa Piboontanasawat

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jim Rogers, chairman of Singapore- based Rogers Holdings, said investors should be “worried” about the U.S. dollar, sell government bonds and buy raw materials, China stocks and the yen.

“If I were you, I would be worried about the U.S. dollar,” said Rogers, 66, in a speech at the Asia Financial Forum in Hong Kong today. ”The Americans are printing U.S. dollars. The Americans are going to do whatever they can to revive their economy, even if it means destroying the U.S. dollar.”

Holding government bonds is a “big mistake” and is going to “end badly,” he added. Investors should instead favor agriculture, power generation and China shares if they want to make money, said Rogers, who correctly predicted the start of the commodities rally in 1999 and has written books including ‘A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market.’

Rogers said in a Dec. 17 Bloomberg Television interview he planned to sell the dollar. In a Dec. 31 interview, Rogers said he has been buying Chinese agricultural stocks to benefit from state efforts to bolster economic growth. China’s government unveiled a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package in November, which included spending on roads and bridges.

The world’s third-largest economy may have expanded at the slowest pace in seven years in the fourth quarter, with gross domestic product rising 6.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd., recommended investors buy “anything to do with Asian consumer, infrastructure, alternative energy and technology.” He made the comments at the same forum Rogers spoke at.

[kennynah]

the man is repeating himself...

so much so, it is as if he is hoping people will follow his trade and move the market as a result...

and over time, it also sounds as if he is desperate in need of a listening ear....sad .... this is what happens when an old man keeps repeating his story over and over again...

i mean, let's be frank here...has he said something new, since he left USA for singapore? anything new that you have discovered him saying...besides weakening US dollar, strong commodities, buy chinese shares....these 3 main items ?

[winston]

Yes, strong Yen...

Despite crisis, Jim Rogers is still a China bull

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The global financial crisis has only strengthened reknowned international investor Jim Rogers' acerbic criticisms about the U.S. economy and his resoundingly optimistic view on China's future.

Rogers, co-founder along George Soros of the Quantum Fund, railed at the Federal Reserve and incoming U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, while also saying the high saving rate and solid fundamentals in China make it a powerful force to be reckoned with.

"This is going to be the new center of the world, not just the financial but the political world," he said at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong.

Rogers, who is now an independent investor living in Singapore, said he was going to use the U.S. dollar rally in the last six months to get out of all his investments in dollar-denominated assets and keep buying Chinese equities, and commodities.

He said his bets against U.S. investment banks, the two largest U.S. mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the yen kept his portfolio in the positive last year, but the rest of his investments suffered.

He accused U.S. authorities of consciously trying to devalue the U.S. dollar by flooding the market with liquidity -- or in his words, "turning on the printing presses" -- and said anyone chasing the rally in government bonds is making a "terrible mistake."

"The idea that you can fix a period of excess borrowing and excess consumption by more borrowing and more consumption to me is just ludicrous," he said.

Underscoring his convictions, Rogers began his speech by showing pictures of his two young children, both of whom he said have Swiss bank accounts and speak Mandarin.

The Quantum Fund shot to fame after making more than $1 billion betting against the British pound in early 1990s.

[winston]

Rogers sticks to his guns
Benjamin Scent

Investment guru Jim Rogers said he is bullish on China's water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure sectors and has been buying more Chinese shares recently.

The power generation, construction and tourism sectors in China are also going to come through the current financial crisis with "no problems at all," the Singapore-based private investor said yesterday.

"There are many parts of the Chinese economy, and Asian economies, which are going to do extremely well, no matter what happens," Rogers told a forum in Hong Kong.

He said the fundamentals of commodities, including oil, have been enhanced and prices will go higher.

The United Kingdom and Malaysia, both currently oil exporters, will begin importing oil by the end of the decade, Rogers predicted.

"In 15 years, there's not going to be any oil at any prices, unless something really dramatic changes," said the co- founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros.

Rogers also warned policy blunders being made now by central banks could turn the current setback into a period as bad as the Great Depression.

The plan that the UK and US governments have put in place "is not going to work."

The idea that a period of excess borrowing and excess consumption can be solved with more borrowing and more consumption "is ludicrous on its face," he said.

Rogers is not hopeful about the incoming US administration of Barack Obama.

Obama's choice for Treasury Secretary, New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner, "has been dead wrong in everything he's done for the last 15 years," Rogers said.

"I don't see that these guys have any clue what to do."