Jim Rogers 01 (May 08 - May 10)

[winston]

Best advice I ever got

Jim Rogers: Read everything
Age: 66
Investor and commodities guru

The best advice I ever got was on an airplane. It was in my early days on Wall Street. I was flying to Chicago, and I sat next to an older guy. Anyway, I remember him as being an old guy, which means he may have been 40. He told me to read everything. If you get interested in a company and you read the annual report, he said, you will have done more than 98% of the people on Wall Street.

And if you read the footnotes in the annual report you will have done more than 100% of the people on Wall Street. I realized right away that if I just literally read a company's annual report and the notes -- or better yet, two or three years of reports -- that I would know much more than others.

Professional investors used to sort of be dazzled. Everyone seemed to think I was smart. I later realized that I had to do more than just that. I learned that I had to read the annual reports of those I am investing in and their competitors' annual reports, the trade journals, and everything that I could get my hands on. But I realized that most people don't bother even doing the basic homework. And if I did even more, I'd be so far ahead that I'd probably be able to find successful investments.

--Interview by Brian O'Keefe, Fortune

[winston]

Jim Rogers Sells Dollars, Plans to Short Treasuries (Update2) By Bob Chen

July 6 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar and U.S. Treasuries are both likely to slide as soaring government debt in the world’s biggest economy undermines confidence in its assets, according to Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings.

“The government is printing lots of money and borrowing even more; that’s not the basis for a sound currency,” he said in a telephone interview today from Singapore. “The idea that anybody would lend money to the U.S. government for 30 years at 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 percent interest is mind-boggling to me.”

Rogers, the author of books including “Investment Biker” and “Adventure Capitalist”, said he holds fewer dollars than a year ago and plans to “short U.S. government bonds someday.” A short bet involves selling a security you don’t own with a view to buying it back after the price has fallen.

The U.S. is stepping up debt sales to finance a record budget deficit as it tries to spend its way out of a recession and that’s causing the supply of the securities to balloon. After more than doubling note and bond offerings to $963 billion in the first half, another $1.1 trillion may be sold by year-end, according to Barclays Plc, one of the 16 primary dealers that are obligated to bid at Treasury auctions.

U.S. debt lost 4.46 percent through June, according to Merrill Lynch & Co.’s U.S. Treasury Master index.The yield on benchmark 30-year notes reached 4.84 percent on June 11, the highest since 2007, and was 4.31 percent as of 2:02 p.m. in Tokyo. It sank to 2.51 percent in December, the lowest since sales of the security began in 1977, as the economic slump fueled demand for the relative safety of government bonds.

Swiss Franc, Yen

ICE’s Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona and Swiss franc, has declined 1.2 percent so far this year after gaining 6 percent in 2008. It reached a three-year high of 89.62 in March and was recently at 80.37.

Rogers said he recently bought the Swiss franc and within the Asia-Pacific region his currency holdings include yen, Singapore dollars, China’s yuan as well as the Australian and New Zealand dollars. The Swiss franc reached this year’s low of 1.1965 per dollar on March 13 and recently traded at 1.0869.

Rogers, who predicted the start of a global commodities rally in 1999, forecast resources will again climb, saying they are one of the few asset classes where “fundamentals are improving.” The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials has gained 7.1 percent so far this year, after losing 36 percent in 2008. It almost doubled in the nine years through 2007.

Sri Lanka, China

Stocks in Sri Lanka are the only equities Rogers said he would consider buying at the moment, adding that he plans to hold on to his holdings in China for many years to come.

Sri Lanka’s stock benchmark, the Colombo All-Share Index, has jumped 60 percent this year as the government’s defeat of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ended 26 years of fighting on the island. Only China’s Shanghai Composite Index has done better in Asia, surging 70 percent as the government’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus plan helped combat an economic slump.

“Selling Chinese shares in 2009 would be like selling U.S. ones in 1909,” Rogers said. “My children were born in 2003 and 2008 and I expect them to hold my shares someday.” Rogers said he last added to his holdings of Chinese shares in the fourth quarter of 2008 and has not bought any stocks at all this year.

[kennynah]

Rogers said he last added to his holdings of Chinese shares in the fourth quarter of 2008 and has not bought any stocks at all this year.

wouldn''t you say he was a little late to the chinese party?

[winston]

No, he bought at the right time, just before HK & Shanghai exploded upwards ..

[kennynah]

ic...then, he must be a guru indeed

[winston]

So is Jim Rogers also saying that the China is doing the wrong thing too ? The Chinese economy supposedly rebounded becuz of the RMB 4t program. Assuming leakages & delays of 50%, it's still a RMB 2t program ..

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Rogers: America Bordering On Communism By: Dan Weil

Investor extraordinaire Jim Rogers has harsh words for the government’s interventionist economic policy.

That policy, which he dates back to the Bush administration, verges on communism, he told Moneynews's Dan Mangru in an interview.

“America now owns the car industry. America owns the mortgage industry. America owns a lot of the insurance industry,” Rogers said.

“Karl Marx must be somewhere standing up in his grave cheering.” And why is that? “America has become a socialist and maybe even communist nation in many ways,” Rogers said.

In Asia, by contrast, “they’re not doing that. In Asia, they’re getting rid of state and government ownership,” he said.

As for stimulus, Rogers said that President Bush approved two packages, President Obama one, and now there’s talk of a fourth.

“The first stimulus didn’t work. The second stimulus didn’t work. The third stimulus hasn’t worked,” he said.

“They’ve been doing the wrong thing for over two years. Nothing has worked. I don’t know why they think this is going to work. This is going to make things worse, too.”

Rogers said that Japan implemented a huge stimulus in the 1990s. “It didn’t work in Japan, and Japan was a creditor nation… It’s not going to work for us, either.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and White House economic adviser Larry Summers “used to say to the Japanese: ‘You’re doing it wrong. This approach isn’t going to work,’” Rogers said. “We’re doing exactly the same thing.”

Rogers isn’t too happy with the massive monetary easing the Fed has engineered under Chairman Ben Bernanke, either.

“Printing money has been tried many times throughout history in many countries,” he said. “It has never worked in the long term; it has never worked in the medium-term. Occasionally, it has worked in the short term.”

Still, he says, “Printing money is going to lead to serious problems down the road.”

The amounts involved are staggering, Rogers said. “They’ve already injected huge amounts of money into the system. The Fed has more than tripled its balance sheet in the past year or so.”

The federal government “has increased its own debt by four, five, six times,” he said.

“We don’t know much, because they took over Fannie Mae, AIG and the rest of them who had huge debts, which we are now responsible for,” he said.

Rogers scoffs at the conventional wisdom of diversification. “If you are a successful investor, and if you’ve made a lot of money, then maybe you’ll think about diversification,” he said. “But if you want to make money, if you want to build a fortune, you don’t diversify. You find the right horses, you back those horses, and you watch those horses very carefully.”

© 2009 Newsmax.

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk ... 35777.html

[kennynah]

who doesn't know how to criticize... for small people...commoners...we tcss...and whine, no big deal... but for a public figure like rogers... dont just whine...give positive suggestions on solutions that can solve the current problems...

he thinks he can do a better job than Fed Chairman or Treasury Sec, go for the posts man... else, dont just be a backseat driver...kpkb when he investments go sour...

no respect for this person to imagine he is a singaporean/a PR...living here...yaks !!!

[helios]

this guy is on TheEdge coverpage this week.

He said he is betting on Airlines with his new Rogers Airlines Index ... saying that airline' seats are a perishable commodity, esp. China ...

[winston]

For the past few flights that I have taken between Shanghai & Beijing, the flights have been full. A lot of tour groups on the flights ..

[helios]

Yeah. He said more people are forced to travel; airlines will need bigger planes.

His baby bee photos, that are taken in Little Indian Singapore, looked pretty ... ...