There is very little shift. Farming has been a terrible business for 30 years. And when that happens people go to where the money is. They go to Wall Street, wherever the money is.
In America the average age of farmers is 58 because nobody wants to be a farmer anymore. There are farms in Japan that are empty because there is nobody to farm them; they are even experimenting bringing in workers from China, and they don’t like foreigners at all but they have little choice. The average age in Australia is 58. Canada has the oldest age for farmers in recorded history. In the UK the highest rate of suicide is in agriculture. I guess we all know that millions of Indian farmers commit suicide because things are so terrible.
More people in America study public relations than agriculture, because it has been a terrible business. The only that is going to change is for it to become very profitable and for young people to see the farmers getting rich. Of course they will say “those guys are driving Lamborghini's and I want one too so I will become a farmer”.
But it’s not going to happen until it becomes an exciting and profitable business. The Soviets tried to make people farm, they had all these coops or whatever they called them; Mao Tse Tung tried the same thing and eventually ruined Chinese agriculture by forcing people to become farmers. It doesn’t work.
The only way it works is for people to become motivated to become farmers and that will only happen when they get rich. There have been many periods in history where farmers got rich and powerful. It will happen again.
If you don’t have water you can’t make it. I’m wildly bullish on China but if they don’t solve the water problem there’s no China story. Likewise India has a water problem, worse in fact. There’s no question that India will be in worse shape than China. Northern India has gigantic problems. And that’s a nation of a billion people. Add another 1.3 billion in China and you have a big water problem.
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| View of Shanghai |
There are great opportunities in water. I haven’t found one that is publicly listed as of yet. I am sure there are several, I am just too lazy to find them. But I would love to find water plays that are substantial and serious.
The problem with water is that you can’t own it. Because if you do, when the crisis comes the politicians will hang you in the public square because you are exploiting Man’s God given right to water. And they will curse and scream at you. But if you find a way to solve the water problem they will build a monument for you. You will be very, very rich. But for goodness sake don’t own the water because if you do they will take it away from you, torture you and execute you.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
I, like many people, didn't know much when I was young. I thought I knew everything. At one point, I decided the market was going to collapse. I went and put all my money, which wasn't much, into puts. And lo and behold, the market collapsed, the worst drop since 1938. I tripled my money when everybody else was going broke. And I thought, 'Boy am I smart.' I sold my puts the day the market hit bottom, waited for the market to rally. This time I sold short, didn't want to pay the premium, and two months later, I was wiped out completely. I didn't have anything left. I couldn't meet the margin call. One thing you better learn is about the margin clerk. He doesn't care. He's going to give you a margin call. The six stocks I shorted eventually went bankrupt in the next two to three years. But in the meantime, they had gigantic rallies. It never occurred to me that a company on the way to bankruptcy could go up, could double.
I learned a lot about myself. I learned about margin. I learned that markets do really strange things. I assumed that everybody knew what I knew. I now know they don't but that I have to wait. My timing is useless and hopeless. I now realize if I want to do something, I usually wait a year or two, and even then I am wrong in my timing.
When I speak at schools and universities, I explain to them that there's nothing wrong with failing, nothing wrong with losing everything, but please do it when you're young, when you don't have that much money. Learn your lessons that way rather than when you're 50 and it could be $50 or $100 million dollars. That was a great experience.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
We [USA] keep coming up with sanctions and rules and regulations and penalties on people, no matter what. They [USA Government] penalize you for doing something in other countries which is legal in the other countries, but not legal in America.
So needless to say, the rest of the world is getting tired of this, getting fed up, cannot operate in a system like that, and so they are now, it’s not just China and Russia, its other countries that are now putting together an alternative and competing system which will ultimately, of course, will mean a competing currency as well.
At that point the U.S. dollar is probably going to have serious problems, because if we cannot control things the way we have been able to for the past 60 or 70 years. And again, we’re bringing it on ourselves, all these bureaucrats in Washington are coming up with constant regulations and penalties, now the rest of the world is being forced to do something outside of the U.S. system.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
China has got gigantic water problems. First they have the water in the wrong place and second the water is filthy, terribly polluted in many cases. So the Chinese know that and they are spending a lot of money trying to figure that out. So someone is going to make a lot of money in China helping them to solve their own water problems.
That’s the opportunity right now. Figure out how to get the water from the wrong place to the right place, clean it up and you can get very rich.
VIA octafinane
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
China will become the largest economy in the world in the foreseeable future. It will become the most important country in the world in the foreseeable future. When that happens, they’re going to control the price of a lot of stuff, directly or indirectly. I don’t see them controlling the price of gold anytime soon, as big as they are and as important as they are, there’s just too much gold around the world for them to control it yet. But my children speak Mandarin.
I moved to Asia so that my children would know Asia, and speak perfect Mandarin. China’s the future, whether we like it or not.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
I'm very excited about North Korea. If I could put all of my money into North Korea, I would. Massive changes are taking place there. I would not have invested in Kim Jong Un's father or grandfather by any stretch of the imagination, but that's like saying that in 1980 you shouldn't invest in China because of Mao Zedong.
Mao was dead and Deng Xiaoping was making huge changes. They are making huge changes in North Korea. The kid is making astonishing changes.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
I own a lot of dollars and have done for the last couple of years, but it has gone straight up. Anything that goes straight up you have to start worrying about. It's my largest currency position, at the moment, but I emphasize at the moment.
People perceive the dollar as a safe haven. It's astonishing that the biggest debtor nation in history is going to have a bubble in its currency.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
I'm buying markets that are depressed. China's stock market is now about 40 percent below their historic records, Japan's stock market - 50 percent. I'm still very bullish. I'm still buying more China stocks as we speak. We are supposed to buy when things are difficult.
Right now for a variety of reasons the Chinese are trying to encourage their capital markets, the population is pouring into the market, so is the rest of the world and so am I.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
I had bought shares in India—it was one of the few times I’ve done that in my life, and it was because of the new government. So far, the new government has done nothing but talk, and it is a shame because Modi had experience; he said he knew what needs to be done. He campaigned for many months saying he knows how to fix India, but he has done very little. Cleaning toilets is wonderful, but as far as building the economy or changing India goes, he has not done very much. I still own Indian shares, and I wonder if I should continue holding, because, after a year of no action, you begin to wonder if anything is going to happen. One might say he is getting ready to act, but Modi had run a provincial government for a long time and he knows what to do. So what is all this talk about? I am getting disillusioned about India, but I’ve not acted yet.
But Modi has a very large majority, he has experience, he has the contacts, and if anybody could do something, it has to be him. If he can’t do it, then I don’t want to remain invested in India. If he can’t save India, no one else can. So I would want to sell.
http://www.octafinance.com/jim-rogers-nervous-about-his-india-stocks-and-modi-promises/
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
Open the market to all investors, eliminate exchange controls, dismantle protectionism and remove subsidies. These would make big differences in India.
I do not believe foreign investors have significant issues about setting up new subsidiaries in India. It is fairly inexpensive to have lawyers organize a new company, obtain necessary approvals, tax-related registrations, appoint directors, open bank accounts.
VIA http://www.newindianexpress.com/business/Open-Up-Indian-Market-to-All-Investors-Experts/2015/05/03/article2795377.ece
