Jim Rogers holding US Dollars

My largest currency position is the US dollar. I expect some problems going forward in the world financial markets, and during those problems people will seek a safe haven. They think U.S. dollars are a safe haven. The U.S. may be the largest debtor nation in the world, but as you look around, certainly you are not going to the Euro or the Yen these days, so I own a lot of U.S. dollars and as the turmoil comes, the U.S. dollar will go higher and higher. It may turn into a bubble, depending on the severity of the turmoil. But if gets overpriced, I hope I will sell it at that point. 

Jim Rogers thinks oil may be in a bottoming process

"I guess I would buy agriculture with both feet, energy with a toe and watch the others."

Question: What would you say to an investor now who has little to no exposure in commodities and sees that most assets have been beaten down. What types of commodities do you think have the best potential now going forward?

Jim Rogers: I would say agriculture through the ( RJA ) [Elements Rogers International Commodity Agriculture ETN]. It is amazing how low some of these agricultural prices are. The average age of American farmers is 58 now. The average age in Japan is 66. There are more people in America who study public relations than study agriculture. It has been a nightmare industry for a long time and that’s got to change. I would certainly buy agriculture. [Rogers designed the index that RJA tracks.]


Question: What about other commodities?

Jim Rogers: I would probably start to buy oil in a small way, energy in a small way. I think it may be at the bottom, but since I don’t have much confidence in my convictions right now, I want to see more. There is a lot of bad news that keeps coming out about energy and yet the prices don’t go down. Historically, I have noticed that if something is going up and good news comes out and it doesn’t keep going up it usually means the top is being set. Likewise if something is going down, and bad news comes out and it doesn’t continue to go down, it usually means we are making a bottom, so I suspect that energy is making a bottom. 

via BARRONS


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.

Jim Rogers owns FXI, ASHR, AGF.AU

Barrons Magazine: In an interview with my colleague Kopin Tan in 2013 you said that you wouldn’t buy China’s stock market “unless it collapses.” This summer, did it collapse enough to get you interested, and are you still a buyer?

Jim Rogers: In July 2015, I started buying on the collapse. There were a couple of days where it was down very big on a day. Well I was one of the buyers on those days. I haven’t been terribly active since.


Barrons Magazine: And you are using ETFs to invest in China?

Jim Rogers: I own FXI [iShares China Large-Cap ETF] and ASHR [Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI300 ETF], as well as some based in Singapore. But the best investment might be AMP Capital China Ord (ticker: AGF.AU ) units listed in Australia, which is a closed-end fund trading at a big discount.


Barrons Magazine: Do you have any short positions right now that you’d care to share?

Jim Rogers: I have been shorting U.S. junk bonds by going long the Proshares Short High Yield ( SJB ) and I’m shorting U.S. tech stocks through the ProShares Ultrashort QQQ ( QID ).


Barrons Magazine: But if you think U.S. stocks have one last leg up, why are you shorting these risk-on assets that should be helped by a rising market?

Jim Rogers: Well, one has to be hedged in case one is wrong.


via barrons

Jim Rogers talks stocks and recessions

Barrons: What if the time frame is now and the investors are folks who are comfortable with risks of emerging markets and commodities? 

Right now as I look at the world, I’m not terribly optimistic. The American stock market has been in a bull market now 6½ years. In America, we’ve had economic setbacks every four to seven years since the beginning of the republic, and chances are we’re getting closer to being due for some kind of correction, bear market even. And the next bear market is going to be worse than most of us have experienced because the debt is so much higher.

You know, we had a problem in 2008 because of high debt, but since then, debt worldwide has gone through the roof. I mean nobody has reduced their debt, almost no nation has reduced its debt since 2008—the debt has gotten higher and higher. So the next time around, we are going to have a very serious problem.

What I’m saying is that I’m not racing around looking for markets. I’m afraid that the big picture is such that we are going to have more problems in the next year or two, and being long most stocks or most investments is not going to be great.


Barrons: Let’s say you’re a 50-year-old Barron’s reader with a few million dollars in net worth. How much of your assets should be in these areas? So where do you think the big global problems are going to start?

Big problems are going to come from the U.S., essentially because it has been the American central bank that has been the most at fault. We’re the ones who started all this money-printing, and everybody else of course copied us. But it is the first time in recorded history that you’ve had all the major central banks printing staggering amounts of money: Japan, the U.S., Europe, Britain, we’re all doing it.

Having said that, when you look back at previous bear markets, they usually start with a small, marginal country that has trouble that snowballs, and the next thing you know, we’re all in trouble.


There is going to be another leg up in stocks as central banks continue to panic [and keep rates low]. I suspect it will be the last one.



via barrons

*Last update Nov 22, 2015

Demand for venture capitals is here to stay | Jim Rogers

The world is always going to need capital and sources of capital, whether it is the same as it was 20 years ago or 20 years hence. There is going to be a need for people to raise money whether they are startups or 40-year old companies. Therefore there is a need, it may be crowdfunding or some evolution of crowdfunding. Somebody has got to do it. 

There are going to be 18-year-olds in garages as long as we live, but there has to be someone to show the 18-year-old how to do it. If you are going to raise money, you should have a track record, it is the best way to do it. If you are more visionary than that. If you are going to replace sliced bread you’ve got to convince people of why you are going to replace sliced bread, then you can go forward. These are basic rules that have been around 1,000 years.

Market has gone on a strong run for quite a while now

Be very careful. If you are investing in anything, be very careful because the next couple of years, maybe not this month but we are going to see some real problems in the financial markets. It has been over six years since we have had any problems. We are well overdue, so be very careful no matter what you are invested in.

Future of Financial Services and Investment sector

Trading is becoming more automated, we cannot stop progress. There are going to be a lot fewer human beings in finance, there is no question about that. But we still have to tell these machines what to do. There will be fewer traders in the business. 

We have had long cycles in the world where the financial types were on top of the world and then it collapses; then we have long cycles with producers of real goods on top. When I went to Wall Street, finance was a backwater. After what had happened in the Depression and the War, I mean the last place anybody wanted to go was Wall Street or the City of London. Especially London, they had exchange controls, the nation was going bankrupt and other problems. Then along came the great bull market of the 80's, 90's. But now the world is changing again. I am sure you read that thousands of people are getting laid off in the financial community whether it is banking, insurance, stockbroker and/or investing. It is not an easy to place to get a job anymore and not an easy place to keep a job, but the numbers continue to decline. Great people can always get a job and keep a job. That is in part because there is so much competition because everyone now wants to get into finance and get an MBA. In 1958, America graduated 5,000 MBA's, the rest of the world graduated none. Now America graduates 200,000 a year and the rest of the world graduates thousands more. There is massive competition. 

It is a time when there is big leverage in the financial community. In the old days, banks and brokers had very little leverage for historical reasons now there is massive leverage everywhere. 

By the way, Lehman Brothers had been around since the 1850s and Bear Stearns was around from 1922, it was not like these were Johnny-come lately operations. You have governments being very anti-banker, anti-investors, and financial types, that are constantly passing laws and taxes and regulations to make it tougher. So it is not the place to be in 2016, unless you love it.



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.