Showing posts with label Jim Rogers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Rogers. Show all posts

Thursday 9 December 2010

Investment guru Rogers bets the farm as he shuns Wall Street

Investment guru Rogers bets the farm as he shuns Wall Street
December 8, 2010 - 10:15AM

Investor guru Jim Rogers says life on the farm will bring far more riches in coming years than the trenches of Wall Street.

Rogers, a commodities evangelist for more than a decade, has tweaked his pitch, saying the producers of the world - whether individuals, companies or countries - will become the new growth sector.

In short, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York, being productive, saving the fruits of your labor, and owning hard assets hold the keys to a bright future.

"All these people who got MBAs made a mistake. The city of London and Wall Street are not going to be great places to be in the next two or three decades. It's going to be the people who produce real goods," he said.

"Throughout history we've had long periods when the financial centers were in charge. But we've also had long periods when people who produced real goods were in charge - the farmers and the miners," Rogers said.

Rogers, who rose to prominence after co-founding the now defunct Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros some four decades ago, railed about the fiscal irresponsibility of debtor governments and praised China and other Asian countries because they save, work hard and invest in the roads, schools and factories that beget tangible wealth.

As an example, he said that commodity- and mineral-rich Canada will fare far better than Belgium, the seat of European bureaucracy.

Rogers still touts commodities, despite a recent price surge. Even with the benchmark Reuters-Jefferies CRB index of 19 commodities hitting its highest level on Tuesday since October 2008, Rogers said commodities will continue to soar over the next decade.

"They're very high, but they're going to be much, much higher over the next decade. Even I'm going to be stunned, and I'm the bull," he said.

Spot gold hit an all-time high at $US1430.95 an ounce on Tuesday, benchmark copper hit a record peak at $9,044 a tonne in London and US crude rose above $US90 a barrel for the first time in 26 months, before all turned lower.

A year ago at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit, Rogers said investors in oil, metals and grains should not sweat sell-offs in those markets because the printing of money by governments across the globe would push prices higher.

Rogers reiterated on Tuesday that politicians are afraid to bite the fiscal bullet and will opt to debase their country's currency. He called the Chinese renminbi the world's safest currency and again said gold would eventually rise above $US2000 an ounce.

A bubble might exist in housing in China's coastal cities, but he called it a price bubble and not harmful like the credit bubble that was behind the US housing debacle.

"We had a credit bubble here, perhaps the biggest credit bubble in the whole world," he said. "That kind of huge credit bubble certainly is different than a price bubble. If people go bankrupt in China, it's not going to bring down the Chinese economy."

More currency crises loom, and creditor nations - China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore - will thrive, he said.

Rogers singled out the United Kingdom as vulnerable to hard times, and said the pound would underperform the euro over the next five years.

The United States also faces difficulties.

"The way you build an economy, a thriving economy is you save and invest," he said. "Productive capacity is what leads to long-term growth of the economy. You don't build an economy by going to the disco every night."

Reuters

Tuesday 5 October 2010

'We are going to have higher prices for commodities'

'We are going to have higher prices for commodities'
Wheat, sugar, cotton and gold are arousing interest from investors across the globe.


By Paul Farrow, Personal Finance Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 02 Oct 2010


Sugar prices are at a seven-month high

It wasn't so long ago that investors were extolling the virtues of hedge funds, private equity, currency swaps and infrastructure. But these newfangled alternatives have been knocked off their perch by investments that were being traded by City gents wearing tails and top hats more than a century ago.

Wheat, sugar, cotton and perhaps the oldest of all investments, gold, are grabbing the headlines and generating interest from sophisticated investors across the globe. The reason is rising prices. This week, sugar climbed to a seven-month high on concern that adverse weather will curb output in Brazil, the world's biggest exporter, and Australia, the third-largest.

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Cotton extended its rally to its highest price in more than 15 years, wheat prices have risen by 60pc over the past 12 months, while gold continues to attract investors worried about a global double-dip recession and its price hovers around a record high of $1,300 an ounce.

For many private investors investing in commodities is a novelty. Yet research published this week by JP Morgan suggests that people who do not have any exposure to commodities within their investment portfolios could be missing a trick or two.

"Commodities are the oldest asset class known to man, but perhaps one of the least understood today," said Rumi Masih, the global head of the strategic investment advisory group at JPM. "You can go back even further – one of the first investors known to profit from a commodity trade was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales (pictured), who, as Aristotle recalls, invested in oil presses near the ancient Ionian cities of Chios and Miletus early in the growing season one year and thus reaped the benefits of a bumper crop of olives."

Mr Masih's research found that commodities were a hedge against rising inflation and improved returns while reducing volatility. Commodities outperformed equities and bonds when economies were in a late expansion phase by 10pc and marginally outperformed when economies were in the early expansion phase just after a recession. The only time they lagged other assets was towards the end of a recession.

The commodity recovery story has been triggered by the supply and demand effect – quite simply, demand for many commodities outstrips supply as giant economies such as India and China march forward.

Even though the demand for metals has been rising, supply is tight – no new mine shafts have been opened in 20 years worldwide, according to JPM. The last iron ore smelter to be built in the United States dates back to 1969.

"The case for including commodities as one component of a diversified portfolio has become stronger in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and amid the economic ascendancy of China," Mr Masih said. "There are significant supply constraints on commodities amid burgeoning demand for them, not only among developed nations and China but also from a broader swath of the developing world. This includes emerging economies in places as far afield as Africa, Asia and South America."

JP Morgan is not the only commodity bull. Commodity analysts at Standard Chartered estimate that nearly $200bn (£130bn) worth of investment projects were suspended as a result of the financial crisis in iron ore, copper, and coal alone.

Among soft commodities, particularly grains, disruptions to climatic patterns have again tightened supply. "This combination of medium-term demand-side pressure against the background of a limited short-term supply response in many commodities looks set to keep commodity prices supported," said Philip Poole, the global head of macro and investment strategy at HSBC Global Asset Management.

The question for investors is which commodities to buy and whether they are arriving too late to the party – as the graphs show that commodities have recovered from their 2008 falls. Commodities are volatile beasts – just ask investors who piled into oil stocks as crude marched towards $147 a barrel in 2008, only to come down with a jolt as the price plummeted to $60. Investors who bought exchange-traded funds following sugar, natural gas, zinc, cocoa and lead prices have seen the value of their investments fall by 10pc or more.

Gold continues to win favour and, with the economic uncertainty set to linger, demand will be strong. The question is whether the price can go much higher. There are concerns that cotton may not be rich pickings. Connor Noonan, a commodities analyst at asset management house Castlestone, is bullish on the prospects for cotton over the medium term, but he expects a lot of volatility, "with prices easing over the next month".

Evercore Pan Asset invests in commodity ETFs, but at present owns only two – ETF Securities Agriculture and iShares Timber. And it avoids gold. "We sold out of a general, 'hard' commodity ETF, which was a play on oil earlier in the year," said Christopher Aldous, the chief executive. "We have no way of understanding its movement. Its prices seem to be driven by speculators and we have missed out on the price rises – and we are not going to start chasing it now."

Legendary investor Jim Rogers, who set up one of the world's first hedge funds with George Soros in the Seventies, is also an advocate of commodities over the long term – although he warns investors not to simply buy those that have shot up in price in recent months. He recommends commodities that have not moved up that much. "Buy silver rather than gold, for instance, if you want to buy precious metal," he said. "I would like to buy coffee too. But there is still a huge potential [in general]. If governments are going to continue to print money, we are going to have higher prices for commodities."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8036344/We-are-going-to-have-higher-prices-for-commodities.html

Sunday 28 March 2010

Most look for the bull and neglect the bear. DON'T NEGLECT THE BEAR

Jim Rogers wrote - Don't neglect the Bear - in his book 'A Gift to My Children':

What is it that most investors fail to consider?  Most look for the bull and neglect the bear.  As an investor, I am always in search of "what is bearish."  When people are crazed about an overheated market and are oblivious of other investment possibilities, that's when I find a good deal.

During the stock bubble of 1998, when most people ignored commodities, I started up a commodity index.  Commodities had been in the doldrums for years, so no one had made any money.  Most people fled the field, and few young people even studied natural resources.  Fewer still went into farming or mining (MBAs were all the rage then, remember?). the end result being that we currently have a shortage of farmers and geologists.  That is  true in other countries as well.  These factors led to a multiyear decline in productive capacity, while demand kept rising.  The returns show how well commodities have done.  The Rogers International Commodity Index, which I founded in 1998, quadrupled over the next ten years, while the Standard and Poor's 500 index of stocks rose about 40 percent.


Also read:

Betting on the Blind Side