JIM ROGERS BLOG: 04/03/13

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

There Is No Such Thing As A Sound Currency

Jim Rogers: "There`s not a sound currency anymore, there are sounder currencies, the Canadian Dollar, the Australian Dollar, there are some currencies the Singapore Dollar, the Rembinbi, there are some currencies that are less unsound but there is no such thing as a sound currency." - Source Yahoo Finance

Jim Rogers is a bestselling author, financial commentator and successful international investor. Rogers was a co-founder of the Quantum Fund (considered to be the first truly international fund of its kind) and is the creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI).

Jim Rogers Bought North Korean Gold and Silver Coins

Legendary investor Jim Rogers is buying all the North Korean coins he can get his hands on. At a recent coin fair in Singapore, his assistant purchased 13 rare North Korean gold coins, typically featuring pictures of Korean generals, The Wall Street Journal, reported. “He wanted to buy more, but we only had 13 left,” a representative of the state-owned Korea Pugang Coin Corp. that sold gold and silver coins at the fair, according to The Journal. It offered 20 one-ounce gold coins for 2,500 Singapore dollars ($2,014) as well as several hundred silver coins. By comparison, gold closed at $1,598 an ounce Friday. Roger’s assistant also bought many of the silver North Korean coins being sold. In a way, Rogers is short North Korea. “At some point down the line, North Korea will cease existing as a country. Then the value of the coins will go up,” Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said in a previous interview, the Journal noted. “Coins and stamps are the only way I can invest in North Korea. … At some point down the line, North Korea will cease existing as a country. Then the value of the coins will go up," Rogers said in a previous interview. Rogers also purchased most of the North Korean gold coins at last year’s Singapore coin fair. Korea Pugang Coins mints only about 2,000 coins a year, the Journal reports, noting that North Korea has a limited gold supply. Most are sold to foreign investors and collectors at coin fairs in the Far East.

The Gold Market Outlook

"I don`t think the bull market will end in gold. What I said was that normally all assets correct 30 or 4 percent every year or 2 or 3. It`s just the way the markets work. Gold has only been down 30 percent once in the past 12 years and even then it ended up for the year. This is extremely unusual for any market. So, what I said was, that if gold were to correct 35 or 40 percent it would go to 1200. Gold needs to correct it`s supposed to correct every 2 or 3 years. It has not, which worries me. If it did, I hope I am smart enough to buy more. It should but it does not mean it will. It may go to 2400 before it goes to 1200."

Stuck With the Old Technology

"If you go to some countries now, people don’t have telephones with land lines, they just completely leapt over that whole thing. We all used to have telephones with copper wires coming in. Most new countries don’t have land lines, they don’t have all those copper wires, et cetera. They don’t need it, they just completely leapt over all that. That’s been the story throughout history, the way people have developed, something new comes along, people develop it rather than go with the old ways, and people still stuck with the old technology and the old ways usually have to change or get passed by." - Source, Investors Guide:

Too many students doing their MBA

In 1958, America produced 5,000 MBAs per year and none of the other countries produced any. Last year we produced 200,000, and the rest of the world produced tens of thousands more. We have a glut, we have a lot more MBAs than we used to, there’s a huge amount of competition in that field, in finance. And nearly all MBAs these days study finance. In the old days some of them studied manufacturing, or marketing, or accounting, or other things. Now it’s nearly all finance. This is at a time when there’s massive debt and leverage in the financial community. You know, back in the 60s and 70s there was very low leverage in the financial community, many investment banks were partnerships, partners weren’t about to go and risk their entire fortunes with leverage. And of course now you have governments around the world antagonistic to finance, passing laws and regulations all the time, trying to come down hard on financial types. Finance, which was a backwater and pretty much ignored by everybody including students, has now become, in the 80s, 90s, and the last 10 or 15 years, wildly hot and popular. That’s why I’m saying this is going to change. Throughout history we’ve had long periods where the financial types were the masters of the universe, followed by long periods when the people who produced real goods were. Well, that’s changing now, going back to the old ways. We have more people in America studying public relations than studying agriculture. More people study physical education than study mining engineering. So how much more do you need to know? 10,000 people studied agriculture last year while 200,000 got MBAs.

Invest in Russia not US

I'm certainly not investing in the United States... the whole world is benefiting from all this money being printed, but there are better places than where the all-time high is.

Too many financial related graduates

There’s nothing wrong with finance if you love it and you’re passionate about it. And we do need financial types. But do we need a huge glut of them? Probably not. That was never very smart. But I happen to love finance and fortunately I went there when nobody else was going there. I would hope I’d be smart enough to find something I love where everybody else was not piling in.

Not investing in US right now

I’m certainly not investing in the U.S., because the U.S. is making all-time highs based on money printing. If you give me a trillion dollars, I’ll show you a good time too and a lot of people are having a good time. I’m somewhat skeptical because I know it’s going to end badly.

Study and work in what interests you

Everybody’s got to find their own way. Listening to me, maybe it’s fun, maybe it’s boring, who knows, you’re not going to succeed until you find your own way. I mean if you’re a musician you’ve got to find your own sound, your own way. Great musicians through history were the people who had their own madness, and were proud of their madness, especially if it was not what everybody else is doing. Well, the same is true of art, literature, politics, finance, especially finance. Yeah, you can copy other people, and many people do, that’s why everybody invests in the same thing, and that’s why it winds up being a bad investment. No, you’ve got to figure out your own way, no matter how absurd your way may sound, especially if your own way sounds absurd to others, you should pursue it even harder. You can learn from other people, but don’t try to be like Joe or Sally, try to be like yourself.

Visit India and the Taj Mahal

If you love nature, I would urge you to cross the Sahara Desert, or go down to parts of South America. If you love man-made objects, everybody should see the Taj Mahal, most have only seen pictures of the Taj Mahal. I’ve been there a few times, and every time I walk in I’m stunned at how magnificent it is. We should not allow people to take pictures of the Taj Mahal because they cannot do justice to how beautiful and how exciting it is. It’s like the Terra Cotta Warriors out in Xi’an. Now, I’ve seen pictures of it a thousand times, but none of those pictures can do any justice to the shock of when you walk in there, you say “oh my gosh, how could this be?” It really depends on what you’re interested in. Everybody should see the Grand Canyon. It’s stunning, magnificent. Iguazu Falls in South America is a magnificent waterfall. Or Victoria, the one in Zimbabwe… fabulous waterfalls. Depends on what you’re interested in more than anything else. If you can only visit one country in your life, I would urge you, Tom, to go to India. It’s got a combination of man-made and natural sites like no other country in the world, it’s got a breadth and depth of culture like no other country in the world. The languages, the traditions, the food. I mean it’s a constant sensory feast walking down the street, driving down the street. It’s an astonishing place to visit. So if you go to one country, I would urge you to go to India.

North Korean Gold Coins

Jim Rogers : "At some point down the line, North Korea will cease existing as a country. Then the value of the coins will go up." - in The WSJ

The One and Only Way To Invest In North Korea

Jim Rogers : "Coins and stamps are the only way I can invest in North Korea. At some point down the line, North Korea will cease existing as a country. Then the value of the coins will go up." - in The WSJ