Asia News
Jim Rogers stays bullish on China, commodities - changes mind on Russia
19 Oct 2012
Renowned American investor and commodity expert Jim Rogers doesn't see the US dollar as a safe haven and continues to be a bull on China, even as he acknowledges the Asian giant is going to face some setbacks. "China is on the rise, it's going to change the world as we know it and it is changing the world as we know it. But it's not going to be just for a few years, it's going on for decades. The best advice of any kind that I can give you is to teach your children and your grandchildren Mandarin because it's going to be the most important language in their lifetimes."
Speaking at the SALT conference in Singapore today, Rogers added he owns several currencies including the US dollar "only because I see a lot of turmoil coming and when there's turmoil, many people will flock to the US dollar as a safe haven. But the US dollar is not a safe haven, though many people still perceive it that way."
Rogers is short on stocks and bonds, and he owns commodities and currencies. "In my view the commodity bull market which started in 1999 is still intact and in my view, that's going to continue. I'm not very optimistic about stocks. I don't think you're going to make a whole lot of money in stocks unless you're good at timing."
Neither is Rogers optimistic about India, even though he admits it is the most astonishing country in the world: "As for the business, the Indians have the worse bureaucracy in the world. They learned bureaucracy from the English and then they took it to a higher plane. It's a very difficult place to do business, they don't like capitalists - it's very chauvinistic.
"If you're in bed with the right politicians, of course you can make a vast fortune in India. But the education system, the infrastructure system, the bureaucracy make it very difficult to make a lot of money in India."
Rogers, who has always been short on Russia, is now considering going long there and has started to look for investments: "If you know of anything that's good to invest in Russia, don't blurt it out, just come up later and hand me a little piece of paper and say' Why don't you look at this.'
"Russia is changing and when something is changing, I should change my view too."
Author: Wing-Gar Cheng
