"If I were looking for new investments today, I would be looking at agricultural commodities. That is probably the best place to put money and will be, for some time to come."
Video at this link: http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/video/stockmarket/11/55/newsvideo/289317
--------------------------------------------------- India a great invst place minus the Govt: Jim Rogers 2007-06-29 10:50:11
Investment Guru Jim Rogers gives his view on crude, other commodities and various asset classes. He expects upside in sugar and other agro commodities over the next decade.
He thinks the US housing market will worsen over next few years and expects interest rates to continue to go up.
He believes the cooling down of Chinese markets will impact Asian peers. He expects to see oil over USD 150 per barrel before the bull market is over. He is bullish on Gold, and sees upside in cotton, sugar and coffee. He prefers precious metals over base metals and crude.
Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Jim Rogers:
Q: What is looking good at the moment? Is it emerging markets, international stocks or commodities?
A: If I were looking for new investments today, I would be looking at agricultural commodities. That is probably the best place to put money and will be, for some time to come.
Q: You have been bullish on sugar for a long time, but people think it is peaking out. Are you still bullish on sugar?
A: I am bullish on all commodities. The bull market has another ten or fifteen years to go. Obviously, there are going to be corrections, just as on any bull market, but sugar and other agricultural products are going to be much higher over the next decade.
Q: China versus India - You have been a bear on India for quite some time. Do you think the contradictions cloud judgment, because you were wrong on it when you came in last time invited by CNBC? You were very bearish on India and the market has gone up 3 times since then.
A: The market is up - the average is up. If you look at Indian stocks, most stocks are not doing very well at all. If you take out five big stocks that have gone up, most Indian stocks are not doing very well. So be careful when you say that before making money in Indian stocks, because most people are not.
Q: How do you gauge the situation for various asset classes, emerging markets, commodities or the move in the bond market? Is liquidity the most important factor or is something else driving all the three of them?
A: Liquidity is always the most important factor in the market. But when you have excess liquidity, as we do now, it affects markets all over the world and all kinds of markets. The Central Banks of the world have created too much money. All that money has to go somewhere. Even the private sectors have created money with the carry trade, gigantic amounts of money. People borrow money in Japan and turn it around to put it somewhere else or in Switzerland.
Q: How do you expect that to play out in the next three months? In that case, what is most vulnerable to a correction?
A: Over the next three months, I am not very useful, I am hopeless, I am a terrible market timer and a terrible trader, probably the world’s worst, so I do not know what over the next three months. Though, you might start seeing problems develop in some markets, this year. Considering the Central Bank will continue printing money till the end of the decade, I cannot imagine that helping them, because in the past, when you have too much money, it has always ended very badly. We already have worse than a recession in the US housing market and automobile market.
Q: Do you agree with the Fed when yesterday it said that the slowdown in the housing market will not affect the rest of the economy and that the rest of the economy will continue expanding? We have seen the dollar picking up a little, is this the end of the downside for the dollar for sometime?
A: I don’t find myself agreeing with the Fed at all. In fact, I don’t pay too much attention to the Fed. They think they set interest rates, but the market really set interest rates and the Fed follows the market. But people on television have to talk about the Fed, so we came.The Fed is wrong about the housing market. The housing market is going to continue to get worse and the United States will continue to cause problem.
As for the US dollar, it vanished as the world’s reserve currency, as the world’s medium of exchange. People are starting more and more to move away from the US dollar and that will continue. Not this year, not this quarter. But over the next decade, the US dollar is doomed.
