Jim Rogers discusses his outlook for the economy, stocks, and commodities.
Call Notes:
Jim Rogers: I'm not optimistic about 2012, and maybe even not 2013."
Favouring agricultural commodities - huge shortages developing of just about everything, and even, particularly, a shortage of farmers. Agriculture's going to be a great place the next 10-20 years.
Shorting emerging markets stocks, American technology, European stocks;
JR: "I don't see much reason to own stocks, when one can own commodities. If the world gets better, i'm going to make a lot of money in commodities because of the shortages, and if the world doesn't get better, governments will print money. Whenever governments have printed money, the only way to protect one's self is to own real assets."
China: Hard or Soft Landing?
JR: "Some parts of the Chinese economy will have a very hard landing; the Chinese government has been trying to kill the real estate boom for 2 1/2 years. They've raised interest rates 6 times, raised reserve requirements a dozen times; they're gonna pop the real estate bubble, but that's not the whole China story. There's gonna be parts of the Chinese economy that are gonna boom no matter what happens to real estate in Shanghai and Beijing."
How about beaten down stocks like Potash and Mosaic?
JR: "I'm not familiar enough to give you a good comment; I just remember in the 70s, stocks went down and did nothing, and economies did nothing, and yet commodities themselves went through the roof. Some commodities stocks did well in the 70s; A recent Yale study showed that you would have made 300% more investing in commodities themselves rather than commodities stocks, unless you were a very good stock picker. So I'm sticking with the real commodities."
Comment: Jim Rogers travels everywhere in the world with his family, and he eats his own cooking.
What about the other BRIC nations? What about Brazil and its dependency on China? Would you short Brazil?
JR: "I'm short India, I'm short Russia. Brazil is a huge natural resource based economy, and in commodity bull markets they do well. Fortunately, I'm not long, I don't have any positions - Unfortunately, the new Brazilian government is starting to do some pretty foolish things which I think will not make them participate as much as they could."
Jim Rogers is long gold, long silver, expects correction to continue down to the $1300/oz. level.
JR: "I'm a terrible market timer, I'm a terrible trader. It would not surprise me if gold went down to $1,300-$1,200. If it goes that low, I'm going to buy a lot more. I'm not selling any ofo my gold or silver, but I'm not a good market timer. I'm just saying that gold has been up 11 years in a row, it deserves a substantial correction. Substantial corrections are not unusual in bull markets. If it goes that low, I'll buy a lot more."
Source: CNBC, December 28, 2011.
