We talked, in a taped telephone interview at his home in Singapore, with Billionaire Jim Rogers, legendary commodities trader, who picked the bottom of the commodities bull market in 1999. With George Soros, Jim Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund in 1970.

Over the next decade, Quantum Fund grew by more than 3,300 percent. Rogers retired, later a guest professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and still later circumnavigating the globe to firsthand discover new investment opportunities. He is widely and often quoted in the media about his views on the commodities market. Bestselling author, investment biker, adventure capitalist and widely followed, Jim Rogers talks about what he's now investing in.

StockInterview: Of all the places where you can invest, why China?

Jim Rogers: I’m investing in China because China, in my view, is the next great country in the world.
The government is trying to do things now to encourage the stock market. They had a bubble, and the after effects of the bubble have worked their way through the market.

StockInterview: What about investing in stock markets, other than in China?

Jim Rogers: I’ve sold out of every (other) emerging market in the world. Some of them I’ve owned for 15 or 20 years. Most of the emerging markets in the world have gotten into a sort of a mania phase. There are tens of thousands of people flying around the world looking for new emerging markets, these days. They’ve gotten a very excessive evaluation, huge amounts of foreign money has been pouring into them. Whenever that’s happened in the past, in the stock market, it’s been a sign of a top or trouble to come. I’m not particularly happy about us selling out, but in my experience it’s time to get out of these markets. There may be a chance to come back in – in a year or two or five. Who knows how long? If and when the markets get cheap again, I will invest again.

StockInterview: Is it the growth in China and India which is driving the commodities boom?

Jim Rogers: Everybody’s driving the commodities boom because demand everywhere is going up: in the U.S., Europe, everywhere. Everybody’s been growing, whether it comes from the Philippines, India or the U.S. Supply is under terrible stress. There hasn’t been much investment in productive capacity in any commodity in the past 25 years. You have had supply going down for 25 years. At the same time, demand has been growing worldwide, including India and China. It doesn’t matter where the demand comes from. Yes, India and China have been growing, especially China.

StockInterview: Is China undergoing something similar to the Anglo-American experience of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century? And with strong accompanying growth both England the United States had for several decades?

Jim Rogers: Yes, in my view, that is what is happening. There will be setbacks, needless to say. We had some pretty horrible setbacks as we moved to power and glory. In the nineteenth century, we had fifteen depressions. We had a horrible civil war. We didn’t have many human rights, or much less civil rights. We had some great setbacks as we grew. But, the U.K. had terrible setbacks as they grew to become the richest, most powerful country in the world at one time. China will have those setbacks. I expect to see some serious setbacks in Chinese real estate. But they will be nothing more than temporary setbacks on a rise, which I think will take them to be the most important country in the 21st Century.

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