He arrived in Manhattan in 1968 with $600...
He retired a millionaire twelve years later. No one knows for sure how much money he's made, but he's rumoured to be worth several hundred million now.
Here's the thing... Jim Rogers made all that money in stock markets no one else has thought of. Like Botswana. Uruguay. Zambia. The more unknown the better. That's how you get in cheap before the big boom.
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Here's an example of one of his best plays:
In 1984, a manager at Creditanstalt Austria's largest bank - told Rogers Austria didn't have a stock market.
When a market is so neglected that even a high-ranking banker doesn't know his own country has a stock market, you buy as much as you can.
For Rogers, the insight was good for 500% gains in three years...
Rogers makes this type of investing seem easy, obvious even. It's not. He has to understand what's going on in the world before anyone else does. And given how competitive this type of investing is - especially since the Internet came along and spread awareness you can be sure Rogers has a very special edge.
Recently, I heard Jim speak at a hotel in London. To a small group of bankers and one newsletter writer, he explained the flaws in the US dollar, the coming collapse in US government bond prices, and how commodities can keep rising until 2018.
How satisfying to hear Jim Rogers convince a room full of London bankers that coal will outperform stocks for the next decade and Iowa farmers are about to make a fortune!
He told us he owns every traded commodity including gold. He is long Japanese stocks and Canadian oil sands. He is short Fannie Mae and homebuilders. His baby girl has a bank account denominated in Swiss francs and she owns commodities but not bonds or stocks.
Jim mentioned his six favourite places with the most profit potential in the coming years. He said, "If there were six clones of Jim Rogers, I'd send one to live in each of Angola - Angola is about to become Africa's largest oil producer... Tanzania... East Timor... Myanmar is about to open up...
"I'd think about South America. It's so rich in commodities. To invest in North America, I'd go for Canada... trade surplus and balanced budget for 10 years..."
Here's one more titbit from the presentation... Jim said that if he were looking to make any new investments in commodities, as of June 5th 2006, he'd be looking at agriculture: "I see unbelievably depressed prices in agriculture."
Jim is also tremendously bullish on China for the coming decades. In fact, he's even considering moving his wife and daughter to Shanghai, saying, "The world's best capitalists are in communist China."
Recommended reading:
For more from Jim Rogers, read MoneyWeek's interview with the 'investment biker' - What Jim Rogers is buying now. You can also read Jim's detailed thoughts on commodities by clicking here: Why Jim Rogers thinks you should invest in commodities.
By Tom Dyson for Daily Wealth. You can read more from Tom at www.dailywealth.com.
Tom Dyson is a member of the Daily Wealth research team. He made his first trade age 12. The stock returned 300% in less than 9 months. Since then, Tom has worked on a bond trading desk at Salomon brothers, qualified to the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and ridden freight trains all over North America.
In his spare time, Tom likes to speculate in the capital markets, gamble on the golf course and play poker against his colleagues. He graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in Spanish. Tom's articles have appeared in the Daily Reckoning and many other well-known contrarian websites.
