Jim Rogers is the author of Investment Biker (Random House 1994), Adventure Capitalist (Random House 2003) and Hot Commodities (Random House 2005).
Born in 1942, Jim Rogers had his first job at age five, picking up bottles at baseball games. Winning a scholarship to Yale, Rogers was coxswain. Upon graduation, he attended Balliol College at Oxford where became an Oxford Blue. After a stint in the army, he began work on Wall Street. He co-founded the Quantum Fund, a global investment partnership. After 10 profitable years when the portfolio gained 4,200% while the S&P rose less than 50%, he decided to retire, at the age of 37, but wouldn’t remain idle.
Continuing to manage his own portfolio, Rogers served as a professor of finance at Columbia University Graduate School of Business and was a regular media commentator. At the same time he laid the groundwork for his lifelong dream, an around-the-world motorcycle trip: more than 100,000 miles across six continents. That journey became the subject of Rogers’ first book, Investment Biker.
Having returned to New York after his second record setting trip of 152,000 miles, this time in a custom-made Mercedes Benz (chronicled in Rogers’ second book, Adventure Capitalist), he continues to comment in the media on financial topics, while he and his wife enjoy the pleasures of parenthood. His third book, Hot Commodities, was published early in 2005 and immediately made most of the bestseller lists.
Jim Rogers Articles
How anyone can invest in the worlds best market
Financial advice
In 2002, Rogers said that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s “reaction to the stock-market bubble has caused two more bubbles to grow: a real-estate bubble and a consumer-debt bubble.” In 2006, Rogers said he was shorting US financials, home builders and Fannie Mae.
On November 4, 2010, speaking at Balliol College, Oxford, Rogers urged students to scrap career plans for Wall Street or the City, London’s financial district, and to study agriculture and mining instead. “The power is shifting again from the financial centers to the producers of real goods. The place to be is in commodities, raw materials, natural resources.”
In May 2012 he remarked during an interview with Forbes magazine that “there’s going to be a huge shift in American society, American culture, in the places where one is going to get rich. The stock brokers are going to be driving taxis. The smart ones will learn to drive tractors so they can work for the smart farmers. The farmers are going to be driving Lamborghinis. I’m telling you. You should start Forbes Farming.”
In an October 2012 interview, he further clarified his views, stating “[t]he 21st century will be the century of China. First of all, the largest creditor nations in the world are all in Asia now. The largest debtors are the US and Europe. Most of the assets are in Asia.”
Personal life
Rogers has been married three times. In 1966, he married his first wife, Lois Biener; they divorced in 1969. In 1974, he married Jennifer Skolnick; they divorced in 1977. His third wife is Paige Parker;[22] they have two daughters.
Bibliography
1994: Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers. – ISBN 1-55850-529-6
2003: Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip. – ISBN 0-375-50912-7
2004: Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World’s Best Market. – ISBN 1-4000-6337-X
2007: A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market. – ISBN 1-4000-6616-6
2009: A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons For Life And Investing. – ISBN 1-4000-6754-5
2013: Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets – ISBN 0-307-98607-1
Photo credit: Eye – the world through my I via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA
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