John23

Jim Rogers' Recent Portfolio Moves

You dont need Jims brokerage statements to confirm his trading/investment ability.

There's plenty of public information out there to show you his thinking, or ideas. Investment Biker, Adventure Capitalist, his other books. Numerous interviews.

His big themes have mostly been spectacularly right. Bullish on commodities since the 90's, have far outperformed stocks (even with the commodity crash of 08). Bearish on the dollar since the 80's. Bullish on China long before the mainstream media caught on. Publicly short the financials, fnm, c before this collapse.

In all his interviews, he always points out he's a terrible short term trader, and he's always explaining facts, historical tendencies, whats worked in the past, what hasnt.

The "Four Filters" of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger

I've also read alot about Buffett and Munger. I recently re-read Mungers "Poor Charlie's Almanack", great book.

I think there are much easier lessons to be drawn from Buffett and Munger for the average investor. For example, Buffett's 20 punch card philosophy. Or Munger mental models approach to problem solving.

I think management is way too subjective for the average investor to figure out. Look at all the companies that have fudged the numbers, not expensed stock options, report ebita, etc. The press loves Buffett, and doesn't want to criticize him. But they don't follow up much about the management question.

For example, Buffett brings up Coke as a great company. But how do you know management will stay great? What if they do another "New Coke"? What if they get bored with soft drinks and get into something else?

Look at Bear Stearns. The CEO came out and said everything was fine. A few days later, the stock was at $5.

I think Buffett and Mungers genius is that they reduced investing down to the 4 filters. And then apply filters to those filters. Thus, they make very few decisions with a high degree of accuracy.

Jim Rogers on the Bear Stearns Bailout

I think Jim is somewhat misunderstood in the media.

He comes across in interviews as eccentric and sort of "out there" with his views (the demise of the federal reserve, bernanke is a nut, etc), but he's just comparing whats going on now to history. If you read his books...investment biker, adventure capitalist, and read old interviews of him, he's a real student of history.

Hes comparing the dollar to currencies that fell before it (pound sterling, dutch gilder, etc), he compares the fed to other central banks around the world. In one of his books, he described the 90's FED and Greenspan as a historical anamoly, the idea that central bankers as gods that can weave magic. Thats only been the case in the last 10 years.

He's brilliant, he has a brilliant model of how the world works. But it doesnt come out like that all the time.

The Big Whoosh: Is This The Beginning?

I'm 29, tonight I've been following the Bear Sterns news and reading different blogs and sources to see whats going on.

All the doom and gloom gets pretty old. We won't be at the soup kitchen next week. Electricity is going to stay on this week, next week, the following week. Honestly, what do people expect?

Sure the dollar is going to go down. It may hit $2 to the Euro, $2.5, who knows. But we aren't going to see 100,000% hyperinflation or turn into Zimbabwe two weeks from now.

I think there are some key differences between now and the 30's...

-We're better educated
-Longer life span
-More industrious, better developed capital markets.
-Improved technology.

Warren Buffett makes the point, we're living better than Rockefeller. The Japanese are still living through their zombie decade. People dance and go to movies and have babies.

I think there's going to be a huge downward shift in the economy no question. The era of easy credit card offers in the mail, 0% down financing, etc, that'll all end. This whole credit era will be over.

The 70's were a horrible decade economically, but life still went on. They still made movies in 73/74. They danced in 78. We'll make it.