Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Jim Rogers: Commodities Great Investment No Matter How Economy Goes

Commodity investor Jim Rogers says it doesn't matter whether the global economy is good or bad, commodities will do great for some time because historically when governments print money, commodity prices go up.

If and when the global economy does improve, than the growing middle classes in Asia, especially China, will generate huge demand for a large number of products, many of which will be commodities directly, or at minimum, commodities indirectly, through products which are manufactured using specific commodities as components of the process.

And as mentioned, if the economy doesn't improve for some time ahead, commodities are a great place to be based on investors looking to raw materials and some precious metals to protect against inflation and dropping value in the U.S. dollar. Printing money will continue to pressure the U.S. dollar downward in value, so that should be a big part of the picture with commodities in the years ahead.

Rogers pays little attention to the inevitable swing in prices of commodities, as that's part of investing in the sector. What he's looking for now is commodities that have been depressed like agriculture, silver, natural gas and palladium.

While he remains bullish on gold, he's not going to buy any at this time, while he will continue to hold what he does own as well.

Rogers says we're in a cyclical bull market, and he has learned the hard way not to short commodities during those times.

The Rogers Commodity Index, which Rogers set up, has outperformed its more well know competitor the Reuters-Jefferies CRB commodities index in 2009, as it's up by close to 30 percent this year, while Reuters-Jefferies is only up by 17 percent.

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