Apr 1, 2013

Book Excerpts of "HOT COMMODITIES", how anyone can invest profitably in the world’s best market” by Jim Rogers


EXCERPTS FROM BOOK
“HOT COMMODITIES, how anyone can invest profitably in the world’s best market” by Jim Rogers
Publish date= 1994
Introduction and prologue by us:
Jim Rogers founded the famous Quantum Fund along with George Soros. However, he became more famous after he successfully predicted and aggressively advocated, in the early years of first decade of twenty first century; for case for a bull market across commodities. He wrote this book basically to express his views on the same and giving out information about trading and investing in commodities.
It was a precious reading at the time of launch. However, even after now close to a decade since the book was first published (2004), the lessons on commodity investing and importantly the approach towards it has not vanished.
There are very good explanation about some of the most important commodities in detail and their history as well.
One has to keep in mind, that today, in the investment world as we know it, commodities are not an entirely a new asset class. However, while this book was written, it was not. It was only beginning to start to get recognition, and perhaps one of the strong important factors was this book itself.  Since, then in last 5-8 years, commodities have an ‘official’ asset class for diversification, rather than an element ‘included passively into equities’. Hundreds and thousands of commodity specific funds have been introduced by investment companies across the world. The advent of Commodity ETFs have given enormous boost to them and the almost long lasting position of commodities seem to have been cemented into the investment world of this new century.

Below are some of the important excerpts from the book,
       ……I had always been interested in current affairs and history, and it was a revelation to learn that someone on Wall Street would actually pay me for figuring out that a revolution in Chile would drive up the price for copper.
       CRB Commodity Yearbook is a bible for all those who want to track commodities.
       I vaguely recall studying the CRB charts for various raw materials; when I saw a sharp rise, I analyzed why the prices of that commodity went up so quickly.
       Whenever someone claims that investing has become different this time around, I grab my money and run.
       There should be consistency, stability and transparency in an index.
       The Rogers Raw Materials Index Fund International Commodities Index opened for business August 1, 1998 based on the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI). It features a basket of 36 commodities.
       I was now old enough to know that anytime you move away from the herd, the herd will criticize you, indeed revile you; it will call you ‘crazy’.
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2013 | Categories: