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’.
