- Jim Rogers is bracing for an epic stock-market crash and a painful recession.
- George Soros' former partner sees the US dollar, energy, and agriculture as solid short-term bets.
Jim Rogers warned a historic stock-market crash is on the horizon, touted energy and agriculture as near-term winners, and cautioned that curbing inflation would require much higher interest rates during a recent Kitco News interview.
Rogers is best known as George Soros' former business partner, and the cofounder of Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management. The veteran investor predicted a painful recession, ruled out bitcoin succeeding as a currency, and asserted that even a Russia-Ukraine peace deal wouldn't prevent asset prices from eventually plunging.
Here are Rogers' 10 best quotes, lightly edited for length and clarity:
1. "I know more bear markets are coming. The next one is going to be the worst in my lifetime."
2. "Many stocks are going to go down 70%, 80%, 90% - that's the way bear markets work. Of course that's going to happen. I just don't know when."
3. "It's been 13 years since we've had big problems, and that's the longest in American history. It could go for 30 years, who knows, but it's already overdue on a historic basis. We have very high valuations, we have staggering debt, we have a lot of new investors coming in. It's not my first rodeo, I've seen this movie, I know how it works. They're all going to lose a lot of money. I hope I'm not one of them."
4. "When you have inflation, if you own the things that go up in price, you make money. Agricultural goods are going to go higher, energy will go higher before this is over. You can sell short many things, many stocks all over the world, and make a lot of money. If you don't know how to do either of those, put your money in the bank and wait - it's better to earn 1% per year than to lose 20% per year. Bear markets lead to big losses."
5. "I own a lot of US dollars. Not because it's a sound currency - it's a disaster going forward - but in times of turmoil, people look for a safe haven. For historic reasons, many people think the dollar is a safe haven. It's not, but they think it is. US dollars are going to get overpriced, they might even turn into a bubble depending on how bad things get."
6. "There's no level at which I would buy cryptocurrencies, unless something dramatically changes."
7. "Bitcoin is wonderful for people who buy it and sell it and trade it. I know people who are having fun trading it; nothing wrong with that. But if it ever becomes successful as a currency, no government's going to allow that. No government wants to lose its control - they all love their monopoly, they're not going to give up their monopoly."
8. "Because we've made so many mistakes this time around, interest rates will have to go very, very high. We will have a serious recession; many people will go bankrupt, we're going to have a lot of problems. There's no other way to solve the problem other than to have double-digit, Volcker-esque interest-rate hikes."
9. "We need to raise interest rates a lot, and have a lot of pain. Or we let people continue to print money, and have horrible, horrible inflation, and cause even more pain. I don't know how we solve the problem
of too much inflation without pain."
10. "If there were peace, we might make new highs, but still that would not negate the bear market. If something positive happens in Ukraine, there'll be a big rally. Oil will go down, grains will go down, stocks and everything will go up for a while. I hope I'm smart enough to sell that rally, because that's probably the last big rally."