Investment veteran Jim Rogers has been in the news lately. On Monday, he informed Reuters Insider that he believes the credit ratings of the UK and some countries in the eurozone will be downgraded over the coming months. Mr. Rogers thinks global debt problems will only worsen and additional quantitative easing is the solution. This is not to say that he agrees with such action- he would rather see people forced to go bankrupt.
Just who is this outspoken investor causing such a stir? Well, he co-founded the infamous Quantum Fund with the world-renowned George Soros. In 1996, Mr. Rogers created RICI, the Rogers International Commodities Index, a dollar-based composite, total return index. RICI is considered one of the most diverse commodities indexes, calculated from 37 commodities trading on 13 international exchanges.
An outspoken supporter of the free market, Mr. Rogers believes that the distribution, price, and use of goods, labor, and services should be free of state intervention. At the age of only five, he entered the business world by gathering empty bottles from baseball games and selling peanuts. After graduating from Yale in 1964, he landed his first Wall Street job.
The Quantum Fund he co-founded in 1973 is considered one of the first funds that was truly international. In its first ten years, this portfolio gained an amazing 4,200 percent, while only a 47 percent increase was experienced by the S&P. Mr. Rogers announced his retirement in 1980 and took a motorcycle trip around the globe.
In addition to motorcycle journeys that have landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records twice, Mr. Rogers serves as a Columbia University guest professor, television moderator and guest, and author. He now resides in Singapore, advocates careers in natural resources, commodities, and raw materials, and recently released a new index called The Rogers Global Resources Equity Index.
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