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The book “Adventure Capitalist “ is the story of Jim Rogers’ 3-year trip with his wife Paige Parker through 116 countries on 6 continents in a custom-made Mercedes Benz. The idea was to spend 3 years driving around the globe to take the world's pulse at the end of one millennium and the start of another.
The trip was both an adventure and a part of education. “Adventure Capitalist“ offers a lot of investment analyses, recommendations and economic and political predictions which make the book very practical in addition to being an entertaining read. Please subscribe in order to stay tuned. While traveling, Jim Rogers analyzes the political and economic situation in the country and the opportunities to invest there.
According to him, successful investing means getting in early, when things are cheap, when everything is distressed, when everyone is demoralized. In most countries around the world the currency is like a thermometer and you know a country is falling apart when even the government doesn't not accept its own currency.
That's why he likes to visit the local black market. He claims that you should never invest in something unless you yourself know an enormous amount about it. The way of the successful investor is normally to do nothing– not until you see money lying there, somewhere over in the corner, and all that is left for you to do is go over and pick it up.
Something without much risk. You don't buy unless it is cheap and unless you see positive change coming. One of the mistakes that many people make in the stock market is buying something, watching it go up and thinking they are smart. They take a big profit and immediately go looking for something else.
That is the time they should do nothing. Self confidence leads to hubris and arrogance. His advice is: Whenever you hear somebody tell you that investing is different this time, grab your money and run because it is never different. Here are the investor’s comments on some of the countries he visited during his trip.
Turkey The author mentions as an advantage the fact that Turkey is young by contrast to Europe. He claims that the younger the population of a country, the more open to change it is. That is why he is optimistic about Iran, too. In his opinion, Turkey should join the European Union because it will add 70 million people to the market.
But in the end he did not invest in Turkey, disappointed by its bureaucracy. China The country that Jim Rogers fully admires is China. He thinks that China's greatest resource is its expatriate class people living in Singapore, Bangkok, Vancouver, Jakarta, New York. China opens the door to them, they bring in both capital and expertise.
He explains that Chinese work overtime, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. They also save and invest more than 30 percent of their income. The fact that tourism was flourishing and being encouraged, was one more indication of emerging capitalism in China. He claims that their roads are the best in the world.
He finds Shanghai trendy, fashionable, sophisticated and rich. The Chinese understand money, finance, capitalism. He notices that Chinese children are spoiled rotten as a result of one child policy. These special children get the best education available in an endless crop of private schools . He says that if you want to get rich, you can go to China and open a chain of private schools.
He thinks that this country will become less aggressive because people who have only one child won't send that child to war. The 21 century will be the century of China – it is the largest importer of goods in the world and sells to the world more than it buys and has gigantic international reserves.
South Korea In Jim Rogers’ opinion, South Korea's prosperity is artificial because of its protectionism and is not a place to invest. He admits he can make money in such a climate, investing in a very short term, getting in and getting out fast. But that has never been his style. The author differentiates between trading and investing.
He sees himself as an investor, he likes to buy things and own them forever. Buying simply because it is cheap is not good enough - it could stay cheap forever. You have to see a positive change coming, something that within the next two or three years everybody else will recognize as a positive change.
Japan Writing about Japan, the author mentions that by traditional measure – international monetary reserves - Japan is the richest country in the world, but it has serious problems such as demographics, massive internal debt and its absurd protectionism, which will continue to erode the country's economic position in the world.
Inflexibility and overregulation to the point where creativity and innovation are rapidly evaporating. Russia Jim Rogers finds the former Soviet Union a place out of date. The system there is not a real system at all because it is not driven by accumulation of knowledge, capital and expertise. If it is capitalism, it is outlaw capitalism.
The entrepreneurs there are not building anything. He thinks that there is an economic vacuum in Siberia that is currently being filled by Chinese labor and Japanese capital. China is desperate for raw materials which Siberia is rich of, Siberia is virtually uninhabited, and China has 1,2 billion people who wake up every day ready to work.
According to him, eventually Siberia will be Chinese again. He claims that there are more top-of-the-line Mercedes in Moscow than in any city in the world and money for them pours from the IMF and the World Bank, which are funded by the world's taxpayers. According to the author, both the IMF and the World Bank should be abolished because the greatest beneficiaries of their programs are the bureaucrats who work for them.
He finds Russia is a third-world country, one with a vast wealth of natural resources, a well educated population, but a declining industrial base. The country experiences difficulties moving from its old centrally planned economy to a modern market economy partly because it had never had much of an entrepreneur class and partly because the Russian soul still doesn't trust or understand the marketplace.
India The author claims that India is a country defined by violence and political instability where an anti colonial and anticapitalist spirit prevails.The country epitomizes bureaucracy, chauvinism and protectionism. Its infrastructure is hopeless, its protected market has not developed the concentration of capital, expertise or the quality that can compete.
Singapore Jim Rogers finds Singapore the greatest success story of the developed world in the past years He claims that there is no other city as rich and as safe as Singapore. It could become the Venice or the Florence of the digital age - the people have the brains, the money and the motivation. Europe Traveling through Europe, Jim Rogers shares his opinion about the euro.
He doesn't expect the euro to survive in the longer term. Because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the only way for the euro to work is for all the member countries to run their economies properly. You are not going to get all the countries to do that, and when things get bad, the euro can't survive.
Africa Jim Rogers loves Africa and spent his honeymoon there after he got married on January 1, 2000. In Africa he saw corruption and lack of discipline that ruined African nations after their independence. He thinks that freedom fighters became dictators themselves and ruined economies, entire societies - capital fled, people fled.
Africans call NGO bureaucrats the new colonialists because they act the same way. The money thrown around by them was aimed chiefly at the pockets of various politicians and bureaucrats. In his opinion, most famines are caused not by a lack of food but by government bungling. He thinks that Africa could feed itself and export food but not when its farmers are up against subsidized Western agriculture and free lunches.
The author reveals that clothing of all kinds given as donations in the US and destined for the poor in Africa, is sold as a commercial product reaching the continent. Not only do these donations enrich the entrepreneurs involved in the traffic, they also put local tailors out of business. Returning in Africa, Jim Rogers hoped to find new and revitalized countries on the track toward prosperity , but he was disappointed.
Certain countries among the thirty-two they visited (Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mauritania) were making some right moves but many other countries had taken steps backward. The new generation of leaders proved to be as hopeless as the old. His suggestion is: no more foreign aid. Africa should be left to survive on its own.
The people of Africa would learn to fend for themselves. South America Traveling through South America, the author shares his cardinal rule always to have the brokerage account with the largest bank in the country. If the bank gets in trouble, you don't lose everything because the government will take it over.
So your shares don't disappear. When Jim Rogers returned home, he realized he had closed as many accounts on this trip as he opened. USA Jim Rogers learned more about the US in the three years he was away from the country than he learned in the six weeks that he spent driving it. His advice is: if you want to get to know America, get out for a while.
According to him, the United States, as a debtor nation, needs free trade and free movements of assets. He thinks that the US needs risk takers, driven, brave , bright, ambitious people and closing the doors to outsiders is not going to make the country any safer. Americans have too many lawyers, bureaucrats, too many people holding protected jobs and shortage of soldiers, nurses, vets, doctors, computer specialists, janitors, farm workers etc.
Sanctions, a favorite tool of the US, are not effective, because competing products are swept in or American products are smuggled in. American workers, businesses and taxpayers are the losers. Sanctions resulted only in more enemies for the US. “Adventure Capitalist” is both an entertaining and educational book.
The reader can find a lot of interesting facts and descriptions of different places. Curious by nature, Jim Rogers was determined to try everything he could and to share his experience. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out our summary of Jim Rogers’ other book “Street Smarts”. Thank you for watching.
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