http://www.reuters.com/article/news..._DOUBLEFEATURE_mortgage_troubles&pageNumber=1 Top investor sees U.S. property crash Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:59pm EDT By Elif Kaban MOSCOW (Reuters) - Commodities investment guru Jim Rogers stepped into the U.S. subprime fray on Wednesday, predicting a real estate crash that would trigger defaults and spread contagion to emerging markets. "You can't believe how bad it's going to get before it gets any better," the prominent U.S. fund manager told Reuters by telephone from New York. "It's going to be a disaster for many people who don't have a clue about what happens when a real estate bubble pops. "It is going to be a huge mess," said Rogers, who has put his $15 million belle epoque mansion on Manhattan's Upper West Side on the market and is planning to move to Asia. Commodities investment guru Jim Rogers in an undated file photo. Rogers stepped into the U.S. subprime fray on Wednesday, predicting a real estate crash that would trigger defaults and spread contagion to emerging markets. Worries about losses in the U.S. mortgage market have sent stock prices falling in Asia and Europe, with shares in financial services companies falling the most. Some investors fear the problems of lenders who make subprime loans to people with weak credit histories are spreading to mainstream financial firms and will worsen the U.S. housing slowdown. "Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas. There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had this kind of speculative buying in U.S. history," Rogers said. "When markets turn from bubble to reality, a lot of people get burned." The fund manager, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros in the 1970s and has focused on commodities since 1998, said the crisis would spread to emerging markets which he said now faced a prolonged bear run. "When you have a financial crisis, it reverberates in other financial markets, especially in those with speculative excess," he said. "Right now, there is huge speculative excess in emerging markets around the world. There will be a lot of money coming out of emerging markets. Top investor sees U.S. property crash Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:59pm EDT "I've sold out of emerging markets except for China," said Rogers, long a prominent China bull. Even in China, the world's fastest expanding economy, Rogers said stocks were overvalued and could go down 30-40 percent. But he added: "China is one of the few countries in the world where I'm willing to sit out a 30-40 percent decline." The last stock market bubble to burst was the dot-com craze which sparked a crash from March 2000 to October 2002. When the last bubble burst in Japan, said Rogers, stock prices went down 85 percent despite the country's high savings rate and huge balance of payment surplus. "This is the end of the liquidity party," said Rogers. "Some emerging markets will go down 80 percent, some will go down 50 percent. Some will most probably collapse."
Not bad. Like the programs at racetracks, the winners are all listed, problem is so are the losers. In the same typeface too. You can always go back and cherry pick the great calls., forgetting the 100's of lousy calls. All in all, I give rogers an A for that PARTICULAR interview. You still got your ass kicked in his commodes.
I have been observing JR for a while but I am unable to even guess his net worth. Any intelligent ideas? P.S. I know that any guess would have to be just that, a GUESS....unless you can hack into his IRS file.....
$150m in 2005. This sounds MUCH MUCH more realistic. Also consider he was divorced twice; not sure how costly that was for him. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=64746
After reading Hot Commodities I emailed JR at the email address listed on his website about traveling the world with a question which was rather ignorant, at the time I was new to commodities and he was an old pro. I was extremely surprised when he actually answered the email personally lending some much needed help at the time. All the talk about him being gruff I take with a grain of salt.
The commodity play is over, the bubble was formed and bursted just like the dot coms and real estate bubble.