Rogers is a very nice guy, and a real success. I have talked to him and read his books - wish I had his life! Beware of jealous reviewers on Amazon!
On the plus side Rogers has made more money than 99.99% of his critics. He was in the right place at the right time in the 70s. He had the smarts to exploit the opportunities at hand. On the negative side, the WSJ had an article on him many years ago. Accoring to the article he went bearish on Japan in 84 with the NIkkei at 10,000 as it was on its way to 39,000. He went bearish on the U.S. market in 86 and stayed bearish throughout the 90s. I recall his broken record bearishness on his many CNBC appearances as well as his incessant inflationary warnings just as we were instead entering a near deflationary spiral. Market Logic had a piece about his Barron Roundtable picks as a frequent yearly panelist and they were at or near the bottom compared to his peers.
Here's a quote from an article. The link to the article is below: "After apprenticing with Arnhold and S. Blichroeder in the early 1970s. Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund, a global-investment partnership. During the next 10 years, the portfolio gained more than 4000%, while the S&P rose less than 50%. Rogers then decided to retire â at age 37." http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2003/Rogers.htm Sounds like a smart guy to me. OldTrader
It seems to me that Rogers gets alot more flack than other well known investors (Buffett, Soros, Lynch, Templeton, the traders in the Market Wizards Series, etc). Some of it has to do with the private nature of his investments. But alot of it probably stems from his lifestyle. The maverick personality, the hot young wife, traveling around the world with a money is no object attitude (the "rich arrogant guy" came up as a theme in several reader reviews of his books on Amazon). Still, he's made more money than everyone here put together!