Chris Mayer (Penny Sleuth): “If you can tell me something else where the fundamentals are so attractive…I’d be happy to put my money there,” said Jim Rogers, the famed investor and self-made billionaire in a recent interview. “But I don’t know of any other place.”

What’s he talking about? Today, we take a look and invest right alongside his idea. And it should start to pay off with the arrival of the first swallows of spring in 2010. It’s also timely now — in this weak-kneed economy — because it has traditionally held up well even in when the economy is on the ropes. Even the Great Depression couldn’t put this thing down.

We start with simple truths. The world’s population has more than doubled since 1950 — from about 2.5 billion to 6.7 billion. By 2050, there will be more than 9 billion people on the

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Nelson Schwartz (HeraldTribune.com): Inside the global gold frenzy, November 8, 2009. Long considered the ultimate refuge for nervous investors, gold has climbed as the dollar has steadily weakened, budget deficits have expanded in the United States and Europe, and central banks have continued to pump trillions of dollars into weak economies, creating fears of another asset bubble that will ultimately pop. “It’s not that gold has changed, but gold buyers have changed,” said Suki Cooper, a precious-metals strategist for Barclays Capital. “It’s a structural shift we’re seeing on the investing side, from Asian central banks right down to individual investors buying ingots and coins.”

• William Rees-Mogg (Times Online): Which will come out on top: paper or gold? November

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Lindsay Whipp of the Financial Times sits down with Jim Rogers in Tokyo for a four-part interview covering the US dollar, China, commodities and crisis-related issues.

Part 1: Rogers sees brief dollar rally He says he has increased his dollar holdings in anticipation of a rally in the US currency, but the dollar is still broadly set for a lasting decline.

Click here or on the image below to view the video clip.

Part 2: Rogers still a China bull He says he’s not buying Chinese stocks, but sees the renminbi rising despite its effective peg to the dollar.

Click here to view the video clip.

Part 3: Rogers backs commodities for the long run. He says he’s fully expecting another leg up in commodities, and that real assets represent

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Lindsay Whipp of the Financial Times sits down with Jim Rogers in Tokyo for a four-part interview covering the US dollar, China, commodities and crisis-related issues.

Part 1: Rogers sees brief dollar rally He says he has increased his dollar holdings in anticipation of a rally in the US currency, but the dollar is still broadly set for a lasting decline.

Click here or on the image below to view the video clip.

Part 2: Rogers still a China bull He says he’s not buying Chinese stocks, but sees the renminbi rising despite its effective peg to the dollar.

Click here to view the video clip.

Part 3: Rogers backs commodities for the long run. He says he’s fully expecting another leg up in commodities, and that real assets represent

...

I’m moving to China … possibly to live in a bunker. At least that was my inclination after listening to a presentation by Jim Rogers yesterday.

Now don’t get me wrong―Mr. Commodities wasn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, his talk was both informative and highly entertaining. But Rogers doesn’t sugarcoat things―he’s very matter-of-fact about his concerns and projections for the future. And most of them don’t bode well for the U.S.

I’ll be posting an interview with Jim Rogers on the site in the coming week, but for now, I just wanted to offer some highlights from his speech at ETF Securities' mini-conference and the Q&A that followed.

1. The 21st century belongs to China

According to Rogers, the 19th century was the era of the British Empire and the 20th century was the

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While prices of gold don’t necessarily affect silver prices or vice versa, history has demonstrated that when gold rises or falls, silver usually follows suit.

This time around, silver has failed to match the gains that gold posted in recent months, spawning a widespread believe that silver is poised for a bull run. Such factors as a decline in supply and a weakening U.S. dollar have buttressed that bullish belief. And so has the fact that China’s government is strongly encouraging that country’s residents to buy the white metal.

With Beijing’s plan to inject $587 billion (4 trillion yuan) into China’s economy, and a growing desire to diversify away from the U.S. dollar as its key reserve currency, the Asian giant could increase its reliance on such precious metals as gold and silver – especially if global inflation takes hold.

China’s central bank “could use gold, silver or even a basket of

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Welcome again TheStreet.com readers. Seems that Jim Rogers is becoming a regular collaborator with The Curious Investor. It seems that people who have found this blog through my references on TheStreet.com come in two flavors.

People who think that I’m an Apple expert. Mac fanboys upset that I haven’t given a 100% Buy! Buy! Buy! comment on Apple.

For those in group 1, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this isn’t an Apple blog. I don’t purport to have any particular insight on Apple and its products other than through my interest as an Apple investor. But, I have written a few articles on my view of Apple’s stock and business strategy (follow the link to find the full collection).

For group 2, let me address my viewpoint on the rumored Apple tablet as

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The Top 10 Reasons Why the China Sell Off Will Continue

by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist

How much are you willing to pay for good advice? And by “good,” I mean profitable.

A couple of hundred bucks? A couple of thousand?

Before you answer, consider this: Two weeks ago, I alerted members of The Oxford Club to the precarious position of Chinese equities. As I put it, “China could be on a crash course with a correction.”

A contrarian stance, no doubt. But vindication came quickly.

The following Monday, Chinese stocks (represented by the Shanghai Composite Index) suffered a 5.8% drop – the worst single-day decline of the year. Two days later, they got dented by another 4.3%.

Unabashed China bulls will point out that the Shanghai index promptly recovered. But then this week hit…

Rally Rebuffed: Chinese Stocks Take Another Tumble

On Monday, the

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Like many investor/blogger types, I am constantly reading a few books. My lack of trading recently has given me even more time to plow through some books. I figured I give a quick update of what I'm reading. There's a good shot I'll review some or all of these books.br /br /emAdventure Capitalist /emby Jim Rogers. Story of Jim's journey around the world with his modified Mercedes convertible. He shares stories of the culture in various countries, and in particular conditions for investing. One might say a book written six years ago about where to invest is outdated. But the beauty here is Rogers is always thinking with a longer time horizon than most, and he's often quite early on trends, so its actually a perfect time to be reading this book.br /br /iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=inthknafiblby-20o=1p=8l=as1asins=0812967267fc1=000000IS2=1lt1=_blankm=amazonlc1=0000FFbc1=000000bg1=FFFFFFf=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"/iframebr /br /br /emThe Snowball/em by Alice Shroeder. This is the ...

After earning hefty profits on its commodities trading for nearly 18 years, heavyweight trader Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) now finds itself on the hot seat, defending this crucial source of revenue. And while that may not be good for Goldman, it’s also bad for investors.  Let me explain…

It all started back in 1991, when J. Aron & Co., Goldman’s commodities-trading division, recommended that a large institutional client invest about $100 million in commodities.  The vehicle “du-jour” was Goldman’s own investment vehicle, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (now the S&P GSCI Commodity Index).

The GSCI is a 24-commodity dollar-weighted index, comprised of 70% energy (oil and natural gas), 8% industrial metals (aluminum, copper, lead, nickel and zinc), 3% precious metals (gold and silver), 14% agriculture (wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar, coffee and cocoa) and 4% livestock (cattle and hogs).

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