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| Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers | 
 enlarge | Author: Jim Rogers
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (61 reviews)
Sales Rank: 32195
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 440
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0812968719
Dewey Decimal Number: 650
EAN: 9780812968712
ASIN: 0812968719
Publication Date: April 8, 2003
Release Date: April 8, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 1990, a pattern for 2007 November 18, 2007
The investment biker gives the reader insight into the way Jim thinks. Jim says in 1990, most of his money was in utility stocks, U.S government bonds, and foreign currencies. Jim owned utility stocks particular nuclear power for companies like Illinois power and Niagara Mohawk which were distressed. Jim's next comments strike as parallel to problems in 2007, as he says, "I thought U.S Interest rates were headed south, so I was bullish-optimistic-on bonds and bearish-pessimistic-on the dollar, that is, I expected the price of bonds to rise and that of the dollar to fall. I figured politicians would do everything to keep the economy going. Since they aren't very smart, all they really know how to do is cut interest rates. I bought foreign currencies, mainly certificates of deposit denominated in guilders or deutsche marks, reasoning that the dollar would go down as the politician's cuts rates." Jim that was interesting insight over 17 years ago and today the dollar demise is causing exports to increase, unemployment to drop, bond yields to drop and price to increase, GDP to rise, consumption to drop, investment to decrease, real wages to drop, and credit to get tighter. The US economy is strong enough to continue climbing for the next sixty years without disruption from business cycles. Commodities will continue to be a profitable sector for the rich and commodities indexes supposing the commodity boards can remain solvent and stable.
Currency exchange controls: "The soviet union exchange rate for travelers was six rubles per dollars. On the black market I got between twelve and eighteen rubles, whereas today you might get a hundred times that". For this reason Jim carried a few travelers checks and a healthy sum of cash while traveling through Turkistan.
Georgian: Stalin had been a Georgian. "Georgia had always been a trading nation and a crossroads." Jim saw similiarities between Georgia and Texas, New Mexico, and California. "As those parts of the United States become more Lationo, and as the United States begins to suffer its inevitable economic decline, I wonder if we won't see the same things: ethnic strife and a drive for separatism, either a desire to rejoin Mexico or to be independant". "Georgia has always been a merchant area and of a capitalist bent".
Baku: "Baku, a major center of oild production, all around the road lay rusted pipes and drill rigs, idle, unmaintained, a cluttered junk heap. No wonder Soviet oil production was down." Communism fails because managers work to meet quotas, no incentives, no accountability, skimming oil from the top and running, and no private property ownership. "On of the reasons Soviets never built their capital bases, because they never built their capital." "Riding along the Caspian Sea we saw hudnreds of these discarded drilling rigs, all stripped."
Kazakhstan: "Kazakhstan had become a gigantic farmland, a desert that had bloomed into vast arable tracts." It had become 40 percent Russian, 2/3 of water provided from the Aral Sea, heavy salization, high rates of birth defects and infant mortality, and thirty mile coast line. "The Russians had thought they could use the water to turn the area into a cotton plantation. But they had treated the land the way they treated the oil fields we had passed: They stripped it and moved on." In communism you can ruin a resource without anyone saying halt. On the other hand, China in the seventies admitted its ways were not working and deregulated agriculture to teh peasants, allowing farmers to lease land for a very long time, and in some place buy it; the government allows the farmers to sell crops that they could sell for a profit on the world market; the farmers went wild; every field was planted and cultivated with items being reused and no waste; the farmers didn't strip the land; and China became an agricultural exporting country.
Samarkand: The most prosperous city in Baku. "The Centerpiece of the city's ancient splendor is the Registan, and esemble of three madrasas, or Islamic schools". "Under the corner domes of the Ulug-bek Madrasa, completed in 1420, were lecture halls, and in its rear was a mosque. The Tiger Madrasa flouted the Islamic injunction against showing pictures of live animals by boldly diplaying glorious tilework devoted to its namesake...Samarkland was like the Taj Mahal in that way, if not even more extraordinary." "We discovered that forty mosques had opened in Uzbekistan alone in 1989, and at least one was being built in every town we passed through-Ashkhabad, Mary, Bukhara."
Muslim: "The Muslims were always trying to come into Europe through Austria, through Hungry, through Spain. The Christians beat them back several times. During the centuries of the Dark Ages in Europe the Muslims were much more dynamic than the Christians. They expanded geographically, spreading their culture and religion from the Altantic to the Pacific". "All the Muslims are resurgent, not so much because they want to be Islamic, but because the need a vehicle to help them get more. If people are prosperous, they tend not to fight. What they're reaching out for is Islam, the only unifying thread they have, to help them achieve their own prosperity and identity."
Soviet Union: "The Soviet Union is actually headed toward a system that will resemble feudalism: the economic, political, and social system of the medival Europe after the breakup of the Roman Empire, in which their were innumerable and ever-changing fiefdoms."
China: "By early 1990 China's harsh new monetary policy began to cause hard times. Several months later, people surged into Tiananmen Square to complain about tight money". "Like successful entrepreneurs in many parts of the world, Chinese entrepreneurs are bringing every scrap of energy, money, technology they can marshall into their business"
Currency valuation: "If the rate on the black market is five and a half zlotys to the dollar, compared with the state banks rate of five, then things might not be so bad. But if it is ten or fifteen to the dollar, then I know the country is in terrible shape, with maybe the collapse of the government or hyperinflation on the horizon." During Jim's first visit to China he paid Renminbi for a dollar, a 50 percent premium and by 1990s the premium had dropped to 35 percent. The chinese want out of the their currency less.
Soviet Union: "The Soviet Union hadn't raised its prices in fifty years! It sounded good, even great for the customer-low rent, postcards for kopecks, inexpensive bread, cheap birch juice, and low-cost hinges. But the flip side was that they had almost no consumer goods except bread, which ofcourse was the one item not even th Communist dared allow to run out". "By keeping these prices low the Communist had robbed everyone, including the state and teh party, of any eral-world incetive to produce and distribute every product. What possible incentive could there be to make hinges or socks when every pair lost money?" "The real crime was the misery-the shortages, the shoddy goods, and teh lack of opportunity-perpetrated bythe Communist on the Soviet people for decades." "In the Soviet Union they' always been told that if they left the country, they couldn't come back except under exceptional circumstances, and that this was true throughout the world."
Nakhodka: "The port of Mobile was long past its prime, but compared with the rust and broken equipment here, it was a model of repair. There was no security around the docks; goods were piled up in such a fashion that anybody could walk off with anything." Nakhodka is a city port of 170,000 with a single children's clothing store, a single grocery store, a single auto-parts store, and a single hardware store. The bakery was full of inexpensive, extraordinary bread, baked every day. The other stores were virtually empty of people and goods.
Gold Prices: In the 1970s investors were sure all paper money was going to lose its value as the price of gold rose quickly. Historically, gold prices had seen long periods of low price which did not move up even as the price of other commodities went up. In the 1930, Roosevelt responded to the economic crisis by setting the price of gold at $35/ounce. Everyone, who owned gold enjoyed a 67 percent premium in value. "Everybody was delighted to own dollars." During WWII the worldwide economy collapsed and gold did not move around the exchange for other foreign currencies, trade had come to an end. For thirty seven years gold was held to $35/ounce. "The only gold that came to the market was from Africa and Russia" In the 1970, gold began to be used in teeth and electronics, it was cheap. Through the 50s and 60s the price of gold rose as the economy faced trade deficits and printing money (inflation). 1971, Nixon took the US economy of the gold standard to avoid recession.
A bet against the central bankers: "In the seventies, the central banks were defending the United States artificially low price of gold." The market realized the prices (high or low) were absurd. As soon as the gold price controls were lift the price went up. When price goes up more supply will be created; new gold mines will open; existing gold mines will scale production; and replacement commodities will compete as a cheaper alternative. The supply will increase and price will drop cooling demand. Eventually, the price of gold will become cheap. "Every year since 1981, the world has produced more gold than in the year before. Remember, it takes a long time to bring a gold mine on stream...More supply.
Siberia is the world's largest country with 8,650,000 square miles, a sixth of the world's land mass. Siberia makes Russia one of the richest country in energy resources and minerals: a quarter of the world's oil reserves, 40 percent of the iron ore, and a third of its phosphates. "Even today no one knows the full extent of the nation's wealth", says Jim. The Soviet Union pushed hard to produce more steel, fertilizers, and oil. "This fervid lunge for producing more and more, however, mean that quality, environmental concerns, and efficient production had been ignored." "As the price of oil went to forty dollars a barrel, Moscow reaped a bonanza. All the money had gone to the Communist hierarchy and for the space program, to intercontinental ballistic missiles and world-class Olympic teams. The party managed things so poorly and the system was so rotten, there had been nothing left for the 275 million working toads except subsistence wages and a subsistence existence."
Moscow, "there was a good chance, however, that despite the good harvest, half the grain and vegetables wouldn't reach the consumer because of tractors, combines, and trucks that sat idle for lack of spare parts and gas... One engineer said it was a waste of his talents for him to be pulling up carrots."
Government price fixing messes up production. In Zimbabwe the government decided to enforce a cheap food policy and set the price of corn. In the mid eighties farmers produces 1.8 million tons of corn a year. After the government policy enforcing corn price fixes was in place corn production dropped 98 percent. However, the government never regulate flower production and in the mid eighties flower production was $5 millions and the year Jim traveled through Zimbabwe the flower production was $200 million. "The ability of farmers to raise flowers had apparently gone up some forty times during this catastrophic drought." "It is only when a government artificially holds a price back and then all of sudden releases it that the price explodes and a political crisis arrives." "I saw countries realize they could not control prices, that it wouldn't work". "Only when the market is free-unleashed, if you will-and the local currency finds its own level, will people then start doing what comes naturally..." "I won't put my money into a country until it actually makes it currency convertible."
"It's the American government policy for the dollar to sink, because the government think then American goods will be more competitive on the world market...But unfortunately the dollar will continue to go down until it fall becomes so out of control that the government will snarl and blame our problems on `evil financiers`. Once controls are put on, the currency will fall farther because everybody will try to smuggle it out."
Botswana had a balance of payment surplus. Major economic sectors are diamonds, copper, nickel, beef and tourism. Botswana had democratic elections. Botswana passed laws, given tax incentives, and everything to attract capital.
Jim Rogers Cycles Money May 15, 2007
I read this a few years ago and gave it to someone who has enjoyed motorcycles and has been investing for years. We both gained from reading it.
I don't bike and am relatively new to investing, but both of us found the adventure yarn interesting and a good way to get a better appreciation of world economies. An easy entertaining way to gain an understanding of what differentiates the successful (macro and micro) from the types that will always be in survival mode.
stellar tour January 16, 2007
Investment Biker is a fascinating book for anyone interested in biking, world history, or economics. It's one of those you hate to put down, as you are eager to see what challenges Jim and his friend were to encounter next. It's a wonder they survived, but thank God they did!
Required reading! December 8, 2006
This should be required reading for any economics course! (or for global investing ...of course ;) My eyes are opened. Jim has accomplished something that may never be repeated. He completed an amazing land journey through territories of every kind on earth. He experienced the people, the lifestyles, the local markets, the capital markets, the currency markets and the black markets of the world. His experience relates cause and effect of political and economic policies of over fifty countries. He has travelled our global economic history and laid it all down in an clear, concise and exciting text that will have you churning paper as you roar through it.
I learned alot. I want more!
Thank you!
A good read, lots to think about . . . November 20, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
From March of 1990 to August of 1992, Jim Rogers and his friend Tabitha took a marathon motorcycle trip on two BMW motorcycles. By the end, they had logged over 65,000 miles on each bike, and had traveled through Europe, the Middle East, Nepal, China, Siberia, Russia, Europe (again), western & southern Africa, three-quarters of the edge of Australia, South America, Central America, and North America.
The record of this extraordinary trip, told from the perspective of Jim Rogers, is _Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers_.
Jim Rogers made a fortune on Wall Street in the 1980s when he & George Soros ran the Quantum Fund. He is interested in international investing, and the story is definitely told from the perspective of someone who is interested in investing and making money. This sometimes makes the book slow and Rogers' focus a bit single-minded.
On the positive side, Rogers gives brief historical backgrounds of most of the places he visits, and he is one of those few authors who describes not just what a place is like right now, but what direction it seems to be going. As he goes through various locales, he often stops by local banks and stock markets to see if he can invest, but he also stays are regular places, eats regular food, and talks to regular people. It is clear that his large cash reserves made the trip much easier than it might have been otherwise, but at the same time many of the risks, adverse conditions, and long days were things that no amount of cash could help, and he & Tabitha still persevered.
One of the things I liked a lot about this book were Rogers' observations about the people and countries along the way. His discussion about health (especially women's health) in Siberia was eye-opening and hair-raising, his observations about the historical economics and current vivacity of different Southern & Central American countries are thought provoking, and his comments about the difference in temperament between those in the capitals of the U.S. and Canada ("joiners and backslappers") versus those in the sparsely settled hinterlands ("loners and mavericks") are very true.
There are parts of the book where it is quite slow, especially the section where they are traveling through sub-Saharan Africa. I really wish there had been more pictures.
Rogers writes that above almost all else, his trip taught him that mankind as a whole will find a way to adapt and persevere in almost any situation. His long-term outlook is very optimistic, but his short-term expectations are both pessimistic and a bit short-sighted. While Rogers does understand just how quickly the world can change, he does not seem to understand how long the countervailing force of inertia can keep things the same.
All in all, a very eye-opening & thought-provoking book. DON'T read it if you are looking for a 100% guaranteed guide to either travel or investing, but DO read it if you are looking for an engaging story about a multi-year trip that most of us would never have the time or inclination for, but that is still fun to read about.
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