Commodities were Everybody's Favorite Disaster

Jim Rogers

"Certainly commodities at the end of the '90s were everybody's favorite disaster, and yet for whatever reason, I had decided that it was not a disaster. In fact, it was a great opportunity and there were plenty of things to buy. In 1998, for instance, Merrill Lynch—which at the time was the largest broker, certainly in America and maybe the world—decided to close their commodity business, which they had had for a long time. I bought. That's when I started in the commodity business in a fairly big way. So that's the kind of example I am talking about. Everybody had more or less abandoned or were in the process of abandoning commodities, and yet, that's when I decided to go into commodities in a big way, because of what I considered fundamental reasons for doing it, but the fact that Merrill Lynch was getting out buttressed in my own mind anyway that I must be right, because, you know, everybody was out. Who was left to sell? There was nobody left to sell at that point." - in Investing.com



Jim Rogers started trading the stock market with $600 in 1968.In 1973 he formed the Quantum Fund with the legendary investor George Soros before retiring, a multi millionaire at the age of 37. Rogers and Soros helped steer the fund to a miraculous 4,200% return over the 10 year span of the fund while the S&P 500 returned just 47%.