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%.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Jim Rogers : I had opened my first Swiss Bank Account in 1970

Excerpt from Jim Rogers' book Street Smarts :

Some of Switzerland’s most prestigious banks were established in the aftermath of the French Revolution, during the turmoil that gripped France under Napoleon. Bank people fled France and took their money over the mountains to Geneva, which was not very far away. You will see that some of the great old Swiss banks, the private banks, were founded in 1795, 1803, years like that. But by then Swiss banking traditions were already well established.

Switzerland has been an international center of finance since the end of the Renaissance. Known since then for its stability, sound economy, sound currency, and privacy in financial matters, it has long provided monetary refuge from the wealthy evading the consequences of political turmoil in Europe, from French nobility fleeing the guillotine to the Jews escaping Germany a century and a half later. It has, for the same reasons, in modern times, attracted the money of numerous despots, criminal organisations, and scoundrels.

Switzerland, traditionally, has been unconditional in its offer of bank secrecy. Of course, all banks are supposed to keep your affairs quiet. If you put your money in a bank in Chicago fifty years ago, you would have done so with the assumption that it was confidential. In America, as we have seen, that is no longer the case. The government can look into your bank account, your bedroom, your mail … anywhere it wants. And in much the way that our privacy has been taken away from us, the Swiss have recently surrendered some of theirs, succumbing to pressure from the United States. Bank secrecy in Switzerland is not as sacrosanct as it once was.

Nonetheless, the first thing people look for when seeking monetary refuge is safety. They want stability. They want the security of knowing they will get their money back, and that they will get back at least as much as they put there in the first place. That depends entirely on a sound currency. And that is something the Swiss franc has always offered. The question, now, is whether that is going to last.

I had opened my first Swiss bank account in 1970 in the face of coming turmoil in the currency markets. By the end of the decade, as the markets grew more volatile, people all over the world were trying to open Swiss accounts. And the same thing is happening today. The dollar is suspect, the euro is suspect, and again people are rushing to the franc. In 2011, the CHF (the Swiss franc) escalated to record highs against both the euro and the dollar, rising 43 per cent against the euro in a year and a half as of August 2011.






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%.

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Jim Rogers "the 19th century was the century of the UK , the 20th century was the century of the US , the 21 st century is going to be the century of China "
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