Amid Covid-19 Downturn Here’s Where to Profit - Jim Rogers
By Michael Bociurkiw
The renowned investor and financial commentator, Jim Rogers, says companies that have collapsed in the market should be in the line of sight of savvy investors.
The advice may sound counter-intuitive but seems to correspond to the theory ‘what goes down must come up.’ This includes stocks of airlines, hospitality and travel companies.
Rogers is a member of the small club of influential financial observers who can move the market with an utterance. The holder of three Guinness World Record titles, he greeted the millennium by travelling by car 245,000kms around the globe. His book, Investment Biker, is the story of his record-setting global motorcycle trip, and it’s about the world economy and society – who’s sinking and who’s swimming, which countries are on the rise and which are collapsing, where you can make a million and where you could lose one. Rogers is the co-founder of the Quantum Fund and the Soros Fund Management.
Rogers says he bought a shipping company in Russia earlier in April, and that depressed stocks are in his shopping list. “These shared have been crushed totally and that usually leads to opportunities.”
Rogers added: “I don’t think we are going to stop flying in airplanes. And I don’t think we will go back to using the bus, the train and ships. We are going to continue flying. So there are probably great opportunities developing.
”The things that have been crushed the most - travel, tourism, airlines, restaurants, hotels - these are fairly obvious candidates to go for…Agriculture has been and continues to be an obvious place.”
In his home base of Singapore, Rogers is eyeing the company which manages the local international airport - even thought it is mostly closed.
At the same time, gig-economy companies which have become hot picks because of the crisis - meal-delivery, ride hailing and collaboration companies - are of interest.
Rogers said there could be long-lasting changes to human behavior due to the Covid-19 lockdowns. This includes wider use of home-schooling, meal delivery and tele-medicine. “Lots of things are being accelerated by what is happening - and some people are going to come out of this really happy,” he said in an exclusive interview with the podcast, Global Impact.
“Life is already changing, whether we like it or not…Human interaction is going to change more and more over the Internet.”
Rogers was once famously quoted as saying: ‘If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London; if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City; and if you were smart in 2007 you move to Asia.’
“I’ve learned in my life if you find a catastrophe, then you should probably be investing. Because in five or six years you will probably look great.”
I put it to Rogers where would a smart person move to, in say 2021. His answer: South Korea. “Because the 38th parallel is going to open soon. And when it does the Korean peninsula is going to be the single most exciting country in the world for a decade or two.”
He said there are other exciting possibilities, including China. And out of emerging economies - Russia, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea - the latter three for non-Americans.
“I’ve learned in my life if you find a catastrophe, then you should probably be investing. Because in five or six years you will probably look great.”
For the full Global Impact episode featuring Jim Rogers - as well as his perspective for smaller investors - click here