Book Review - Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market by Jim Rogers

Worth its weight in pork bellies...

Jim Rogers is one of few individuals on the planet whose investment advice is worth listening to. And that's an understatement. Jim co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros, later retired at age 37, and has traveled around the world twice, each time collecting even more investment wisdom from each of the hundreds of countries that he's visited.

In Hot Commodities Jim Rogers parlays his travel and investment experience into investment advice for now and the coming next ten years. As he says on page 10, "Most investors could use some mental deprogramming. At certain points in history, stocks (and bonds) are not the best investments to make." Of course, he's talking about investing in commodities. Jim goes on to soundly counter all the false beliefs most of us have about commodities investing. He provides a short history of commodities trading and then gives an excellent tutorial on commodities trading and termonology. Why not just buy stock in commodity-related companies? A recent and thorough Yale study found that returns from commodities were triple those of companies producing those commodities.

Besides sugar and corn, you'll also find the book filled with Jim's thoughts on gold, oil, and markets like Brazil and China. Here's one of my favorite Roger's quotes: "Spain was the greatest economic power in the world in the sixteenth century; the rich and the powerful of the eighteenth-century world spoke French; the nineteenth century belonged to Britain; and the twentieth was the American century. The twenty-first will belong to China. History has not been kind to empires."

If you're interested in turning current world events into money, you'll love this book.

You might also be interested in http://www.jimrogers.com/ as well as my review of Jim's previous book Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip.

Buy it on Amazon