‘A Bull in China’ Leaving New York for Singapore

America has lost one of its most colorful Wall Street characters, veteran investor Jim Rogers, to another country.On Saturday night, the 64-year-old Mr. Rogers, who has resided in New York City since 1968, addressed the investment community in Dallas. After the speech, he packed his bags and took a nonstop, 19-hour flight to Singapore — not for business or pleasure, but to take up permanent residence there. A day earlier, his wife, Paige, and his 4-year-old daughter, Hilton, also left for Singapore.Mr. Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in the 1960s and later created the Rogers International Commodity Index, is by no means abandoning New York City, and will plan periodic trips back. It’s just that living in Asia excites him. “Moving to Asia is like moving to New York in 2007 or like moving to London in 1907,” he told me at dinner the other night. In Singapore, which he says is pollution-free, he has many English-speaking friends.An international traveler who frequently makes the rounds on TV business shows, Mr. Rogers laid out his latest market thinking. In brief, he’s even more bearish than usual on the stock market and sees difficult times ahead for America, especially in the financial arena.One key reason is his glum view of the economy. Although the economic numbers don’t show a recession, which is generally defined by two declining quarters in a row in the gross national product, Mr. Rogers insists “we’re in a recession right now, especially in housing, automobiles, and some financial sectors.” It’s terribly abnormal not to have a recession in a five-year period, he says, and he attributes the latest such stretch to what he says is a huge amount of money printing by the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan.“If we keep printing money, the Dow will go to 30,000, but the dollar and stock market will eventually collapse,” he tells me.Another reason he’s bearish is the absence of a full 10% market correction for the past five years. “We’re long overdue,” he says. “Stocks don’t ever go up forever.” During the market decline between mid-July and mid-August, the S&P 500 fell a mite short of that 10%, sliding 9.4%.He also says he thinks the mortgage and subprime problems will get progressively worse before they get better. “I know Fannie Mae is going broke,” he says. He’s short the stock (a bet its price will fall).A graduate of London’s Oxford University who grew up in a small town in Alabama, Mr. Rogers, who once took a motorcycle trip around the world and wrote a book about his travels, is also short investment banks such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, largely through the exchange-traded fund Amex Securities Broker/Dealer, which is traded under the symbol XBD. “The financial area is where we’ve seen the worst abuses,” he says. Likewise, despite the big declines in home builders, he’s short a number of the industry’s leading names.On the other hand, he’s heavily invested in China, and since 1999 he hasn’t sold a stock he bought in the market. However, Mr. Rogers, who is working on a new book, “A Bull in China,” has disposed of all his other holdings in emerging markets. His favorite investments are commodities and such currencies as the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, and the Swiss franc.Meanwhile, Mr. Rogers’s move to Singapore was predicated on the sale of his 10,000-square-foot brownstone on the Upper West Side. The home, which he bought for $107,000 in 1977, is being sold for $15 million. A contract is pending.* * *SEC PROBE EXPANDED: On July 23, I reported that I had learned the Securities & Exchange Commission had initiated another stock-trading investigation of a major takeover: the trading in the shares of Hilton Hotels Corp. prior to the July 3 announcement of the $26 billion, or $47.50 a share, acquisition of the lodging company by the Blackstone Group. Now, I’ve learned the SEC has broadened the scope of its investigation, having recently sent out inquiries to the brokerage community seeking additional trading data. Interestingly, it is also examining trading in Hilton that occurred after the deal was announced.An SEC spokesman declined comment, but a regulatory source confirmed the additional query.I’m also reliably told that regulators, primarily the SEC and the market regulation division of the New York Stock Exchange, have launched a number of other stock trading investigations. These include looking into share trading in Alcan, Crescent Real Estate Equities, Avaya, Pharmion Corp., Sandisk Corp., Penn National Gaming, Manhattan Pharmaceuticals, Pioneer Companies, On2 Technologies, and Ethanex Energy.

‘A Bull in China’ Leaving New York for Singapore

‘A Bull in China’ Leaving New York for Singapore

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