Jim Rogers - SPACs, Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, Uranium

[Music] hi jim and thanks for joining us today my pleasure jimmy i'm delighted to be here it's morning where i am i guess this evening where you are that's correct so tell me how are things in singapore well things are well the whole world has been closed down as you know singapore has started opening up more and more but you know the airport basically is closed as even if you could go anywhere and you can't go anywhere because you have to go to quarantine no matter what nearly everywhere not enough flights so singapore itself is opening but the outside world is still somewhat limited because of flights and are you and your family able to go out for dinner go out for lunch oh looking good the restaurants are open i mean some have closed permanently but the restaurants are open they close at 10 30. you cannot have alcohol after 10 30 so needless to say by 11 they're all empty uh but there are i mean we go out quite a lot uh and shops are open everything many things are open now jim the last time we spoke was in september of 2020 and a lot has changed in the last six months so i thought it would be good to sit down with you again and get your views on a few things and in the last six months so much has changed we had we've had massive social unrest political unrest we still have the all-consuming pandemic we have a new administration in the u.s we have three trillion dollars in deficits in the u.s and yet the s p and the nasdaq continue to make new highs i believe they're both up 10 since we spoke in september and i just wanted to get your views on the current market valuations well jimmy governments all over the world uh especially in washington dc have printed and spent and borrowed staggering amounts of money i mean if you give me several trillion dollars i'll show you a very good time we'll have a wonderful time uh we'll regret it someday uh but that's what's happening now i mean they're printing in the u.s i'll use the us since uh it's it's larger than anywhere the amount of we were already the largest debtor nation in the history of the world i mean now it's gone up by trillions that's trillions with a t it's a good time to be old an old american because we're getting the benefit of all this but younger me it's not a good time to be a young american i mean someday soon they're all going to wake up and say wait a minute what about all this death what do we do now i've seen many countries go into decline client when they do things like this and i don't particularly like saying it as i said because i have teenage daughters but the future is not good for young americans so you've touched a little bit on the debt levels but what about the levels of speculation that we're currently seeing like to me this is like 1999 to the power of 10. like we have bubble after bubble after bubble it's going from one sector to another sector whether it be evs or spax or whatever what are your thoughts on that well it's not my first rodeo i've seen i've seen this movie before i've lived through bubbles i've read about many bubbles bubbles are recurring part of human beings for better or for worse the worst the worst part of jimmy is that people don't learn the lessons of history probably the main lesson of history is people don't learn the lessons of history this is all a bubble but they all say no no it's different now you don't understand it's different this now um they all look the same you people come into the market spax you mentioned space packs are recurring recurring in bubbles uh quite frequently it's not the first time we've had a boom in specs no no no all the signs are there that a bubble is developing i mean bonds worldwide are in a bubble bonds have never been this expensive in the history of the world never uh property in some cities seoul or some places is turning a huge bubble uh stocks are beginning we don't have in my view or i mean who knows if i'm right but you know some stocks in the u.s never go down apple you know these stocks to google they just never go down but there are many stocks that are still down and are not participating i mean in asia 10 cent never goes down samsung never goes down so it's happening around the world but it's not can you see people leaving their jobs you see you saw what happened with the short squeeze a week or two ago in the u.s all these things are signs but it's all happened before so as i said jimmy i've seen this movie i know how it ends and how does it end well it ends and uh eventually there's an explosion the bubble pops everything goes down a lot some stocks will go down 70 80 90 percent lot of people will lose a lot of money a lot of people will say i'm never going to invest again as long as i live never ever ever um and you hit a bottom and something starts over again until the next level maybe 20 or 30 years later so i'd say it's not the first time we've had a big bubble and it's not just the us you mentioned the late 90s what color jimmy i mean you remember cooper be probably not old enough but kuwait tokyo i mean uh us in the late 60s it's all happened before jim the last time we spoke in september of 2020 bitcoin was trading at or around eleven thousand dollars and now in february of 2021 it's around fifty thousand dollars so it's up over three hundred percent what are your thoughts on that well i wish i'd bought it you know obviously uh that makes proof well i've never bought or sold any cryptocurrencies so they've turned out that well contracts that many of them have disappeared and gone to zero as you know there were thousands at one time and they're always cropping up every month um i have never played long or short any of them crypto has been a huge success um my view is that if it ever it's a trading vehicle it's uh it's great for whoever knows what they're doing and is training uh but as i say many have disappeared and many many bitcoins have disappeared i don't know where they go but somebody steals some or or whatever um but if bitcoin ever becomes successful as a currency my view is that the governments will outlaw it as a currency because governments don't want to lose monopoly don't want to lose control again throughout history governments don't like other people controlling money and they will make it illegal now the crypto guys say ah we're smarter than the government of course they are but the government's got the guns the government's got the tanks money is going to be on the computer jimmy uh you cannot take a taxi in china with money you cannot buy an ice cream the chinese are way ahead of the rest of us but every country is now working on computer money and it's going to be there but it's going to be government money it's not going to be your money and mine and i would also remind you some countries have already outlawed crypto currencies india uh recently last week in myanmar they closed the internet well if you're sitting there with all your money and the crypto money and the internet's closed you're in a bit of a bond uh texas recently electricity closed down well if you don't have electricity you don't have much crypto money no matter how much you think you have so there are shortcomings for cryptocurrencies as well not just government actions the world so i guess that makes a good case for gold and and hiding it under your bed well i own gold and silver i would rather buy silver than gold right now because it's cheaper on a historic basis but jimmy i'm an old peasant you know all of these politicians and academics say i forget gold forget gold it's obsolete maybe but us old peasants want to have some gold in the closet or under the bed uh when when things go wrong and so i presume that all enough old peasants like me who will continue to buy gold and silver in case and so you just mentioned that you prefer silver over gold why well on his i mean silver's down 45 from its all-time high gold is 10 from its all-time high on a comparative but historic basis anyway silver is much cheaper and silver has many uses i mean solar energy apparently solar energy is getting bigger and bigger you know you need silver and many things so silver is just cheaper but if we reverse if gold was down 45 percent silver down 10 i'd say buy gold right i'll buy both but more silver so silver is currently trading around 27 as you mentioned the all-time high was 50. are you a buyer of silver at these levels no i'm waiting there's a correction going on you know many like just india is a huge market for gold and silver and a lot of those people are for a variety of reasons they're having troubles right now so liquidating their gold and so but uh i would who knows my timing is very bad i told you i wish i could time like roy newberger could uh i'll buy more gold and silver somewhere i just don't know when jim i guess the other thing that really stands out to me about cryptocurrencies and more specifically bitcoin is that there's many well-known investors coming out in support of it michael novogratz michael saylor paul tudor jones and kathy wood at arc investments and yet we really don't have anybody doing that with gold what are your thoughts on that so what yeah bitcoin has been a great success as a trading vehicle there's no question about that you know some of the people you mentioned i mean the police paul you know paul's a fantastic traitor uh paul is probably as good as maybe better than roy newberg was because he's more multifaceted but i i mean it doesn't so what i'll never be as good a traitor as paul tudor jones or her roy newberger and if they find great trading vehicles do it do it do it don't listen to me uh but um you ask about it i'm just suggesting to you that if bitcoin and the others become successful as money they will be outlawed but if they just continuous trading vehicles as long as people can make money trading something history would indicate they'll keep trading it most things though that people have traded constantly and forever have had ultimately some economic use i mean the mississippi bubble you know three or four hundred years ago at least theoretically there was land in the south seas that you could by speculating the tulip bubble at least theoretically you could take your balls and plant them and have tulips so most things that have become great trading vehicles um have eventually disappeared if that's all they were but maybe bitcoin is going to go on forever and cryptos as trading vehicles as i say if they become successful as money i suspect governments and the governments are already starting to outlaw them and jimmy governments are all working on crypto money computer money i said in china you you can't take a taxi with money it won't they don't i tried to buy an ice cream in beijing woman couldn't say she'd never seen money she was 19 years old or something she gave it to me the ice cream in the end because she didn't know what to do with his money i mean now i have you know even i have money on my phone now but it's government money it's not crypto money maybe in six months when i speak to you again you'll have a digital wallet on there with some bitcoin well i have a digital wallet in the sense that i have money on my phone as i say but it's it's money which is governments recognize not which government says i mean i want to repeat in india cryptocurrency is illegal only a billion people in india you know china it's illegal a billion four hundred million so in myanmar they closed the internet last week close the internet what do you do if all your money's on your phone and the computers goes texas electricity went down what do you do if you're in texas and there's no electricity and all your money is on your crypto money i mean maybe you have an answer i don't know i wouldn't have i don't know if i needed to go down to the shop and buy some bread and the electricity was down i wouldn't have any money i guess you wouldn't be eating yeah i know i wouldn't be here i can go in there i can say to the guy my money's hearing my phone he said i'm sorry sir i need money in my cash register gold does have an economic purpose i mean it also has speculative purposes and it has jewelry purposes but now gold is also used in electronics etc as is silver so even if women and men all suddenly decide oh i can't stand gold jewelry at least gold still has an economic purpose likewise silver as i said solar panels silver kills bacteria there are many uses for silk besides speculative purposes i hope it doesn't disappear a speculative purpose because i own a fair amount of it but even if it does at least i can sell it to the solar energy guys and the electronic the electric vehicle guys they need silver jim copper has had a significant move here in the last six months so what are your views on copper well as i look around commodities are the cheapest asset class uh bonds are in bubbles many stocks are forming bubbles property forming bubbles commodities are still i mean silver's down 45 from its all-time highs sugar is down about 70 percent from its all-time high i mean commodities are the cheapest asset class and copper's suddenly gone up it's at a seven or eight year high seven or eight year high the japanese stock markets at a 31 year high you know and if electric vehicles are coming which apparently they are electric cars use five times as much copper as regular cars electric cars use a huge amount of metals you know and in fact for what it's worth electric cars have a horrible environmental footprint because they have all this lithium and copper and other stuff which has to be mined and of course you have to make electricity from something but people don't really think about that they just say electric cars are environmentally better than petrol cars gasoline cars and what about uranium do you have a view on uranium well i own i own some uranium just because it got so unbelievably cheap and and uranium speaking of environmentally friendly uh uranium is very environmentally friendly unless it blows up you know but if you take if you if you manage uranium energy sources properly it's cleaner cheaper and everything else than other that's certainly then petrol then gasoline and coal so no i i owned uranium and i think america did america recently past the law saying they were going to build uranium stockpiles i mean i think various things are going on to make uranium more attractive you and george soros started the quantum fund back in the 1970s and over a 10-year period you had an astonishing 4200 percent return during the same time the s p was only up 47 what were you trading jim at that time that enabled you to have such incredible returns well we traded all kinds of things commodities stocks currencies bonds long short we went short a lot of stuff uh anything that was legal uh that whether we thought there were opportunities we invested uh all over the world which was not very common in those days certainly not selling short wasn't so common still isn't but no invested in anything well we thought we could find an opportunity and did you use a lot of leverage huge amounts of leverage yes which is you know we shouldn't we i should be broke you shouldn't be interviewed i should be i should have gone broke 45 years ago fortuna we didn't so so that leads me to my next question if you were 25 years old and you were at a point in your life where you could take a great deal of risk what country or what asset class would you invest in right now and use a lot of leverage oh i guess i would if i were 25 or we go into agriculture in asia or russia uh probably china now of course you're assuming that you have complete mobility with language and everything else i would say probably chinese or russian agriculture if i were 25 years old in 2021 so i'm surprised to hear you say that like you're not talking about cryptocurrencies you're not talking about evs or spax well spax always come around at the end of bull markets i've explained that we're probably getting near i can see the end of the bull market and whenever it is a year or two so no spikes are would not be around when you're 45 if uh say 55 uh unless they have a comeback uh no uh evs have a great future apparently but so what i mean i wouldn't be great at it besides there's huge amounts of competition in evs right now and i would wouldn't be a very smart 25 year old i'd be i hope i'd be smart enough to know let me go where there's no competition i don't want to compete with all these smart people let me find where they're not so many competitors you know the average age of farmers in america is 58 in japan it's 66. highest rate of suicide in the uk is in agriculture i mean jimmy more people in the u.s study public relations and study agriculture i'm not a very smart person so i want to stay away from all the smart guys and i don't want to stay away from the competition jim i want to thank you very much for spending time with us today it's been a very interesting discussion it's been my pleasure jimmy let's do it again sometime i hope the next time we get together we can do it in person hooray hooray i do too i hope i can go somewhere you can go somewhere [Music]

Channel: Bloor Street Capital

Views: 11,219

Rating: 4.8007116 out of 5

Keywords: Jim Rogers, Bloor Street Capital, Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, Copper, Uranium, SPACs, George Soros, Quantum Fund, China, Singapore, Digital Currencies

Id: 986kbm7UaGM

Length: 21min 28sec (1288 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021