Commodities king and formerly George Soros’ partner and co-founder of the Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers, said gold, silver and other commodities prices will trade up no matter what move the Fed makes at its next FOMC policy meeting scheduled on November 2-3.
On Thursday, speaking from Singapore to Bloomberg Television’s Andrea Catherwood, Rogers said:
“If the world economy gets better, the prices of commodities will go up because there are shortages developing. We already see shortages developing. You mentioned rare earths, but there are others. If the world economy doesn’t get better, I still want to own commodities because they’re [Federal Reserve] going to print money.”
In the short term, however, Rogers said he doesn’t like buying any commodity “when prices are making new highs,” referring to gold, which has rallied nearly straight up in price from its recent low of 1,155.90 on July 28 to its intraday record high of $1,387.10 set on October 14. But Rogers likes silver and rice now, because both these commodities haven’t made new highs yet.
Since the last FOMC meeting of September 21, speculation that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will formally announce further “quantitative easing,” or QE2, in an effort to stimulate a noticeably weak U.S. economy has sparked a fire under all commodities across the board.
Released on October 12, minutes of the September 21 meeting contain language that troubles Rogers. Most disturbing relates to a change from a multi-decade stance of the Fed on its inflation targets, which were repeatedly held at somewhere between 1% or 2%.
Jim Rogers has taught finance at Columbia University’s business school and is a media commentator worldwide. He is the author of Adventure Capitalist, Investment Biker, Hot Commodities, A Gift to My Children, and A Bull in China. See his website.
