On the Road Again

By Jyoti Thottam

Jim Rogers turned investing into an international thrill ride in his books Investment Biker and Adventure Capitalist. His latest effort, Hot Commodities, explains how to invest in everything from tin to coffee--with detours into Brazilian sugar farms and Dutch smuggling rings. TIME's JYOTI THOTTAM asked him for some New Year's wisdom.

TIME: What will the investment markets look like this year?

JR: I expect the U.S. stock and bond markets to be down in 2005. George Bush spent huge amounts of money in 2003 and 2004 to get the economy going. To top that is impossible, so we have to have the normal reaction and a slowdown.

TIME: Why are commodities so hot?

JR: There have been no great oil discoveries anywhere in the world in over 35 years. Mines deplete. Oil wells deplete. You could see that Asia was growing. The rest of the world was continuing to grow. With demand going up and supply going down, it had to be a bull market.

TIME: Did you have any epiphanies in writing this book?

JR: The Brazilians have the option of turning sugar into gasoline or selling it as sugar. With oil at an all-time high and sugar at 70% or 80 % below its all-time high, obviously the Brazilians are going to turn their sugar into gasoline. I had never thought about that before.

TIME: When everyone else is in commodities, where will you be?

JR: In my dreams that's going to happen. But in 10 or 15 years, when everybody's foaming at the mouth, then it'll be time to get out. It will be time to go back into stocks.

TIME: If you were 25, what would you be doing?

JR: I would work for a commodities firm in China. My little girl is learning Chinese. She has a nanny who speaks to her only in Chinese. You can't believe how proud it makes her daddy.