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We Need to Get Our Money into China

By Tom Dyson, publisher, The Palm Beach Letter
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

They call him the Indiana Jones of finance.

He arrived in Manhattan in 1968 with $600. He retired 12 years later with millions. No one knows for sure, but these days, the rumors say he's worth several hundred million.

Here's the thing... Jim Rogers has a gift for exploiting sleepy markets no one else has thought of. He's made money in Ghana, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

He put money into Uruguay before people "even bothered with shares," Bolivia when the stock market was less than two years old, and Peru while it was still in a civil war.

And in Austria, Rogers made one of his biggest coups of all. In 1984, he noticed Germany was becoming an industrial powerhouse and was dumping its socialist politics. Austria is next to Germany. Rogers figured the Austrian stock market was ready for a boom...

He called a manager at Creditanstalt – Austria's largest bank – and asked him how to invest in Austria's stock market. The bank manager told Rogers Austria didn't have a stock market. Austria's market was so obscure, the manager of the country's largest bank didn't know about it. His ignorance was a buy signal for Rogers, who made 500% gains in three years.

 "You have not really been to a country," he says, "until you have had to cross the border physically, had to find your own fuel, a place to sleep, until you have experienced it close to the ground. My success in the market has been predicated from seeing the world from a different perspective."

Rogers thinks China will become the world's next superpower. Last year, he sold his house in New York and moved his family to Singapore. He wanted to move to China, but said the pollution was too bad there. He's using Singapore as his Asian base instead. "It's like moving to New York in 1907 or London in 1807," he says.

Rogers thinks the Chinese are the most capitalist people on earth. They save almost 35% of their income and don't worry about how many vacation days they might get. Instead, they worry about how many days they are allowed to work.

 
"I recommend you all start to learn Mandarin," he always tells audiences at investment conferences. "And tell your children and grandchildren to do the same." Jim's daughter has a Chinese nanny, who speaks only Mandarin.

In 2006 and 2007, Chinese stocks rose 500%. It was one of the most memorable bull markets in history. Newspapers published stories every day of Chinese taxi drivers and hairdressers making fortunes in the stock market. We read about queues of people waiting to open brokerage accounts.

Then the market collapsed...

Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index

Now I'm starting to get excited about China. I've been researching Chinese stocks that trade on North American exchanges. I call these Chimerica stocks.

I found some interesting agriculture companies. They do all their business in China, but they report in English and conform to U.S. regulations. These stocks have better valuations than Shanghai-traded stocks because so few people know about them. They even have better valuations than most of their American and Canadian peers.

Yesterday the papers announced Jim Rogers is buying China again. "All the panic looks like a bottom," he told an audience at a conference in Beijing. "I have bought in the last four to five weeks. I've been buying shares in China for the first time in a long time."

Jim Rogers is rarely wrong about these trends. We need to get our money into China soon. I'm going to wait for the Shanghai Composite to form an uptrend before I invest... It'll improve my odds of making a profit. In the meantime, I'm going to keep researching Chimerica stocks, and I suggest you do the same.

Good investing,

Tom

Editor's note: Tom Dyson is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.

 
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THE NO-BRAINER INCOME INVESTMENT OF 2008

Today's chart shows the no-brainer income opportunity you have in 2008. We first posted it back in February, but it's so important, it's worth going over 100 times...

Our chart is the gigantic dividend yield offered right now by a tiny group of stocks called "Business Development Companies." BDCs for short.

BDCs invest in small businesses, either by owning equity stakes or by making loans. In order to entice investors to organize as a BDC, Congress allows them to pay no taxes... as long as the majority of earnings are passed on to shareholders through big dividend checks.

Like all companies related to finance, BDCs were sold heavily during the credit crisis. But several of the best BDCs have nothing to do with real estate, credit cards, or other consumer debts. They're simply doing business as usual. And now, as prices have fallen, our BDC index yields around 12%!

One of our favorite BDCs is a small oil-patch lender yielding nearly 10% right now. As many finance companies decrease their payouts, this one is actually increasing its payout. (You can read about it in the March 2007 issue of The 12% Letter.) Whether you buy this stock or not, realize the time to buy BDCs for huge yields is now.


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