Adventure Capitalist

By Jim Rogers

Review by Vinnie Apicella

"My success in the market has been predicated on viewing the world from a different perspective." So says Jim Rogers, among the many captions from former "Investment Biker" gone "Adventure Capitalist."

In his latest journey, bestselling author and legendary investor Jim Rogers takes us through 116 countries totaling 152,000 miles and 342 pages worth of strongly opinionated investment advice by way of road hugging narrative from the comfort of his banana colored Benz--modified for moon travel, or in this case, 'round the world in 1,100 days--on his trip through the global marketplace from a ground-level perspective.

Seems far-fetched yet few could argue Mr. Rogers' success as an investor, having already retired at age 37 after founding, along with George Soros, and riding the 4000% crest of the Quantum Fund beginning in the early ‘70s, if for no other reason than to have the ability to leave home for three years, custom build an all-terrain luxury cruiser, get hitched, return home, write a book, and never miss a beat.

Personally, I have trouble justifying leaving town on a four-day weekend, but then I have not achieved a fraction of the success of Rogers and that’s what prompted me to pick up the book in the first place. Should you? It depends on your level of investing experience and the degree to which you actually want to see the world from the comfort of your…armchair. Entertaining? Yes, very much so. Informative? That too, but in the end, while it’s understood this could easily be a 700 page brick by the time the smoke clears from picking apart each and every travel place, there’s an awful lot of smoke-blowing about general politics and little left of the "lessons" we’re expecting to come away with.

Besides getting an up close and personal account of life where few others have dared to visit, let alone by car--his travels takes him/us through Icelandic blizzards, African war zones, various assorted deserts, jungles, and frail ferry boats--the persistent and opinionated author shares views on the socio-political and economic scale of the countries he visits in an attempt to see the world the way it really is while attempting to uncover investment opportunities along the way.

The end result is he pulls out of many investments he initially made a decade earlier as the record setting Investment Biker, yet does offer a few recommendations, if on a broad scale; readers expecting to be led by the hand with a "how-to" guide to getting in on the world markets will come away disappointed. The advice generally comes by way of forecasting for the future--provided some of these countries still has one in another ten years--and serves to spotlight the strength(s) they do or will possess and where the smart investor might scope a little further down the road, or breeze past altogether.

Some of his observances include:

The Republic of Ireland is seeing an inflow rather than the customary outflow of human resources and is considered by Rogers as a "European Tiger"; Iran, as a demographically young country wrought with positive change and ripe for investment; the 15 states that comprised the former Soviet Union will sooner or later be bankrupt; the 21st century will belong to China, contingent upon allowing its currency to be freely convertible and tradable on the world market; Korean protectionism continues to stifle its prosperity on the world market.

Rogers' commentary, while slick and intellectually stimulating, is interwoven with colorful conclusions of a philosophical kind that in truth, is probably where the real "profitable lessons" are learned. This, as opposed to advising on how to buy into Reykjavik’s natural resource reserves or to actually capitalize on the fact that Angola, which he compares to "low hanging fruit," will soon be Africa’s largest producer of oil and, potentially, diamonds.

When he says, "When in Rome, talk to the Romans," it’s understood that the "Roman" will relay more reliable information pertaining to their place in the world than much of the propagandist pen pushers miles removed. Speaking of Iran, he concludes: "The younger the population of a country, the more open to change it is. A young population embraces change the way an older population reveres the past." Iran as a future investment? Rogers' philosophy on investing also follows: "What success I have had in investing has usually come from buying stock that is very cheap… but you also have to see positive change coming; something that everybody else will recognize in time."

Rogers' experience and foresight lends itself to some brilliant writing and insightful commentary. Adventure Capitalist is an illustrative narrative developed with the care and detail of a handmade silk carpet from the Orient... and I believe he ordered three and shipped them home. He keenly observes everything from the trip down to the finest detail, from delicacies in the African Congo to dodging authorities at the Asian/Indian border; there is simply no stone unturned, and practically nothing the author is not aware of, which for purely entertainment value, provides a solid ROI (return on investment).

At the conclusion, Rogers, an American, checks the pulse of his own country by taking a step back--or in this case, three years--and observes from a distance as a detached bypasser, which he admits is not necessarily profound, in suggesting himself that he learned more about the country from his time away then the six weeks spent driving through it. "If you really want to get to know America," he writes, "get out for a while." A convincing argument, yet if anyone should know...

Adventure Capitalist is educational and layered in life lessons and worldly experience that makes for essential reading to inform, inspire and entertain while allowing for a view of the world the way it really is without haggling at the airfare counter or customs checks. As a potential investor, take from it what you may, and look for later headlines.

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