Jim Rogers' success mantra: Invest where demand is low

Nifty BSE | NSE 01/06/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

Q: What would be the best piece of investment advice that you ever got?

A: Buy low and sell high. No, the real one is do your homework. Do not listen to what other people tell you.

Q: Attention to detail?

A: Be very attentive to detail. Cover all the bases; most people don't cover the bases. If you read an annual report for a company on Wall Street, you would have done more than 98% of the people on Wall Street.

Q: Really?

A: Come on, you know that. How many people in India ever bother to read the annual report? They get hot tips if somebody says, they see it on TV or read it in the newspaper and very few of them read the annual report. None of them read the notes to the annual report. If you just do simple things like that, you're way ahead of everybody else, but that does not mean you are going to be successful. I promise you. But if you've learnt to cover all the bases, if you cover attention to detail, and you are sceptical, chances are that you'll be a successful investor.

Q: You also said stock traders should learn how to drive tractors? That is where the money is, the next decade?

A: What I said was, the last 30 years has been an era in the developed world where finance has been the centre. The '80s, '90s and this decade, people in Wall Street, the City of London, once you had all the money and the influence. We've had many periods like that in history but we have also had many periods in history when it is the people who produce real things, whether it is miners or farmers or whatever, where they have been the centre. In my view, we are in a historic shift now away from the financial centres to the people who produce real goods.

Farming has been one of the worst professions, the worst jobs for the past 30 years. I am telling you that in my view, farming is going to be one of the great professions in the next 30 years. All these people who were stockbrokers should turn in their degrees and go down and learn how to drive a tractor. They will be a lot better off. Atleast they will be working for rich farmers if nothing else and if they are smart they will become the rich farmer themselves.