Adventure Capitalist The Ultimate Road Trip

by ROGERS, JIM

• ISBN13: 9780812967265
• ISBN10: 0812967267
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-07
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Summary

Drive . . . and grow rich! The bestselling author ofInvestment Bikeris back from the ultimate road trip: a three-year drive around the world that would ultimately set the Guinness record for the longest continuous car journey. InAdventureCapitalist, legendary investor Jim Rogers, dubbed "the Indiana Jones of finance" byTimemagazine, proves that the best way to profit from the global situation is to see the world mile by mile. "While I have never patronized a prostitute," he writes, "I know that one can learn more about a country from speaking to the madam of a brothel or a black marketeer than from meeting a foreign minister." Behind the wheel of a sunburst-yellow, custom-built convertible Mercedes, Rogers and his fiancee, Paige Parker, began their "Millennium Adventure" on January 1, 1999, from Iceland. They traveled through 116 countries, including many where most have rarely ventured, such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Angola, Sudan, Congo, Colombia, and East Timor. They drove through war zones, deserts, jungles, epidemics, and blizzards. They had many narrow escapes. They camped with nomads and camels in the western Sahara. They ate silkworms, iguanas, snakes, termites, guinea pigs, porcupines, crocodiles, and grasshoppers. Best of all, they saw the real world from the ground upthe only vantage point from which it can be truly understoodeconomically, politically, and socially. Here are just a few of the author's conclusions: The new commodity bull market has started. The twenty-first century will belong to China. There is a dramatic shortage of women developing in Asia. Pakistan is on the verge of disintegrating. India, like many other large nations, will break into several countries. The Euro is doomed to fail. There are fortunes to be made in Angola. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are a scam. Bolivia is a comer after decades of instability, thanks to gigantic amounts of natural gas. Adventure Capitalistis the most opinionated, sprawling, adventurous journey you're likely to take within the pages of a bookthe perfect read for armchair adventurers, global investors, car enthusiasts, and anyone interested in seeing the world and understanding it as it really is. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Born in 1942, Jim Rogers had his first job at age five, picking up bottles at baseball games. Winning a scholarship to Yale, Rogers was coxswain on the crew. Upon graduation, he attended Balliol College at Oxford. After a stint in the army, he began work on Wall Street. He cofounded the Quantum Fund, a global-investment partnership. During the next ten years, the portfolio gained more than 4,000 percent, while the S&P rose less than 50 percent. Rogers then decided to retire—at age thirty-seven—but he did not remain idle.<br>Continuing to manage his own portfolio, Rogers served as a professor of finance at the Columbia Univer-sity Graduate School of Business and as moderator of <i>The Dreyfus Roundtable</i> on WCBS and <i>The Profit Motive</i> on FNN. At the same time, he laid the groundwork for his lifelong dream, an around-the-world motorcycle trip: more than 100,000 miles across six continents. That journey became the subject of Rogers’s first book, Investment Biker (1994), now available from Random House Trade Paperbacks. <br>While laying plans for his Millennium Adventure 1999–2001, he continued as a media commentator at <i>Worth,</i> CNBC, et al., and as a sometime professor.<br>He now contributes to Fox News, <i>Worth,</i> and others as he and Paige eagerly await their first child.<br>He can be reached at www.jimrogers.com.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>

Table of Contents

MAP	viii
PART ONE: 1999
1. A YELLOW MERCEDES	3	(15)
2. YOUNG TURKS	18	(14)
3. THE COMING CATASTROPHE OF CENTRAL ASIA	32	(20)
4. THE BEST CAPITALISTS ARE IN COMMUNIST CHINA	52	(27)
5. A NEW ASIAN CRISIS: A SHORTAGE OF GIRLS	79	(18)
6. DIGITAL MONGOLIA	97	(21)
7. THE WEDDING	118	(27)
PART TWO: 2000
8. INTO AFRICA	145	(22)
9. MY BROKER IN GHANA	167	(18)
10. WHIRLING DERVISHES	185	(25)
11. ARABIAN NIGHTS	210	(25)
PART THREE: 2001
12. SIXTY MILLION OF US WASH AWAY OUR SINS	235	(21)
13. THE ROAD FROM MANDALAY	256	(25)
14. PLAYING DETECTIVE IN LA PAZ	281	(18)
15. MY FATHER'S GRAVE	299	(21)
16. HOME AGAIN	320	(23)
APPENDIX	343	(6)
INDEX	349