Monday, December 13, 2010

Jim Rogers Bets on China's Renminbi

Global currencies have come into the spotlight this year as struggling economies like the European Union and the U.S. have issued massive stimulus to jump-start growth. The result is that emerging-market currencies have popped as investors turned to the higher-yielding currencies leading to accusations that some countries are artificially depressing their money.
China also has come under significant fire by not letting its local currency, the renminbi, appreciate fast enough in value, meaning its goods are cheaper to buy in other countries which helps its export business. On the flip side, other countries have a harder time breaking into the wallets of the Chinese consumer because of the high import price.
Currency battles ignited even more as the European sovereign debt crisis and contagion fears spread throughout the EU. The euro plunged to levels not seen since the Lehman Brothers crisis and had many investors calling for parity with the dollar. The CurrencyShares Euro Trust(FXE) fund has fallen 8.5% year to date.
The U.S. dollar has been on shaky ground as well. PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish(UUP) is up 1% for the year while PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bearish(UDN) has lost 4%.
Although the dollar has gained as the euro suffered, expectations are that the Federal Reserve's $600 bond-buying program will lead to money printing and devaluation.
With sentiment negative on the euro and mixed on the U.S. dollar, I recently sat down with Rogers, a legendary contrarian investor, to see what currencies he would be buying and which ones he would be avoiding.
I want to get your take on what the fate of the euro will be in the next year .
Rogers: Next year? I'm not smart enough to know that; you should watch TheStreet.com ... I'm not very good at short-term trading or market timing. I own the euro; whether I own it another day or another year or another five years I don't know. I don't think it will be around in 10 years so I doubt if I'll own it then but I have to watch to see what happens.
So if you don't think it's going to be there in 10 years, why are you owning it now?
Because last summer everybody got extremely pessimistic and everybody was dumping the euro as fast as they could and in my experience when everybody's on one side of the boat you should go to the other side of the boat and so I stepped in and bought it and it went up.
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