26 AMERICANWAY
NOVEMBER 1 2007
M O N E Y M A T T E R S
PHOTOGRAPHBYPETERMuRPHY
You CAN sAY thIs
about Jim Rogers:
For a guy who’s made a career of traveling
throughwar zones, dodgingepidemics, and
even being taken hostage, he looks pretty
darngood.
And it doesn’t appear that this invest-
ing legend is slowing down at all. We’re at
Rogers’s mansion on the UpperWest Side
of Manhattan, and the 65-year-old is rid-
ing his stationary bike, answering e-mails,
taking phone calls, and looking after his
cute-as-a-button four-year-old daughter,
all at the same time. But if you’re someone
known not only for investing but also for
hopping around the world— his last trip,
in a souped-upMercedes-Benz, took three
yearsandcovered116countries— thiskind
of multitasking must seem like a walk in
thepark.
“I didn’t want to wake up at 75 and be
known only as a great investor,” says Rog-
ers, who cofounded the Quantum Fund
with famed billionaire George Soros and
subsequently retiredat the tenderageof37.
That is, ifbeing retiredmeans runningyour
own investment portfolio, speaking at con-
ferences around the world, and appearing
as amarket sage on CNBC and Fox News,
among other sidelines. “I always wanted to
doother thingsandhavemore thanone life.
And that’swhat I’vedone,” he says.
Nowonder Rogers has been dubbed the
Indiana Jones of finance. Combining a love
templeof
Wealth
Most investors are trapped
at computers and in cu-
bicles. But not JimRogers.
He’d rather travel the globe
for his inspiration— and
that pays. Here’swhat the
“Indiana Jones of finance”
foresees forworldmarkets.
ByChris Taylor
of adventurewith a keen sense of themar-
kets,he’s seenasoneof theworld’s foremost
commodities gurus—hewas talking about
the emergence ofAsia longbefore everyone
else jumpedon that bandwagon.
“Many people thought I was nuts for
wanting to travel the world,” says Rogers,
who admits that his current life is a long
way from the small town inAlabamawhere
he grew up. Back then, at age 16, he had a
girlfriendwhoboasted of having journeyed
all theway toBirminghamandMobile. “But
for me, I couldn’t imagine a better way to
spend your time than to see theworld from
thegroundup,” he says.
After graduating from Yale and Oxford
universities by the mid-1960s, Rogers be-
camean investing rock starat theQuantum
Fund, which racked up an envy-inducing
3,365 percent in its fir t 10 years. But it
was as an author that he earned evenwider
renown, with the books
Investment Biker
and
AdventureCapitalist
,whichchronicled
his around-the-world journeys in search
of new experiences. His colleagues hadn’t
seen anything like it in the buttoned-down
investment world. He ended up turning
“countless thousands of professional mon-
ey managers green with envy,” says James
Grant, a longtime friend and the editor of
the newsletter “Grant’s Interest Rate Ob-
server.” “Many have lived that life of foot-
looseadventure vicariously throughJim.”
Rogers’s
fi
rst big trip, in 1990, was on a
motorcycle and lasted 22months and cov-
ered52 countries. Along theway, he always
kept an eye out for new investments. After
witnessing
fi
rsthandhowwell runandpros-
