Jim Rogers
Boards keep asking the same question and getting comfortable answers: where is the next decade of growth actually coming from, and which assumptions about America, China, and commodities will not survive it. Most of the analysis on offer comes from people who have never set foot in the markets they are forecasting. Capital allocators want a view that has been tested against the ground, not just the spreadsheet.
Jim Rogers is a global macro investor and author who helps institutions stress-test their assumptions about commodities, currencies, and the long-term shift of economic gravity toward Asia.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jim Rogers
- He co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973 and helped run one of the most successful early hedge funds in history, which gives institutional audiences a primary source on how a global macro book is actually built.
- He created the Rogers International Commodity Index, still used as a benchmark for broad commodity exposure, so his views on energy, agriculture, and metals carry a structural weight that pure commentators do not have.
- He has driven and ridden through more than 100 countries on documented multi-year journeys, including a Guinness-recognised car trip across six continents, which means his country views are informed by direct contact rather than desk research.
- He has been calling the shift of capital toward Asia since relocating to Singapore in 2007, and audiences get a long-running, internally consistent thesis rather than a quarter-by-quarter pivot.
- His books, from Investment Biker to Hot Commodities to Street Smarts, give boards and investment committees a pre-read that frames the conversation before he is even in the room.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros, 1973
- Creator of the Rogers International Commodity Index (RICI), 1998
- Former guest professor of finance, Columbia Business School
- Author of Investment Biker, Adventure Capitalist, Hot Commodities, A Bull in China, A Gift to My Children, and Street Smarts
- Guinness World Record holder for most countries visited in a continuous journey by car, with Paige Parker, 1999 to 2002
- Yale (BA, history, cum laude, 1964) and Balliol College, Oxford (BA, PPE, 1966); chairman of Beeland Interests; based in Singapore
Biography
The Quantum Fund returned roughly 4,200% in its first decade while the S&P moved about 47%. Jim Rogers co-founded that fund with George Soros in 1973, and the partnership remains one of the reference points for how a global macro book can compound when the manager is willing to look beyond the home market.
He retired from active fund management at 37 and turned to teaching, writing, and travelling. A guest professorship at Columbia Business School followed, alongside two long-form journeys: a motorcycle trip across six continents in the early 1990s, and a Guinness-recognised car trip with Paige Parker from 1999 to 2002 covering 111 countries and three territories. The travel is not decoration. It is how he tests his macro thesis against border posts, fuel stations, and local exchange rates.
In 1998 he built the Rogers International Commodity Index, a broad-basket benchmark still referenced by commodity-tracking products. The index is the structural expression of a view he has held for decades: that real assets, food, energy, metals, and the countries that produce them, are systematically underweight in most portfolios.
Since moving from New York to Singapore in 2007, his argument has sharpened around the eastward shift of capital and growth. His books, from Investment Biker to Hot Commodities and Street Smarts, set out the same case in detail. For an investment committee, a board, or a treasury team, the value is access to a thesis that has been held, traded, and revised over fifty years on three continents.
Key speaking topics
- Global macro investing
- Commodity cycles and the case for real assets
- Asia, China, and the eastward shift of capital
- Long-term economic and currency outlook
- Emerging and frontier markets
- Investing through political and policy risk
Ideal for
- Institutional investors, asset managers, family offices, and sovereign funds setting long-horizon allocation
- Banks, treasury teams, and CFO communities exposed to commodity, currency, and rate cycles
- Boards and executive committees of multinationals with significant Asia or emerging-market exposure
- Wealth management and private bank client events where the audience expects a contrarian macro voice
Audience outcomes
- A clear, fifty-year-tested thesis on how capital is shifting between West and East and what that means for portfolio construction
- A working framework for thinking about commodity cycles and where real assets sit in a long-only book
- Specific country and sector views on China, the broader Asia region, and frontier markets, drawn from direct travel and current allocation
- Sharper questions to bring back to investment committees and boards about consensus assumptions on the dollar, US equities, and global growth
- A reading list, anchored on Hot Commodities, Investment Biker, and Street Smarts, that lets attendees keep working with the argument afterwards