By MoneyMorning.com.au
Billionaire US investor Jim Rogers is bullish on China.
We can safely say regular Money Morning editor Kris Sayce is not. That might be putting it the wrong away. It would be like saying Man vs. Wild star Bear Grylls tries an adventurous meal every now and again: it understates the case.
Kris was making his speech for ‘After America’. We were half way through the first full day of the conference. There was no slowing down. Kris said China is an ‘entrepreneurial desert’ whose economy is based on ‘the lowest common denominator: cheap labour’.
The top brass in government spend money to build pointless stadiums and buildings. The idea that the West was ‘exporting’ capitalism to China was a joke. Most of the Western world is as socialist as the comrades in Beijing, anyway.
But it doesn’t mean you can’t make a buck investing. There is always an opportunity when people are free to create wealth. Natural gas is a key sector to investigate in 2012. It’s not without risk. But speculation could have a place in your investment strategy.
Balancing and allocating your portfolio, he added, is not as complex as the marketing industry – sorry, the finance industry – would have you believe. You can do most of it yourself (and save the fees) through a handful of carefully selected investments.
After lunch, Murray Dawes broke down charts, such as BHP and oil, in detail. Every investor could benefit from listening to the Slipstream Trader. Actually, we should say from watching. Murray is a trader. Charts are important. If you’re considering ordering the audio or DVD of the After America conference and you’re interested in Murray’s work, we humbly suggest you choose the visual option.
Murray didn’t let us forget price action is always a map of human psychology. And we must always remember that our own mind and emotions can be our biggest enemy. We’re all a mixture of biases and assumptions. Not to mention ego – the biggest trap of all. We need to manage risk, but get exposure to large upside potentials. It’s a balancing act.
Nick Hubble knows about those. At one point he had four juggling balls in the air. He also got the delegates on their feet. He had a powerful strategy for buying shares at a discount with a view for income in a world of low-growth capital gains.
Six of the presenters were on a panel. People were free to ask what they liked. The discussion came to how the cost of credit had been held artificially low and the resulting crisis. The conclusion: If you give everyone free drinks people are going to get drunk.
Dylan Grice suggested popular anger directed against banks should be directed to those who (mis)priced credit in the first place – central bankers. And the system that put them in that position of power. Sadly, the guys who took us here are still in control.
But it doesn’t mean we are powerless. We can control our own investment strategy if we are mindful of the wider context. The first rule of a bear market is not to lose money.
As we got ready to wrap up, there was a surprise announcement. Professor Steve Keen had decided to do an unscheduled speech to open the following day …things are going to get even more interesting! Stay tuned.
Callum Newman
Roving Reporter, ‘After America’