'Commodities set for bull run'

Gold may breach $900/oz; crude oil may touch $150: Jim Rogers.

Teach your children Chinese... the biggest boom over the next two decades is going to be in Asia led by China," said Jim Rogers, commodities guru and Guinness record-holder for his epic round-the-world trip, at a meeting organised by Anand Rathi, a private brokerage, for its investors today.

Rogers, who quit his fund manager's job at Quantum at the age of 37, warned investors against betting on dollar denominated assets and said he was bullish on the commodities market.

"I have hired a Chinese maid for my two-and-a-half year old daughter whose only job is to talk to her in Chinese...my daughter has an account in a Swiss bank," he said, opening his attack on the US government's economic policies.

Rogers, famous for generating 4,200 per cent returns in 10 years on the fund under his management, said he was against further investments in "western" stock markets and favoured commodities as an investment option.

"The (US) central bank likes to make its printing press work as fast as possible, but that is clearly not a sustainable proposition.... Stocks in the West are very expensive while on the contrary, commodities are at a stage where people do not understand them as an investment option.

"Currently, the world commodity market is poised the way the US equity markets were poised in the early '80s, (on the verge of a boom.) History tells us that bull markets run for an average of 23 years," he pointed out. "So the commodities markets have one more decade of bull run," he added.

He said due to low commodity prices in the last 25 years, companies had not made capital investments to increase production, creating conditions ripe for sustained high prices in the future.

"For instance, only one new lead mine has come up in the last 25 years and only one oil-field in the last 35.... Countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, those in Europe and China, which were exporters until a few years ago, are likely to turn importers within the decade," he pointed out.

Rogers advised investors to concentrate on agriculture commodities, which he said, were undervalued compared with metals and oil.

"All agriculture commodities are where people should be looking for opportunities right now while most metals and energy have gone to near all-time highs, and most agriculture products are far below their all-time highs. International sugar is 80 per cent below its all-time high and one should look at cotton, soya-beans, maize, coffee and perhaps tea," he advised.

He also said gold was likely to continue its bull run and breach the $900-an-ounce mark and that one should not be surprised to see oil breaching the $150 mark in the next few years.