One of my best mates in the City ( present company excluded) is Chris Turner (ex-Equity & Law, ex-Morgan Grenfell, ex-Deutsche, ex- Morley and as of a month or so ago ex-Citigroup Alternative Investments).
Chris's background is that at University he studied Maths. While I, as I will bore you to death re-ieterating studied History.
I have relatively recently been taking a belated interested in Maths. Chris has taken an interest in History. As a typical 'ex-client' I called him up to talk about maths, and he ignored my questions and steered it on to History!
He said, 'Yes, I've been looking at history more and more recently. I was talking to a friend recently who studied history and it was really interesting. He said that all that stuff about the American Civil War being about Slavery is rubbish. It was all about Tariffs. The Northern Businessmen wanted to stuff the South with tariffs. It wasn't about Slavery at all.'
Chris would, rightly, pull me up if I said something stupid about Maths. And I had to pull him up on this point about history.
The fact is that during the American Civil War, several million men-and women, of course- rose up and went to war with several million others. 'Causation' is a serious subject that you study as a historian. And it is frankly rubbish to say that there was 'one cause' that caused the American Civil War. Every one of them had their own motives. If we cannot talk of several million different motives, it is at least clearly a misrepresentation to talk about ONE single motive driving all of them. For some 'Slavery' was an issue, for others it might have been something much pettier-maybe loyalty to or rivalry with a brother, after all this was a war in which often 'brother fought brother', quite literally.
All of which is a fairly long winded preamble to saying that no-one can have a monopoly on the truth, or anyone's single perspective capture the whole 'beast'.
But given all those caveats, there is one thing which I am going to put pretty fairly and squarely at the start of this blog:
I f there is one person's opinion that I value and put above most others, it is that of Jim Rogers.
In terms of many years of 'truth-seeking' and trying to sort the 'wheat from the chaff', this guy comes out head and shoulders above many, many market commentors in providing a clear 'road-map' for investment and a clear-sighted view at least 5 years ahead of the pack.
So fairly unashamedly I recommend following what this guy says, and reading, and re-reading, what he has wriitten and says.
Alabama-born, a 'History Major' at Yale, Rhodes Scholar in PPE at Oxford, Co-Founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros, Associate Prof at Colombia School and veteran of two epic 'round the world' trips, you just don't find many more informed and thoughtful guys than this.
Full CV is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Rogers
Unofficial Blog is at:
http://jimrogers-investments.blogspot.com/
The closest to an official blog (mainly useful for up-and-coming speeches are here:
http://www.jimrogers.com/
In the jabba-jabba, hurley-burley and financial markets, it is often hard to focus. But if I get time to do so, I follow, read and re-read this guy.
And recommend him unashamably. Not a saint or infallible, and certainly not beyond 'talking his own book', but as humans go, in the investment world -as good as it gets
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