George Soros
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Jim Rogers Says New Greece Deal Can't Save Europe
Investing legend Jim Rogers said that although the latest Eurozone deal for Greece is more generous than he expected, it's not enough to solve Europe's problems.
"Politicians have delayed addressing the problem yet again," Rogers told Investment Week. "It will come back in a few weeks or a few months and the world will still have the same problem, but this time only worse because the European Central Bank and other countries will be deeper in debt."
The deal European leaders hammered out on Thursday includes boosting the region's rescue fund to $1.4 trillion (1 trillion euros) and asking bondholders to take a voluntary 50% haircut on Greek debt.
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A Potential "Big Trade" That Will Put George Soros to Shame
Many investors dream of making the "big trade."
Spurred on by stories of fabled investors who accumulated generations of wealth with just one big trade, they talk incessantly about what they could or should have done.
But actually doing something about it pays better.
Consider George Soros, who reportedly made $1.1 billion in a single trade against the Bank of England by shorting the British pound on September 16, 1992. Or Jessie Livermore, who reportedly made $100 million on October 24, 1929 - Black Thursday. Or how about Jay Gould, who tried to corner the gold market on September 24, 1869. Nobody knows exactly how much Gould made but he left his children $77 million when he died in 1892.
Well, if you have the guts, now is the time to make your move, because I think the next "big short" is already out there. In fact, judging from open interest I'm seeing on gold puts and VIX puts, I'd bet on it.
Right now there are literally tens of thousands of contracts open on both at various strike prices, so the odds are good that somebody - perhaps a group, a hedge fund, or another big money player - is placing highly leveraged bets that things will reverse.
With the proper structure, these trades could dwarf the bets made by Soros, Livermore, and Gould.
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Money Morning Mailbag: Market Volatility, BP's Blow Out, and Obama's Agenda
As the first full week of September ends and the summer draws to a close, many investors are still looking for answers to questions first asked back in May, notably:
- What's behind the recent market volatility?
- Can we put BP behind us?
- And what effect will President Obama's political agenda have on investments?
BP may be the next shoe to drop if that blowout preventer proves to be functional.
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George Soros: "We Have Just Entered Act II" of the Global Financial Crisis
George Soros gained global recognition when he co-founded the Quantum Fund with Jim Rogers in 1970. That fund generated an average annual return of more than 30% while he was at the helm.
Soros hasn't quit making timely market calls since: From his $10 billion bet against the British pound sterling in 1992 to his April 2008 prediction that we had not "seen the full effect" of the recession and that the situation was "more serious than the authorities admit or recognize."
In February, Soros called the euro's viability into question, and the currency has plunged some 10% since that time.
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Know When to Fold'em: When Is the Right Time to Sell a Stock?
There's one word in every stock market movie ever made that's never uttered in a normal tone of voice. Never merely said, but rather shouted.
That word is SELL!
Indeed, no other word in the financial lexicon is so often associated with market uncertainty, investor fear, or in the worst case, outright panic . Truthfully, I can't recall a single film in which the protagonist calmly decides to sell based on reasoned analysis.
Of course, that's the case in movies because it makes for stronger plots - ones propelled by high drama and intense emotions. But all too often, it's much the same in real life.
And it shouldn't be.
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Playing 'Follow the Guru' Can Be Fun – and Profitable – for Investors
If you wanted to distill all the world's best investment advice into a single sentence, it would probably come down to this: Follow the leader.
- Just do what Warren Buffett does.
- Or what George Soros does.
- Or what Peter Lynch does (or did).
We've whittled the investing wisdom of these three stalwarts - and others - into 15 rules to live by. We offered the first five rules in Part I of this story, which appeared yesterday (Wednesday). Here in today's second installment, we offer the final 10 rules.
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Playing 'Follow the Guru' Can Be Fun – and Profitable
If you wanted to distill all the world's best investment advice down into a single sentence, the result would actually be fairly simple:
- Just do what Warren Buffett does.
- Or what George Soros does.
- Or what Peter Lynch does (or did).
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Plummeting British Pound Leads to Worries of Another Currency Market "Black Wednesday"
Outside of the earthquake rescue efforts in Chile and the Greek-rescue efforts in Brussels, the big news in the world economy last week occurred in currencies.
As you can see in the chart below, the plummeting British pound sterling has dropped even more than the beleaguered euro in the past month and a half, while the good old U.S. dollar has been as good as gold. (That last bit was a bit of currency irony; the dollar has actually been much better than gold, which has flat-lined in the past six weeks.)
