Thank you for downloading this program. In this edition of the bottom line, Evan Davis discusses the business of prediction.

Hello and welcome to the program. Now business is all about prediction. Firms have to make bets on what customers will buy before the customers commit. Investors have to spot trends in order to know where their money will make the best return.

Unfortunately, human beings struggle with prediction.

We find it hard enough to make sense of the past, let alone the future.

So today we'll find out more about the business of looking ahead.

We'll hear from three business guests who place huge bets on forecasts of long-term trends.

And let's take a few minutes initially to meet those three guests... who place huge bets on forecasts of long-term trends.

And let's take a few minutes initially to meet those three guests.

And first of all, Jim Rogers Investment Guru.

You chair your own company, Jim Rogers Holdings,

and have written legendary books,

most notably Investment Biker,

in which you wrote about riding around the world in the early 90s on Harley.

BMW.

BMW, I do apologize.

And your latest one is called Street Smarts.

Street Smarts, Adventures on the road and in the markets, brush to your nearest bookstore.

Now, what are you investing in at the moment?

Oh, my main investments at the moment are agriculture and currencies, U.S. dollars, in fact. To my astonishment, I'm optimistic about the U.S. dollar, which I've been terribly pessimistic about for years. Yeah, because you actually, you've up and left the U.S. You've settled in Singapore now. Yeah, we moved to Singapore six years ago, yes. I am still an American citizen, but we live in Singapore. What's made you turn around your view of the United States? Because you were the, yeah, you were kind of missed a down on the west, up on the east. I'm still down on the west. I'm still down in the U.S. is the largest detonation in the history of the world, Evan, in the history of the world. But we're about to have a lot more currency turmoil. The Japanese are printing money, the English are printing money, the Europeans are printing money. So in times of turmoil, rightly or wrongly, people go to the U.S. dollar. They think it's a safe haven. It is not a safe haven, but people are going to go there. So I went there too. Which brings me to another point I wanted to ask you about Jim, because you're somebody who looks at fundamentals when you invest.

You worked with George Soros. Does it ever amaze you how few people in finance invest that way?

They also call momentum investors. They're not

thinking about where the money should go. They're looking at charts and extrapolating lines or

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