The idea here is that while spending stocks like RV builders, boat retailers, and automakers struggle, companies involved in the basics will continue to do well… These companies sell things folks “have to have” rather than “want to have.”

The new highs in coal, natural gas, oil services, and agriculture companies show this trend at work. These are all basic industries that help produce food, fuel, and electricity. All are soaring right now. Also soaring is Wal-Mart – the ultimate destination for buying things we “have to have.”

Wal-Mart doesn’t sell $25,000 motorcycles or mega motor homes. Just the cheapest, most basic stuff in America. Sales are robust, and shares have gained 30% this year. As today’s chart shows, it’s a bull market in the basics.

Source: Another New High for the Ultimate Basics Stock

Here’s the thing… Jim Rogers has a gift for exploiting sleepy markets no one else has thought of. He’s made money in Ghana, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

He put money into Uruguay before people “even bothered with shares,” Bolivia when the stock market was less than two years old, and Peru while it was still in a civil war.

And in Austria, Rogers made one of his biggest coups of all. In 1984, he noticed Germany was becoming an industrial powerhouse and was dumping its socialist politics. Austria is next to Germany. Rogers figured the Austrian stock market was ready for a boom…

He called a manager at Creditanstalt – Austria’s largest bank – and asked him how to invest in Austria’s stock market. The bank manager told Rogers Austria didn’t have a stock market. Austria’s market was so obscure, the manager of the country’s largest bank didn’t know about it. His ignorance was a buy signal for Rogers, who made 500% gains in three years.

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“You have not really been to a country,” he says, “until you have had to cross the border physically, had to find your own fuel, a place to sleep, until you have experienced it close to the ground. My success in the market has been predicated from seeing the world from a different perspective.”

Rogers thinks China will become the world’s next superpower. Last year, he sold his house in New York and moved his family to Singapore. He wanted to move to China, but said the pollution was too bad there. He’s using Singapore as his Asian base instead. “It’s like moving to New York in 1907 or London in 1807,” he says.

Rogers thinks the Chinese are the most capitalist people on earth. They save almost 35% of their income and don’t worry about how many vacation days they might get. Instead, they worry about how many days they are allowed to work.

“I recommend you all start to learn Mandarin,” he always tells audiences at investment conferences. “And tell your children and grandchildren to do the same.” Jim’s daughter has a Chinese nanny, who speaks only Mandarin.

In 2006 and 2007, Chinese stocks rose 500%. It was one of the most memorable bull markets in history. Newspapers published stories every day of Chinese taxi drivers and hairdressers making fortunes in the stock market. We read about queues of people waiting to open brokerage accounts.

Then the market collapsed…

Now I’m starting to get excited about China. I’ve been researching Chinese stocks that trade on North American exchanges. I call these “Chimerica” stocks.

I found some interesting agriculture companies. They do all their business in China, but they report in English and conform to U.S. regulations. These stocks have better valuations than Shanghai-traded stocks because so few people know about them. They even have better valuations than most of their American and Canadian peers.

Yesterday the papers announced Jim Rogers is buying China again. “All the panic looks like a bottom,” he told an audience at a conference in Beijing. “I have bought in the last four to five weeks. I’ve been buying shares in China for the first time in a long time.”

Jim Rogers is rarely wrong about these trends. We need to get our money into China soon. I’m going to wait for the Shanghai Composite to form an uptrend before I invest… It’ll improve my odds of making a profit. In the meantime, I’m going to keep researching Chimerica stocks, and I suggest you do the same.

Good investing,

Tom