Jim Rogers: short the U.S. now

Now that the Jackson Hole hoopla is behind us, traders can exhale and move on to the next order of business, which, incidentally, isn’t all that different from the previous order of business: Fretting about interest rates.

Or, specifically, as Jeff Miller of the Dash of Insight blog asks in his weekly preview: Will the Fed get the signal to hike rates? The answer, he says, lies in the next crop of economic data, which will certainly get “special scrutiny” this week.

Of course, extra special scrutiny will be reserved for the end of the week, when we get the August employment number. Until then, there’s more than a few notable reports to keep us occupied (more on that in the “The economy” section).

And so we enter another stretch with the market precariously perched near record highs. Despite these lofty levels, there are plenty of bullish analysts out there optimistic about the coming sessions. One of them is Jeffrey Saut of Raymond James. He puts the worst-case scenario for the market at a 5% drop over the next month. What’s more, “if we don’t follow through on the downside with vigor, the S&P 500 could test new highs,” he said.

Don’t count famed investor Jim Rogers among the rose-colored-glasses set. While he had some bullish things to say about Russia and North Korea, of all places, he isn’t giving the U.S. and Europe much love in our call of the day (see below) He’s all about the shocks that are headed our way.

Jim Rogers recently shared a wide range of his views on the global investing landscape with Real Vision, and he definitely appears comfortable in the company of the doom-and-gloom bunch. Zero Hedge nicely summed up the lengthy interview, in which Rogers points to Europe, the U.K and the U.S. as markets ripe for a hit. “You should be short the U.S.,” he said. “That’s the market that’s still the highest. It hasn’t gone down yet.”

But don’t bother shorting Japan, it’s already down 75%. Same with Russia. “Who wants to short Russia? I’m long Russia,” Rogers said. “I mean, where are you going to short? Everything’s collapsed.” He even had some positive things to say about North Korea, claiming “we’d all be rich someday” if we loaded up on that country’s currency.

Rogers says he is also optimistic about China, which he described in the promo video below as “the most important country in the 21st Century.” Still, he warned that there will be some wrenching developments along the way. The kicker: “The next time the world comes to an end, it’s going to be a bigger shock than we expect.”