Jim Rogers is buying Chinese shares

Investor Jim Rogers is buying Chinese shares as the market has bottomed, and he’s focusing on agriculture, tourism, airlines and education.

“All my new money goes to commodities and China,” said Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum fund with George Soros in the 1970s.

“All the panic looks like a bottom,” he said on Saturday. “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.”

China’s CSI 300 Index plunged as much as 39 percent this year, becoming at one point the world’s second-worst performer, amid speculation government steps to quell inflation would hurt corporate profits.

To support the market, the Chinese government reduced the tax on stock trading on April 24 and Chinese stocks jumped 9.3 percent that day, the most since Oct. 23, 2001.

Some remain unconvinced the measures will have an effect with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse last week saying China’s shares are a “sell.”

“Given earnings deceleration, we do not think such a rally can last,” Morgan Stanley’s Jerry Lou (婁剛) and Allen Gui wrote in a report on Friday. “The government’s cut of the stamp duty seems to suggest that it is running out of silver bullets.”

Chinese Hong Kong-listed ‘H shares’ are more attractive than yuan-denominated ‘A shares,’ Credit Suisse’s Vincent Chan (陳昌華) wrote in a separate note.