Jim Rogers says may short U.S. Treasuries, later today

Jim Rogers, the veteran investor and commodity bull, plans to short U.S. Treasuries, maybe today if he "gets around to it" and wants to buy more silver, he told Reuters in an interview.

Rogers, who rose to prominence as co-founder of the former Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros four decades ago, said he expects bond prices to fall and the U.S. dollar to rally when the Federal Reserve halts its government bond buying program at the end of June.

"I'm not short bonds yet but I plan to short bonds -- maybe this afternoon if I get around to it," Rogers told Reuters Insider television on Tuesday.

To see the Reuters Insider interview, click here:link.reuters.com/baw49r

The Fed in November launched a second round of purchases of long-term securities, which investors and traders refer to as QE II, pumping $600 billion into the financial system.

Rogers added a cautionary note on bonds, however.

"The problem is that polls show 95 percent of investors are bearish on bonds. One reason that I'm not short on bonds yet is that there are too many bears," he said.

The long-time commodities investor said he was unruffled by last week's commodities rout that knocked 13 percent off oil prices. Silver also fell 25 percent in its biggest correction since prices collapsed in 1980, hit by a succession of margin increases that nearly doubled trading costs. Silver had risen 27 percent in April.

Now he sees a buying opportunity.

"It's not the end of the silver market," he said. "I want to buy more silver."

The price of increasingly scarce commodities like oil and precious metals will be rising for a number of years, Rogers said, regardless of impressive market corrections.

"We are in a bull market that has several years to go. I don't know when it is going to end," Rogers said. "We have virtually no new supply of anything. The world's known reserves of oil continue to decline."

He described the commodity crash as "nothing unusual".

"Corrections happen all the time in markets," he said.

Despite his insistence that he's the worst market timer out there, before last week's plunge Rogers had expressed concern a sudden rise in silver prices could lead to a correction.

But now that silver has fallen back, he is optimistic.