Quote from Hurricane:
The question is simply will the USD fall against the CAD? The USD may weaken for all the reasons indicated but might still strengthen relative to the CAD. The Canadian economy is starting to slow down (due to the U.S. slow down) and further interest rates increases seem unlikely. I heard two firms make projections about the CAD over the past two weaks. One looked for a 2007 high of .89. The other looked for a 2007 low of .81 to .82. Both might be right but it still makes me think there's more downside than upside.
I suppose if I am going long I should look into some mechanism to hedge or profit from a USD/CAD relationship change. This is a bit of a new area for me. I don't currently play currency futures or currency forwards at all since my broker does not support it. So if I keep to my current broker I probably need to find a way to passively and indirectly hedge through the equity and bond markets some how. Perhaps buying options on a dollar index or something. I know Rydex has a currency fund that can be used to play on changes in dollar strength. For example: Rydex Dynamic Strengthening Dollar (RYSDX) or Rydex Dynamic Weakening Dollar (RYWDX) amplifies 200% an underlying dollar change. But I'd prefer to use an direct ETF currency index with an options chain if I knew of one. This way I could write an upper and lower credit spread using an Iron Condor to earn premium from slow non-trending movement and build up a profit reserve for future currency shock. It would be a lot of work to do collar or straddles/strangles on each of the equities and unfeasible for some since most trusts are not directly listed on our US exchanges except as pink sheet closing price mirrors.
Right now I am going to watch it for a quarter and see how things trend. Right now I think the currency relationship favors me since the dollar is low and I am paid high yield relative to CA dollars. If CA currency starts to trend down back to its more traditional ranges (e.g. about 30% discount to dollar) I'll start backing out. But I think that Canadian currency is destined to move toward par with US currency in the long run; either that or we eventually adapt a single "North American" trading currency.
TS