Quote from Sikhinvestor:
I think your making a foolhardy play, here's the best example I can give you.
What Canada has going for them?
-Loved by every country in the world, Americans put Canadian flags on their backpacks in Europe
-Commodity based market, OIL, Gold, Copper, were providing the next superpowers with the keys to building their infrastructure
-A Healthy economy, where surpluses are produced every year and the deficit is going down.
What does America have for them?
-Social Networking
Honestly, I dont see anything that America has going for them, how about some of these factors?
-The worlds debtor nation
-The Americans no longer produce the worlds major and key ideas
-The NYSE's major winners the past 5 years have been adrs
-A war that will never go away
-No oil.
Canadian dollar value has everything to do with oil price. Oil export price dictates the value of CAD GDP and economic success. The fundamentals you mention have really much less to do with money flow. As evidenced during last year's oil selloff, CAD plunged to .82 despite the great fundamentals you mention.
Don't get me started on the accelerating pollution levels in Canada due to the inefficient and very difficult to scale oil sands business. 2.6 mil barrels/day of crude production (total) contributes alone 1B annually to Canadian GDP (on production/revenues received) for each dollar crude goes up. Similarly, a cut of 1B to GDP for a drop. Just by a quick view there, crude price entirely dictates whether Canada is a state of trade surplus of deficit.
A correction in oil and decreased American exports [which will result from less attractive pricing by Canada due to currency valuation] will pressure the surplus quickly.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/ca.html
All growth in Canadian oil production is entirely dependent on increased natural gas well production, as oil sands depend on natural gas to boil water/steam to make the oil products. Additionally, models to Canadian oil sand profitability depend upon natural gas price staying where it is. As it is now, 1 barrel of crude contains the energy of 6MCF of natural gas. However, the price is ratio is nearly double. In otherwords, natural gas is priced twice as cheap as crude oil for energy content.
Basically this means what has shown to be historically nonscalable natural gas production realized at current price discounts (half off) is necessary to support the key grower of Canada's GDP. Would you bet the future of your country on that?
IF crude doesn't collapse, natural gas price WILL come to parity with crude on demand from ramped up oil production and a general trend of energy users (ie autos) starting to find natty more attractive. You'll start to see more natural gas cars -and- pressurized natural gas fueling stations pop up quickly. Give it 9 months, as a season of retail gasoline at $4.00-$5.00 in the US [which will happen if crude doesn't collapse] will quickly stimulate change.
http://www.capp.ca/raw.asp?x=1&e=PDF&dt=NTV&dn=123361
http://www.capp.ca/default.asp?V_DOC_ID=689
Two other interesting points (long and short term): Copper demand and price coming down is an interesting possible canary in the mine, further illustrating that perhaps we are peaking here (in the short term) in the China boom. That has everything to do with real long term oil demand. Second, a friend did an analysis of both CAD and crude, and showed in the last 30 years or so, they have never (or rarely) been this far from the 200dma. In past instances of lesser runoffs in price, there was usually a several week quick reversion that occured.
Having a strong currency is not easy on their exports either, as the US is their largest trade partner. Realize this.
Wearing flags on backpacks is no way to value a currency.