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Grade 'Eh' Bacon
Grade 'Eh' Bacon
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Consider that currency fluctuation in your own country is already partially hedged by the fact that you buy goods in your home currency. ie: If the Euro drops in value relative to the USD, that will greatly impact your ability to buy American goods, but will have less of an impact on your ability to buy European goods.

So by putting your money in an offshore currency, in my opinion you have added risk to your finances, not reduced it. If a weakening of your home currency relative to the USD correlates very highly with local inflation in your country, then this currency risk may partially offset your inherent inflation risk (thus, hedging it, as you said). However, this is not something you can simply assume to be true.

For a real-world example:

On Dec 31, 2012, 1 USD was worth about 1 CAD. On Dec 31, 2015, 1 USD was worth about 1.40 CAD. That's a 40% weakening of the CAD relative to the USD, over a time span of 3 years.

Over the same time period, according to http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/econ46a-eng.htm, Canada's Consumer Price Index (measuring the cost in Canadian dollars to buy a similar basket of goods to what could have been bought in 2002) moved from about 122 to about 127. That's about a 5% weakening of the CAD, in real local purchasing power.

If someone in 20022012 had sold some CAD to purchase USD, by 2015 they would have gained 40% in CAD value (ignoring investment returns, which could have been earned whether the money was in CAD or USD). That lossincrease in CAD value per USD is not greatly correlated with the lossdecrease in value of theirlocal CAD purchasing power, of 4%. If this were a well-correlated relationship, we could expect inflation in Canada over that period to hit about 40% (offsetting the increase in value of USD over that period.

How this applies to you

As @Keshlam notes in your comment, what you have done here is an investment (and potentially a very risky one) - it is not something you can just assume is a hedge. If it was a proper hedge, the strengthening of your home currency (and thus, weakening of your USD investments) would have been offset somewhat by deflation in your home currency. That is, maybe you bought $1 USD for every 10 units of your home currency ("HC"), and now if you sold $1 USD, you would only get 8 HC: if this were a hedge, 8 HC would today buy you about as much as 10 HC when you made originally bought the USD. I very much doubt this is the case, and it highlights that your investment is adding risk to your portfolio, not necessarily reducing it.

What you should do

This is something only you can decide. However if your goal is to create a low-risk portfolio, this appears to be a poor way to do it.

It is tempting to think ("I bought high, so I can't sell low - I need to at least wait until it reaches my original cost") but this is not very logical thinking. What the price was, doesn't tell you where the price will be. This applies to any investment - you think you're in a trough, so you should wait for a peak, but your trough could continue to bottom out, without every climbing back. Don't let regret over past performance blind you to what you plan on doing for the future.

Consider that currency fluctuation in your own country is already partially hedged by the fact that you buy goods in your home currency. ie: If the Euro drops in value relative to the USD, that will greatly impact your ability to buy American goods, but will have less of an impact on your ability to buy European goods.

So by putting your money in an offshore currency, in my opinion you have added risk to your finances, not reduced. If a weakening of your home currency relative to the USD correlates very highly with local inflation in your country, then this currency risk may partially offset your inherent inflation risk (thus, hedging it, as you said). However, this is not something you can simply assume to be true.

For a real-world example:

On Dec 31, 2012, 1 USD was worth about 1 CAD. On Dec 31, 2015, 1 USD was worth about 1.40 CAD. That's a 40% weakening of the CAD relative to the USD, over a time span of 3 years.

Over the same time period, according to http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/econ46a-eng.htm, Canada's Consumer Price Index (measuring the cost in Canadian dollars to buy a similar basket of goods to what could have been bought in 2002) moved from about 122 to about 127. That's about a 5% weakening of the CAD, in real local purchasing power.

If someone in 2002 had sold some CAD to purchase USD, they would have gained 40% in value (ignoring investment returns, which could have been earned whether the money was in CAD or USD). That loss in value is not greatly correlated with the loss in value of their CAD, of 4%. If this were a well-correlated relationship, we could expect inflation in Canada over that period to hit about 40% (offsetting the increase in value of USD over that period.

How this applies to you

As @Keshlam notes in your comment, what you have done here is an investment (and potentially a very risky one) - it is not something you can just assume is a hedge. If it was a proper hedge, the strengthening of your home currency (and thus, weakening of your USD investments) would have been offset somewhat by deflation in your home currency. That is, maybe you bought $1 USD for every 10 units of your home currency ("HC"), and now if you sold $1 USD, you would only get 8 HC: if this were a hedge, 8 HC would today buy you about as much as 10 HC when you made originally bought the USD. I very much doubt this is the case, and it highlights that your investment is adding risk to your portfolio, not necessarily reducing it.

What you should do

This is something only you can decide. However if your goal is to create a low-risk portfolio, this appears to be a poor way to do it.

It is tempting to think ("I bought high, so I can't sell low - I need to at least wait until it reaches my original cost") but this is not very logical thinking. What the price was, doesn't tell you where the price will be. This applies to any investment - you think you're in a trough, so you should wait for a peak, but your trough could continue to bottom out, without every climbing back. Don't let regret over past performance blind you to what you plan on doing for the future.

Consider that currency fluctuation in your own country is already partially hedged by the fact that you buy goods in your home currency. ie: If the Euro drops in value relative to the USD, that will greatly impact your ability to buy American goods, but will have less of an impact on your ability to buy European goods.

So by putting your money in an offshore currency, in my opinion you have added risk to your finances, not reduced it. If a weakening of your home currency relative to the USD correlates very highly with local inflation in your country, then this currency risk may partially offset your inherent inflation risk (thus, hedging it, as you said). However, this is not something you can simply assume to be true.

For a real-world example:

On Dec 31, 2012, 1 USD was worth about 1 CAD. On Dec 31, 2015, 1 USD was worth about 1.40 CAD. That's a 40% weakening of the CAD relative to the USD, over a time span of 3 years.

Over the same time period, according to http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/econ46a-eng.htm, Canada's Consumer Price Index (measuring the cost in Canadian dollars to buy a similar basket of goods to what could have been bought in 2002) moved from about 122 to about 127. That's about a 5% weakening of the CAD, in real local purchasing power.

If someone in 2012 had sold some CAD to purchase USD, by 2015 they would have gained 40% in CAD value (ignoring investment returns, which could have been earned whether the money was in CAD or USD). That increase in CAD value per USD is not greatly correlated with the decrease in local CAD purchasing power, of 4%. If this were a well-correlated relationship, we could expect inflation in Canada over that period to hit about 40% (offsetting the increase in value of USD over that period.

How this applies to you

As @Keshlam notes in your comment, what you have done here is an investment (and potentially a very risky one) - it is not something you can just assume is a hedge. If it was a proper hedge, the strengthening of your home currency (and thus, weakening of your USD investments) would have been offset somewhat by deflation in your home currency. That is, maybe you bought $1 USD for every 10 units of your home currency ("HC"), and now if you sold $1 USD, you would only get 8 HC: if this were a hedge, 8 HC would today buy you about as much as 10 HC when you made originally bought the USD. I very much doubt this is the case, and it highlights that your investment is adding risk to your portfolio, not necessarily reducing it.

What you should do

This is something only you can decide. However if your goal is to create a low-risk portfolio, this appears to be a poor way to do it.

It is tempting to think ("I bought high, so I can't sell low - I need to at least wait until it reaches my original cost") but this is not very logical thinking. What the price was, doesn't tell you where the price will be. This applies to any investment - you think you're in a trough, so you should wait for a peak, but your trough could continue to bottom out, without every climbing back. Don't let regret over past performance blind you to what you plan on doing for the future.

Source Link
Grade 'Eh' Bacon
Grade 'Eh' Bacon
  • 43k
  • 11
  • 110
  • 164

Consider that currency fluctuation in your own country is already partially hedged by the fact that you buy goods in your home currency. ie: If the Euro drops in value relative to the USD, that will greatly impact your ability to buy American goods, but will have less of an impact on your ability to buy European goods.

So by putting your money in an offshore currency, in my opinion you have added risk to your finances, not reduced. If a weakening of your home currency relative to the USD correlates very highly with local inflation in your country, then this currency risk may partially offset your inherent inflation risk (thus, hedging it, as you said). However, this is not something you can simply assume to be true.

For a real-world example:

On Dec 31, 2012, 1 USD was worth about 1 CAD. On Dec 31, 2015, 1 USD was worth about 1.40 CAD. That's a 40% weakening of the CAD relative to the USD, over a time span of 3 years.

Over the same time period, according to http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/econ46a-eng.htm, Canada's Consumer Price Index (measuring the cost in Canadian dollars to buy a similar basket of goods to what could have been bought in 2002) moved from about 122 to about 127. That's about a 5% weakening of the CAD, in real local purchasing power.

If someone in 2002 had sold some CAD to purchase USD, they would have gained 40% in value (ignoring investment returns, which could have been earned whether the money was in CAD or USD). That loss in value is not greatly correlated with the loss in value of their CAD, of 4%. If this were a well-correlated relationship, we could expect inflation in Canada over that period to hit about 40% (offsetting the increase in value of USD over that period.

How this applies to you

As @Keshlam notes in your comment, what you have done here is an investment (and potentially a very risky one) - it is not something you can just assume is a hedge. If it was a proper hedge, the strengthening of your home currency (and thus, weakening of your USD investments) would have been offset somewhat by deflation in your home currency. That is, maybe you bought $1 USD for every 10 units of your home currency ("HC"), and now if you sold $1 USD, you would only get 8 HC: if this were a hedge, 8 HC would today buy you about as much as 10 HC when you made originally bought the USD. I very much doubt this is the case, and it highlights that your investment is adding risk to your portfolio, not necessarily reducing it.

What you should do

This is something only you can decide. However if your goal is to create a low-risk portfolio, this appears to be a poor way to do it.

It is tempting to think ("I bought high, so I can't sell low - I need to at least wait until it reaches my original cost") but this is not very logical thinking. What the price was, doesn't tell you where the price will be. This applies to any investment - you think you're in a trough, so you should wait for a peak, but your trough could continue to bottom out, without every climbing back. Don't let regret over past performance blind you to what you plan on doing for the future.