Earlier this week, Wall Street fiddled while the city was burning. Well, not so much the city as the specie that makes it possible -- the almighty buck. After this week's 0.5% rate cut by the Federal Reserve, stocks shot up across the board. Politicians like Ben Bernanke and George Bush have been jawboning the housing market issues, but it took a couple of days for the fallout to begin landing and lighting up the landscape.
We're seeing the results now. The dollar hit an all-time low of $1.40 per euro today, and for the first time in about a billion years, it's at parity with the Canadian Loonie. This is, of course, a direct result of the Fed's recent return to a loose money policy, as well as years of fiscal profligacy by our free-spending Congress and president.
I think it could be a long while before the buck stops sliding or stages a recovery. The Street needs its Fed fix, and with election season upon us, the politicians are going to keep on doling out that greenback-sweetened vote sauce.
My advice? Move more money into companies that do their business overseas and do that business in foreign currencies -- euro, yen, pesos, rupis, magic beans -- so long as that company doesn't depend entirely on exports to the U.S.
For my part, that means buys of Gigamedia (NYSE:GIGM), south-of-the-border beverage companies such as Coca-Cola Andina (NYSE:AKO-A), strong Asian industrials like Tata Motors (NYSE:TTM), or staple commodity sellers like PetroChina (NYSE:PTR). U.S. companies that are growing overseas revenues at a good clip, such as Guess? (NYSE:GES) and Fossil (NYSE:FOSL), are also good ideas.
