No. of Recommendations: 13
Just an observation that when you measure something, the choice of yardstick matters.
Berkshire's price is up 4.2% since January 21, a rather arbitrarily selected Monday picked from a graph.
But that's the price measured in US dollars. The US dollar on a trade weighted basis is down -10.49% in the same stretch.
So, in terms of purchasing power, a share of Berkshire is worth 6.75% *less* than it was then. You couldn't buy nearly as much global "stuff" now.
i.e., a person would have done better with Euro notes stuffed in a mattress (or on average any currency) than Berkshire shares, no matter where they lived.
Trade weighted dollar index is a peculiar thing to visualize, but the US dollar has dropped in value by
-3.9% versus the Australian dollar
-9.7% against British Sterling
-4.5% against the Canadian dollar
-9.5% against the Euro
-7.5% against the Japanese yen
-10.2% against the Swiss franc
The US dollar is actually still quite high if you look at a longer time frame. There are several reasons to suppose that there may be more room to move lower.
* Tariffs generally depress the currency of a country imposing them
* Less obviously, import tariffs generally depress exports of the country imposing them, which depresses the currency
* There is no current prospect for a reduction in the US budget deficit, so continual capital account surpluses are required to keep the currency stable, yet...
* there is a modest shift in global investment flows away from US-domiciled securities underway--small in percentage, but not a short term tactical move.
Take all that reasoning with a bucket of salt. Currencies make stock price prediction look simple and obvious.
Jim
