Exchange rate US/Aus may improve next year!

[Rodstar]

I have been quietly ferreting away some pennies with a view to purchasing a T5 31mm Nagler....and then the bottom fell out of the Aussie dollar - from almost parity in September, down to 63 US cents in November.

I was comparing the listed price of the 31T5 in the September edition of AS&T with now: an increase from $639 to $1019. Ouch!

Well, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel....
http://www.forecasts.org/ausd.htm

I might just keep ferreting away for the time being, and hope the forecasters are right.:prey:

[jungle11]

Here's hoping! I suffer from buyer's itch. Two much abstinence is not a pretty thing!:screwy:

[h0ughy]

i cant wait.....

[Ian Robinson]

Yep .... I've got enough set aside to buy an EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS USM and 2x extender (now) but refuse to pay through the nose while the exchange rate is so lousy .... I'm more than willing to wait.

I'll finish off my upgrade to the old 10" newt and then after Xmas do my ROR observing shed in the mean time.

Other than that - no major astro or photo purchases for me for the foreseeable future.

[norm]

This might sound like a crazy notion, but I was trying to justify a purchase with the other half with this logic:

1. 6 months ago the OZ $ was around 90-94c at peak. At the same time petrol was about $1.40 - $1.55 a litre.

2. Today petrol is hovering around $1.00 with the OZ $ at 62-64c - rumours has it thats its going to go down further still.

Wouldn't the savings in petrol at todays rate(obviously dependent on ones consumption) offset the low value of the OZ $, hence justifying a purchase at its current price be a non issue? :shrug::screwy:

Norm

[Zuts]

So true,

there is absolutely no way you will wait :)

Cheers
Paul

[Zuts]

No probs,

Except, a new Tak FSQ106 is around 7,000 AUD. So you are saving 50 cents on a litre of petrol. So you would need to be doing say 14,000 litres of petrol a year to justify it.

Not unreasonable I guess .....

Cheers
Paul

[Chippy]

Not unless you do a hell of a lot of km's or your purhase is a minor one. And as many here will atest, the AUS$ was over US$0.98 at the peak. How times change. :(

Just glad I made a few purchases before the dive and hope it goes up again soon. We have been hit hard.

[bloodhound31]

Maybe if you drive from Australia to America......hope your Hyundai is amphibious...

[gary]

Hi Rod,

Thanks for the link.

Unfortunately the forecast has about as much reliability as a tarot card reader
predicting what the weather will be like at the next IceInSpace Astrocamp at
Lostock. :)

As I am fond of reminding people, even if you could reliably predict any
exchange rate fluctuation of even a single cent over a twenty-four hour period,
day in, day out, you would rapidly become not only the richest man in the world,
but the wealthiest individual in the history of civilization. :)

If you have not read it already, you might be interested to read my recent
commentary on exchange rates, Japanese housewives and the carry trade in
this thread here - http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=37336&page=2

Currently the market can only be described as volatile and just about
anything can happen. As long as there is a Dollar, Euro, Yen or Peso to be
made, the carry trade won't die. But right now it has retracted considerably
and so the demand for the Aussie has contracted with it.

My advice. Never forget that life is short, so buy the eyepiece and then hope that
clear weather is on the cards this summer. :thumbsup:

All the best.

Gary

[Kal]

Someone I used to work with traded currency, but not as most people would imagine it. Most trades were purchased and resold within a matter of minutes, with the average time of currency ownership being about 2 minutes. They watched the currency rate change on a 1 second ticker! The 'scalping' was based on minute movements, and even a $0.005 profit on the exchange rate was good. Wether the currency was good or bad was irrelevant, infact, the volatility of the exchange rate was what he wanted (and there has been plenty of that lately). The purchases were leveraged at 100 to 1, although there are some currency traders out there leveraging at 1000 to 1. Alot of the currency fluctuation is due to automated trades by trading firms buying currency to settle the account differences on purchases made in the day (I think about 35% of all currency trades are based on this, and it is expected to rise to 50% within a few years), so when you have computers making purchases based on algorithms, I can see how a human can come in, and with some predictability and identifiable patterns in the exchange rate fluctuations, make some money.

Not my cup of tea, but if you want to read more check this out (http://www.aussiestockforums.com:80/forums/showthread.php?t=8896&highlight=%22pip+plan%22&page=30).

[gary]

Hi Kal,

Thanks for the great post and link.



Or in some circumstances, manage to lose such huge chunks of change that they
would have even given the Pharaohs heart failure. :)
See http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/19/1074360693630.html

All the best.

Gary

[Kal]

Now I know it's definately not my cup of tea Gary :)

[gary]

Hi Andrew,



LOL! :rofl:

I would imagine some in the bank would have needed something stiffer than tea
after seeing that loss. :)

Merry Xmas.

Gary

[Ian Robinson]

May or June 2009 is not far away .... guess it depends on how much worse the economic situation in the USA gets and if those bailouts achieve anything positive.

[Ian Robinson]

That kind of speculation is nothing short of criminal in my view.

[Kal]

I'd take it one step further and say that all of this type of speculation is screwing the system. The only reason why oil went up to close to US$150 a barrel was because people that weren't using it were buying it on the speculation of the future price - which artificially inflated the price.

Bond futures used to be used in the system to provide a method of insurance to traders, nowdays it is being abused by being the primary method of trade for "high risk high gain" traders.