Or is a strong dollar good?
While a strong dollar may hurt US stocks, it also makes international stocks a bargain for US investors who want to diversify their portfolios. Historically, international stocks have outperformed US stocks and they also have tended not to rise or fall in lockstep with US markets. Over time, diversifying with non-US stocks may reduce risk in an investor’s portfolio. The strong dollar may also help the stocks of non-US companies who operate in currencies such as the yen or euro but who export their products to the US.
However, making major changes to your investments based on fluctuations in foreign exchange rates may not be a winning strategy because the strength of the dollar hasn’t historically been much of a predictor of how stock sectors will perform.
A strong dollar makes imported goods cheaper for US consumers. That may help cushion some of the impact of high inflation in the US, but much of the food and energy whose price increases are hitting households the hardest are produced in the US rather than imported, and continuing supply chain tangles are still likely to influence the prices of foreign-made goods at least as much currency values are.
Cheaper imports also create other problems for the US by increasing the country’s trade deficit. The US already imports nearly $1 trillion more in goods and services than it exports each year, almost 5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), at a time when total US debt is already well over 100% of GDP. Fidelity’s Asset Allocation Research Team says that high levels of public and private debt are likely to mean returns from stock and bond investments may be lower in the decades ahead than they have been historically.
