Monday, June 22, 2009

Volume 3, Issue #54

Also in Today's Issue...

When the financial crisis began to turn into a full-fledged bear market last fall, few investments escaped the downdraft. But perhaps one of the more surprising drops was felt in the foreign currency markets.

As investors clamored to the safety of dollar-denominated U.S. Treasuries, the relative value of the U.S. dollar soared. This eventually pushed almost every world currencies to near-historic lows. For instance, in late January, the British pound hit a 25-year low against the U.S. dollar.

The precipitous fall of commodities prices was a little more understandable -- although certainly just as painful for investors. Oil prices had hit a record price of $147.05 per barrel in July 2008. We tend to remember oil's high price because we were all stuck filling our gas tanks with $4/gallon gasoline.

But oil wasn't the only commodity to hit new highs last year. Aluminum and copper also hit record prices last summer. When commodity prices tumbled, the metals fell the hardest.

But these two trends are starting to reverse. As the market launched into its springtime rally, investors began to abandon the U.S. Treasury market and foreign currencies started to rebound. And metals, which many argued were oversold, also began to recover.

In the chart below, you can see the fall of both the value of Australian dollar and the London Metals Index through the latter part of 2008 and the start of 2009. But starting in late January, both foreign currencies, like the Aussie dollar, and metals prices began to rebound.

This has been very good for foreign stocks trading as American Depository Receipts (ADRs) and the foreign funds and ETFs that trade on U.S. exchanges. As the value of the U.S. dollar falls, the value of foreign assets rises.

This has also been good for metals stocks or funds concentrated in metal-related companies and commodities.

But it has been especially great for all the Stock of the Month newsletter subscribers who bought into the fund I recommended back in April. This fund is getting the full benefit of both rebounding trends. I bought this fund for my "Real Money Portfolio" only after I gave my readers a chance to get in first. I never front-run my investment recommendations. I'm up +26.6% on this investment so far and I'm locked into a 15.1% yield. Of course my readers are doing even better.

I still love this investment and look forward to even bigger gains as foreign currency valuations and metals prices continue to improve. And it's not too late to lock in this fund's hefty 11.9% yield.

If you'd like to learn more about this fund -- and the other Stock of the Month ideas that have "double play" potential -- just visit this link.

Always looking for the next great idea....

-- Amy Calistri
Chief Investment Strategist
StreetAuthority's Stock of the Month
 

P.S. -- If you're not already a subscriber to one of StreetAuthority.com's premium investing newsletters, which include a wealth of additional information and specific investing guidance that you won't find anywhere else, then please visit the following page to learn more: http://www.StreetAuthority.com/subscribe.asp