Sorry. Can’t help.

on a related tack - have you considered Japanese stocks. Here the trends are both working in your favour: JPY:AUD at roughly 6 year lows and Japanese market at considerable discount to fair value.

You can buy ASX:IJP - listed ETF tracking MSCI Japan. Currently trading on PE of 12.5 vs historical average of 18-20 or so.

Usual currency risk advice, but it is possible Japanese interest rates will increase as Australian one’s moderate in the medium term, plus a pick up in market sentiment with a valuation expansion producing an opportunity to unwind with a nice profit.

DISC - I’m putting 3% of super into this strategy next week. Might increase to 5%

The way I tried to play this game was to add money to my US trading account when the $A was above 70c and withdraw funds when the dollar fell below 70c.

Between June 2019 and July 2019 I added money between 70c and 70.3c.

During March 2020 I withdrew funds at 58.2c.

July 2020 to January 2021 added at 70c to 77.5c and recently withdrew all funds at 64.1c.

Funds were invested in household names like MSFT, GOOG, AAPL which seemed to provide some protection from the wider market volatility over this time.

I was positive over this time with both capital gain, some dividends and currency changes. Probably more luck than skill.

I gave up in the end as it was too hard to keep track of and I wanted access to my funds without relying on the timing of the currency market.

@Chagsy thnaks for the reply. i dont know much about Japan. one thing is clear from my investing experience -when i do things i dont understand the results are almost always poor. Good luck to you the currency is certainly at the right level

@Byrnesty intersting thanks for the reply

Interestingly I've also been pondering this exact same thing (as @Chagsy) for a while

(mine originally stemmed from my portfolio just being quite a bit underweight Japan - a few of the os/world ETF's I'm holding happened to be Ex-Japan (e.g. VAE) and adding 3% in IJP would still leave me a little underweight against the world benchmark - then again I find it's hard to tell since my Australia weighting is technically massively overweight resulting in almost ALL other countries being underweight - e.g. X-Ray says I'm less than half the benchmark for North America)

I don't really have a good answer to all this but just throwing my 2c in with a bit of a caution about having too strong assumptions of past correlations and / or about picking out past historical time periods. Also apologies I am straying a bit off topic as it sounds like you are decided on wanting to hedge and looking for good methods.

For example I recall back in mid 2011 all the excitement about the AUD as a currency. Even though it looked at it's high point then, many investors were thinking it would keep going higher. So much so, that similar questions were being asked about at the time about the importance of hedged exposure, so the rising AUD/USD wouldn't continue to hamper your performance of your US stocks going up. Many said US stocks were not cheap as they had rallied very hard after the GFC in the 2 or 3 years prior.

I don't have the precise levels, but about over the next 8 years, the AUD USD declined from near 1.10 to below 0.70. The S&P500 went from circa 1,200 to nearly 3,000?

Rather than being an AUD bear I am just trying to highlight strange things can happen. I actually agree with you about the correlations I would expect. I am also cherry picking a bit because in 2011 the AUD looked high to many based purely on historical charts, where it is quite different now as you are probably thinking.

I tend to try and not take too much of a view and work out what is appropriate for my lifestyle, I am in a different situation to most as I spend a lot of time overseas. I then rebalance things occasionally if exchange rates go through some extreme moves.

However I even think it is useful for people who have all their expenditures basically in Australia to consider aspects that don't get brought up all that often. For example maybe the benefits of being unhedged, is that if the AUD USD from here slips to 50c, at least that helps your unhedged equity investments. That could be a small safety net in a scenario that the Australian economy goes through a relatively very hard time compared to the world. Perhaps such a scenario means further rising living costs, or even your job security is not as great in a rising unemployment environment. Not predictions, just some food for thought how it all may tie in for your own risk tolerance and portfolio construction.

A long post there without an answer :)

Thought: an ASX listed US ETF would technically be still earning in $USD and then when it comes time for dividends or portfolio rebalancing (paid out in dividends) that would then be distributed in $AUD, which in turn would be "more" Aussie dollars after the conversion... no?

@tbra97 thats true but what i am trying to avoid is a procylcial move up in the AUD. so the US ETF in this case would pay out less $A"s as the $A goes up. for example i buy GOOGL at $100 and it goes to $130 (up 30%) while the $a goes from 65 to 75c (up 15%) and i "lose' half the gain.

@Solvetheriddle I see. That is certainly a riddle in need of a solution.

I've wondered the same, I don't think there is a product that does it for retail investors, seems like a gap in the market that Xtrackers or something else could fill.

I converted a lot to USD at above US$0.70 on interactive brokers knowing we were near the end of the market cycle. Not ideal with the lack of interest on the funds at the time but appears to have been worth it - would be great to be able to convert back and then get hedged access.