Hi Allan

Following is the view of Alan Kohler of the Eureka Report.

But while the switch from Australian dollar to US dollar assets may not become a real option for investors until late 2008 or early 2009, I think subscribers should start thinking and researching for it now.

The risks to the Australian dollar (downwards, that is) are starting to build. While there might be a short-term pop to parity because of the massive coal and iron ore price rises coming through now, interest rates here are heading nowhere but down, in my view, and Australian assets look relatively overpriced compared with the US – especially housing.

You can now buy a decent Manhattan apartment near Central Park for less than the price of the same-sized place in Melbourne or Sydney.

And more fundamentally, the national median house price in the United States is now less than half of the Australian median.

According to the latest figures from the US National Association of Realtors, the US median house price is now $US195,900 ($210,645) – down 8% on a year ago. According to RP Data, the Australian median price has gone up 14% over the past 12 months and is now $466,209.

There are good supply/demand reasons for this, and neither the US housing glut nor the Australian shortage is likely to be cleared soon – although the collapse of margin lending in Australia could lead to a surplus of beach houses and flash investment properties, as geared sharemarket investors look to pay off margin debt.

So where to start in thinking about buying US dollar assets? Some strategists are just suggesting a US money market fund, but with interest rates on these around 3%, it is a pure currency bet.

In my view you would be better to look at cheap US equities instead, and there are two ways to do that from a distance without a lot of detailed research: follow Warren Buffett or invest in US exchange traded funds (ETFs) that are listed on the ASX.

Buffett’s top picks for 2008 are: Kraft Foods, Wells Fargo, Burlington North Santa Fe (a railroad business), GlaxoSmithKline (the drug company) and Carmax Inc, which runs a car sales website. He’s been a particularly heavy buyer of Kraft this year.

There are 14 international ETFs listed on the ASX, all of them “iShares” managed by Barclays Bank. The fees are generally around 25 basis points (0.25%) or less.

There are four US-based ETFs listed here: one that replicates the S&P 500 index, another that replicates the S&P midcap 400, a third based on the S&P small cap 600 and the iShares Russell 2000 small cap fund. There is another fund called the iShares S&P global 100, which matches 100 multinationals that have market capitalisation of at least US$5 billion.

The other ETFs listed here match a range of European and Asian indices.

All of the funds are unhedged, which means they are exposed to currency-related changes to valuation

Regards Peter.