Rex, I made enough on Nortel (NT) today to pay for my entire trip to London. If this is what a low dollar does, then let it drop! And who said Tech was dead!

Likewise with CSCO - - not only today, but in the past 6 months - - up 40+%, up 80+% in 12 months!

Chat Noir, are you saying you sold your Nortel today? How bold of you! Otherwise, you didn't make any money, you know.

Rex, I sold a portion and put a stoploss order under the rest.

So my trip is paid for and I've got a chance for the rest of my shares to go up and pay for another one!

This post was started in January and things have only gotten worse. I think the dollar will continue to loose steam since there does not appear to be an urgency to prop up the dollar. http://www.businessweek.com/investor...0845_pi032.htm

I bet you all anything that it won't go lower then 100 cents.

On another thought, it may go down to 4 quarters, hmmm... -:?

It's been up and down this year, but if it started the year at $1.28 per euro and is now at about $1.30 per euro, that doesn't look like a trip-buster.

Just so you know, Warren Buffett is "increasingly bearish on the dollar."

http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/06/pf/buffett_letter/

I loved this part:

Buffett made clear that he's not entirely comfortable -- personally or professionally -- making currency bets. "The cemetery for seers has a huge section set aside for macro forecasters," he quipped.

Why do people waste time responding to a post that one considers to be a "tired old subject." When people respond to this post with "go or stay home", my reply is "skip this post and address something that interests you."

Dear Richard

I, for one, feel for you poor Richard. These posters on Fodors are incredibly callous, mean and nasty! They are elitist snobs of the worst kind. For some us hardworking Americans this can make the difference between going to Europe or not. I am on a fixed income and now it looks as though I may never see the Old World again! The responses you received poor Richard were very typical of many of these travel snobs on Fodors! Not all of us have stocks to sell Mr. Rex you elitist capitalist. Some of us folks are just scraping by each month. We still love Europe. There was a wonderful time when w could afford to travel there. It is quickly ending for many of us. You would apparently like to return to the days when only the well-to-do could enjoy the wonders of Europe. For those of you who say the current fares are great, yes but I know well that cheap fares don't mean squat if you can't afford a decent meal, a place to stay and museum entrance fees.
As far as the stock market rise, I remember well how it reached new highs back in 29 just weeks and days before the great fall. God help us all when the Chinese and Japanese investors who are propping up our current economy and now control our destiny finally say "enough is enough" of this Texan and his falling dollar that ain't worth a farthing. We will be in the bread and soup lines again. This is not a load of political hooey either, for even the big Wall Street investment analysts were warning of this. I saw it in my local conservative wing San Diego Tribune just today. So I think we all ought to march on Washington to protest these policies. If not, we should at least protest the callous words of some of our mean,pompous and more ungratefuilly wealthy Fodorites.

At the risk of being accused of an unnatural preoccupation with your age, nellyanne, you have just claimed that your "remember well" how high the stock market climbed in 1929. Let's see, that's 75 years ago, so you are either well past the octogenarian stage or you had a preternaturally precocious interest in the market as a child.

Marilyn:

It does seem unnatural and overly rude! Believe me, I know of what I speak.

nellyanne, you're obviously just a spring chicken. You should have been around when the great 1890 depression struck Australia. Well I remember my poor old dad (he's getting on now, of course, but still pretty spry, mind you) having to go bush to earn tuppence-farthing an hour castrating homicidal big sheep, and that was on time-and-a-half, and nothing to eat but stewed parrot (Dad's recipe - boil two galahs with one large river stone and seasonings for two days, discard parrots, eat stone). And my poor old mum having to take in male lodgers to earn the price of a dry crust of bread. (They can't have liked the room, because four or five would come in every night to check it out with Mum, but they all stayed only half an hour. And when poor old Dad finally came home, years later, he'd count the kids at the dinner table every night and say "There seems to be more or the buggers than there used to be" - but maths was never Dad's strong point.)

Ah, you youngsters, you don't know what hardship is. Latest Australian dollar exchange rate, US$0.78 - and you think YOU'VE got it tough.

nellyanne, I do believe you.
Neil, LOL! Give my best to your dad.

Oh my gosh Neil, remember I told you my Dad was raised in Australia.

Well I wish he was here (passed on he did) to read your post. He would have been chuckling all night.

What is it with you Australians and your sense of humor? To this day I think of my Dad and find myself giggling. Something in the water perhaps?

Always enjoy your post, more than you know. ;;)

Marilyn, I'd love to, but I'm worried about putting extra strain on his old ticker. he only remembers one Marilyn -that was just before his eyesight started to fail, and he still gets excited in a quite unseemly way when he hears the name. And I don't want to mention nellyanne, either, because I think that was the name of one of his old girlfriends. He's started to lose the plot, Dad has, and he can get quite graphic about their investigations into human reproductive mechanisms in the woolshed. Dad has shorter words for it, though, and it can get quite embarrassing when we have friends around, so my wife insists we lock him in the laundry with a few bottles of cheap sherry and a packet of smokes when we're having a dinner party. I understand her feelings - she has a career and colleagues to impress, or at least not shun her in the street - but it's still sad, isn't it?

LoveItaly, you did indeed, and I think it's very brave of you to own up to it, but really, we're deadly serious most of the time. We just sound like we're joking. I don't know about the water; we've been trained to conserve it as a precious natural resource and drink beer instead.

Seriously, I think we should all give nellyanne a big hand. How many of us would be into our 90s and still worrying about the effect of exchange rates on our plans for a month of idleness in that villa in Umbria?

Yes, it is sad, Neil, although I suppose he's quite content in the laundry room watching the clothes spin round in the dryer. Not much plot to lose there.