Canadian Railroads > US vs. Canadian dollar strongest in many years

https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=CAD&To=USD

Currently 69.5 cents, but bad for Canadians to visit the US. Too bad we cannot go to Canada for some months to come. I will probably have to cancel my annual July trip. 

With the exchange rate USD vs CDN, wonder if Todd will give us Canadian members a break on the renewal of TO membership ???
Couple of years ago I made a large dollar purchase on some Live Steam parts, mentioned the exchange difference on my Canadian dollar, the fellow gave me a discount mentioning that he was not aware of the difference as most of his customers are in the USA.
No harm in asking eh !!
Doug

Absolutely brutal for us up here.  But government always likes to point out how it's so wonderful for exports to the US.

Jim

The US has benefited for years with a strong dollar. Among other things, it makes imports cheap but US exports expensive.

That's why braying about managed currencies has so little effect. And tariffs end up costing US buyers more.

Posted from Android

The exchange rate is an interesting thing to negotiate with a Canadian railway as a US supplier.  The Canadian roads typically get pretty large cash flows of US currency as a result of interline settlements, so can 'hedge' longer term contracts by choosing to be invoiced in US or CAD.  BC Rail was especially good at this.  Sensing a coming drop in Canadian Dollar they insisted their agreement with us be priced in CAD, even though we marked up the agreement by the then current exchange rate.  Several years later, they perplexed me by happily agreeing to a new agreement invoiced in USD.  Both times they correctly predicted long term exchange rate changes and benefitted by 5 to 10% overall.

Surprising to me the exchange rate is that low.  The two  times  I was in Canada I think it was around .87 US  cents to a C dollar.Long time ago 2007. and 1995..   

We've enjoyed vacationing in Canada the last few years and have enjoyed the benefits of the exchange rate.  It seems to have been  around .75 to $1.00 the last few years.  Most recently, we visited in February for a trip on the Canadian.   

90s were good time to visit Canada. Maybe 50-60 cents to the dollar

I think it will be a bit difficult for U.S. travelers to take advantage of a good Canadian exchange rate for the foreseeable future.

Posted from Android

Had a great visit to the Toronto area back in August. Absolutely love how clean it is for a North American city, and how friendly and helpful Canadians were helping us getting around on transit and just in general. Quite refreshing.

Posted from Android

Don't know about Canada, but in the states, gasoline prices have been dropping because of diminished demand.

In California for instance, gasoline prices dropped around 40¢/gallon this week (and still dropping according to Gas Buddy).  

Good C$ exchange rate, cheap gas.....and no where to go.

Again, in California, we're on lockdown.  It's a $1000 misdemeanor (according to a flyer left on our doorstep by the city, lasting until at least 19 April or until further notice) if one is challenged about being more than 5 miles from home without a reasonable explanation.  I seriously doubt a cop would accept the railfan explanation. 

Marooned at home.....but warming up the slide scanner.

d.

WAF Wrote:
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> 90s were good time to visit Canada. Maybe 50-60
> cents to the dollar

I don't remember it ever being that bad, but when I bought a camera from B&H in 1998, I paid a 50% premium on the exchange, so the rate was about 0.66 then.

It's getting close to that now.  Good thing I don't need another camera.

I get the impression that currency traders are no better than the general public when it comes to panic buying (or selling).  If anything is going wrong in the world (and it certainly is right now), they all flock to the American dollar, despite what the fundamentals would indicate.  It's natural to see the price of the Canadian dollar go down with the price of oil, but I think the effect is exaggerated.  When oil was high about 10 years ago, the Canadian dollar was actually slightly about par for a while.  Didn't we hear all the exporters howl about that!

But don't take my advice on economics.  In 1999 my company's pension plan had a big surplus, which they paid out to employees, and rather than take a tax hit, I plowed it into US tech stocks.  A year later it was worth HALF of what I'd put in.  It's only in the past year or so that it has climbed back up above par.  C'est la vie!

GTD