in the past couple of weeks – we can see that ringgit to US dollar has been crashing like mad. I remember us having a $1 to MYR3.5 earlier this year. That’s generally ok but still expensive to be honest. In the recent weeks – that rate has been going up and up, to about 4.1. That’s really bad.
In the past we’ve been always talking about the psychological level of 3.8 – which is the point where we peg our currency, back during the financial crisis in 1997. The following chart shows the trend.
If you can see, in a chart since 2014 – the ringgit has been sliding from 3.1. Honestly – I am not particularly sure what’s going on. I suspect it’s the political stability but I might be wrong. There are data points that leads towards a general USD up valuation across multiple Asian currencies. I might be wrong.
I am in two side of the coins. As ringgit goes down – my USD investments are actually going upwards. And this is definitely a positive sign. Though I wish a lot more of my investments was there. Earlier this year – I saw my investments value dropped due to ringgit gaining. But it wasn’t that bad as most of my investments went up more than the devaluation of USD. Now it’s the other way around, with double up – suddenly I got a gain of almost 15% in the last three months. Perfect.
I will find a challenge when I travel as the value of my currency is low. Don’t even need to go far. Going down south to Singapore will be an expensive affair. I suspect it’ll touch 1-3 in the next 6 months.
Let’s see where this take me…..