Has anyone invested in Foreign Currency CD's? Who in the states offeres these? What currencies have you had success with? What length of CD's.

Thanks in advance.

Everbank offers them.
Stay away from then. Buy foreign stocks (or maybe bonds, maybe) for your international exposure.

Is there any sort of tax-deferred-foreign-currency-CD-annuity-plan offered that could maximize gains by reducing tax exposure while hedging against USD currency risk?

I bought one of those Icelandic CDs from Everbank when they were paying 11% interest. Of course, a week later their economy imploded and I lost $2,500 of the $10,000. I knew it was risky, but didn't expect that. So, I'd stay away.

Remember the Stanford scam. That was all dealing with international CDs. He's in jail.

I don't know what you are trying to achieve or what your current portfolio looks like, so it is impossible for me to make a suggestion concerning an investment that might be appropriate for you, but if you are looking for a fixed income vehicle that pays a good yield, try looking at ishares fixed income ETFs. Of course there are many different companies that offer ETFs and many of them are great companies. But the reason that I prefer ishares or Powershares is because they have great liquidity. You can cash them in any time you like without penalty. Two to look at are ticker symbols PFF and HYG. Both have yields that are over 10% and should be less risky than international CDs.

PFF is a Preferred stock ETF, and HYG is "High Yield" Bond ETF. As you may know some people call "High Yield" bonds, Junk bonds. But I have used them sucessfully in the past in given situations.

A less risky alternative is symbol LQD and TIP. Both have yields between 5 - 7%. LQD is an investment grade bond ETF and TIP is the ishares Lehman TIPs Bond ETF.

Kee Haskins

You don't have to research individual companies, learn their languages, or "talk to any countries" on the phone. You do the same thing you can do here, invest in a fund. As "home" based investor, I seriously doubt you do that much research for any individual picks in the US, you are just trying to make international exposure sound complicated to support your poor decision. Numerkins has show that it is quite possible to lose a significant portion of your money, even with a good interest rate. You may as well just do forex.

bigmig said:pthor1231,

I'm not following what you mean by numerkins....

One of the posts in the thread you obviously failed to read

No, it isn't youtube. But it is a forum where people expect you to read the thread that you start. It isn't even one page and I had to link something that was directly relevant to your question, in the same damn thread.

I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I didn't mean to imply to go buy individual stocks or bonds. Point your browser over to vanguard.com and look at their index funds. I don't think they offer an international bond fund, or it is a recent addition.