"While its fundamentals and books appear to be sound, I am a bit...

"While its fundamentals and books appear to be sound, I am a bit concerned about the exchange rate for the foreseeable future. Do you have a view on that?"

@thunderhead1,

I have not the faintest clue what exchange rates will do, so I pay them almost zero attention when making investment decisions.

Don't misunderstand me; while I like to understand how financial performance of a business is explained by exchange rates - or indeed by other macroeconomic variables - I certainly don't invest on the basis of making any explicit forecasting of those extraneous factors.

I have not come across anyone who is able to accurately forecast macroeconomic variables, such as exchange rates, interest rates, commodity prices or economic growth, on anything resembling a sustainable basis.

So if the really smart guys - those with strings of post-graduate economic degrees, working for major financial institutions, and surrounded by the world's best resources, literature, databases and teams junior assistants to do their number-crunching for them - can't get it right overwhelmingly most of the time, what chance does little old me sitting in my study at home, have of doing so?

I suspect there is very good reason why one doesn't come across any successful macro funds.