Why Is the Dollar Weakening? What Multi-Month Lows Mean for Your Purchasing Power

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is InvestTalk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Luke Guerrero.

**Luke Guerrero** (0:16)
Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome to the August 27th, 2026 edition of InvestTalk. I'm your host, Luke Guerrero. I'll be with you over this next hour as we dissect the market today, talk about the stories that matter, and most importantly, answer your finance and investment questions.
To that end, before we talk about today's market performance and those show topics that we brought to the table, let's tackle this fresh collar question now.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
Can you do a quick review of Danaher Corporation, DHR? That's David Harry Railroad. Thank you.

**Luke Guerrero** (0:55)
Take a DHR is a name that I want to say we looked at maybe a couple months ago. It is a global life sciences and diagnostic platform company. So essentially what they do is they manufacture and design medical devices for life sciences, for diagnosing, for patient monitoring. Year to date, it's down about 5.78 percent, while still being up 24 percent over the past three months. I mean, it's had a pretty solid three months, though year to date, it's still underperforming its industry. It's about a 700 and looking at shares, about 151 billion dollar market cap company, and they're about due for earnings I guess a little bit soon, a couple months away still. Most recently, they had a pretty solid Q2 revenue, up five and a half percent year over year. That beat, you saw pretty strong quarters in their higher growth market, about 10% from their life sciences division. A lot of that coming from China, maybe a bit of a concern as we're starting to see a flare up in tensions related to tariffs. But one other thing that I think is a bit of an issue that may weigh down on them in the future is their long term debt has grown quite a bit year over year from $16.4 billion to $19.4 billion. Now sitting about $25.1 billion as the most, after the most recent quarter. So it's up $7 billion pretty much year over year. Actually, not even year over year, only in the past eight months.
And then, you got a bit of a CEO transition that started in August that rallied the stock about 6%.
It's one of the reasons why it's up so much over the past three months. The market in general is pretty hopeful here, right? Life Sciences is at a multi-year high. They had an acquisition that is doing well. The EPS guidance raise was pretty meaningful at their most recent report, Odie agrees with me. And their new CEO is giving a bit of a catalyst for a company that really has struggled for quite some time. I mean, relative returns have been negative relative to both the market and the industry for four years.
It hasn't been a good, really an outperformer of any sort. So for me, you're seeing the best quarter in years. You're seeing a guidance raise. You're seeing a bit of a combination of growth here in an area that or rather a company that has been listless for a while. I would wait to see some confirmation from the earnings in October. That's October 27th. So not too far away because you want to see, is this just a one-off or is this a bit of a trend? That is Danaher Corporation, ticker DHR.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:53)
Thanks for the call.

**Luke Guerrero** (3:54)
We had a great show yesterday, where we looked at an analogous story to what might be happening in the US. We looked at Germany's aging population and coupled that with the record social spending. So this is what is happening there, a preview of what is going to happen in America.
We also talked about XHS, the State Street Spider S&P Healthcare Services ETF. So if you want to learn more, and I thought it was a great episode, I think you should. I encourage you to check out yesterday's episode and to remember, the best way to never miss InvestTalk is to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Now onto today, where we have yet another meaningful story. This time, we'll seek to answer the question, why is the dollar weakening? What multi-month lows mean for your purchasing power? The US dollar is hovering near multi-month lows as debt concerns and geopolitical risk are really starting, or rather continuing to unnerve investors, and that weakness is and will continue to have ripple effects across everything from import prices to international emerging market assets. So we're going to break down why the dollar is under pressure, who wins, who loses, and what a sustained dollar slide would mean for the American investor. Also got a couple more stories for you, including one on electricity prices, and why given all of this demand for electricity, they might be a source of inflation, a key driver of a story that a lot of states are not prepared for. We'll also touch on Rare Earth Metals and Rare Earth Metal pricing, where they fit in the supply chain.