The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that while Canada's politicians work on how to diversify our economy away from our hostile southern trading partner, it is worth asking what we as individuals can do to diversify our own personal finances. Guest columnists Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung write that Canadians tend to hold their assets almost exclusively in Canadian dollars, which you might have noticed has been under assault lately. The loonie is now valued at around 70 U.S. cents. One easy way to gain exposure to other currencies is to make sure that your exchange-traded funds that invest in foreign equities are currency-unhedged. Currency-hedged funds use financial options to counteract, or hedge, against the effect of foreign currency fluctuations. iShares has two Canadian ETFs that track the S&P 500 Index: XSP, which is currency-hedged, and XUS, which is currency-unhedged. If the U.S. dollar were to weaken against Canada's dollar, the currency-hedged fund would do better since you would not be exposed to the drag of a weakening greenback. But if the opposite happens, and the U.S. dollar strengthens against our dollar, the currency-hedged fund would perform worse than the currency-unhedged fund.