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Christine St Anne is Morningstar's online funds and ETF editor.

The Australian dollar is at a historical high against the greenback.

Strong commodity prices and relatively high Australian interest rates look set to maintain the Australian dollar's strength against its US counterparty.

"Unless the global economy slides back into recession, which appears unlikely, the Australian dollar is likely to average above parity over the next few years on the back of strong commodity prices and relatively high Australian interest rates," AMP Capital Investors head of investment strategy Shane Oliver says.

Oliver predicts that that US dollar will be $1.10 by year end.

Investors can also get exposure to the rising Australian dollar by taking on currency trading through an exchange traded fund (ETF).

Recently Betashares launched the Betashares US Dollar ETF (USD) giving investors a low-cost approach to opportunities in currency markets.

"The US dollar ETF is a good strategy for investors looking to get exposure to the US dollar," Morningstar co-head of research Tim Murphy says.

The ETF aims to track the price return of the US dollar relative to the Australian counterpart. This is done by a US dollar-denominated account held by JP Morgan Chase in the US. The deposit paying account pays distributions from the interest earned minus the management fee which is 45 basis points.

Investors can access US dollars thorough foreign currency bank accounts, however, according to figures by Betashares, the ETF offers investors a substantially cheaper option. 

Based on a $10,000 investment over six months, investors are charged $76.15 compared to $782 if they used a foreign currency bank account.

"We found that our ETF was one tenth the cost of most of the foreign bank account rates on offer," Betashares head of investment strategy Drew Corbett says.

As the ETF tracks the change in value of the US dollar relative to the Australian dollar the value of the ETF changes accordingly, so if the US dollar goes up 10 per cent against the Australian dollar (that is the Australian dollar falls in value), the price of the ETF rises by 10 per cent.

While the Australian dollar remains high, Corbett says investors can still benefit from using the currency ETF.

"Using the ETF can provide hedging tools for an Australian equities portfolio. Australian equity portfolios tend to be heavily invested in resource companies," Corbett says.

"The Australian dollar tends to move in line with the resources stocks. Resource stocks are doing well at the moment but if resource companies start to struggle and the Australian dollar falls, than a USD ETF can effectively hedge the portfolio."

Investors that are exposed to foreign currency risk can use the ETF to hedge against movements in foreign currency exchange rates, Corbett says.

Of course if the Australian dollar does fall, investors will gain from uplift in the value of the ETF.