Deborah Knight: The Aussie dollar is well and truly on the way down after spending most of the last couple of years valued more than the US dollar.

To give you a sense of how significant such a move could be, the Aussie traded at 1.05 against the dollar in mid-April. So a drop to $0.80 would be a 23.8 percent decline.

The dollar has lost about US6c in the past fortnight due to lower interest rates, concerns about the Australian and Chinese economies and signs of improvement in the US.

The Australian currency has been falling sharply and selling Aussie dollars for the appreciating Mexican peso is becoming an increasingly popular trade, said one analyst.

With the Australian dollar now firmly trading below parity with the US dollar the benefits to the wider national economy will not immediately help its airlines and will drive changes in their strategies, outlooks and opportunities.

The Australian dollar has fallen to a new 11-month low, after US stocks lost ground on the back of another batch of weak economic data.

Adding to the dollar's downward pressure are moves by currency traders, including hedge funds, to push the dollar lower. Big global hedge fund managers George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller have very publicly put bearish bets on the Australian dollar, ...

HIGH-PROFILE stockbroker Charlie Aitken has weighed into the debate around the Australian dollar, saying that a wave of hedge funds could be set to short the currency and the biggest winners would be industrial stocks, not resources.

The Australian dollar has fallen to another 11-month low as the currency becomes unpopular with Japanese investors. On Friday morning, the Australian currency dropped as low as 97.53 US cents, its weakest level since June 2012.

The All Ordinaries added a third of a per cent to 5,160 and the ASX 200 matched that gain to 5,181. The dollar has fallen by around six cents against the greenback over the past three weeks and is also down against a range of other currencies.