BUZZ-COMMENT-Clearly prudent to hedge risk of bigger dollar rise

Feb 6 (Reuters) - The dollar has risen toward crucial levels versus major currencies and to record highs, or towards them, for many emerging currencies. It's clearly prudent to hedge the risk that the global reserve currency rises beyond highly influential levels during the period of uncertainty stemming from U.S. trade policies.

This year, EUR/USD briefly threatened to test parity, cable flirted with 1.2000 and USD/JPY has come close to last year's high, which was the highest traded for almost 40 years since the Plaza Accord was reached in 1985 to weaken the dollar.

The dollar has reached record highs against China's yuan, India's rupee and Brazil's real, and is very strong versus the currencies of the remaining two BRICS nations - Russia and South Africa.

Of these China, India and South Africa have cut interest rates or are planning to do so, which will heap pressure on their extremely weak currencies during a period when the U.S. interest rate is expected to remain fairly static.

The British and euro zone central banks are expected to lower interest rates significantly and, unusually, the central banks of several other emerging nations whose currencies are teetering on the brink of record lows have lowered rates and may ease them further.

With the actions of central banks supporting falls for their currencies when U.S. monetary policy is more static, it's not a case of if the dollar rises beyond these major levels; it's when.

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