Could Fisher have cut costs without losing overseas coverage?

Could Fisher have retained enough ships for overseas presence while still achieving his fleet reductions?

Yes, but he needed to pair the reductions with some modern heavy or armored cruisers instead of relying only on light cruisers and increasingly large battlecruisers.

Fisher walked a very fine line and cut too deeply into the ships needed for distant stations. Later battlecruisers grew too large and scarce to cover every overseas need, while newer 9.2-inch cruisers could have supplied presence and reinforcement at lower cost. Such orders might also have sustained British shipyards that failed before the war. The Battle of Coronel illustrates the operational cost of leaving elderly armored cruisers to meet threats for which a modern intermediate type would have been better suited.