The dollar's recent weakness has stirred concern among some
investors that the greenback is only pausing before ceding further
ground to other major currencies. A handful of mutual funds have been
launched in the last two years to cater to investors uneasy about
having all their assets in dollars.
Concerns about the dollar have taken on a new urgency in recent
weeks after it hit a 14-year low against the British pound and a
20-month low against the euro. Axel Merk, who began the Merk Hard
Currency Fund 18 months ago, contends the U.S. dollar is not the
impregnable investment some once regarded it to be.
"There is no such thing anymore as a safe asset," he said.
Merk describes his fund as an international money market fund.
"We don't try to gamble. We don't jump in and out on each piece of
the economic news," he said. The fund, which has about $51 million in
assets, comprises nine currencies and gold. As of Nov. 30, some 45
percent of its holdings were in the euro, followed by the Canadian
dollar at 13.6 percent.
"This is for people who don't know when the dollar is going to
decline but are pretty sure it's going to get substantially weaker," he
said of his fund.
