MHCIX — Merk Hard Currency Fund
Data updated: 2022-11-17
MHCIX — Merk Hard Currency Fund. Money Market · $39.34M AUM · 1.07% expense ratio · -16.3% 1-yr return. Holdings, fees, performance and SEC filings.
MHCIX Fund Overview
MHCIX — Merk Hard Currency Fund is a US mutual fund managed by Forum Funds, categorised as Money Market. ABC INVEST provides holdings, performance, costs, cashflows, risk data, prospectus documents and SEC filings, sourced from SEC filings.
- Type: US mutual fund
- Manager: Forum Funds
- Category: Money Market
- Assets under management: $39.34M
- 1-year return: -16.3%
- Ticker: MHCIX
- SEC CIK: 0000315774
- SEC series ID: S000004558
- Share class ID: C000087780
MHCIX Investment Objective and Strategy
Merk Hard Currency Fund describes its objective and strategy as follows, from its latest prospectus filed with the SEC by Forum Funds.
Investment objective
"The Merk Hard Currency Fund (the ""Fund"" in this section) seeks to profit from a rise in hard currencies relative to the U.S. dollar."
Principal investment strategy
"Under normal market conditions, the Fund invests at least 80% of the value of its net assets (plus borrowings for investment purposes) in ""hard currency"" denominated investments. The Fund normally invests in a managed basket of hard currency denominated investments composed of high quality, short-term debt instruments, including sovereign debt, and indirectly in gold and gold-related securities. Hard currencies are currencies of countries pursuing what the Merk Investments LLC (the ""Adviser"") believes to be ""sound"" monetary policy and gold. Sound monetary policy is defined by the Adviser as providing an environment fostering long-term price stability. The Adviser considers gold to be the only currency with intrinsic value and, as such, qualifies as a hard currency. To the extent that the Fund invests in gold, it will normally do so indirectly through U.S.
listed exchange-traded products (""ETPs"") that invest in gold bullion and futures contracts. The Fund may invest in ETPs sponsored by the Adviser or its affiliates. The Adviser will determine currency allocations based on an analysis of monetary policies pursued by central banks and economic environments. Once this determination has been made, money market or other debt instruments will be selected to create a liquid portfolio of short duration and high credit quality securities. The Adviser may adapt the currency allocations as its analysis of monetary policies and economic environments evolves. The Fund will specifically seek the currency risk of select countries pursuing what the Adviser believes are sound monetary policies. As long-term price stability is unlikely to be achieved by most currencies, if any, the Adviser focuses on countries with monetary policy that in the Adviser's view better fosters such stability.
The Fund may from time to time focus its investment in just a few currencies that meet the Adviser's investment criteria for stringent monetary policies and practices. To mitigate interest rate and credit risk to its portfolio, the Fund typically maintains a weighted average portfolio maturity of less than eighteen months. In addition, the Fund only buys money market or other short-term debt instruments that are rated in the top three rating categories by one or more U.S. nationally recognized services or that the Adviser considers comparable in quality to such instruments. When selecting debt securities for the portfolio, the Adviser may sacrifice yield in return for high credit quality. To gain exposure to hard currencies, the Fund may also invest in a combination of fixed-income securities and forward currency contracts.
Over time, the Fund seeks to generate more gains from securities than derivatives. The Fund may invest a significant portion of the Fund's total assets in cash or cash equivalents if the Adviser's process does not identify other appropriate investments for the Fund. The Fund is non-diversified."
MHCIX Performance
Total returns for MHCIX (as of 2026-10-01), from SEC filings.
| Period | Total return |
|---|---|
| 1 year | -16.3% |
| 3 years (annualised) | -5.9% |
MHCIX Risk Information
Risk metrics for MHCIX, derived from monthly returns in SEC filings.
- 1-year volatility (annualised): 9.5%
MHCIX Costs and Fees
MHCIX costs about $107 per $10,000 invested per year in fund expenses.
- Net expense ratio: 1.07%
- Portfolio turnover: 68%
- Brokerage commissions: 0.07 bps of average net assets (SEC N-CEN)
MHCIX Cashflows
Over the 12 months to 2022-09, Merk Hard Currency Fund had net outflows of $6.18M, from monthly SEC N-PORT filings.
| Month | Net flow |
|---|---|
| 2022-09 | −$861.52K |
| 2022-08 | −$521.64K |
| 2022-07 | −$2.04M |
| 2022-06 | −$617.48K |
| 2022-05 | −$139.65K |
| 2022-04 | −$201.74K |
MHCIX Debt Constituents
No individual debt constituents are reported in Merk Hard Currency Fund's latest SEC N-PORT filing.
MHCIX Prospectus and SEC Filings
Official Merk Hard Currency Fund filings on SEC EDGAR — prospectus, portfolio holdings and annual reports.
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2022-07-22
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2021-07-22
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2020-08-10
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2022-11-17
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2022-08-10
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2022-05-27
- Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2022-06-13
- Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2021-06-11
Related Funds
Other Money Market funds tracked on ABC INVEST:
Data Sources
ABC INVEST compiles this page from public filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through EDGAR: portfolio holdings and monthly cashflows from Form N-PORT, expenses and returns from fund prospectuses (Form 485BPOS) and the SEC DERA Risk/Return Summary data sets, annual data from Form N-CEN, and shareholder reports from Form N-CSR.