In the News: Smartmoney

Portfolio manager Axel Merk tells Smartmoney over the past decade, currencies have been less volatile than stocks

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While many investors have been looking at a sea of red in recent years, hedge funds and other institutional forex traders followed by the Iowa-based BarclayHedge research shop have been awash in green. Since 1987, the Barclay Currency Traders index, which tracks such players, has logged only four down years, without a double-digit loss. In contrast, the S&P 500 has been down six times over the same period, with four of those losses exceeding 10 percent. What's more, these consistent, if generally modest, gains have historically come with another, more surprising, selling point: stability. Over the past decade, currencies have actually been half as volatile as stocks and have tended to move in a direction that's largely distinct from the trading patterns of stocks and bonds, according to currency- and bond-trading firm Merk Investments…"