The Merk Asian Currency Fund provides you with exposure to a basket of Asian currencies. This strategy seeks to profit from a rise in asian currencies relative to the U.S. dollar, which may help to diversify your portfolio, and potentially decreases downside risk against a decline in the dollar. The Merk Asian Currency Fund indirectly provides access to these currencies, while seeking to mitigate stock market, credit and interest risks incurred by alternative means of access, such as the typical international equity or bond fund.

Note: Aside from taking Chinese Renminbi time deposits as of earlier in 2012, the Fund may increasingly be buying high quality, short-term debt instruments denominated in Asian currencies to seek to profit from a rise in Asian currencies relative to the U.S. dollar. As debt markets become more developed in Asia, the Fund may rely less on buying U.S. fixed-income instruments in conjunction with forward contracts, as well as non-deliverable forward contracts. To facilitate the purchase of Asian currency denominated fixed income securities, the prospectus has been updated to reflect that the Fund may now maintain a weighted average portfolio maturity of less than eighteen months; previously, the Fund only bought money market or high quality debt instruments with effective maturities of less than eighteen months at the time of purchase.

The performance numbers below are for Investor Shares for the period ending May 17, 2013.