As planned we reduced our MERKX holdings. Our return on this two year investment was a paltry 1%. This from a fund that had the big gainer GLD in the portfolio. The EURO's slide must have hurt. Steep management fees were another negative. I'm conviced-- additional MERKX shares will be sold tomorrow.
To replace MERKX, we placed a buy limit order for Wisdom Tree's ETF CCX. The CCX concept of a basket of currencies from commodity producing countries sounds appealing, but CCX is very thinly traded now and that's a worry. As an aside, the South African Rand ETF (SZR) looks quite strong, but like CCX, it trades only a few thousand shares daily. Given this lack of liquidity with the currency ETFs, my currency related MERKX experience, and an earlier loss with the Dollar Bear Index ETF (UDN), I think somebody's dropping hints to skip the currency futures and move on to brighter pastures. The CCX order is cancelled.
Happily we report that BPT bounced back quickly from last Thursday's big sell off and today is at an all time high. And just so I don't forget, we are still trying to purchase shares of the Canada ETF (EWC) at $29.71, but the trade has moved away from us so far.
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