Axel Merk Founder, President and Chief Investment Officer, Merk Investments LLC

Axel Merk is Founder, President and Chief Investment Officer of Merk Investments LLC—"the Authority on Currencies" and a pioneer in the currency asset class. His SEC-registered investment advisory firm, which manages mutual funds specializing in international currencies, started out in Switzerland 15 years ago. Axel relocated the business to Palo Alto, California, in 2001. The Merk Hard Currency Fund, established May 10, 2005, with assets of $362 million (as of early September) invests primarily in Euros, the Norwegian Krone, Canadian and Australian dollars and gold. In April 2008, Axel added the Merk Asian Currency Fund, and already it has assets of nearly $64 million (in the currencies of China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand). Known for offering understandable advice and an uncanny ability to predict market movements, Axel is a regular guest on CNBC and Fox Business, and is frequently quoted in Barron's, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, USA Today and the Financial Times. His book, Sustainable Wealth: Achieving Financial Security in a Volatile World of Debt and Consumption [Sustainable Wealth.org], synthesizes macro trends, explains their effects on individual wealth, and suggests ways to build and preserve financial security in a volatile environment.