The Peak Oil Fund ?  

Google adwords is showing up all sorts of odd new things in relation to peak oil, from Marshall Brain's weak effort to discredit it, to this piece of opportunism from Guiness Atkinson Funds. I guess it had to happen some time.

Whenever I see funds like these appearing on the back of a trend I get this alarm bell ringing in the back of my head issuing a "top of the market" alert - but maybe this is just a harbinger of things to come. Their strategy (as outlined by a snippet from the prospectus below) seems sound enough, assuming they take a good look at the reserves situation for any fossil fuels companies they invest in (along with the risk profile of the companies involved, assuming that we'll be seeing more resource wars down the line).

The main problem with peak oil investment strategies is that if you consider a lot of the more extreme scenarios (catastrophic "second great depression" deflation or hyper-inflation) its pretty hard to come up with a strategy that handles all eventualities.

The Fund intends to invest at least 80% of its net assets (plus any borrowings for investment purposes) in equity securities of both U.S. and non-U.S. companies principally engaged in the production, exploration or discovery, or distribution of energy including the research and development or production of alternative energy sources. The Fund will not change this policy unless it gives shareholders at least 60 days advance notice. The Advisor believes that growing demands on existing energy supplies, in particular petroleum-based energy supplies, could lead to higher prices for this and other traditional energy sources and the profitable development of alternative sources of energy.