Cathie Wood’s funds had a scorching start to the year and she wants investors to know it.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec, the founder and chief executive officer of ARK Investment Management said her flagship fund now gives investors better exposure to long-term innovation than most of the market’s most popular growth stock benchmarks.
“We are the new Nasdaq,” Wood said. The claim is just the latest from the ARK Investment Management founder who is known for making bold predictions. She again reiterated a forecast that Bitcoin will top $1 million per coin in the next decade.
So how does Wood’s historical performance stack up? It depends on the time frame. While the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) has jumped 42% this year — more than twice as much as the Nasdaq 100 — the Ark fund is still down 72% from its peak two years ago, underperforming the index by about tenfold. The Ark fund has posted a five-year gain of just 12% versus 89% for the tech benchmark.
The Nasdaq 100’s top holdings currently include the mega-cap technology stocks that have dominated the market over the last decade: Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. While ARK Innovation ETF’s largest holding — Tesla Inc. — is also a top stock in the Nasdaq, the fund’s other big positions are concentrated in smaller, newer companies like Zoom Video Communications Inc. and cancer-test maker Exact Sciences Corp.
