After its first year of trading in 2015, the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) increased by 87.38% in 2017!
The fund produced a gain of 3.76% in 2015 and a small loss of 1.96% in 2016, all of a sudden, the boom in 2017! 2017 was followed up by another modest gain of just 3.58% in 2018. But in 2019, ARKK made 35.73%.
Then, despite 2020 being the year we will all remember the Covid-19 pandemic beginning in the United States and the stock markets crashing when the country shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of the deadly virus, ARKK showed its investors a return of 152.52%.
Unfortunately, in 2021, the fund did not perform as well, actually posting a loss of 23.35% for the year. And while we still have a few months left in 2022, year-to-date ARKK is down 49.17%.
Even though 2021 and 2022 have not been good to ARKK, the fund is still up an annualized 16% over the last five years. That is due to the incredible performance it experienced in 2019 and 2020.
Since its inception, some would say ARKK has been somewhat volatile. That is primarily due to the fund's lead investor, Cathie Woods, and how she takes what many would consider 'very long-shot bets.' Woods often invests in unproven technologies and companies trying to develop cutting-edge technology.
Cathie Woods believes the future of technology will, if it already hasn't, truly change the world. By looking at the performance of not just her flagship fund, ARKK, her other funds all focus on the same idea; finding innovative companies. But that comes with risk.
And Cathie Woods' ARK funds have a lot of risk in them. If the companies Woods invests in don't perform well, Woods funds take big hits. But, the other side of this coin is also at play. Continue reading "ARKK Fund's Wild Ride"
