By David Randall
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Star stock picker Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF tumbled near a 15-month low Wednesday, leaving the best-performing U.S. equity fund of 2020 down nearly 30% for the year to date.
Nine of the 10 largest positions in the $16 billion fund fell Wednesday, with the largest declines coming from streaming company Roku Inc, cryptocurrency company Coinbase Global Inc and e-commerce company Shopify Inc.
The losses came ahead of a policy meeting by the Federal Reserve in which the central bank is expected to take a more hawkish tone, dealing a blow to both riskier assets and high-valuation companies that have comparatively low revenues. The broad S&P 500 index slipped 0.3% Wednesday.
ARK’s declines come one day after firm founder Wood said in a webinar that deflation, rather than inflation, will prove to be the larger concern for financial markets and the economy in the year ahead.
“Our confidence in our strategy has increased” despite the stock losses for the year to date, Wood said Tuesday.
Overall, the ARK Innovation fund is down 43.2% from the high of $159.70 that it hit Feb. 16, before concerns about rising inflation began to weigh on the sort of high-growth, stay-at-home stocks that rallied during the economic lockdowns from the pandemic in 2020.
Ark Invest did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
(Reporting by David Randall; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
