Cathie Wood notched her best month ever as her holdings of innovative technology stocks roared back from steep losses amid declining Treasury yields in November.
Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) rallied 31.1% this month, scoring its strongest month ever since its inception in 2014. The fund rebounded dramatically from three straight months of losses, pushing 2023 gains to 47%.
Driving the innovation fund higher this month were biotech names CRISPR Therapeutics and Twist Bioscience, along with Roku, Coinbase, Block and Shopify, which were all up at least 50%.
Despite the stellar performance this year, ARKK has suffered about $664 million in outflows in 2023, according to FactSet. Due to ARKK’s big losses over the past two years — down 67% in 2022 and off by 23% in 2021 — many of the fund’s more recent investors are likely to remain hugely underwater. It closed 2020 at $124.48, compared to today’s trading level around $46.
Wood has been a firm believer that many of her big holdings stand to be leading beneficiaries from the artificial intelligence boom, including Tesla, Twilio and UiPath.
The 68-year-old CEO of Ark Invest previously said she expects the economy to slow down more than the consensus, creating an ideal environment for artificial intelligence-driven companies to expand as firms seek to salvage profit margins by using their products.
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