Cathie Wood’s flagship strategy is on course for one of its best months on record, joining assets across Wall Street that are so far defying gloomy expectations for the year ahead in emphatic style.
The ARK Innovation ETF (ticker ARKK) has returned almost 22% since the start of January, currently set for its third-strongest month ever. With a week of trading still to go, the fund could yet eclipse the 26% and 24% monthly returns it delivered in 2020, the year it burst onto the global investing scene.
The product is benefiting from a buoyant mood in global markets, as investors wager that high inflation is behind us and policy makers will be able to slow their monetary tightening. Relentless rate hikes, pushing up the cost of money, had slammed the likes of ARKK and the type of speculative tech shares it targets.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index has led US equity benchmarks higher in 2023 on bets the worst is now behind the cohort. Exact Sciences Corp., ARKK’s largest holding, is up about 37%. Beleaguered Tesla Inc., now the third biggest weight in the portfolio, has jumped about 17%.
