Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, is famous for her unwavering conviction in disruptive innovation and the companies behind it. The firm's ARK funds gained prominence, and legions of investors, in 2020 as interest rates plummeted and growth stocks lifted off, although gains turned to losses in the next two years as the companies stumbled and rates rose.
This year, ARK is riding high again, paced by huge gains in stocks such as Tesla (ticker: TSLA), Coinbase Global (COIN), and Roku (ROKU). The firm's flagship ARK Innovation exchange-traded fund (ARKK), with about $8 billion of assets, gained 54.5% through July 26, compared with a 19% increase in the S&P 500 index. ARK's other funds, which invest in themes such as the genomic revolution, autonomous tech and robotics, and financial-technology innovation, similarly are outpacing the broad stock market, although they are still well below their early-2021 peaks.
