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ARKK's $50 Billion Problem

Summary ARKK has been one of the most successful ETFs in recent years. Success brings its own set o

ARKK's $50 Billion Problem

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{"i18n":{"language":"zh_CN"},"data":{"magic":2,"id":346048637,"tweetId":"346048637","gmtCreate":1617976975929,"gmtModify":1634295420794,"author":{"id":3574126113613712,"authorId":3574126113613712,"authorIdStr":"3574126113613712","name":"福星宝宝来了","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/43da61914fa7c90352bb65d9a679d4c9","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":25,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Put all in&nbsp;to Tesla [鬼脸]&nbsp;</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Put all in&nbsp;to Tesla [鬼脸]&nbsp;</body></html>","text":"Put all in to Tesla [鬼脸]","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/346048637","repostId":1119761514,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1119761514","pubTimestamp":1617958209,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1119761514?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-09 16:50","market":"us","language":"en","title":"ARKK's $50 Billion Problem","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1119761514","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nARKK has been one of the most successful ETFs in recent years.\nSuccess brings its own set o","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>ARKK has been one of the most successful ETFs in recent years.</li>\n <li>Success brings its own set of challenges, namely rising assets under management.</li>\n <li>Few investment managers are able to effectively manage the amount of money that has flown to ARKK these past few months. I'm not sure that ARKK itself can do so.</li>\n</ul>\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c42bac5d199f39bef07dcc2bc98b69f0\" tg-width=\"1536\" tg-height=\"1024\">Photo by Igor Kutyaev/iStock via Getty Images\nThe ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) has been one of the best-performing ETFs these past few years, due to a strong management team, and an outstanding investment strategy. Said strategy focuses on disruptive innovators, or companies developing highly innovative products with the potential for market-beating returns. ARKK's success has led to ballooning assets under management, which threaten the viability of the fund's investment strategy.\nARKK has too much money, and nowhere to put it.\nFew asset managers can successfully manage tens of billions, none can match the triple-digit returns ARKK accomplished in the past. ARKK's investment managers will be/have been forced to pivot their strategy towards managing a portfolio of large-cap tech stocks and similar, hopefully achieving some incremental returns or alpha. Few asset managers have successfully managed similar pivots in the past, so I'm concerned about ARKK's capacity to do so.\nIn my opinion, ARKK is no longer a compelling investment opportunity. Risks are still sky-high but potential returns are much lower, albeit still quite high. As such, I'm currently neutral about the fund.\nPeter Lynch and the Magellan Fund\nLet's start with a quick history lesson. I think it will prove instructive.\nBefore Cathie Wood and ARKK there was Peter Lynch and the Fidelity Magellan Fund.\nLynch's strategy as fund manager was quite different from that employed by ARKK. Lynch focused on more traditional large-cap U.S. equities, think General Electric (GE) or Philip Morris(NYSE:PM), and coined the phraseinvest in what you know, which summarizes his investment philosophy. Lynch's performance track record was, however, similar to that of ARKK. Under Lynch's watch, the Magellan Fund consistently outperformed the S&amp;P 500 by double-digits, with annual returns of over 29%:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e9fcf03b6b8ccbe8c49654cebd638959\" tg-width=\"527\" tg-height=\"405\">Source: Yahoo.com - Chart by author\nThe above downplays Lynch's performance. Consistent double-digit annual outperformance compounds very, very quickly, leading to eye-watering returns. During Lynch's fourteen-year tenure at the fund, investors saw their investments multiply&nbsp;25&nbsp;times in value, compared to about 5.5 times for the S&amp;P 500. Extremely few investment managers have achieved comparable results.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5e02cdfb88d7c904d3f0bdf833b30dae\" tg-width=\"481\" tg-height=\"289\">Source: Yahoo.com - Chart by author\nCompared to ARKK, returns were somewhat lower, but much more consistent, owing to Lynch's highly diversified portfolios.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0b1eb89ef2fa0e4d216260ca53133631\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"476\">Source: ARKK Corporate Website\nAs returns grew so did assets under management, as investors, understandably, sought to profit from Lynch's success. Under his tenure, AUM grew from $18 million to $14 billion. Magellan became the largest investment fund in the world, and Fidelity earned a lot in fees:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/fc1991d9fc3b4f7c987fcb4589775268\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"403\">Data by YCharts\nMagellan was incredibly successful. Too successful, in fact.\nAs AUMs grew Lynch and his team had issues generating alpha. There are only so many mispriced stocks out there, plus large funds have to take care not to move markets as they enter or exit positions. Take a look at Magellan's yearly returns above, and you'll see that outperformance decreased after 1986, when AUMs reached $4 billion. The fund also underperformed during 1987 and 1990, after, and only after, it had grown in size. Consistent double-digit outperformance and returns were easy when the fund had a billion or two in assets, more difficult when these grew to the tens of billions.\nAssets continued to grow. Alpha became ever more difficult to find. Management grew weary. By 1997, Fidelity decided to close the Magellan Fund to new investors, in the hopes that lower, more stable AUMs would lead to sustainable long-term alpha. AUMs stabilized, but the fund never managed to consistently outperform again:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/483a8bd392efc3391e6d930018cddd57\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nMagellan was, ultimately, a victim of its own success, although Lynch left the firm and the fund before that happened. Perhaps he saw the writing on the wall, although I'm guessing he thought he could earn more money on his own.\nOther investment managers, including Warren Buffett, have had similar issues to Lynch, and most are quite forthcoming about the issues with managing large amounts of money.\nWhich brings me to Wood and ARKK.\nARKK started out in late 2014 as a small, niche innovation fund. AUMs were quite low at first, started to grow in 2017, and reached a respectable $1.86 billion by 2020:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6c18aed663d62ec32e1965f0831b7a16\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"403\">Data by YCharts\nReturns were lackluster at first, but started to improve during 2017, preceding AUM growth:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0f52d824415fff6d263a510a2b003b7d\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\">Data by YCharts\nThen the coronavirus pandemic hit, causing a rotation towards tech and tech-adjacent stocks. ARKK was well-positioned to take advantage of these trends. The fund was heavily invested in industries like fintech and biotech, both of which saw increased revenues, earnings, share prices and valuations during the pandemic. Returns skyrocketed to triple-digits, with the fund significantly outperforming the market:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/34c4c7d712147eedfe1ca64c47009a04\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\">Data by YCharts\nAUMs grew even faster, with the fund ballooning from less than 2 billion to over 24 billion in just over a year. Collective, actively-managed ARKK funds hold over $50 billion in assets:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/27b509641ebe8e6dcea150a0c02ce5e1\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"403\">Data by YCharts\nAsset growth has, however, coincided with lower returns. The fund is down more than 18% since AUMs peaked at over $25 billion:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b543438ea47c45a87a52d866239ba7aa\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\">Data by YCharts\nThe stories seem awfully familiar.\nAs should be clear from the above, I believe that what happened to the Magellan Fund could happen to ARKK.\nThere is precedent for large funds to underperform. It is extremely difficult to generate alpha at scale. Most asset managers are simply unable to do so. Wood and ARKK could be the exceptions, but exceptions are rare, and investors shouldn't assume that ARKK will be one.\nMost of my thoughts and concerns with size are simply due to the historical precedent, hence the analysis of Lynch and Magellan. Still, I think that a close look at ARKK's strategy can help explain why size could be such a drag on the fund's performance. Let's have a look.\nARKK Strategy Analysis\nARKK's strategy is quite simple. The company invests in disruptive innovators, or companies developing technologies with the potential for significant world-altering effects. ARKK first selects innovation themes, basically highly innovative industries, and then selects appropriate stocks from these. I covered the fund's strategy in more depthhere.\nThese are ARKK's ten largest holdings in January 2020, before the pandemic, and before their explosive growth.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c9bb0ea10ffad2b4c664a7fef70eecc3\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"235\">Source: ARKK Corporate Website - Chart by author\nAs can be seen above, the average ARKK holding was a small company, with a market cap below $5 billion, little in revenues or earnings, but the potential for strong revenue growth and outsized gains. The typical company was something like Crispr (CRSP), which develops gene-editing technology, or Invitae (NVTA), which develops genetic testing equipment. ARKK's job was to separate the wheat from the chaff. You want the innovative companies, you don't want the \"frauds\" like Theranos. As these are small companies, ARKK generally held a sizable percentage of their market cap. Low single digits was common, rising to double-digits for a few of the smaller names.\nARKK also had large investments in mid-cap stocks like Square (SQ) and Illumina (ILMN). These were all relatively large companies, but with a strong growth pathway, and have all performed reasonably well.\nARKK's largest, most controversial, and sole large-cap stake was in Tesla (TSLA). The fund's managers had identified the company as a key player in the burgeoning electric vehicle industry, and thought it offered the strongest potential returns in the entire equities market. They were right.\nThe strategy and holdings above were very effective and profitable in the past, but shouldn't work as well as AUMs grow. This is the case for three key reasons.\nFirst, is the simple fact that a large fund can't effectively focus on small-cap stocks, there are only so many of these, and not enough for a fund with tens of billions in AUMs. As an example, ARKK had $86 million invested in CRISPR last year. For a $2 billion fund, that is a sizable investment. For a $20 billion fund, that is basically peanuts, equivalent to less than 0.5% of its holdings. It is impossible to build a high-conviction actively-managed portfolio in a very niche industry if you need hundreds of holdings, so ARKK will simply dump this aspect of its erstwhile successful investment strategy.\nLooking at ARKK's current largest holdings, it seems that the above is the case:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f936d1dd0ed83b4f7d7c694b9af2279c\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"186\">Source: ARKK Corporate Website - Chart by author\nAs can be seen above, ARKK now invests more heavily into larger corporations, with an average market capitalization of $128 billion. ARKK does a similar, more in-depth, calculation of the above, and arrives at a similar (outdated) figure:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0c25a8ce3bca2b5765b34f9450feaf13\" tg-width=\"418\" tg-height=\"601\">Source: ARKK Corporate Website - Chart by author\nAs can be seen above, the average ARKK holding is a $122 billion corporation, quite close to Tesla's market cap last year. I think this is very telling. Tesla was the only large-cap stock ARKK's management team felt was significantly undervalued last year. Today, most of their investments are in companies like Tesla circa 2020. Did management change their perspective on these stocks, or were they forced into large-cap stocks due to rising AUMs? In my opinion, it is definitely the latter, which bodes negatively for the fund's long-term returns.\nSecond, is the fact that insofar as ARKKdoesinvest in small-cap names, the fund is forced into holding a significant portion of their float. ARKK and its sister funds own more than 10% of 29 companies, and over 25% of three:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/24db7e3904a14f5b916448f2bcdb021c\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"245\">\nIn most cases, ARK is the biggest institutional investor of these stocks.\nIt is very, very difficult to enter or exit into positions of these sizes. In most cases there is simply no buyer for, say, 29% of a stock like Compugen, at least not on a moment's notice. At the same time, in the vast majority of cases you can't enter or exit into a position like this without the market moving against you. Buying a 29% stake in a company will almost always mean the price of the stock increases, selling should have the opposite effect. In simple terms, ARKK is likely being forced to buy high and sell low, a dreadful combination.\nThird, and related to the above, is the fact that holding large stakes in small-cap stocks could prove ruinous if the fund is forced to sell its assets due to investor outflows.\nLet's go through a simple example to show what I mean. During the last week of February, ARKK suffered outflows of about $638 million, equivalent to about 2.7% of the value of the fund. Other ARK funds suffered similar outflows:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ca89fe18ba14ce75565bd56bbef25abf\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"371\">\nARK funds collectively hold 29% of CGEN, or42% of its float:\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/449620cc1b39a874a1f0db2ce3a1785f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"251\">\nAssume ARKK sold 2.7% of all of its stocks to fund that outflow, that would mean that the company would be forced to sell about 660,000 shares. Volume&nbsp;averages 1,300,000 shares, which means that ARKK selling would constitute 50% of the market for CGEN. You can't sell this much stock without measurably moving the market, meaning that ARKK would be forced to sell their CGEN stock at a sizable loss. This for a2.7% reduction in AUM. A larger reduction in AUM would lead to outsized losses, the fund could even conceivably have liquidity issues.\nRemember, ARKK is the biggest holder, by far, of several stocks. In the case of large outflows, who, exactly, would they sell these stocks to? Themselves? In practice, a buyer is likely to appear sooner or later, but not at a favorable price.\nThese issues have proven intractable for other large investment managers to address in the past, and I see no reason why ARKK should be any different. Expect lower returns moving forward.\nARKK Bull Case Revisited\nFinally, I wanted to remind readers that ARKK remains one of the best-performing ETFs in the market, on the back of the fund's strong management team and investment strategy. The issues, risks, and challenges presented above are very real, but management is well aware of these, and will obviously attempt to generate alpha to the best of their abilities. I'm not confident that they will succeed, but it is definitely a possibility, and investing/betting on that fact would be a reasonable enough position.\nOne of ARKK's strengths is their transparency. ARKK's managers consistently explain their overall investment process, their thoughts on their holdings and broader market conditions, as well as issues and challenges faced by the fund. ARK's COO discussed some of the company's liquidity/trading issues in an interview with ETF Trendshere. I think the interview does a good job of presenting the other, more positive, side on the issues raised in this article.\nConclusion\nARKK's rapidly increasing AUMs significantly complicate matters for the fund, reducing returns while increasing the possibility of substantial losses. Investment managers generally see declining performance once assets grow, and I believe the same will likely happen to ARKK. The fund's strong investment strategy and performance track record remain enticing, but the risks are simply too high at the moment, in my opinion at least. As such, the fund is a hold for me.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>ARKK's $50 Billion Problem</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nARKK's $50 Billion Problem\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-09 16:50 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4418291-arkks-50-billion-problem>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nARKK has been one of the most successful ETFs in recent years.\nSuccess brings its own set of challenges, namely rising assets under management.\nFew investment managers are able to effectively...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4418291-arkks-50-billion-problem\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"ARKK":"ARK Innovation ETF","TSLA":"特斯拉"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4418291-arkks-50-billion-problem","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1119761514","content_text":"Summary\n\nARKK has been one of the most successful ETFs in recent years.\nSuccess brings its own set of challenges, namely rising assets under management.\nFew investment managers are able to effectively manage the amount of money that has flown to ARKK these past few months. I'm not sure that ARKK itself can do so.\n\nPhoto by Igor Kutyaev/iStock via Getty Images\nThe ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) has been one of the best-performing ETFs these past few years, due to a strong management team, and an outstanding investment strategy. Said strategy focuses on disruptive innovators, or companies developing highly innovative products with the potential for market-beating returns. ARKK's success has led to ballooning assets under management, which threaten the viability of the fund's investment strategy.\nARKK has too much money, and nowhere to put it.\nFew asset managers can successfully manage tens of billions, none can match the triple-digit returns ARKK accomplished in the past. ARKK's investment managers will be/have been forced to pivot their strategy towards managing a portfolio of large-cap tech stocks and similar, hopefully achieving some incremental returns or alpha. Few asset managers have successfully managed similar pivots in the past, so I'm concerned about ARKK's capacity to do so.\nIn my opinion, ARKK is no longer a compelling investment opportunity. Risks are still sky-high but potential returns are much lower, albeit still quite high. As such, I'm currently neutral about the fund.\nPeter Lynch and the Magellan Fund\nLet's start with a quick history lesson. I think it will prove instructive.\nBefore Cathie Wood and ARKK there was Peter Lynch and the Fidelity Magellan Fund.\nLynch's strategy as fund manager was quite different from that employed by ARKK. Lynch focused on more traditional large-cap U.S. equities, think General Electric (GE) or Philip Morris(NYSE:PM), and coined the phraseinvest in what you know, which summarizes his investment philosophy. Lynch's performance track record was, however, similar to that of ARKK. Under Lynch's watch, the Magellan Fund consistently outperformed the S&P 500 by double-digits, with annual returns of over 29%:\nSource: Yahoo.com - Chart by author\nThe above downplays Lynch's performance. Consistent double-digit annual outperformance compounds very, very quickly, leading to eye-watering returns. During Lynch's fourteen-year tenure at the fund, investors saw their investments multiply 25 times in value, compared to about 5.5 times for the S&P 500. Extremely few investment managers have achieved comparable results.\nSource: Yahoo.com - Chart by author\nCompared to ARKK, returns were somewhat lower, but much more consistent, owing to Lynch's highly diversified portfolios.\nSource: ARKK Corporate Website\nAs returns grew so did assets under management, as investors, understandably, sought to profit from Lynch's success. Under his tenure, AUM grew from $18 million to $14 billion. Magellan became the largest investment fund in the world, and Fidelity earned a lot in fees:\nData by YCharts\nMagellan was incredibly successful. Too successful, in fact.\nAs AUMs grew Lynch and his team had issues generating alpha. There are only so many mispriced stocks out there, plus large funds have to take care not to move markets as they enter or exit positions. Take a look at Magellan's yearly returns above, and you'll see that outperformance decreased after 1986, when AUMs reached $4 billion. The fund also underperformed during 1987 and 1990, after, and only after, it had grown in size. Consistent double-digit outperformance and returns were easy when the fund had a billion or two in assets, more difficult when these grew to the tens of billions.\nAssets continued to grow. Alpha became ever more difficult to find. Management grew weary. By 1997, Fidelity decided to close the Magellan Fund to new investors, in the hopes that lower, more stable AUMs would lead to sustainable long-term alpha. AUMs stabilized, but the fund never managed to consistently outperform again:\nData by YCharts\nMagellan was, ultimately, a victim of its own success, although Lynch left the firm and the fund before that happened. Perhaps he saw the writing on the wall, although I'm guessing he thought he could earn more money on his own.\nOther investment managers, including Warren Buffett, have had similar issues to Lynch, and most are quite forthcoming about the issues with managing large amounts of money.\nWhich brings me to Wood and ARKK.\nARKK started out in late 2014 as a small, niche innovation fund. AUMs were quite low at first, started to grow in 2017, and reached a respectable $1.86 billion by 2020:\nData by YCharts\nReturns were lackluster at first, but started to improve during 2017, preceding AUM growth:\nData by YCharts\nThen the coronavirus pandemic hit, causing a rotation towards tech and tech-adjacent stocks. ARKK was well-positioned to take advantage of these trends. The fund was heavily invested in industries like fintech and biotech, both of which saw increased revenues, earnings, share prices and valuations during the pandemic. Returns skyrocketed to triple-digits, with the fund significantly outperforming the market:\nData by YCharts\nAUMs grew even faster, with the fund ballooning from less than 2 billion to over 24 billion in just over a year. Collective, actively-managed ARKK funds hold over $50 billion in assets:\nData by YCharts\nAsset growth has, however, coincided with lower returns. The fund is down more than 18% since AUMs peaked at over $25 billion:\nData by YCharts\nThe stories seem awfully familiar.\nAs should be clear from the above, I believe that what happened to the Magellan Fund could happen to ARKK.\nThere is precedent for large funds to underperform. It is extremely difficult to generate alpha at scale. Most asset managers are simply unable to do so. Wood and ARKK could be the exceptions, but exceptions are rare, and investors shouldn't assume that ARKK will be one.\nMost of my thoughts and concerns with size are simply due to the historical precedent, hence the analysis of Lynch and Magellan. Still, I think that a close look at ARKK's strategy can help explain why size could be such a drag on the fund's performance. Let's have a look.\nARKK Strategy Analysis\nARKK's strategy is quite simple. The company invests in disruptive innovators, or companies developing technologies with the potential for significant world-altering effects. ARKK first selects innovation themes, basically highly innovative industries, and then selects appropriate stocks from these. I covered the fund's strategy in more depthhere.\nThese are ARKK's ten largest holdings in January 2020, before the pandemic, and before their explosive growth.\nSource: ARKK Corporate Website - Chart by author\nAs can be seen above, the average ARKK holding was a small company, with a market cap below $5 billion, little in revenues or earnings, but the potential for strong revenue growth and outsized gains. The typical company was something like Crispr (CRSP), which develops gene-editing technology, or Invitae (NVTA), which develops genetic testing equipment. ARKK's job was to separate the wheat from the chaff. You want the innovative companies, you don't want the \"frauds\" like Theranos. As these are small companies, ARKK generally held a sizable percentage of their market cap. Low single digits was common, rising to double-digits for a few of the smaller names.\nARKK also had large investments in mid-cap stocks like Square (SQ) and Illumina (ILMN). These were all relatively large companies, but with a strong growth pathway, and have all performed reasonably well.\nARKK's largest, most controversial, and sole large-cap stake was in Tesla (TSLA). The fund's managers had identified the company as a key player in the burgeoning electric vehicle industry, and thought it offered the strongest potential returns in the entire equities market. They were right.\nThe strategy and holdings above were very effective and profitable in the past, but shouldn't work as well as AUMs grow. This is the case for three key reasons.\nFirst, is the simple fact that a large fund can't effectively focus on small-cap stocks, there are only so many of these, and not enough for a fund with tens of billions in AUMs. As an example, ARKK had $86 million invested in CRISPR last year. For a $2 billion fund, that is a sizable investment. For a $20 billion fund, that is basically peanuts, equivalent to less than 0.5% of its holdings. It is impossible to build a high-conviction actively-managed portfolio in a very niche industry if you need hundreds of holdings, so ARKK will simply dump this aspect of its erstwhile successful investment strategy.\nLooking at ARKK's current largest holdings, it seems that the above is the case:\nSource: ARKK Corporate Website - Chart by author\nAs can be seen above, ARKK now invests more heavily into larger corporations, with an average market capitalization of $128 billion. ARKK does a similar, more in-depth, calculation of the above, and arrives at a similar (outdated) figure:\nSource: ARKK Corporate Website - Chart by author\nAs can be seen above, the average ARKK holding is a $122 billion corporation, quite close to Tesla's market cap last year. I think this is very telling. Tesla was the only large-cap stock ARKK's management team felt was significantly undervalued last year. Today, most of their investments are in companies like Tesla circa 2020. Did management change their perspective on these stocks, or were they forced into large-cap stocks due to rising AUMs? In my opinion, it is definitely the latter, which bodes negatively for the fund's long-term returns.\nSecond, is the fact that insofar as ARKKdoesinvest in small-cap names, the fund is forced into holding a significant portion of their float. ARKK and its sister funds own more than 10% of 29 companies, and over 25% of three:\n\nIn most cases, ARK is the biggest institutional investor of these stocks.\nIt is very, very difficult to enter or exit into positions of these sizes. In most cases there is simply no buyer for, say, 29% of a stock like Compugen, at least not on a moment's notice. At the same time, in the vast majority of cases you can't enter or exit into a position like this without the market moving against you. Buying a 29% stake in a company will almost always mean the price of the stock increases, selling should have the opposite effect. In simple terms, ARKK is likely being forced to buy high and sell low, a dreadful combination.\nThird, and related to the above, is the fact that holding large stakes in small-cap stocks could prove ruinous if the fund is forced to sell its assets due to investor outflows.\nLet's go through a simple example to show what I mean. During the last week of February, ARKK suffered outflows of about $638 million, equivalent to about 2.7% of the value of the fund. Other ARK funds suffered similar outflows:\n\nARK funds collectively hold 29% of CGEN, or42% of its float:\n\nAssume ARKK sold 2.7% of all of its stocks to fund that outflow, that would mean that the company would be forced to sell about 660,000 shares. Volume averages 1,300,000 shares, which means that ARKK selling would constitute 50% of the market for CGEN. You can't sell this much stock without measurably moving the market, meaning that ARKK would be forced to sell their CGEN stock at a sizable loss. This for a2.7% reduction in AUM. A larger reduction in AUM would lead to outsized losses, the fund could even conceivably have liquidity issues.\nRemember, ARKK is the biggest holder, by far, of several stocks. In the case of large outflows, who, exactly, would they sell these stocks to? Themselves? In practice, a buyer is likely to appear sooner or later, but not at a favorable price.\nThese issues have proven intractable for other large investment managers to address in the past, and I see no reason why ARKK should be any different. Expect lower returns moving forward.\nARKK Bull Case Revisited\nFinally, I wanted to remind readers that ARKK remains one of the best-performing ETFs in the market, on the back of the fund's strong management team and investment strategy. The issues, risks, and challenges presented above are very real, but management is well aware of these, and will obviously attempt to generate alpha to the best of their abilities. I'm not confident that they will succeed, but it is definitely a possibility, and investing/betting on that fact would be a reasonable enough position.\nOne of ARKK's strengths is their transparency. ARKK's managers consistently explain their overall investment process, their thoughts on their holdings and broader market conditions, as well as issues and challenges faced by the fund. ARK's COO discussed some of the company's liquidity/trading issues in an interview with ETF Trendshere. I think the interview does a good job of presenting the other, more positive, side on the issues raised in this article.\nConclusion\nARKK's rapidly increasing AUMs significantly complicate matters for the fund, reducing returns while increasing the possibility of substantial losses. Investment managers generally see declining performance once assets grow, and I believe the same will likely happen to ARKK. The fund's strong investment strategy and performance track record remain enticing, but the risks are simply too high at the moment, in my opinion at least. As such, the fund is a hold for me.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":755,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":["TSLA"],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"CN","currentLanguage":"CN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":21,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ZH_CN"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}

ARKK's $50 Billion Problem

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