Ark Invest is testing a fund with the aggressive strategy of simultaneously betting against major stocks in disrupted benchmarks. Cathie Wood, Ark’s CEO, told CNBC that they are currently testing the strategy in-house on Ark employees and did not relay when the fund might become available to retail investors.
Calling the strategy “Ark on steroids,” Wood said that she believes long term big risks are in the benchmarks, with value-trap companies that have done well, but are being disrupted by the tremendous innovation currently taking place. Ark would be shorting stocks in big benchmarks and taking advantage of opportunities created in a risk-off situation, when portfolio managers “run back to get those stocks, get closer to their benchmarks and they dump our stocks, which are either small parts of benchmarks or not in benchmarks,” she told CNBC’s Squawk Box.
But with Ark Innovation ETF, their flagship fund, down almost 15% this year and the S&P 500 up 25%, this new strategy could produce big losses—a risk Wood acknowledged given its potential volatility. She’s looking ahead five years, to when she believes the disruptors will come out on top. That firm belief in innovation is evident in Ark Innovation’s major holdings, which include Tesla, Coinbase, and Zoom. Disruptive innovation is currently valued between $10-15 trillion in the global marketplace, Wood added in the interview, but in 10 years it will be about $200 trillion of that market capitalization, “thanks to DNA sequencing, robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.”