Young Research & Publishing Inc.

Investment Research Since 1978

Disclosure

  • About Us
    • Contributors
    • Archives
    • Dick Young’s Safe America
    • The Final Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
    • Dick Young’s Research Key: Anecdotal Evidence Gathering
    • Crisis at Vanguard
  • Investment Analysis
    • Bonds
    • Currencies and Gold
    • Dividend Investing
    • ETFs & Funds
    • Investment Strategy
    • Retirement Investing
    • Stocks
    • The Efficient Frontier
  • Investment Counsel
  • Dynamic Maximizers®
  • Retirement Compounders®
  • Free Email Signup

All Shooting Stars Burn Out Eventually

May 12, 2021 By Jeremy Jones, CFA

By Yongyut Kumsri @ Shutterstock.com

In The Wall Street Journal, Spencer Jakab cautions investors against joining “star managers,” who have already had their biggest gains. He uses ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood as an example. He writes:

Just as unusual as ARK Invest’s marketing has been its performance, growing its assets more quickly than any active exchange-traded fund firm in history. Cathie Wood’s firm went from about $3.5 billion under management across several funds shortly before the pandemic struck to hit the $50 billion mark a year later. But that rapid growth has come back to bite her investors.

Even after a major tumble the past few months, the actual damage isn’t obvious from a longer-term look at her funds’ performance charts. So many investors piled in relatively recently, though, that her actual wealth-creation record is unimpressive. Analysts at Bespoke Investment Group calculate that the money-weighted annualized return of her funds since inception was 5.24% through Monday. That is far less than a steady investment in a plain vanilla S&P 500 index fund.

And ARK Invest’s paper gains have depended on some uncomfortably concentrated positions. There are big, liquid bets such as Tesla, TSLA -2.05% of course, but also smaller companies like Intellia Therapeutics NTLA -5.98% —which had just $58 million of sales last year—that could get hit hard if ARK begins to unload a lot of shares as investor cash leaves the funds. ARK funds owned 16.52% of the company at the end of 2020, more than any other institution by far, according to FactSet. Intellia rallied by 470% from the beginning of 2020 to its peak this January but has since retreated by 27%, giving it a current market cap of around $4.3 billion. Another stock with a similar pattern and ownership is Crispr Therapeutics. CRSP -2.76%

Ms. Wood’s “disruptive innovation” jargon may be somewhat novel. What her investors are experiencing isn’t. Fund managers like Gerald Tsai in the 1960s who rode Polaroid and Xerox to stardom or various dot-com visionaries in the late 1990s wound up doing poorly for clients who discovered them after they became hotshots. The culprit is unrealistic expectations and reversion to the mean for the bubbly sectors that got them there. Analyst Meb Faber points out that not one of the five Morningstar “fund managers of the decade” through 2010 even managed to beat the market in the next 10 years. The best of the bunch, Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Fund, became the worst.

Star managers can be dangerous to your wealth.

Read more here.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

You Might Also Like:

  • Can You Rely on Income Funds?
  • Are Index Funds Still Diversified?
  • Where Money Goes to Die
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Jeremy Jones, CFA
Jeremy Jones, CFA, CFP® is the Director of Research at Young Research & Publishing Inc., and the Chief Investment Officer at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. was ranked #5 in CNBC's 2021 Financial Advisor Top 100. Jeremy is also a contributing editor of youngresearch.com.
Latest posts by Jeremy Jones, CFA (see all)
  • Resilient Nordic Market Spawns Fast Growing Offshoot - August 9, 2022
  • SHOCK: Home Prices FALL in San Francisco as Market Dries Up - August 8, 2022
  • Despite All the Money Involved, Crypto Is Still a Wild Market - August 5, 2022

Search Young Research

Most Popular

  • The Key Ingredient to an $8 Million Estate Is This
  • SCHUMER-MANCHIN: An "Inflation" Bill that Doesn't Fight Inflation
  • The Power of a Compound Interest Table
  • NO GO ZONES: The Wealthy Protected, the Rest Left to Rot
  • Vanguard Wellesley (VWINX) vs. Wellington (VWELX): Which Fund is Best?
  • Do Governments Cause Recessions On Purpose?
  • Do You Have $500,000 in Savings? Avoid This Nightmare
  • American Manufacturers ALARMED by Schumer-Manchin Tax Hike Plan
  • Corporate Bond Yields: What You Can Earn Today
  • Field of Dreams: You Too Can Live Like a Billionaire

Don’t Miss

Default Risk Among the Many Concerns with Annuities

Risk and Reward: An Efficient Frontier

How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth

Could this Be the Vanguard GNMA Winning Edge?

Cryptocosm and Life After Google

Warning: Avoid Mutual Fund Year End Distributions

Is Gold a Good Long-term Investment?

How to Invest in Gold

Vanguard Wellington (VWELX): The Original Balanced Fund

What is the Best Gold ETF for Investing and Trading?

Procter & Gamble (PG) Stock: The Only True Dividend King

The Dividend King of the North

You’ll Love This if You’re Dreaming of an Active Retirement Life

RSS The Latest at Richardcyoung.com

  • Pelosi’s Trip a “Pointless Gesture That Brought Us Closer to Military Conflict”
  • RIP David McCullough
  • Your Retirement Life: Let the Slow and Steady Be Your Way of LIFE
  • Who Benefits from and Orchestrated the Trump Raid?
  • California’s Progressive Liberals Have Created a Monster
  • DeSantis Leadership: Good Government and Smart Politics
  • The Most Vulnerable Will Suffer at the Hands of Anthony Fauci
  • If the Phone Doesn’t Ring…It’s Me
  • REGION AT RISK? Chaos of War Surrounds Ukrainian Nuclear Plant
  • Did China Buy Land in North Dakota to Spy on Air Force Base?

About Us

  • About Young Research
  • Archives
  • Contributors

Our Partners

  • Richard C. Young & Co.
  • Richardcyoung.com

Copyright © 2022 | Terms & Conditions

 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.