Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Devote, speaks during an interview on CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 27, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Cathie Wood is defending her underperforming ARK Alteration exchange-traded fund following a rocky stretch.
“We have a volatile fund,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. “We should not be a massive slice of any portfolio. We are more of a satellite strategy now, although we think this is the way the world is going.”
Shares of the technology dough have lost nearly two-thirds of their value from their Covid-19 pandemic heyday, when sell excitement and the meme stock craze drove shares to nearly $160 and led the fund to more than double in 2020, increase 149%.
Since then, the fund has underperformed, fueling skepticism over the Ark Invest CEO’s investment strategies. Shares are up 2.8% this year, far behind the S&P 500’s 24% approach, and over the past three years have lost about 23% annually, according to FactSet data.
Wood allowed that several “interesting behaviors” during the pandemic sent ARKK shares higher, but asserted that uncountable of the technologies and research underpinning her firm’s investments are “much more advanced.”
She called out the multiomics life sciences and health-care sectors as the biggest slog on the fund. This should change as new genome therapy editing companies such as Intellia Therapeutics emerge as produce alternative disease-curing methods.
“We think we’re a very good complement to the broad-based benchmarks out there, because we don’t look anything ilk them,” she said of her fund. “And truth will win out.”