Joy ride

'Tis the season for investment spectacles. While GameStop (GME) embarked on the most dramatic round trip in modern stock-market history, boomeranging from $40 per share to $480 and then back to $40, the ARK family of funds made its own history. On Feb. 9 and then again on Feb. 11, ARK funds received more than $1 billion of inflows.

(As I write these words, GameStop has rallied to $120 over the past two days after languishing near $40 for a full week. Go figure.)

If ARK's receipts weren't an all-time record (they were well above Vanguard's best run rate, but I don't have access to Vanguard's daily figures) they were without doubt the highest ever notched by a niche fund company. Unlike other fund-industry sales leaders, ARK is new to the scene (founded in 2014) and until recently was tiny. One year ago, the company's US funds held only $3 billion in assets.

Flows into ARK Innovation ETF accelerated in December and Janruary

Ark Innovation ETF Flows

Source: 4 Charts on ARK's Historic Fund Inflows (David Carey), Morningstar Direct, Data as of January 31, 201

Investing by theme

ARK's funds are highly specialised; the right funds, one might say, for the right time. In the United States, the company operates seven exchange-traded funds, each of which pursues an investment theme. In order of size, the funds are:

  • ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK)
  • ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG)
  • ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW)
  • ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ)
  • ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF)
  • The 3D Printing ETF (PRNT) (yes, really)
  • ARK Israel Innovative Technology ETF (IZRL)

Ark's Disruptive Innovation fund (not rated) is avaliable to Australian investors via the firm's partnership local manager Nikko Asset Management.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC: Deep dive: The fund that returned 150pc in 2020

You can completely, utterly, and unreservedly judge these books by their covers. The funds' portfolios are as their names suggest, stuffed with companies that are high on promise and low on earnings. For example, the median price/sales ratio for ARKK's companies is 22, as opposed to 2.5 for the overall stock market. Only one third of those businesses are currently profitable.

In short, these funds will terrify those with a strong sense of investment history. Finance professors widely prefer cheap, unheralded companies to stocks that carry steep prices and similarly steep expectations. Practitioners tend to be swayed more by personal experience than do academics, but most veterans reach a similar conclusion: Emerging businesses usually disappoint.

Although ARK's investment strategy is familiar, the company's sales success is not. Its inflows raise the question: Is the mutual fund tail wagging the stock-market dog? That is, have ARK funds performed so well--ARKK is up 11 per cent this year after gaining a breathtaking 152 per cent in 2020--because when its funds put their new monies to work, they boost the prices of the stocks that they already hold?

Indexmania running wild?

Such queries are nothing new. They have long been asked of equity index funds, which have been called self-fulfilling prophecies. However, the math doesn't support that argument. Although equity index funds are enormous, their inflows are not strong enough to do anything more than nudge stock prices.

This occurs because of two reasons. One is that index funds have been a long, slow build. Yes, such funds control $5 trillion, but that figure was attained after decades' worth of sales, plus market appreciation. In no calendar year have the net annual sales for US equity index funds of all stripes, offered by all providers, including both mutual funds and ETFs, surpassed $230 billion.

The other reason is that the US equity market is enormous. When equity index funds notched their highest annual inflows, in 2016, the total capitalisation of US stocks was $25 trillion. Thus, during their very best year for sales, equity index funds received cash that amounted to less than 1 per cent of their investment universe. That amount was, and is, insufficient to have meaningful consequences.

Switching to a daily view doesn't change the narrative. Currently, about $350 billion worth of US equity shares are exchanged each day. Even if equity fund sales had remained at their previous level, they would account for just 0.3 per cent of the market's overall activity. True, their impact would be greater than that number suggests, because about half of that daily $350 billion comes from high-frequency traders shuffling their shares, but their effect would nonetheless be modest.

The ARK view

The numbers look quite different for ARK's funds, which not only are relatively concentrated, but which also own many smaller companies. Several times this month, ARKK has received more than $300 million in a single day, to be placed in around 50 companies. Naturally, the impact of those trades is much greater than those made by the industry's major index funds.

For example, ARKK's sixth-largest holding as of Feb. 1, 2021, the genetic-testing company Invitae (NVTA), has average daily trading volume of $420 million. To maintain its 3.8 per cent position in Invitae after receiving $300 million in additional assets, ARKK was required to place $11.4 million in the stock. That amounted to 2.7 per cent of Invitae's average trading volume.

That figure is slightly higher than the portfolio median of 2 per cent, but not by much. As of Feb. 1, $300 million in daily new sales would have caused ARKK to buy more than 10 per cent of the average trading volume of four positions, and between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of another 10 positions. Such figures never occur with index funds--at least, not any mainstream fund that benchmarks a major index.

Whether ARK's cash flows have meaningfully boosted its portfolios' prices is unclear. Stocks, after all, do not submit to interviews. However, the possibility does exist that, at least at certain times, ARK's portfolios are bootstrapping themselves. They increase in price because of the assets that they have received. In turn, that performance encourages investors to send them additional monies, which leads to more price appreciation. And so forth.

Perhaps I have overstated this concern. Only professional traders can know how trade orders that equal 2 per cent of daily volume will affect a stock's price--and even then, the impact depends upon other factors, such as how quickly the order must be filled, and the extent of ready sellers. I will say, this, though: Until ARK came along, I shrugged off claims that cash flows into funds influenced their returns. Now I pay attention.

John Rekenthaler ([email protected]) has been researching the fund industry since 1988. He is now a columnist for Morningstar.com and a member of Morningstar's investment research department. John is quick to point out that while Morningstar typically agrees with the views of the Rekenthaler Report, his views are his own.