Cathie Wood’s ARKK Struggles in Early Trading After 20% Retreat

The main fund from Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management slipped in pre-market trading on Thursday, as it struggles to stabilize following a 20% drop from its February peak.

The $22.9 billion Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) was down 0.7% as of 8:53 a.m. in New York. The ETF tumbled 6.3% on Wednesday, adding to recent losses as growth stocks such as Pinterest Inc. and Zillow Group Inc. took a beating.

The decline on Thursday had been steeper, but ARKK clawed back some of the drop as futures on the Nasdaq 100 Index also erased much of an earlier decline. The underlying gauge lost almost 3% on Wednesday, with traders turning away from tech in favor of so-called value stocks that had underperformed during the pandemic.

The rotation, along with higher bond yields that dim the allure of equities, is taking the shine off what had been one of the hottest investments on Wall Street. Since peaking on Feb. 12, ARKK’s price has now dropped by a fifth, the level that commonly defines a bear market.

“People are worried the crowded trades will lose their momentum like they did last September” when some of the biggest tech names suffered a bout of selling, said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co.

Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes have jumped more than 50 basis points in 2021, on track for the largest quarterly increase since 2016. Consequently, it’s growing more difficult to justify sky-high valuations for highly speculative, expensive areas of the stock market.