ARKBTC
Ark / Bitcoin
crypto Composite

Morningstar put out a piece this week asking whether thematic etfs are a $300B trap, i think they are being generous.
Nearly a third of 1100 etfs launched in this year are classified as trading tools which are leveraged or inverse products targeting single stocks, cryptocurrencies or hyperspecific themes. There are now roughly 600 of these available to US investors, MSTU,(the 2x leveraged strategy etf) is down 91% over the past year against MSTR's 67% decline which iss daily compounding doing exactly what its mathematically designed to do in a downtrend
The marketing on these products is impressive tho , they get named things like "Defiance daily target 2X long NVDA etf" which sounds like a reasonable way to get more nvidia exposure but is a product that resets daily which means in a volatile sideways market you can lose money even if the underlying stock ends exactly where it started and its in prospectus too
ARK style innovation funds, ai theme etfs, clean energy funds ,all charge 0.5-0.75% expense ratios for concentrated exposure to trends that are already fully priced into the stocks they hold. its paying active management fees for passive exposure to yesterday's consensus and the data on thematic etf performance consistently shows underperformance versus broad index funds over any 5year window.
The boring answer remains boring as VOO overtook SPY as the world's largest ETF earlier this year with 0.03% expense ratio, 500 companies, no theme, leverage and daily reset. For EU investors building long term positions, platforms like traderepublic and bitpanda both offer VOO and equivalent broad market etfs
How many people here have held a leveraged singlenstock etf for more than 3 months and come out ahead?

I remember someone mentioned ARK was the next best thing since sliced bread. It's down -36.6 last 5 years. Becareful guys, most stocks will fail.

It doesn't surprise me. People either learn the easy way by trusting the data or the hard way by getting burned themselves. I got burned in the ARK craze and now the furthest I'll deviate from index funds is the Nasdaq 100.. which is still an index fund.

It's such an interesting stock and Kathy Woods ARK has just dump 123 Million on it. It's a tough one because the model is amazing but whilst it will create new drug options it will still take years for those drugs to get approved. But, seems to be a lot of investors looking at it as a serious player in the AI drug future. It's exciting for sure. I love it.