The Best Stock Picker of 2020 Wins With Disruptive DNA

2020 was a very good year for Cathie Wood. Photographer: Alex Flynn/Bloomberg

Among the 367 U.S.-based mutual funds with 60% of their $5 billion in American equities, her ARK Genomic Revolution ETF, ARK Innovation ETF and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF are far ahead, reaping bonanzas of 203%, 159% and 157%, respectively. Wood left her closest competitor trailing by 60 percentage points. , specializing in synthetic DNA, including genome engineering, which gained 661% and is 5.9% of the fund, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 65-year-old Wood, a summa cum laude graduate in finance and economics from the University of Southern California, has made disruptive innovation her calling card ever since Ark Investment Management LLC became a registered adviser in January 2014 at a point when money management increasingly was a passive, index-driven business.

Unlike most of her competitors, who rely on market benchmarks to determine the size of their holdings, Wood enabled ARK Genomic Revolution to increase 225%, or $5.2 billion in the most recent quarter, by purchasing an additional 1.5 million shares of Arcturus Therapeutics, keeping its weighting at 4.7%. She added 7 million shares of Pacific Biosciences of California, raising its weighting to 7.1% from 5.6%, and boosted Twist Bioscience by 1.4 million shares, pushing its weighting to 5.9% from 4.7%. holding to 3.6% of the fund from 12% and cut Crispr Therapeutics to 6.2% from 8%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. All of which proved her prowess for dynamic and transparent investing to the extent her ARK Innovation ETF, the second-best performer among the 367 funds this year with a total return of 159%, dethroned JPMorgan in December as the largest actively managed ETF.

Among ARK Innovation’s top three holdings, Palo Alto-based Tesla Inc. , the San Jose internet media company gained 154%, or 11 percentage points, and Crispr, 9 percentage points. Wood is best known for championing Tesla soon after launching Ark seven years ago when more than 60% of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were bearish on the maker of zero-emission, battery-electric vehicles. She made Tesla No. She still considers it undervalued as legacy automakers lose money on their EVs, while Tesla becomes increasingly profitable because of its battery and chip technology.

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Source: Matthew A. Winkler | Bloomberg