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This ARKK Just Won't Float!


Parsad

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I just found this out, and it seems kind of bonkers to me.  At end of 2020 Cathie's distributor decided they wanted to exercise an option she had given them to buy control of Ark investments. She flipped out over this and eventually negotiated to buy them out using what had to be a ton of borrowed money. 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-28/cathie-wood-buys-back-option-that-had-threatened-control-of-ark 

 

The deal was done just a couple months the absolute peak in ARKK, and at the time Ark Investments across all of its funds had $37B in assets so she was likely counting on a big stream of fees to pay that debt. Now her total AUM has declined by 60% to $14B. Is it possible that if they continue to shed assets that she'll be bankrupted? I always thought that she'd be able to milk ARKK and the other funds for fees for another decade based on that one great year, why would she leverage up and risk all of that?

Edited by ValueArb
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13 hours ago, ValueArb said:

I just found this out, and it seems kind of bonkers to me.  At end of 2020 Cathie's distributor decided they wanted to exercise an option she had given them to buy control of Ark investments. She flipped out over this and eventually negotiated to buy them out using what had to be a ton of borrowed money. 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-28/cathie-wood-buys-back-option-that-had-threatened-control-of-ark 

 

The deal was done just a couple months the absolute peak in ARKK, and at the time Ark Investments across all of its funds had $37B in assets so she was likely counting on a big stream of fees to pay that debt. Now her total AUM has declined by 60% to $14B. Is it possible that if they continue to shed assets that she'll be bankrupted? I always thought that she'd be able to milk ARKK and the other funds for fees for another decade based on that one great year, why would she leverage up and risk all of that?

 

Because she's crazy!  Has zero clue about risk management.  Cheers!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Cathy is little different than most of the other finance and even value bros marketing their funds and hoping to raise AUM. They all just get mad cuz she’s better at it. I’d gander the 3/5/10 year performance record of many of her detractors is also quite poor. Best thing a half intelligent individual can do for themselves is just learn how to do it on your own. All these folks are just marketers hoping to get rich of OPM.

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5 hours ago, ValueArb said:

ARKK is up 48% this year, so she's clearly feeling her oats again. We should all get out of the way of the dual steamrollers of Tesla and ARKK!

 

What year is this? So interesting to see the pendulum of investor sentiment / momentum swing back and forth so dramatically.

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18 hours ago, ValueArb said:

ARKK is up 48% this year, so she's clearly feeling her oats again. We should all get out of the way of the dual steamrollers of Tesla and ARKK!

And she will market the crap out of that gain even though it is only because she dropped massively last year and its a small rebound.  I don't think she is breakeven on the money she has raised to date.  But she will definitely market it like a 48% gain is a huge win not a dead cat bounce. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think it's reasonable time to short ARKK on a speculative basis. Speculative stocks have seen a dramatic bounce from their lows / YTD. 

I shorted about 6.2% today and purchased Jan 2024 calls limiting my loss to about 26% of the position.

 

Should ARKK go > 60, I'll lose about 160 bps pre-tax.

 

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Edited by thepupil
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I know it's popular to beat up on ARKK, but I still wouldn't short it because the world is crazy.  Buying an out of the money call option to limit your risk is probably the only way to do it and not lose sleep at night. 

 

People flocked to her when her pandemic picks went parabolic, but if you look at her process, not her results, it's terrifying.  You should be able to identify a cogent theory not just look at the results.  Because the number of data points is infinite you need to understand why something works, not just that it seems to work now, so it will work forever. Butter production in Bangladesh has a 99% correlation with SP500 moves.  But you wouldn't bet on it, just like you wouldn't make decisions on the economy based on the outcome of the world series, because certain correlations occur by chance. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-24/bad-omen-for-us-economy-phillies-winning-the-world-series

 

She liked to tout that her analysts were not accountants or finance majors as a feature not a bug.  Is the reason that most active managers can't beat the index because they are accountants and finance guys, or is it because doing it is so hard that even highly numerate people have trouble because they are competing against each other and cancelling out their edges on average? If the odds of becoming a boxing champion by training in a boxing gym are miniscule, does that mean I have a better chance by recruiting fighters from the music school?  

 

I'm not long or short, just here for the entertainment.  I hope you make some money on the trade. 

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On 7/3/2023 at 10:12 PM, Spooky said:

 

What year is this? So interesting to see the pendulum of investor sentiment / momentum swing back and forth so dramatically.

Sentiment has been a wild factor since Covid. Certainly a traders sandbox out there

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TSLA 2Q23 Earnings Call

Analyst: With the emphasis of price cuts to drive volume growth eating into automotive gross margin, can investors expect to see automotive gross margin stabilize or even rise due to efficiencies outpacing the cuts? And if so, when?

 

Musk: Where’s that crystal ball, again? If I may, look, the short-term variances in gross margin and profitability really are minor relative to the long-term picture. Autonomy will make all of these numbers look silly. I’d recommend looking at ARK Invest. I think their analysis is very good. It’s the best. And generally, Fintwit or the finance, Smart Finance people on Twitter, follow their accounts. They’re great. So that’s in my opinion where you’ll get the best info. So, I strongly believe Tesla is a big long-term investment. And don’t sweat when things go up and down. In fact, if the market panics, buy; if the market is a little too exuberant, sell at the time. But just generally, like -- I feel -- I’m confident we’ll deliver over long term, but can’t control short term. So -- and the autonomy is really where it’s at.

 

I didn't know if the TSLA thread was a better place for this or this one. This is the first time I have seen a CEO of public company as big, ask veteran sell-side analysts who've done nothing but cover the same sector and stock for their entire life to look at analyses on FinTwit. This statement alone gives credibility to Cathie and ARK in the eyes of novice retail investors.

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Of course Elon loves Cathie, she helps him pump the stock by regurgitating his own ludicrous future narrative, so he pumps her ETF to thank her.

 

Last week Matt Levine reported similar ethically challenged behavior by Cathie around ARKKs Twitter stake. She was forced to write her shares value down to a Twitter valuation of $23B, but defended it saying she thought the shares were undervalued and would happily buy more at that price if she could but no one wanted to sell. Matt pointed out that Fidelity gave Twitter a valuation of $15B in their write-down, so clearly they would be happy sellers at $23B. Seems clear she didn’t want to upset Musk, so the mutual hand washing continues.

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  • 3 months later...

Looks like an opportunity to short ARKK again has passed, it's back trading in the $35 range from a peak at beginning of August at nearly $50. Cathie can console herself that she is still up nearly 20% on the year, given that Dec 2022 ended at ARKK's five year low just under $30. 

 

It's not the tech stocks, I compared her chart to the QQQ, and it is up far more this year and its decline since August is far less.  Thats been the norm since Cathie's hot year ended in Feb 2021, the QQQ has done far better than ARKK in almost every period.

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  • 2 months later...
On 10/25/2023 at 10:33 AM, ValueArb said:

Looks like an opportunity to short ARKK again has passed, it's back trading in the $35 range from a peak at beginning of August at nearly $50. Cathie can console herself that she is still up nearly 20% on the year, given that Dec 2022 ended at ARKK's five year low just under $30. 

 

It's not the tech stocks, I compared her chart to the QQQ, and it is up far more this year and its decline since August is far less.  Thats been the norm since Cathie's hot year ended in Feb 2021, the QQQ has done far better than ARKK in almost every period.

Well she states that she's not an index follower and only holds TSLA of the Magnificent 7, so that's unsurprising.

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  • 1 month later...

History repeats itself. She's just a reincarnation of the go-go investors of the 1960s. 

 

The lesson investors never learn that if a fund massively outperforms over a short period of time it is usually a combination of:

a) Taking on a lot of risk (i.e. speculating)

b) Being in the right place at the right time (i.e. the flavour of the month happens to be the stocks you are concentrated in)

 

Of course there is some salesmanship involved. If you can talk your book convincingly that will attract more investors into the stocks you are investing in. 

And you need to be intelligent enough to at least sound convincing. 

 

But she is a product of a speculative investing environment where the current generation of investors are used to getting rich quick and are easily seduced by anything futuristic. 

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