Cathie Wood Was Last Year’s Hottest Investor. But Is There a Lesson for Her Fans in a Forgotten 1990s Icon?

今年1月的一个星期二，一位正在崛起的投资巨星在《前线》节目的一集中首次亮相公共广播服务。在科技股取得了令人难以置信的回报之后，这位互联网奇才被拿来与沃伦•巴菲特（warrenbuffett）或共同基金经理彼得•林奇（peterlynch）等传奇投资者相比，但却与新经济相提并论。这位经理表现出了一种不可思议的能力，能够识别那些使用在线平台和数字化商业模式正在颠覆传统、旧经济竞争对手的公司。但更重要的是，这位首相能够在这些公司股价飙升之前买入它们。

“The competition is fierce and the top mutual fund managers are like modern-day alchemists, creating magical market gains,” narrator Joe Nocera told viewers. “And right now, no one has the golden touch more than this man, Garrett Van Wagoner.”

当然,这是1997年1月,而不是2021年。在time, Garret Van Wagoner was already seen as an absolute stock picking genius. And after two more years of strong performance, the Van Wagoner Emerging Growth Fund capped it off with a 291 percent return in 1999. Investors poured in, chasing the hottest of hot hands. The fund’s assets under management swelled to nearly $1.5 billion that year, up from just $190 million one year prior.

投资者who had followed Frontline’s coverage and invested $10,000 in Van Wagoner’s fund in January 1997 would have seen their investment grow to roughly $45,000 by the beginning of 2000, an annualized return of approximately 66 percent over those three years.

But as we all know, the story didn’t end there. Over the next several years, the internet bubble collapsed, and the NASDAQ fell from a peak just over 5,000 in early 2000, shedding a cumulative 78 percent before hitting a low of 1,114 in October of 2002. Van Wagoner continued to struggle on for quite some time until finally throwing in the towel in 2008. The final tally for investors was a staggering 63 percent loss of investor capital, and an annualized return of negative 7.8 percent per year since inception.

一次性的互联网wunderkind被曝光的原因仅仅是极度集中的曝光与一个白热化的领域有着密切的联系——毕竟这不是一种神奇的接触。

二十年后，Cathie Wood, the bespectacled guru of innovation who runs ARK Investment Management, is the hottest name on the Street. Wood is widely celebrated for her ability to spot innovative companies changing the future of business, like Tesla, Square, and Roku. Over the course of the last year, assets under management at ARK — all via a series of actively managed ETFs — have risen roughly five times. This is in no small part because the funds under Wood’s impressive stewardship returned an eye-popping average of 120 percent last year.

The firm’s flagship offering, the ARK Innovation Fund (ticker symbol ARKK), posted a whopping gain of 153 percent the previous year. Since its launch in October of 2014, ARKK has averaged annualized returns of 33.6 percent, destroying the measly gains of 10.7 percent put up by the S&P 500 index during the same time. An investor with the foresight to deposit $10,000 with ARKK on the first day of trading would be sitting on an account worth $62,611 as of March 5.

但这一令人难以置信的表现是否仅仅归功于技术，这一点也不完全清楚。ARKK的表现当然优于标准普尔，但它的波动率为30%，几乎是大盘的两倍。风险较高的科技行业的飙升表现，显然在推动该基金的风险和回报。事实上，ARRK的贝塔系数甚至接近1.1，甚至与Vanguard的信息技术指数基金ETF（一种被动管理的产品）相比，自2014年第四季度以来，该基金的贝塔系数每年增长23%。

And with tech stocks beginning to correct, ARRK is falling even harder than most. The ETF has plunged more than 25 percent since its peak just three weeks ago, almost exactly three times the 8.4 percent decline of the VGT. ARKK’s beta to the tech index fund during that stretch has jumped to 1.73, meaning it has participated to a far greater extent in the downside volatility than it captured on the upside — a clear sign of embedded structural overweights versus security selection skill.

The past is not necessarily prologue; the market today is certainly not an exact replica of the conditions present during the dot.com bubble. Nor is this to say that Ms. Wood is not a brilliant investor. Over the course of a fairly storied career, first as a renowned economist before moving to the portfolio manager side, she has been consistently known for the accuracy and foresight of her observations, which often run contrary to popular wisdom.

然而，追逐最近表现最好的公司对投资者来说是一场灾难。两者individualandinstitutional investorsalike are similar in their propensity to engage in this behavior, and the investment returns for both are the worse for it.

Consider this more a cautionary tale that today’s hot hand can often become tomorrow’s hot potatoes.