Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation Is Heading to a No. 1 Finish for 2024

Wood has long invested in Coinbase, which trades like a leveraged bet on Bitcoin. That hurt in 2022 as Bitcoin tanked but has paid off this year as the currency rebounded 155%. Coinbase accounts for more than 10% of ARK Innovation’s holdings.

“It’s no secret that we are bullish on the outlook for digital assets, Bitcoin in particular,” Tom Staudt, ARK Invest’s president and CEO, told Barron’s. The fund could stand yet another shot of crypto gains: It’s still off nearly 60% over the past three years as it recovers from a 67% decline in 2022, ranking dead last among mid-cap growth ETFs.

Wood has lightened up on Coinbase, selling more than $150 million of the stock in recent days, though it remains a top holding. A Bitcoin ETF may be coming soon, giving Coinbase another leg up. But Wood may not need it to go from worst to first in this year’s ETF horse race.

Write to Lauren Foster at [email protected]

Last Week

Markets

Stocks ticked up slightly to start the week. On Tuesday, the consumer price index’s headline price growth dipped to an annualized 3.1% in November. The next day, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged and said cuts could come next year.

All three indexes climbed, with the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
topping 37,000 for the first time. The European Central Bank and Bank of England followed the Fed on Thursday in holding rates steady. November’s U.S. retail sales soared past estimates. The 10-year Treasury yield was below 4% for the first time since July. U.S. mortgage rates fell below 7%. The Dow industrials,
S&P 500,
and
Nasdaq Composite
were up 2.9%, 2.5%, and 2.85%, respectively, for the week. All three indexes finished with seven consecutive weeks of gains.

Companies

Pfizer’s
2024 guidance was billions of dollars short of what investors anticipated. The stock slid…
Tesla
recalled two million vehicles to fix a driver-assistance feature…The U.N.’s COP28 climate talks ended with a landmark agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

Deals

Occidental Petroleum
acquired privately held energy producer CrownRock for $12 billion…Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management made a $5.8 billion offer for
Macy’s,
The Wall Street Journal reported…Insurer
Cigna
called off a potential merger with
Humana,
the Journal also reported…
Choice Hotels International
made a hostile bid for
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

Next Week

Tuesday 12/19

The Bank of Japan announces its monetary-policy decision. The central bank is expected to keep its key short-term interest rate at negative 0.1%. The
BOJ
might tweak its yield-curve control policy, which aims for a target yield of 0% on Japanese 10-year bonds with a ceiling of 1%. Many strategists see this as a precursor to the BOJ ending both negative interest rates and the yield-curve control policy in the first half of 2024. The yen has rallied about 6% against the U.S. dollar after hitting a multidecade low in mid-November.

Accenture
and
FedEx
are among the few large-cap companies releasing results in a quiet earnings week. Accenture reports before the opening bell on Tuesday, and FedEx after the market close. Memory-chip maker
Micron Technology
announces earnings on Wednesday, and sneaker giant
Nike
on Thursday.

Friday 12/22

The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the Personal-Consumption Expenditures Price Index for November. Consensus estimate is for the PCE to increase 2.8% year over year, two-tenths of a percentage point less than in October. The core PCE, which excludes food and energy prices, is expected to rise 3.3%, compared with a 3.5% gain in October. The annual change in the core PCE is at its lowest level since April 2021.

Email: [email protected]