Chart of the Day: Past Performance

Today’s Chart of the Day is from the Financial Times in an article titled “Which funds have incinerated the most value over the past decade?” The fund family ARK is on the top of the list by a large margin because for the last 10 years it lost a combined $13.4 billion. About half of the loss comes from its largest fund called ARK Innovative ETF shown in the chart below.

With great risks can come great losses and, in this case, after seeing a short-term run up in prices during the mini-tech bubble during COVID-19, most investors thought it would continue to go up and bought into the fund. Unfortunately, they forgot the most important eight words in investing, "Past performance is not indicative of future returns." Those that bought in at the top saw the prices crumble afterwards.