By David Randall

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – The market relief rally of Monday left many stocks that are considered stay-at home. This is a blow for Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation Fund.

$18.6 Billion ARK Innovation Fund, which performed better than all U.S.-based equity fund last year because of its huge holdings stocks that rallied during the recession, fell 0.5% Monday morning, much less than the 1% increase in the.

Friday’s drop in the benchmark index was nearly 2.3% due to news that a new variant of coronavirus, known as Omicron (now South Africa), had been discovered. This has prompted new restrictions on travel around the world. However, global equity markets recovered some of the lost ground on Monday due to reports that the new variant could cause mild symptoms.

Phil Orlando, Chief Equity Market Strategy at Federated Hermes (NYSE):, stated that signs Omicron is not likely to cause a serious economic downturn, which encourages investors to stay in cyclical stock markets.

It isn’t February 2020, when the entire world will be shut down. “If anything we believe the economy can continue to grow from here,” said he.

Monday was a day of decline for ARK Innovation. 8 of 10 fund holdings fell on Monday. The fund’s second largest holding was Teladoc, a telemedicine company (NYSE: Health Inc), which fell 5.1%. Roku Inc fell 2.6% Zoom Video Communications Inc fell 3.2%

For the year, ARK Innovation is down 14%, while the benchmark S&P 500 is up 23.4%. Morningstar has ranked ARK Innovation as one of the most underperforming mid-cap growth funds in the past year. It has been among the best-performing funds for the past five years.

Ark has not responded to the request for comments regarding this story.