By David Randall

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Cathie Wood has become a star stock picker and is now poised to join a tiny club: Portfolio managers who saw their funds grow from the first to the worst within 12 months.

Morningstar’s $16.7 billion exchange traded fund will end the year in a down 24%. It is one of only 2 active equity funds that Morningstar tracks to show more than 20% loss this year, while the benchmark is rising slightly over 21%.

However, those losses are far from 2020. The fund’s focus on innovators in disruptive innovation rose due to its large bets on stay-at-home stocks, which thrived in the early stages. Morningstar ranked the fund as the most successful U.S. actively managed fund.

Morningstar has only 14,190 equity funds that have been tracked back to 2004, which shows the risk inherent in Wood’s aggressive growth strategy. Robby Greengold is an analyst at Morningstar.

He said that Cathie Wood was willing to accept high-risk names and take less precaution than her peers.

Ark Invest didn’t respond to a request for comment on this story.

Wood for her part has indicated in her recent webinars her concern about increasing inflation. However, she believes that the greatest threat to the economy and financial markets will be deflation in the next year.

Wood claimed that Wood’s confidence in his strategy was growing despite losses to stock stocks for the past year. [L1N2SZ25L]

The portfolio’s losses are extensive with 8 out of 10 fund holdings dropping 8% or greater over the last twelve months. These are the largest losses. Zoom Video Communications Teladoc (NYSE) Health Inc. (NASDAQ:) Inc. Roku (NASDAQ) Inc., down close to 30%

Intellia Therapeutics, (NASDAQ) Inc, and Tesla (NASDAQ) Inc are both the top 10 holdings in the fund that posted positive returns over the past year.

This fund increased by 3.8% Tuesday. It is currently down 44% from its February peak.

Wood’s method appears to have been accepted by investors despite losses. Lipper data shows that the fund had brought in $5.8 billion so far this year, with nearly $229.3 million in the week ending December 15, which is close to the total amount of the previous year.

ARK Innovation continues to be one of the best performing mid-cap Growth Funds over the past five years. It has posted a 38% annualized Return.

According to Todd Rosenbluth of CFRA, the head for mutual fund research in New York, “The fund’s tremendous success in 2020 was always going be difficult to replicate, but many piled into 2021 to begin 2021 and have remained loyal despite disappointing 2021”, said Rosenbluth. “This bodes well for 2022 when many people have renewed optimism that they can’t struggle in back to back years.”