ARK Rockets Into ETF Issuer Top 10

The strong demand for ETFs continued as investors added $18.3 billion to U.S.-listed ETFs during the holiday-shortened week ending Thursday, January 21. Year-to-date inflows now stand at $55.3 billion, compared to $42.7 billion at this same time last year.

ARK Stays Red Hot

Once again, the most noteworthy flows activity of the week came from none other than ARK. Two of the issuer’s funds found themselves on the top inflows list: the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and the ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG), with inflows of $1.2 billion and $1 billion, respectively.

ARK’s seven-ETF suite has now pulled in $6.8 billion of new money through the first three weeks of the year, ahead of all ETF issuers other than Vanguard, which is No. 1, with inflows of more than $18 billion. Over the past year, investors have added $27.3 billion to ARK’s exchange-traded funds.

Thanks to strong performance in its holdings tied to “disruptive technology” themes, ARK has come from obscurity to become one of the hottest and largest ETF issuers. According to the latest ETF League Table, ARK is now the ninth-largest ETF issuer and climbing fast.

Its $47.5 billion in assets trails ProShares by just $1.1 billion. It’s also within sight of VanEck’s $55.5 billion in AUM. There’s a wider gap after that, with First Trust commanding $116.7 billion in U.S.-listed ETF assets, followed by Schwab with $207.5 billion, and Invesco with $304 billion.

Stellar Performance Fuels Interest

Still, $47.5 billion is an enormous amount of assets to be controlled by a firm that had a relatively modest $3.4 billion in assets under management only a year ago, and $1.1 billon in assets three years ago.

Ignited by the pandemic, many of ARK’s next-generation technology and health care stocks have skyrocketed. From Tesla to Roku to Square to Teladoc, many of ARK’s holdings are up triple-digit percentages over the past several months.

Strong performance invariably leads to strong investor interest, thus it’s not a total shock to see ARK become the most successful active manager in the ETF space.

The question now is whether ARK can satisfy the plethora of new investors who have bought into its funds based on a strong track record and expect the stellar performance to continue. ARK certainly has the motivation to succeed. Its seven ETFs, with expense ratios ranging from 0.49% to 0.75%, generate annual revenues of $359 million.

For a full list of this week's top ETF inflows and outflows, see the tables below:

Top 10 Creations (All ETFs)

Top 10 Redemptions (All ETFs)

ETF Weekly Flows By Asset Class

Asset Classes (Year-to-Date)

Disclaimer: All data as of 6 a.m. Eastern time the date the article is published. Data is believed to be accurate; however, transient market data is often subject to subsequent revision and correction by the exchanges.