The stock market became a battle between tomorrow’s trading and today’s bid in recent months, and things got messy in the past week.
The stocks valued on promises for a transformed future have sold hard in favor of those ready to thrive in the current resilient economic boom. But after last week’s erratic swings that culminated in Friday’s sales crescendo and the powerful upward reversal, could these adversaries coexist more peacefully for a while?
Disruptive technology stocks and pre-income upstarts and speculative SPACs with a high story-to-substance ratio have been thoroughly rinsed since mid-February.
The fixation on the ARK Invest ETFs from party to famine was fitting, irresistible, and probably exaggerated now. The flagship ARK Innovation Fund (ARKK) on the Friday morning low had lost more than 30% in about three weeks. The fund has been so popular that stocks are hard to borrow, and Wall Street desks have been busy creating synthetic versions of the ETF that hedge funds can bet against.
Was that a short-term capitulation in this sub-sector ahead of a 10% rebound in ARKK from late morning to Friday’s close?