Are you worried about growing volatility in 2017? Wondering which companies will benefit if tax reform happens? Struggling to figure out an infrastructure play for your portfolio?
Now could be a good time to look up from those near-term issues and consider how a bigger-picture, future-oriented outlook might benefit your portfolio. Consider how innovation is transforming industries and creating new ones—and the ways investors can tap into those themes.
“No sector is safe from innovation,” says Catherine D. Wood, founder and chief executive officer of ARK. At ARK, analysts focus on the ways in which technologically enabled innovation will potentially intersect every aspect of business life, Wood says.
Intersect—and likely improve it, she adds.
“These innovation platforms are going to potentially change the way the world works and, we do believe, make the world a better place.”
For investors eager to allocate a portion of their portfolio to harness these long-term trends, consider the following five innovation themes:
Robotics and Automation
Many people fear that developments in the fields of robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to massive job losses, but ARK sees things differently. While a recent study from Oxford University found that robotics and AI will decimate almost half of all U.S. jobs over the next 20 years, analysts at ARK are focused on how technology and innovation platforms like robotics, automation, and AI should increase productivity dramatically.
Developments in those areas could produce new products and services “that we can’t even imagine right now,” Wood says. Those developments, in turn, represent a source of significant employment growth. ARK analysts estimate that by 2035, that productivity boom will create an additional $12 trillion in U.S. GDP, over and above the $26 trillion to $28 trillion currently predicted for that year.
“Our job as thematic investors is to figure out what new industries are going to be created by that $12 trillion,” she says. ARK’s Industrial Innovation ETF (ARKQ) and The 3D Printing ETF (PRNT) stand to benefit from an industry on the verge of transforming manufacturing in myriad ways.
Energy Storage
ARK’s Industrial Innovation ETF (ARKQ) also focuses on energy storage, which is the innovation driving developments in batteries and, of course, electric vehicles.
According to ARK, demand for electric cars will hit 17 million units worldwide by 2022, compared to expectations of about 2 million units from most other analysts. The wide difference in expectations is partly because many people fail to see the performance potential of next generation electric vehicles. Plus, the cost of building such cars is decreasing and, ARK predicts, will fall below the cost of a Toyota Camry later this decade.
“That’s going to create an explosion in demand,” Wood says. Another area of demand likely will be the trend toward self-driving electric vehicles. ARK believes that over the next 5-10 years, autonomous electric taxis could have a profound impact on global health, and will disrupt the auto industry dramatically. ARK estimates that autonomous taxi networks alone will increase the value of the global public equity markets by 10% in the next two decades. Perhaps most importantly, consumers stand to benefit from cheaper, safer transportation …and fewer stranded assets.
Next Generation Internet
For ARK’s Web x.0 ETF (ARKW), the point is to embrace next generation internet innovations and companies that should benefit from the explosion of cloud computing, mobile services, big data, social platforms and more. Of course, the themes on which ARK focuses intersect with each other.
For example, Wood says, “We think next generation internet innovations are enabling the development of autonomous vehicles because the most important asset that a company can have before it’s able to develop a network of self-driving vehicles is data about the roads, about the environment. This could not happen without the cloud, without breakthroughs in graphics processing units.”
Blockchain technology
Think Bitcoin, but not so much the cryptocurrency as the technology that undergirds that currency. This technology potentially will lead to the creation of new businesses, Wood says, but even before that happens the cost structure should collapse in many inefficient industries, including financial services and the government sector. The health care industry is another example. Currently, health care suffers mightily because of a lack of interoperability, Wood says.
“You have to go out to the doctor’s office and fill out the form every single time.” We think blockchain technology will connect insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and patients—entirely securely with private keys that allow each entity to access a piece of the blockchain, also known as the distributed ledger. The ledger itself never changes.
“It’s immutable,” Wood says, thus providing a system that is highly secure yet allows for interoperability and privacy.” ARK embraces this theme through its investment in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) via its ARK Web x.0 ETF (ARKW) and ARK’s overall Disruptive Innovation ETF (ARKK).
DNA Sequencing
Thanks to developing technologies, health-care professionals soon should be able to sequence individuals’ DNA to figure out which drugs work best for each patient, what diseases a person might be predisposed to, what drug dosage will be most effective for each patient—even whether you should have a particular surgery.
“We’re going to take the guesswork out of health care,” Wood says. For its part, ARK is making the most of the emerging opportunities in health care through its actively managed Genomic Revolution Multi-Sector ETF (ARKG), which invests in companies that are focused on developing and/or harnessing the latest advancements in genomics.
ARK Investment Management LLC is a New York-based registered investment adviser that specializes in thematic investing in disruptive innovations that should change the way the world works. Foreside Fund Services, LLC, distributor.