Jim Cramer says the ‘Ark Invest phenomenon’ appears to be over for now

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday that Ark Invest’s stock-moving influence appears to be waning — at least for now.

Ark Invest’s family of exchange-traded funds were some of the best performers on Wall Street last year, but have not fared well in 2021 as investors rotated away from high-growth stocks and into economic recovery plays.

The “Mad Money” host said as the funds run by star money manager Cathie Wood’s firm struggled, the amount of outflows started to pick up. That has implications for the stocks that are components of the ETFs, Cramer said.

“It seems pretty clear that the Ark Invest phenomenon is no longer in play,” Cramer said. “We’re not seeing major outflows here, but the era of Cathie Wood propping these stocks up with her own buying bazooka, I think, it appears to be over.”

The opposite was true last year as investors started to notice how well Wood’s family of funds was performing, Cramer said, leading the firm to see a massive wave of inflows and new firepower to deploy into the market.

Cramer noted that Ark’s flagship ARK Innovation ETF have started to perform better recently as growth stocks returned to favor. Indeed, the fund is up about 2.4% over the past 5 days, while the S&P 500, by comparison, is down 1.9%.

ARK Innovation also rose 6% between June 7 and June 11.

“Here’s the bottom line: when you look at the fund flows, Ark Invest’s no longer propping up the turbo-charged growth stocks, which makes their recent rebound feel a lot more significant to me,” Cramer said.

“Maybe if this group keeps climbing, Cathie Wood can get her bazooka back, but until then the ‘WoodStocks’ will rise or fall on their own.”