Forget ARKK: This Buffett-Style ETF Beat It Over 5 Years With Half the Volatility

16 hours ago 1

David Beren

Fri, June 12, 2026 astatine 11:13 AM CDT 5 min read

Quick Read

  • MOAT returned 45% implicit 5 years versus ARKK's 33% loss, with a maximum drawdown of astir 20% compared to ARKK's brutal 75% plunge.

  • Tesla anchors ARKK with a beta of 1.8 and a trailing P/E of 371, an utmost volatility illustration that drives the fund's wide result distributions and heavy drawdowns.

  • A 75% drawdown requires a 300% summation conscionable to interruption even, making MOAT's narrower swings a important behavioral vantage that keeps investors from panic-selling.

  • Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and ARK Innovation ETF didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Investors bargain the ARK Innovation ETF (NYSEARCA:ARKK) erstwhile they privation concentrated vulnerability to disruptive innovation: electrical vehicles, genomics, fintech, autonomy, and AI. Cathie Wood's flagship has headlined the active-growth class for a decade, and it inactive commands a loyal base. The lawsuit for owning it holds. The lawsuit for owning thing other alongside it, oregon instead, sharpens erstwhile you enactment the five-year scoreboard connected the table.

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Over the trailing 5 years, ARKK mislaid 33% connected a total-return ground done June 11, 2026. The VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat ETF (NYSEARCA:MOAT) gained 45.06% implicit the aforesaid window, and banked that dispersed portion taking acold shallower drawdowns. The Buffett nexus is conceptual, not personal: Warren Buffett does not endorse MOAT, but its scale runs the economic-moat model Morningstar built from his philosophy.

What ARKK Is Built to Do

ARKK runs a concentrated, high-conviction publication of companies Wood's squad expects to thrust generational exertion shifts. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has anchored the money for years, and it captures some the motor and the risk: a 1.798 beta and a trailing P/E of 371. Those holdings thrust ARKK's signature signifier of wide result distributions, episodic rallies, and heavy drawdowns successful between.

That signifier costs holders. From its 2021 peak, ARKK plunged arsenic overmuch arsenic 75% earlier clawing back, a circular travel that near semipermanent owners with antagonistic full returns. Its caller one-year instrumentality of 18.53% proves it tin inactive rip erstwhile innovation names rerate. The longer arc is the problem.

The Mechanism Behind MOAT

MOAT tracks the Morningstar Wide Moat Focus Index, which flags companies Morningstar rates arsenic having durable competitory advantages (network effects, switching costs, outgo edges) and tilts toward those trading astatine the steepest discount to just value. It charges 0.46%. The scale buys prime compounders erstwhile prices are reasonable, Buffett's model applied astatine scale.

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