Stock market indexes hit record highs this week with both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 celebrating new highs, despite geopolitical volatility. While many investors were likely actively buying and selling stocks, ETF manager Cathie Wood sat on the sidelines.

Ark Invest Makes No Trades

ETF powerhouse Ark Invest, which is led by Wood, is closely followed by retail traders. The company's numerous active ETFs often make multiple trades a day, sometimes buying and selling shares of top performers, companies that reported earnings, or scooping up shares of companies that saw shares trade lower.

Ark is among the most transparent companies in the active ETF space, releasing a daily email that lists all the trades made by its main ETFs for the day.

Anyone who receives this email may have noticed something unusual this week.

"There were no trades on 4/15/2026," an email from Ark said on Wednesday night.

The email was the same as the one sent out on Tuesday, which said no trades were made that day. This marks two straight days for Ark Invest not making any stock trades, which is unusual for the company that makes trades daily based on inflows and outflows of funds into the actively managed funds.

On Monday, Ark Invest reported only two transactions with the Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (BATS:ARKQ) and Ark Space & Defense Innovation ETF (BATS:ARKX) each selling shares of Strata Critical Medical (NASDAQ:SRTA).

Benzinga reached out to Ark Invest to make sure the emails were correct and that no transactions were made.

While the timing of no trades made may be coincidental, the fact that the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 hit new highs while Ark made no trades could prove telling for investors. The company could be waiting for a decline to buy more shares and doesn't feel comfortable selling any current holdings into the rally.

Ark Invest's 2026 Scorecard

Ark Invest had a 2025 to remember with its six main ETFs each outperforming the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY), which tracks the S&P 500.

The same cannot be said in 2026, with only three of the six ETFs having a positive year-to-date gain and only two outperforming the SPY.

Here are the current year-to-date returns:

• SPY: +2.5%
• Ark Innovation ETF (BATS:ARKK): -1.2%
• Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (BATS:ARKW): -8.4%
• Ark Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF (BATS:ARKF): -11.3%
• Ark Genomic Revolution ETF (BATS:ARKG): +2.2%
• Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF: +7.2%
• Ark Space & Defense Innovation ETF: +14.4%

In 2025, the Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF was the best-performing of the main Ark Invest ETFs, narrowly beating the Ark Space & Defense Innovation ETF, with gains of 49.8% and 49.2%, respectively.

Those two ETFs are once again leading the way as the only Ark Invest ETFs currently beating the S&P 500 in 2026.

Both of these ETFs are heavily weighted in sectors like AI, robotics and space that saw strong returns in 2025. The two ETFs have seven of their top 10 stocks in common, with the names listed below each in the top 10 of both ETFs.

• Teradyne Inc (NASDAQ:TER)
• Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (NASDAQ:KTOS)
• Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD)
• Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB)
• Deere & Company (NYSE:DE)
• L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX)
• Archer Aviation (NYSE:ACHR)

Given the performance of the two Ark ETFs, those stocks may be names that investors want to monitor for future gains.

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