When the "new investors" in the 1920s talked about the highlight performance of Catherine Wood's ARK fund over the past year, a similar fund was dug up from its dusty history more than 20 years ago, a reminder that history repeats itself!

Similar to the technology frenzy of the past year or so, the United States also had an Internet technology orgy at the end of the last century. The tide of PC and the Internet era has swept Silicon Valley and soared the share prices of many Internet companies.

In the 1990s, a mutual fund called Janus 20 became the most prestigious star fund at that time because of its heavy exposure to growth stocks such as Internet technology stocks, which more than quintupled in 10 years.

Does it sound a lot like today's ARK fund? Yes, the fund was as popular in those days as it is today's ARK Innovation ETF.

The two-faced god Janus

When it comes to Janus 20 funds, you have to mention Janus, an asset management company. Like its fate, the name Janus comes from Roman mythology, meaning "two-faced gods".

In that year, Janus was as popular as ARK Ark Investment, while Tom Bailey, founder, chairman and CEO of Janus, was no less famous than wooden Sister. The reason why Janus 20 is popular is that the fund is "so profitable".

In the decade since its inception, the fund managed by Janus has expanded from $3 billion to $300 billion, making it the fifth largest fund company in the United States. At the peak of the stock market in 2000, Janus funds accounted for 30% of all new funds raised by mutual funds in the United States.

Even US President Clinton himself has personally entrusted his personal account to Janus management.

Take a closer look at Janus's funds. In 1999, of the 14 equity funds it managed, 11 returned at least 50 per cent and 4 returned more than 100 per cent.

But like Janus's name, as a "two-faced god", Janus has another side, and a terrible side.

When the US dotcom bubble burst in 2000, Janus funds with heavy holdings of growth stocks such as the internet and technology also collapsed, and their net worth fell much faster than the broader market, the worst performance in the history of Janus funds, losing 40 per cent.

Sure enough, whatever goes up, it will fall. And the capital market is also cruel, and the previous highlights can not cover up the fact that it finally went up in smoke.

Favor science and technology and small-cap stocks

The sharp rise and fall reflects the skills of a fund company in research and risk control.

If you want to explore why Janus was exalted to the altar and fell high in the air, you need to look at the position and investment style behind it.

Janus likes to bet heavily on blue chip stocks. Compared with the careful research and in-depth research of other fund managers, and questioning the long-term deterministic growth of a company, Janus fund managers generally do little detailed research, and Janus will hit hard as long as they confirm the company's future prospects financially.

When it comes to decentralization, Janus doesn't care much either. For example, on September 30, 2000, Fidelity spread $608.3 billion to more than 6800 companies, while Janus invested only $220.1 billion in 514 stocks.

Does this look a lot like dozens of tech stocks that ARK bought centrally?

In addition, Janus has a penchant for small-cap stocks. In the United States at that time, few investment companies invested as much money in small companies as Janus did. Janus believes that after holding a certain proportion of shares in a small business, it is reasonable to enter the management of the enterprise and control the operation of the enterprise.

Small-cap stocks typically trade only a few hundred thousand shares a day, while Janus tends to hold millions of shares. Of course, Janus will not necessarily sell these shares, but if there is an urgent need to cash out, it will take weeks for the market to digest, and the price of these shares must have plummeted.

Does this look a lot like the small-cap biomedical stocks that ARK is buying aggressively?

At that time, Janus was like a gambler: if he gambled right, he had a good eye; if he gambled wrong, he lost the whole game.

In fact, Janus's previous investment style was not always like this. Before the 1990s, the company said that "stocks with a price-to-earnings ratio of more than 30 will never touch."

But then Clegg, the new star fund manager, changed his mind and led Janus to jump into technology stocks and made huge returns. At the time, this was the right strategy and brought high returns in 1999, but it also planted the culprit of the sharp decline in performance in 2000.

In any case, we may not be able to shift all the responsibility to investment style and industry choice. after all, in the asset management industry, everyone also faces one of the biggest enemies-scale.

Looking back on the past, the various events that have occurred in history are all experiences and alarm bells that can be used for reference at present. After all, a lot of history has been repeated many times in the capital market, which is only a hundred years old.