The previous decade has seen one of many strongest bull markets in historical past, with the S&P 500 index posting a 10-year return of 182.9% by way of February 2025. But a choose membership of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) nobody needs to affix managed to defy a broadly rising market and destroy billions in shareholder worth.

The most important losers embrace specialised funds that retail buyers ought to principally keep away from, however some belong to classes that many assume to be fairly secure. Beneath, we take you thru the record and the fund corporations behind them whose reputations have taken successful.

The Funds That Misplaced Billions for Shareholders

In response to a March 2025 Morningstar report, 15 funds posted the worst efficiency during the last decade by way of a poisonous mixture of poor efficiency and poorly timed investor flows (individuals placing in cash simply because the market was heading within the mistaken route).

Posting the largest losses was the ProShares UltraPro Quick QQQ (SQQQ), a leveraged inverse ETF that goals to ship unfavourable thrice the every day efficiency of the Nasdaq-100. When the Nasdaq 100 goes up, SQQQ goes down by thrice as a lot, so it should not be shocking that in a decade that the overall 10-year return, in line with TradingView, for the Nasdaq-100 stood at 443.2% (for a mean annual charge of 18.4%), SQQQ misplaced buyers greater than $10 billion.

Different leveraged index funds, like ProShares Extremely VIX Quick-Time period Futures (UVXY), additionally suffered important losses.

Thematic funds with concentrated bets additionally featured prominently in Morningstar’s examine. ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK)—Cathie Wooden’s flagship, actively managed ETF for «disruptive innovation»—and ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG), which focuses on biotech, collectively misplaced greater than $12 billion for buyers. These funds attracted large inflows after sturdy efficiency in 2020, solely to supply steep declines afterward.

Geographic focus added one other layer of threat. KraneShares CSI China Web ETF (KWEB) and iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ) took losses from country-specific political and financial issues.

Maybe most shocking are the standard fixed-income funds on the record. They embrace Templeton World Bond (TGBAX) and Constancy Sequence Lengthy-Time period Treasury Bond Index (FTLTX), demonstrating that much more mainstream bond investments can erase substantial worth ought to interest rates shift dramatically.

Warning Indicators for Buyers

These crimson flags characterised the last decade’s largest worth destroyers:

• Leverage and inverse publicity: Funds with «Extremely,» «UltraPro,» «3X,» or «Bear» of their names are designed for stylish short-term merchants, not long-term investors. These merchandise reset every day and expertise mathematical decay over time, making them unsuitable for buy-and-hold methods.
• Concentrated thematic bets: Funds targeted on slender sectors or themes would possibly seize investor consideration, however typically include excessive volatility that may burn buyers chasing efficiency who enter on the mistaken time. These specialised funds are usually appropriate solely as minor positions for buyers who totally perceive the dangers.
• Extreme volatility: The worst-performing funds skilled excessive swings, with some dropping greater than 60% in a single yr. These funds are designed for skilled merchants and institutional buyers who use them for hedging or as a part of complicated buying and selling methods.

The Backside Line

The most important worth destroyers within the fund trade present a worthwhile case examine in how to not make investments. Buyers this previous decade have been much better served by plain-vanilla classes like passive index funds and by sticking with the trade’s largest and most established fund managers.