These 15 Funds Have been the Worst Performing of the Previous Decade—Is One in Your Portfolio?

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 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 largely keep away from, however some belong to classes that many assume to be fairly steady. Under, we take you thru the listing and the fund firms behind them whose reputations have taken a success.

The Funds That Misplaced Billions for Shareholders

Based on a March 2025 Morningstar report, 15 funds posted the worst efficiency over the past decade by a poisonous mixture of poor efficiency and poorly timed investor flows (folks placing in cash simply because the market was heading within the incorrect route).

Posting the largest losses was the ProShares UltraPro Quick QQQ (SQQQ), a leveraged inverse ETF that goals to ship adverse 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 stunning that in a decade that the whole 10-year return, in keeping with TradingView, for the Nasdaq-100 stood at 443.2% (for a median annual fee 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 vital 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 huge inflows after robust efficiency in 2020, solely to supply steep declines afterward.

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

Maybe most stunning are the standard fixed-income funds on the listing. They embrace Templeton International 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 rates of interest shift dramatically.

Warning Indicators for Traders

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

• Leverage and inverse publicity: Funds with “Extremely,” “UltraPro,” “3X,” or “Bear” of their names are designed for classy short-term merchants, not long-term buyers. These merchandise reset every day and expertise mathematical decay over time, making them unsuitable for buy-and-hold methods.
• Concentrated thematic bets: Funds centered on slim sectors or themes would possibly seize investor consideration, however typically include excessive volatility that may burn buyers chasing efficiency who enter on the incorrect time. These specialised funds are typically appropriate solely as minor positions for buyers who absolutely 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 advanced buying and selling methods.

The Backside Line

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