Invesco QQQ is up 17.3% this year. That is a number most investors would happily sign for, and it arrives with a 0.18% fee and no manager to second-guess. QQQ 0.00%↑ has become the default growth holding in millions of retail portfolios for exactly that reason.
Clearing it is supposed to be hard. Most actively managed funds trail their benchmark over long stretches, and that track record is the entire reason indexing took over the market.
Five active ETFs are ignoring the script in 2026. Their year-to-date returns run from roughly 31% to 94%, putting them anywhere from nearly 2x to more than 5x ahead of QQQ. All five charge four to five times what QQQ charges for the privilege.
These returns did not come from quiet stock-picking genius spread across the market. Four of the five funds are the same trade viewed from different seats.
Semiconductors climbed roughly 80% in the first half of 2026, with Micron MU 0.00%↑ alone up more than 260% year to date. The AI buildout dragged chips, electrical grids, and compute infrastructure up with it.
The fifth fund runs on biology and has no meaningful connection to any of that, which is what makes it the most interesting name on the list.
From the Knicks championship to the World Cup, sports are dominating every headline. The Gabelli Opportunities in Live and Sports ETF, GOLS 0.00%↑ , lets you invest in the business behind them: pro franchises, media rights, broadcasting, and live entertainment in one ticker. Own a scarce asset class that used to be reserved for billionaires. The management fee on GOLS is being waived through April 2027.
The VistaShares Artificial Intelligence Supercycle ETF AIS 0.00%↑ leads the group at roughly 71% year to date, with about $880M in assets and a 0.75% expense ratio.
The methodology starts with a definition. AIS counts a company as an AI company when it draws at least 50% of revenue, or commits at least 50% of assets, to one of three things: high-performance AI semiconductors, AI data centers, or AI-enabled applications. At least 80% of the fund must sit in companies that clear that bar.
From there the manager runs what VistaShares calls a bill of materials process, mapping the physical components required to build and operate AI systems, then buying the companies that supply each layer. The remaining 20% can go toward emerging AI names that fail the revenue test today, plus cash. The result is 69 holdings with nearly half the book in semiconductors and semiconductor equipment, led by SK hynix at 8.2%, Micron at 6.8%, AMD AMD 0.00%↑ at 5%, and Vertiv VRT 0.00%↑ at 3.7%.
One honest asterisk belongs here. AIS markets itself as actively managed while tracking a rules-based index built for the strategy, so the active label carries a qualifier the other four do not need.
The Nomura Focused Emerging Markets Equity ETF EMEQ 0.00%↑ is up about 50% year to date, holds roughly $630M, and charges 0.86%, the highest fee of the five.
Portfolio manager Liu-Er Chen has run the same philosophy for more than two decades. He looks for competitively advantaged businesses positioned to capture long-term secular growth, then concentrates the portfolio into 35 to 60 of the highest-conviction ideas. Nothing about the process is index-driven, and the fund is non-diversified, which allows outsized positions in a small number of names.
In practice, that process has landed heavily in Asian technology. SK Square sits at 15.5% of the portfolio, Taiwan Semiconductor TSM 0.00%↑ at 10.9%, SK Hynix at 8.7%, and Samsung Electronics at 8.6%. An emerging markets label sits on the outside of this fund. An Asian semiconductor engine sits inside it.
EMEQ makes the cleanest case for paying an active manager. The fund returned 68.1% on a NAV basis through May 31 while its own benchmark, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, returned 25.6%.
The Tema Electrification ETF VOLT 0.00%↑ has returned roughly 29% year to date, manages around $760M, and charges 0.75%.
VOLT owns the second-order AI trade. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and the grid delivering that power needs transformers, switchgear, transmission lines, and new generation capacity.
The selection process is thematic and active. Manager Chris Semenuk screens for companies positioned to benefit from rising electricity demand and the buildout required to meet it, spanning four buckets: grid and power equipment, utilities, nuclear, and alternative energy. The fund also applies ESG screens that exclude certain candidates for non-financial reasons, which narrows the pool further. What survives is a concentrated book of about 31 stocks, led by Bel Fuse at 7.2%, Powell Industries at 6.4%, Eaton ETN 0.00%↑ at 5.3%, Quanta Services PWR 0.00%↑ at 5.2%, and NextEra Energy NEE 0.00%↑ at 5.2%.
Utilities and industrials behave differently than semiconductors under pressure, and it showed. VOLT held up better than the rest of the AI complex through the early-summer selloff.
The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF WGMI 0.00%↑ is up roughly 21% year to date, with about $250M in assets and a 0.75% fee. It is the smallest fund on the list.
The methodology is narrow by design. WGMI puts at least 80% of net assets into companies that earn at least 50% of revenue or profits from bitcoin mining operations, or from supplying miners with specialized chips, hardware, software, and services. The fund holds no bitcoin directly, so exposure arrives entirely through the equity of the businesses that secure the network.
That produces a tight book of 28 names including Cipher CIFR 0.00%↑ , Hut 8 HUT 0.00%↑ , IREN 0.00%↑ , MARA 0.00%↑ , RIOT 0.00%↑ , and CleanSpark CLSK 0.00%↑. Miner economics hinge on the bitcoin price, on electricity costs, and on the block reward, which halved again in April 2024.
Miner equities amplify moves in bitcoin, and the amplification works in reverse. WGMI has posted the roughest drawdowns of the five by a wide margin.
The ARK Genomic Revolution ETF ARKG 0.00%↑ is up about 36% year to date, holds around $1.3B, and charges 0.75%. It is also the largest of the five.
ARKG is the oldest fund here by a decade, launched in 2014, and the only one with no AI hardware exposure to speak of. The mandate commits at least 80% of assets to companies advancing the genomics revolution, drawn from health care, technology, materials, energy, and consumer discretionary.
Cathie Wood’s analysts sort candidates into leaders, enablers, and beneficiaries of six technology platforms, including precision therapies, multiomic sequencing, programmable biology, and neural networks applied to drug discovery. Research is thematic and top-down, and position sizing reflects conviction in the theme as much as conviction in the individual company. The portfolio typically runs 40 to 60 names, heavily concentrated in biotech.
The five-year record is brutal. ARKG lost 21.4% annualized over the five years through March 31, which is the kind of number that empties a fund.
Then biotech turned, and ARKG climbed while the AI names sold off. Investors have noticed, with net assets rising by hundreds of millions over the past quarter.
Every number above deserves a wider frame.
The AI selloff that began in late June was steep. On June 24 the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.21% as investors stopped rewarding AI capital expenditure and started demanding proof of returns on it. AIS gave back more than 10% in a single week. WGMI gave back close to 20%.
QQQ carries around 100 of the largest non-financial companies in the Nasdaq. These five hold between 28 and 69 positions each, concentrated in single themes. That concentration produced the outperformance, and it produces the whiplash.
A calendar year is a very small window. Four of these funds launched in 2022 or later, which means their entire track record fits inside one of the strongest technology runs in market history.
Beating QQQ for six months is a headline, but beating it across a full cycle, through the drawdown that eventually arrives, is a different test.
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