FILE PHOTO: Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management LLC, speaks during the Skybridge Capital SALT New York 2021 conference in New York City, U.S., September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
Star stock-picker Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest this week snapped up shares of pandemic darlings including Roblox Corp, Roku Inc and Zoom Video Communications that have fallen out of favor this year.
The asset manager’s flagship ARK Innovation ETF has slumped 43 per cent this year, lagging far behind the S&P 500’s 7.7 per cent decline as the prospect of aggressive U.S. policy tightening hammered the fund’s hyper-growth stocks.
Over the week, ARK bought 100,642 shares of e-commerce firm Shopify Inc, 329,073 of Zoom, 739,082 of gaming site Roblox and 575,648 of streaming device maker Roku.
Wood’s shopping spree came after a shocking subscriber loss at Netflix Inc triggered a selloff in stocks that thrived during COVID-19 lockdowns.
The asset manager shed more than half a million shares of Snap Inc this week, ahead of the company’s earnings. The Snapchat owner slipped nearly 2 per cent in premarket trading on Friday after warning inflation could hurt revenue growth in the current quarter.
Last week, Wood reiterated her bullish stance on the fund’s biggest holding, Tesla Inc. ARK Innovation ETF’s stake in Tesla is worth $969 million, or 10 per cent of the fund’s weight.
The electric-car maker’s stock is the only one among the fund’s top 10 holdings that has climbed over the past year. The other nine – including Roku, Zoom and Teladoc Health – have plunged between 22 per cent and 62 per cent.
Tesla’s shares have climbed about 35 per cent over the past year and rose 3 per cent on Thursday after its results raced ahead of expectations.