It was groundhog day all over again Tuesday for Cathie Wood, chief executive of Ark Investment Management. She repeated two trades of major stocks from Monday.
Ark funds bought 211,298 shares of Roblox (RBLX), an online video game platform, valued at $8.6 million as of Tuesday’s close. Ark purchased $19.5 million of the stock Monday. That was the first purchase since March 15.
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Roblox stock plunged 12% on Monday, after the company estimated that average bookings per daily active user were in a range of down 2% to up 1% in March from a year earlier. Wood may have seen the stock’s drop as a buying opportunity.
Roblox shares are still up a hefty 43% year to date, though they have eased 0.5% over the past 12 months. Roblox is the 12th biggest holding in Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK).
Also Tuesday, Ark funds sold 135,011 shares of Exact Sciences (EXAS), valued at $8.8 million. Ark previously dumped $9 million of the stock Monday.
Exact Sciences is a medical diagnostics provider famous for its Cologuard at-home colon cancer test. The stock has ascended 35% thus far in 2023, buoyed by strong earnings, but has slipped 3% over the last 12 months.
Ark has unloaded more than three million shares of Exact Sciences since Jan. 1. But it’s still the seventh biggest holding in Ark Innovation ETF, dropping from No. 5 Tuesday.
Wood’s Lagging Returns
Meanwhile, Wood’s performance hasn’t exactly lit the investment world on fire over the past year, as her young technology stocks have slumped. Ark Innovation has descended 33% during that period and 76% from its February 2021 peak.
Nonetheless, the fund has bounced back 23% so far this year, as tech stocks have rebounded in general.
Mama Cathie, as Wood is known to her fans, defends her strategy by noting that she has a five-year investment horizon. But the five-year annualized return of $7.6 billion-asset Ark Innovation was negative 0.1% through April 18, compared with positive 10.87% for the S&P 500.
The fund’s performance also doesn’t come close to Wood’s goal for annualized returns of 15% over five-year periods.
But Ark Innovation enjoyed a net investment inflow of $81 million during the five days through April 17, and an inflow of $617 million over the last year, according to ETF research firm VettaFi.
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