Cathie Wood’s investment choices

Ark Invest is focused solely on disruptive innovation. ETFs managed by Cathie Wood invest in such sectors as fintech innovations, robotics, space industry, autonomous vehicles, genomics, blockchain technology, etc. All in all, Ark Invest includes 8 thematic exchange-traded funds. The latest one, ARK Space Exploration & Innovation, appeared this spring. This fund invests in the shares of companies that produce various flight vehicles (from drones to skyrockets) and develop space technologies.

Robinhood

Financial startup Robinhood was founded in 2013 in the US. It is an investing app that allows users to trade on the stock exchange. Robinhood went public in July 2021. By the time of its IPO, the online brokerage company had gained a dubious reputation in the market. The company was involved in two big scandals which affected the price of its shares. Thus, in their trading debut, the stocks fell by more than 12%. Despite all this, Wood’s funds acquired about 1.3 million shares of Robinhood that day. Later, Ark Invest added more shares to its ETF portfolios. Today, the fund is said to hold around 5 million shares of this controversial trading app.

Tesla

Tesla remains the top choice for Cathie Wood. The superstar fund manager believes that Tesla shares will hit $4,000 by 2025 while currently they are trading at just above $700. The funds managed by Cathie Wood are actively working with Tesla stock, buying them up or selling them off, depending on the situation. For example, in May, Ark’s ETFs added 47,000 assets of the electric carmaker worth $27 million. In early August, the fund sold 144,200 Tesla shares to lock in profit. Yet, Tesla remains the largest holding in Ark Innovation, making up nearly 10% of the ETF’s total weight.

Coinbase

Another passion of the famous investor is cryptocurrencies. According to Cathie Wood, bitcoin will surge to $500,000 in the long term. Therefore, she invests in crypto assets as well as in the shares of American crypto exchange Coinbase that was the first among competitors to enter the stock market. Coinbase IPO was held in April and generated buzz among investors. In the first few minutes of trading, the company’s stock soared by more than 70%. That day, Cathie Wood's Ark funds bought nearly 750,000 Coinbase shares worth $246 million and continue to add more of them up to now.

JD.com

Until recently, Ark Invest's portfolios contained various securities of fintech Chinese companies, including Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and others. However, the fund started to get rid of them in July amid a clampdown that these companies faced in China. Nevertheless, Cathie Wood has recently reconsidered her investing approach and increased the fund’s stake in the largest Chinese e-commerce company, JD.com. Its quarterly report encouraged the founder of Ark Invest to buy over 164,000 shares of the company. The fact is that JD.com’s revenue jumped by more than 26% and the number of active users hit a record 32 million.

DraftKings

This is an American sports-betting company that was established in 2012. Today, DraftKings is one of the industry leaders. In August, Cathie Wood purchased more than 604,000 shares of DraftKings with a total value of approximately $29.52 million. This decision was based on the company's revenue report which showed that its earnings jumped by 90% last year and surged by 253% in Q1 2021. As of July 2021, Ark’s ETF portfolios were holding over $571 million worth of DraftKings shares in the amount of 12.48 million.