Famed money manager Cathie Wood, chief executive of Ark Investment Management, sold some of her stock-in-trade names and bought another one Tuesday.
ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) purchased 72,848 shares of semiconductor maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The stash was valued at $5.6 million as of Tuesday’s close.
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AMD has slipped 34% over the past year amid the descent by chip stocks. But it has rebounded along with the entire sector this year, moving up 18%.
On the sell side, Ark funds dumped 33,704 shares of streaming platform Roku (ROKU), valued at $2.2 million as of Tuesday’s close.
The stock has slid 41% over the past year amid intense competition in the streaming industry, but has climbed 65% year to date. It’s the third biggest holding in Ark Innovation.
Ark Pares Back on Exact Sciences and Nvidia
ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG) jettisoned 24,387 shares of Exact Sciences (EXAS), valued at $1.5 million as of Tuesday’s close. The company is a medical diagnostics provider famous for its Cologuard at-home colon cancer test.
Exact Sciences shares have climbed 28% thus far in 2023, buoyed by strong earnings and the overall market’s rally.
That said, the stock has descended 15% over the past year. Wood has unloaded more than 2 million Exact Sciences shares since the beginning of this year. But the company is still the fourth biggest holding in Ark Innovation ETF.
Ark Next Generation Internet unloaded 8,646 shares of semiconductor titan Nvidia (NVDA), valued at $1.8 million as of Tuesday’s close.
Like AMD, Nvidia shares have dropped in line with chip stocks over the past year – to the tune of 11%. And they have bounced back in sync with the industry so far this year – 42%.
Wood’s Returns Tumble
Meanwhile, Wood’s performance hasn’t exactly overwhelmed the investment world over the past year, as her young tech stocks have slumped. Ark Innovation has descended 38% during that period and 75% from its February 2021 peak.
Still, the fund has rebounded 28% so far this year, as technology stocks have roared back.
Wood defends her strategy by noting that she has a five-year investment horizon. But the five-year annualized return of Ark Innovation was only 0.4% through Feb. 21, compared with 10.08% 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.
Ark Innovation, with $7.3 billion in assets, enjoyed a net investment inflow of $77 million during the past five days, and $1.07 billion over the last year, according to ETF research firm VettaFi.
