Cathie Wood buys the dip on pandemic darlings Roku, Zoom, Roblox

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% this year, lagging far behind the S&P 500’s 7.7% 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% 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% 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% and 62%.

Tesla’s shares have climbed about 35% over the past year and rose 3% on Thursday after its results raced ahead of expectations.

(Reuters)