When you think of exciting investments, exchange traded funds can be the last thing on your mind. But while most ETFs simply watch indices, the active ETFs offered by the red-hot investment firm ARK Invest have received a lot of attention.
This makes sense when you look at the returns that ARK’s funds have recently earned. All five of its actively managed ETFs have more than doubled in the last twelve months, with ARF Genomic Revolution ETF (NYSEMKT: ARKG) who is the leader and has tripled since this time last year. ARK Innovation ETF (NYSEMKT: ARKK) and ARK Next Generation Internet (NEW: ARKW) is not too far behind.
ARKF data by YCharts.
Smart investors want to know what stocks Cathie Wood, chief investment officer of ARK Invest, is looking at. Fortunately, ARK reveals all its movements every day, and you can see with just a brief delay what has been done.
To save you the hassle of exploring yourself, below are three of the stocks in which various ARK ETFs have invested more money over the past week.
1. Opendoor Technologies
The biggest buy it ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (NYSEMKT: ARKF) was made last week Opendoor Technologies (NASDAQ: OPEN). The fund made not once but twice purchases during the week, adding a total of more than 406,000 shares. This increased Opendoor’s share in the fund’s total assets by almost half a percentage point, giving the ETF a 1.79% weight at the end of the week.
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Opendoor just became known last month through a merger with a special acquisitions company run by SPAC pioneer Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings. The company wants to disrupt the entire real estate market by offering a flashy “iBuyer” alternative for the months-long process of listing a home, taking offers and waiting months for buyers to get financing and finally close the deal . Instead, Opendoor can make its own offering within a few large markets within a few days, and the company hopes to grow to serve other areas as well.
Some are not convinced of the superiority of Opendoor, noting that it has a lot of competition and that the run-up to and after the merger of the SPAC finally makes the stock look expensive. However, ARK Fintech Innovation does not seem to agree, and it will be interesting to see if the position continues to grow.
ARK Innovation made major purchases during the week and was one of the biggest targets of the ETF Pinterest (NYSE: PINS). Two acquisitions added more than 613,000 shares, increasing ARK Innovation’s stake in the social media company by more than a quarter and increasing the allotment to almost 1%.
Pinterest is just one of the many social media businesses, and it is certainly not the biggest. But Pinterest is striking because of the positive and supportive user base, which defies many of the stereotypes about the destructive features that many social media platforms have.
One criticism on Pinterest was that it did not do as well as some of its peers in turning its audience’s attention into cold money. Still, Pinterest plans to promote monetization in the coming year by finding more of its international entrants and using more video content for ads. The company needs to walk a fine line to prevent its positive atmosphere from being ruined, but ARK Invest is just one of the many investors who think Pinterest can do the job.
3. Skillz
Eventually, ARK Next Generation Internet made several moves, and one of the most interesting was its small position in Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ). A large buyout of 429,000 shares nearly doubled the ETF’s position in the mobile gaming platform provider to 0.40% of the portfolio, and it looks like Wood could build a significant stake.
Skillz has also just become known through a SPAC combination, and investors are excited about how many mobile game creators are using their platform to bring their products to market. Because Skillz gets a cut of every transaction players make, the revenue possibilities are almost endless.
However, there is still plenty of room to grow, as Skillz has only about one in every 1,000 players among its monthly active users. But ARK Invest seems to agree with the company’s strategy of investing heavily in acquiring and marketing customers, and if it can bring even a small fraction of the world players to its platform, the stock could bear fruit.
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ARK Invest has definitely used some of the most exciting themes in the market over the past year. Whether this will continue to be successful remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: people take note of the stocks in which the company’s ETFs prefer to invest.