Cathie Wood buys falling tech stocks, anticipating a market rebound
Investors like Wood see slipping stocks as a bargain, while others prepare for a bear market.
Several ETFs at Wood’s firm, ARK Invest, bought a variety of tech stocks after they fell alongside a broader market drop. ARK Invest, which has $6.7 billion in assets under management, is an influential firm whose funds have fallen on hard times. Reports earlier this year showed investors pulled a total of $2.2 billion from the funds over their poor performance.
Wood is hoping to turn things around. This week, at least two ARK Invest ETFs bought shares in tech companies whose shares tumbled over the past month. The actively managed ARK Innovation ETF bought roughly $45 million worth of shares in companies like Amazon, Advanced Micro Devices, and Coinbase, based on the opening price on the day they were purchased. The firm’s ARK Next Generation Internet Fund bought $9.5 million of Meta, Tesla, and Robinhood shares, based on the same calculations. Both funds purchased other stocks as well.
All of those companies got caught up in the drastic rout that hit the entirety of the market. However, whether Woods is buying stocks at a bargain price or right as the market begins to crater remains to be seen.
“She could be right, she could be wrong,” says George Kailas, CEO of Prospero.ai, a fintech investment platform. “She’s definitely been both in the last couple years.”
ARK invest declined to comment and instead directed Fortune to a video where Wood discussed the recent market moves.
Kailas is referring to ARK Invest’s bet on Tesla, which netted the firm a fortune when its stock rallied in 2021. However, since then ARK Invest’s performance has been much more disappointing. The Next Generation Internet fund, which invests in cloud-related internet companies, is down 2% so far this year. Meanwhile the Innovation ETF, ARK Invest’s flagship fund, is down almost 20% for the year. Neither ETF has reached the heights they soared to in 2021.
The slump in tech stocks coincided with, or some might say led to, a global selloff across equities. On Friday, stock market indexes from Japan to the U.S. all had sharp single-day declines. Since then, both Japan’s Nikkei and the S&P 500 rebounded slightly, but not enough to assuage the fears of some investors that it might just be a short recovery of falling stock prices. “I feel it is a dead cat bounce,” said Gene Goldman, chief investment officer of financial services company Cetera.
Goldman predicts a “peak to trough fall in the S&P 500 of 10% or more.”
Kailas agreed, though more tentatively, saying if he had to pick a direction for the stock market it would be “a little more bearish.”
There are a group of long-term growth investors that, like Wood, view the current state of the market as an opportunity. Many tech companies remain in good shape, even if the market is tumultuous, making their cheapening stocks a bargain, UBS said in an analyst note published Thursday.
“Tech fundamentals remain solid, in our view, while valuations have now reset lower,” analysts wrote.
UBS said it estimated second-quarter earnings growth for the global tech sector would be 20% to 25% higher year over year. The bank also expected sustained earnings growth of 15% to 20% over the next year and a half.
Still, even investors who want to make a move are proceeding with caution. “I’m still not buying yet,” says prominent tech investor and former portfolio manager Paul Meeks. “Even though I love the price. I don’t like the timing.”
In the U.S., investors were hit with an unexpected blow when the Federal Reserve opted to hold off on interest rate cuts at its meeting in July. The markets are now treating a rate cut in September as a virtual certainty. UBS remains bullish on tech stocks in part because of what it called “technical factors” that have more to do with the macroeconomy than individual firms themselves.
For Kailas, there are other big-picture factors that worry him—namely the U.S. election. “Part of what’s really tough is we’re seeing dips that, I think, are related to political and geopolitical issues,” he said.
Trying to divine the outcome of any election can be headache-inducing for investors. However, this time around, both a possible Republican and Democratic White House could spell diverging futures for tech. Neither potential administration offers a clear picture of what sort of tech regulations it will pursue, Meeks said.
Democrats have shown a determination to regulate Big Tech that’s largely unprecedented. On the other hand, the party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has close ties to a few major figures from Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile the Republican ticket presents its own source of uncertainty. The vice presidential pick, JD Vance, is a former venture capitalist backed by influential tech names like Peter Thiel. However, former President Donald Trump has floated blanket tariffs on Chinese imports that would be crippling for some tech firms and already sent some stocks spiraling when he suggested Taiwan pay the U.S. for protection. “Especially with Trump I’ve never really seen behavior like this,” Kailas said.
