Cathie Wood Snaps Up $45M In Robinhood On Debut, Adds $73M In Twitter

Cathie Wood-led Ark Investment Management snapped over 1.29 million shares, estimated to be worth about $45.18 million, in Robinhood Markets Inc HOOD on Thursday as the shares of the company key to the "stonk" revolution tanked on its trading debut.

Robinhood shares fell 8.37% to close at $34.82 on Thursday in the company’s first trading session and below its listing price.

As per a Bloomberg report, Robinhood staged the weakest IPO of its size since Uber Technologies Inc UBER made a debut in May 2019.

A day ahead of the stock listing debut, Robinhood disclosed it has received inquiries from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Securities & Exchange Commission related to employee trading of so-called meme stocks and the FINRA registration of CEO Vlad Tenev.

Ark deployed Ark Innovation Fund ARKK to buy the shares in Robinhood. 

The investment firm also snapped up over 1 million shares, estimated to be worth about $72.74 million, in Twitter Inc TWTR further building up the stake after CEO Jack Dorsey told investors last week that apex cryptocurrency Bitcoin BTC/USD will be a “big part” of the social media company’s future.

Dorsey is also the founder of payments company Square Inc SQ, which is heavily invested in the apex cryptocurrency.

Twitter shares closed 0.61% higher at $70.37 on Thursday and were down 1.3% lower in extended hours.

Ark Invest deployed the two ETFs —  ARKK and the Ark Next Generation ETF ARKW — to buy the shares in the San Francisco, California-based company. No other Ark ETF holds a stake in Twitter.

The recent buys have lifted Twitter’s position in ARKW to the second spot among a total of 50 stocks and the sixteenth-largest investment among a total of 50 stocks for ARKK.

The two ETFs together held over 11.98 million TWTR shares, worth about $838 million, as of Thursday.

Some of the other key Ark Invest buys on Thursday included Quantum-Si Inc QSI, and UiPath Inc PATH, and sells included Roku Inc ROKU. 

Photo: Courtesy of Robinhood