Cathie Wood's Ark Invest bought nearly $9 million of Coinbase stock as the crypto exchange pared gains on hot inflation data
- Cathie Wood's Ark Invest purchased 150,192 Coinbase shares on Friday.
- Coinbase is up 74% year-to-date, paring gains from its year-to-date peak.
Cathie Wood's Ark Invest scooped up nearly $9 million of Coinbase stock last week as the crypto exchange pared some if its big 2023 gains after markets dipped on hotter-than-expected inflation data.
The famed money manager purchased 150,192 shares of the company on Friday, worth $8.7 million at market close. The buy was split between Wood's ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW).
Ark Invest's combined Coinbase holdings have a market value of $547 million across its eight funds, with a 4.71% stake in the Nasdaq-listed company.
The investment firm has been on a Coinbase buying-spree, snatching up a total of $38.5 million of the stock, or 659,357 shares, this month alone.
Similar to the rest of tech sector, shares of Coinbase were surging to kick off the new year. Although the company is still up 73.93% year-to-date, the stock is down 10% in the past five days. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is down 3.2% in the past five days, after notching double-digit gains in January as well.
ARKW and ARKK are both up 1.38% and 1.48% on Monday, respectively. ARKK logged its best monthly performance ever in January, surging 28%. The gains follow a dismal year for Wood's flagship fund, which sank nearly 70% in 2022 as growth-focused bets soured on aggressive monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve.
"We are the new Nasdaq," Wood told Bloomberg, celebrating the fund's performance in early February.
The rally to start the year was fueled by optimism that the US central bank would pull back on aggressive interest rate hikes as inflation appeared to be easing. The Fed has since signaled more hawkish moves are likely ahead as labor market data and the Fed's preferred Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation gauge came in hotter than expected.