By David Randall
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Star stock picker and noted Tesla Inc bull Cathie Wood of ARK Invest does not appear to be buying the dip in shares of the electric car maker, which have fallen around 13% this week in anticipation of selling by co-founder Elon Musk.
Wood, whose ARK Innovation fund outperformed all other U.S. equity funds last year thanks to its bet on high-growth companies that rallied during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, has a roughly 9.7% stake of her flagship fund in Tesla as of the start of trading on Wednesday, according to ARK’s website.
The fund has been paring its stake in the company since July when the stock was trading at around $655, according to daily trade notifications compiled by Cathie’s Ark https://cathiesark.com/arkk-holdings-of-tsla, a newsletter service and online forum that tracks the asset manager.
Wood made little mention of Tesla’s recent stock volatility in a monthly webinar on Tuesday.
“The next big ‘Aha moment’ for the market is when we see some success on [Tesla’s] full self-driving autonomous front,” she said.
Shares of Tesla rebounded on Wednesday following a selloff earlier in the week when Musk said he will sell 10% of his stake in the company in order to pay taxes.
Wood said in September that she has a five-year price target of $3,000 for the stock, which was trading on Wednesday afternoon near $1,030 per share.
ARK Invest did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
ARK Innovation is down 3.1% for the year to date, a performance that puts it in the lowest rank among all U.S. mid-cap growth funds, according to Morningstar. It is among the top-performing funds in its category over the last five years, with an annualized gain of 45.1% a year.
(Reporting by David Randall in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
