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- Cathie Wood's Ark Invest has bought up two little-known stocks several trading days in a row.
- The famed money manager scooped up shares of a metal 3D printing firm and an oncology treatment company.
- Ark's flagship ETF just logged its best month ever, rising 28% in January.
Cathie Wood's Ark Investment Management is loading up on two small-cap stocks, contrasting with its bets on high-profile tech giants like Tesla.
The well-known investor bought shares of metal 3D printing company Velo3D for the past eight trading days and a clinical-stage oncology treatment company Repare Therapeutics for the past seven sessions.
Velo3D is up 65% in the past month, while Repare Therapeutics declined 6.39% in the same period.
Ark Invest holds $36.82 million of Velo3D stock, with a 6.2% stake in the company. The firm has a 6.04% stake in Repare Therapeutics, owning $32.5 million of the company's stock. The two companies are Ark Invest's 53rd and 58th largest positions across its combined funds.
Ark's flagship ETF, Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), just logged its best performing month, rising 28% in January. The gains follow a low-performing year for the ETF, which sank nearly 70% in 2022.
"We are the new Nasdaq," Wood told Bloomberg last week, celebrating the fund's gains.
Investors are eyeing tech-heavy bets like ARKK as traders wager that high inflation is in the rearview mirror, which could prompt the Federal Reserve to loosen its stance on monetary tightening. The Nasdaq Composite is up 12% in the past month amid a broader rally in equities.
"Innovation was one of the biggest victims of the massive interest rate increase we saw last year," Wood added. "We felt it every time Chairman Powell spoke."