Cathie Wood's ARK Invest Buys Meme Stock Robinhood Amid SHIB, DOGE Rally

ARK Invest, the investment firm led by Cathie Wood, moved to purchase a total of 2,240,680 shares of Robinhood on Wednesday, worth as much as $79.4 million.

Data disclosed by ARK Invest shows that the purchase was spread out across the firm’s three actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) being the largest recipient (1,728,431 shares).

A further 320,211 Robinhood shares were added to the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), while the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF saw 192,038 shares added to its portfolio.

ARK Invest also purchased Robinhood stock on Tuesday, with 575,942 and 50,053 shares added to ARKK and ARKF, correspondingly.

Robinhood stock falls below IPO price

The hefty purchase came as ARK Invest moved to capitalize on Robinhood’s Q3 earnings report on Tuesday, in which the Menlo Park-based company revealed that its crypto revenue fell to $51 million in Q3 2021—a 78% decline from the $233 million recorded in the second quarter.

Following the release of the report, the trading app’s stock fell by more than 7% in after-hours trading on Tuesday, before another decline of 10.4% on Wednesday, which saw the price of one share plummet to $35.44—a significant dive below July’s IPO price of $38.

Still, as ARK’s latest purchase suggests, investors continue to pin their hopes on Robinhood’s long-term success.

According to Robinhood, the firm’s bleak financial results were partly driven by slumping demand for Dogecoin (DOGE), the meme coin which helped drive the app’s record sign-ups in the first half of the year.

The company is also being pressed to add more coins to its zero-fee trading app as a Change.org petition to list Shiba Inu (SHIBA) has already garnered over 380,000 signatures.

The Ethereum-based meme coin surged by 34.9% over the last day to hit a new all-time high of $0.00008616 earlier on Thursday, briefly flipping Dogecoin to become the 9th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Dogecoin, however, has seen its own rally on Thursday morning as the canine coin soared by 30% to push back SHIBA to the 10th place in the rankings, according to CoinGecko.