A day after the well-known trading platform announced plans to expand in Europe, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest bought a sizable portion of shares in the American financial services company Robinhood (HOOD).
A total of 1,141,046 shares of Robinhood were purchased by ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF). Based on Wednesday’s close of $8.36, the purchase had a total value of $9.54 million.
“With an experienced team in place, we will soon launch brokerage operations in the U.K.,” Robinhood said in its third-quarter earnings statement on Tuesday. “As another step in global expansion, we are also planning to launch crypto trading in the EU following our U.K. launch,” the firm added. The demand for shares of Robinhood, which as of Wednesday traded just 2.7% higher year-to-date, has not increased despite Bitcoin’s 110% year-to-date gain.
In addition, the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) sold $1.34 million worth of GBTC in 48,477 units. The fund sold 72,509 GBTC units at the end of last month. Even so, GBTC leads the ETF in weight (9.88%).
According to data from charting platform TradingView, shares of GBTC have increased 235% so far this year, outperforming major U.S. stock market indices and bitcoin (BTC) by a significant margin.
In the hopes that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would approve the conversion of the trust into a spot-based ETF, GBTC’s discount to the trust’s net asset value has shrunk to 12.26% from a record 48% in December of last year.