Cathie Wood Copycats Trigger $3 Billion Surge in Ping An Health

(Bloomberg) -- Cathie Wood’s $6.8 million bet on Ping An Healthcare & Technology Co. unleashed a flood of buy orders from copycat investors on Thursday, lifting the company’s market value by a record $3.3 billion.

It was the latest example of Wood’s extraordinary power to move markets. Trades by her Ark Investment Management -- some of which are reported to the public daily -- have become closely scrutinized by investors after several of Ark’s funds trounced benchmark indexes over the past year.

The Ark Fintech Innovation ETF bought 497,800 shares of Ping An Healthcare on Wednesday, according to an emailed trading disclosure, worth about $6.8 million at the session’s closing price. That was enough to boost the stock by 21% in Hong Kong on Thursday, the biggest gain since Ping An Healthcare’s 2018 listing.

Ark’s exchange-traded fund assets under management crossed $50 billion last week, up from only $3.6 billion at the same time last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Some of the largest holdings in the Ark Fintech Innovation ETF include Square Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Ping An Healthcare accounts for less than 0.2% of the fund.

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