ARK Invest’s flagship fund has abruptly ballooned by $3.5bn ahead of the initial public offering of payments company Klarna, echoing a similar phenomenon around last month’s flotation of cryptocurrency exchange Bullish.
The assets of the ARK Innovation ETF — an exchange traded fund managed by the investment manager’s head Cathie Wood — have jumped from $7.3bn at the start of the week to $10.8bn at the end of Thursday, according to Bloomberg data.
ETFs mostly trade like stocks on an exchange. However, sophisticated financial institutions and trading firms known as “approved participants” can also create or redeem shares in them. This is the mechanism that helps them trade in line with the value of their underlying holdings.