Cathie Wood seems to always be making market moves. The founder and CEO of Ark Invest publishes her transactions at the end of every trading day, and that gives us all a great way to track one of the most widely followed growth investors. She’s had some rough years along the way, but her monster returns in 2020 and 2025 can’t be ignored.
She only added to a couple of her existing positions on Monday. Ark Invest bought shares of MercadoLibre(NASDAQ: MELI), Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NTLA), and Generate Biomedicines(NASDAQ: GENB) to kick off the new trading week. Let’s see if you should follow Wood into these volatile growth stocks.
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Latin America’s top e-commerce and fintech play has shed a third of its value since peaking last summer. A mixed financial report last week didn’t help MercadoLibre stock.
On the surface, it posted solid fourth-quarter results. The top-line numbers were great. Net revenue and financial income rose 45% to $8.8 billion, rising 47% on a foreign exchange-neutral basis. Gross merchandise volume for its e-commerce segment climbed 37%. Total payment volume for its continent-leading MercadoPago platform surged 42%. These results were comfortably ahead of market expectations.
The story starts to come undone as you work your way down the income statement. MercadoLibre’s operating profit rose a mere 8%, held back by a 50% spike in operating expenses. Reported net income declined as well, marking the third consecutive quarter that MercadoLibre has fallen short of Wall Street’s profit targets.
At least seven major analysts slashed their price targets following last Tuesday afternoon’s financial update. There’s a pretty sweet silver lining in that universal markdown. Even the lowest of those revised price goals, $2,400, is 35% higher than where the stock closed on Monday.
There are some near-term margin concerns, and things probably won’t get better in 2026. MercadoLibre is facing competitive challenges in Brazil, forcing it to invest aggressively for growth. Dramatically lowering its minimum orders for free shipping in that country last year was one of a number of moves that left a mark. Like many stateside consumer tech leaders, MercadoLibre is also making major investments in big tech to stay ahead of its smaller rivals. The strategy is sound, but it does come with the pain of near-term earnings estimates that have slid lower since last week.
Wood is a fan of several gene-editing stocks. She’s been particularly fond of Intellia Therapeutics lately. In each of the past three trading days she’s bought shares of the developer of next-gen treatments based on CRISPR therapies.
Intellia is volatile. The shares have nearly doubled since their December low, rising another 12% on Monday after the announcement of a positive development: The U.S. FDA has removed the clinical hold it had on an investigational new drug application for the treatment of patients suffering from transthyretin amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy. The previous hold occurred during the potential treatment’s critical Phase 3 clinical trial, so it’s naturally good news to see the trials moving ahead again.
Despite the recent surge, the shares are still trading for a little more than half of Intellia’s October highs. I did mention that the shares were volatile. Losses should continue for the next few years, but its balance sheet is flush with cash.
Artificial Intelligence has become a polarizing topic, but few will argue against using AI to help generate medical breakthroughs. Generate Biomedicines is a clinical-stage generative biology company, turning to machine learning to program novel protein therapeutics in the pursuit of drug discovery and development. One long-acting treatment in development aims to treat severe asthma with a single dose every six months.
If you’re not familiar with Generate Biomedicines, that’s understandable. It just went public on Friday of last week. And things haven’t gone well. It was able to raise $400 million in gross proceeds by going public at $16. The stock opened at $15, only to close at $12.91 on its first day of trading. The shares closed at $12.33 on Monday, sliding 23% for its first two days on the market. Wood has been a buyer on both of those days.
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Rick Munarriz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intellia Therapeutics and MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
