Speculation is surging around Ark Invest’s upcoming space ETF.
The announcement of the ETF, which will trade under the ticker ARKX, sparked a rally in space-related stocks in mid-January. Now, market analysts are closing in on the names that could be featured in the fund.
“You can already dig into some of their ETFs now,” Tom Lydon, CEO of ETF Trends and ETF Database, suggested Wednesday on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Ark Invest founder, CEO and chief investment officer Cathie Wood told “ETF Edge” last week that costs associated with space are “coming down dramatically,” making her all the more ready to tap into the opportunity.
“The good thing about Cathie is she really doesn’t hide what she likes,” Lydon said.
He pointed to Ark’s Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ) as an example.
“One is Kratos Defense and Security Solutions,” Lydon said. “It specializes in direct energy weapons and unmanned systems and satellites. And there’s another one also in San Diego area called Trimble, which has a water management software where they use satellites to help farming.”
“She’s got high conviction on those two. You could probably guess they might end up in that ETF,” he said. “I think there are a lot of people that are dissecting her current ETFs to see what she might own in ARKX.”
ProcureAM CEO Andrew Chanin, the man behind the rival Procure Space ETF (UFO), had a few other ideas.
“Trimble’s actually one of our holdings as well, so, certainly would be happy to see that getting added to other portfolios,” he said in the same interview.
UFO’s top five holdings are Loral Space & Communications, Gilat Satellite Networks, Viasat, Virgin Galactic and Maxar Technologies. Trimble is its seventh-largest weighting at nearly 5%.
“One thing that hasn’t been mentioned too much is her firm actually subadvises a fund out in Japan focused on the space industry as well,” he said, pointing to an investment firm called Nikko Asset Management.
“Someone could probably look to that to get some ideas as well as how she considers looking at the space industry,” Chanin said.
A list of Nikko AM’s ETFs can be found here.
