Saqib Ahmed Iqbal

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood will take another shot at “disruptive innovations” investing through a new fund. This time it will be targeting illiquid securities as well as those from private companies. A regulatory filing was made on Thursday.

Wood is best known as the manager of ARK Innovation, the flagship exchange-traded funds firm. The filing stated that Wood applied for an interim fund to expand the firm’s reach and allow it to invest “disruptive innovations” in securities from firms with no secondary markets.

Interval funds are closed-end mutual funds that do not trade on exchanges. Investors can redeem shares only at specific intervals or in limited amounts.

This filing is made at a moment when the ARK Innovation ETF has fallen about 55% since its record-setting year in 2020. It was due to a decline of technology and growth stocks.

This new fund will be investing in early to late stage private companies that introduce technologically-enabled products and services.

According to the filing, the fund will invest in companies involved in many areas, including artificial intelligence, automation and robotics.

The filing stated that the fund would only allow redemptions of between 5 and 25 percent of its shares every quarter. These restrictions can be used to avoid the potential problems arising from the inliquidity of such securities.

Todd Rosenbluth (head of ETF and Mutual Fund Research at CFRA Research) stated that ARK enjoys a large following from investors, which can help raise awareness.

He said that CTRU’s limited demand highlights the difficulty of acquiring assets in a period of low performance.

The socially conscious ARK Transparency ETF launched in December. Investors have not responded well to it and the price is now down 19% since its debut on Dec. 8.

Rosenbluth explained that while there’s likely interest in the interval funds, it is structured differently to an ETF so it may require additional education.