Cathie Wood buys $2.5 million of tumbling megacap stock

Cathie Wood, caput of Ark Investment Management, was comparatively quiescent this week, adjacent arsenic the S&P 500 rallied astir 4.5% implicit the past 5 days.

Wood made nary trades connected Tuesday, April 14, and Wednesday, April 15, and sold immoderate shares of 2 aesculapian stocks connected Monday, April 13, and Thursday, April 16. But connected Friday, April 17, she made a bigger move, adding shares of a megacap tech institution that had dropped astir 10% successful a azygous day, successful enactment with her accustomed dip-buying approach.

In 2025, the flagship Ark Innovation ETF gained 35.49%, acold outpacing the S&P 500’s instrumentality of 17.88% successful the aforesaid period. So acold this year, Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) is up 1.75% twelvemonth to date, portion the S&P 500 surged 4.1%.

Wood gained a estimation aft the Ark Innovation ETF delivered a 153% instrumentality successful 2020. But her benignant besides brings achy losses successful bearish markets, arsenic seen successful 2022, erstwhile the Ark Innovation ETF tumbled much than 60%.

Those swings person weighed connected Wood’s semipermanent gains. As of April 17, the Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized instrumentality of -8.47%, portion the S&P 500 has an annualized instrumentality of 12.86% implicit the aforesaid period, according to information from Morningstar.

Wood focuses connected high-tech companies crossed artificial intelligence, blockchain, biomedical technology, and robotics. She thinks these businesses person beardown maturation potential, though their volatility often causes fluctuations successful the Ark’s funds.

From 2014 to 2024, the Ark Innovation ETF wiped retired $7 cardinal successful capitalist wealth, according to a March 2025 investigation by Morningstar’s expert Amy Arnott. That made it the third-biggest wealthiness destroyer among communal funds and ETFs successful Arnott’s ranking. The expert hasn’t updated the 2025 ranking.

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In a March 23 Bloomberg podcast, Wood says the planetary system is not heading into a downturn, but into what she calls a “great acceleration” driven by AI and different breakthrough technologies.

“We’re not going into the Great Depression; we’re going into the large acceleration,” Wood said, pointing to however past technological revolutions reshaped economical growth.

She noted that planetary existent GDP maturation averaged conscionable 0.6% betwixt 1500 and 1900, earlier the Industrial Revolution lifted it to astir 3% for much than a century. Now, she argues, a caller question of innovation could propulsion maturation overmuch higher.

“We deliberation [technologies] are going to instrumentality maturation into the 7 to 8% range,” Wood said, adding that the fig whitethorn really beryllium conservative.