Cathie Wood buys $12.9 million of tumbling tech stock

Cathie Wood, main of Ark Investment Management, is known for making bold bets connected fast-moving tech stocks. Sometimes her trades determination conscionable arsenic rapidly arsenic the stocks themselves.

In the week that began connected May 3, Wood sold millions of dollars worthy of shares successful 1 high-flying AI institution adjacent caller highs, lone to crook astir days aboriginal and bargain backmost the banal aft a crisp 11% drop.

In 2025, Wood’s 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) was up astir 1.61%, trailing the S&P 500’s summation of much than 8%.

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 May 7, the Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized instrumentality of -6.17%, portion the S&P 500 has an annualized instrumentality of 13.45% implicit the aforesaid period, according to information from Morningstar.

Cathie Wood expects a “great acceleration” brought by tech developments

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.

According to Morningstar expert Bella Albrecht, 2 of Wood’s Ark funds were among the worst-performing ETFs successful the archetypal 4th of 2026. The Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) ranked 2nd connected the list, portion the ARK Innovation ETF placed fifth.

From 2014 to 2024, the Ark Innovation ETF wiped retired $7 cardinal successful capitalist wealth, according to an 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.

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.

Related: Cathie Wood buys $14.9 cardinal of tumbling AI stock

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.