Anyone who has kept an eye on Cathie Wood‘s finances for a long enough period of time will notice patterns in the way she moves money. Another telling session took place at Ark Invest on Monday, and Advanced Micro Devices was once again at the top of the sell list. At the chipmaker’s closing price of $420.99, the company sold 38,529 shares of AMD across three of its ETFs, a transaction valued at about $16.2 million. Nor was it an isolated incident. Throughout the majority of May, the trims have accumulated into what appears to be a quiet repositioning rather than profit-taking. Wood had been gradually weakening the position on Friday as well.
The size isn’t the only thing that makes the AMD sale intriguing. It’s the background. Despite the export restrictions stifling the industry, AMD still views China as worth the diplomatic effort, as evidenced by CEO Lisa Su’s recent visit to Beijing and meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng. Because server CPU demand is linked to agentic AI workloads, analysts have been raising price targets. Wood continues to sell, though. She feels as though she has seen this movie before, in which a price chart that rose more quickly than the fundamentals could keep up tests conviction.
A similar, albeit more subdued, story is told by the TSMC trade. As Taiwan Semiconductor closed at $395.95, Ark sold 27,707 shares from ARKK and another 2,161 from ARKW, for a total of roughly $11.8 million. This is taking place while TSMC’s Japan division turns a profit and its Arizona factories report significantly higher earnings. The order books are apparently full, the global expansion is genuine, and the AI chip cycle is still humming. To be fair, the brand is almost contrarian when it comes to selling here.
It’s difficult to ignore what Ark purchased in its place. With 5,409 shares added to the Space & Defense ETF for about $1.2 million, Nvidia made the cut. 2,682 shares were acquired by Tesla. Amazon received 6,959. Then there were the smaller, more bizarre wagers, which are what made Wood more well-known. 281,199 new shares were purchased by Archer Aviation, the electric air taxi company whose stock recently fell due to concerns about cash burn. Joby Aviation received 118,699. These businesses are still in the proving-it-works phase, following in Tesla’s uncertain footsteps from ten years ago, when no one trusted the math.
Here, it’s important to remember the chip pullback on May 15. That day, the iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped about 4%, which was quite a shock for a sector that had been priced for near perfection. Wood sold into a portion of that vulnerability, which has turned into one of her signature moves—sometimes justified, sometimes not. Anyone who survived the 2022 collapse, when ARKK fell more than 60%, will never forget it. However, in 2020, the same fund produced a 153% return, briefly making her America’s most watched investor.
The harsher reality is revealed by her five-year annualized return. The S&P 500 returned 13.80% during that time, while ARKK was down 6.25% annually as of early May. The figures don’t disagree. However, inflows continue. According to VettaFi, approximately $1.48 billion came into ARKK over a five-day period ending on May 14, indicating that believers continue to have faith.
Wood vehemently refuted the notion that the economy is slowing down and approaching a downturn in a Bloomberg podcast from March. She referred to the upcoming “great acceleration,” which will be fueled by artificial intelligence and a number of innovative technologies that will reduce costs at rates that no one has fully grasped. The cost of AI training is decreasing by 75% annually. The annual decrease in inference costs is up to 98%. She believes that global growth could reach 7 to 8 percent, which, when stated aloud, sounds almost utopian.
It’s still unclear if the semiconductor sales are tactical or something more profound. Perhaps Wood is cutting winners in order to finance the next round of risky wagers. Perhaps she is discreetly withdrawing from the market’s busiest trades. In any case, the pattern seems familiar as I watch this develop. The next cycle determines whether she was right or wrong after she trims, rotates, and absorbs heat.
