Cathie Wood's Ark Invest Dumps Meta, Nvidia and Bitcoin ETF Shares in Major Tech Sell-Off

In brief

• Ark Invest parted with nearly $41 million in META and $26 million in NVDA shares on Thursday.
• Cathie Wood’s firm also dumped around $11 million worth of shares in its Bitcoin ETF.
• The sales come amid a sustained market downturn as uncertainty in Iran shakes stocks and crypto.

Ark Invest, the investment firm of notable tech investor Cathie Wood, shed millions of dollars’ worth of shares of major tech stocks on Thursday, significantly trimming positions in Nvidia and Meta while also diminishing its exposure to Bitcoin via its own Bitcoin ETF.  The firm’s Thursday activity saw it part with nearly $41 million worth of Meta (META) and more than $26 million in Nvidia (NVDA), both of which have fallen further since the opening bell on Friday, dropping 2.98% and 1.55%, respectively.  The prominent tech stocks have fared much worse over the last month, with META dropping more than 17% over that time to change hands around $531. The bulk of those losses—around 10%—have come in the last week as the social media platform lost a pair of social media addiction lawsuits that said it failed to protect young users.

Nvidia has held up better, but still dipped around 5% in the last month as uncertainty surrounds the conflict in Iran. The firm was also hit with a class action lawsuit over alleged crypto mining revenue gaps.   The actively managed ARK ETFs also saw considerable decreases in other popular tech stocks, like Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which it sold around $2.5 million and $7.5 million worth of, respectively. The pair have not been spared in Friday trading, dropping 1% and 2.27% since trading began. Beyond the tech stocks, Ark Invest also divested from some crypto exposure on Thursday. The firm shed around $11 million worth of shares in its spot Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and about $6.5 million in shares of crypto exchange Bullish. It also dumped nearly $5 million worth of Bitcoin proponent Jack Dorsey’s firm, Block (XYZ), which has a number of Bitcoin-centric products.

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, has now fallen around 4.8% in the last 24 hours to change hands around $66,020, briefly touching its lowest price since March 2 below $66,000. Meanwhile, Bullish has fallen nearly 3.5% in the last 24 hours, and is now down nearly 44% in the last six months of trading as the entire crypto market slides.  Wood has been outspokenly optimistic about the future of Bitcoin, providing ambitious price forecasts—like $1.2 million per coin by 2030. But after Thursday’s sales, the firm only holds around $100 million in ARKB, enough to make it the 35th largest holding among actively managed ARK ETFs out of 96 total positions, according to data from Cathie’s Ark.  Earlier this year, Wood said that she was not concerned about a bubble in AI, instead pointing to precious metals and the run in gold as the real bubble. As of Friday, gold was down around 20% from its yearly high, recently changing hands around $4,483 per ounce.