Ark Invest, the investment firm led by prominent tech investor Cathie Wood, executed substantial sell-offs on Thursday, shedding millions in shares of major technology stocks, including significant reductions in Nvidia and Meta. Additionally, the firm decreased its exposure to Bitcoin through its own Bitcoin ETF.
The firm’s transactions on Thursday resulted in a divestment of nearly $41 million in Meta (META) and over $26 million in Nvidia (NVDA). These tech stocks continued to decline following the market opening on Friday, experiencing drops of 2.98% and 1.55%, respectively. Over the past month, both companies have faced greater challenges, with Meta suffering a dramatic decline of more than 17%, now trading around $531. Much of this drop can be attributed to lawsuits claiming that the platform failed to safeguard young users from social media addiction.
Nvidia showed slightly more resilience, with only a 5% dip over the last month, but the company is now grappling with uncertainties stemming from ongoing geopolitical strife in Iran. Additionally, Nvidia is facing a class action lawsuit regarding alleged discrepancies in its crypto mining revenue.
Ark Invest’s actively managed ETFs also recorded notable reductions in popular tech stocks such as Alphabet (GOOG) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), selling approximately $2.5 million and $7.5 million worth of these shares, respectively. Both companies experienced further declines in Friday trading, with Alphabet down 1% and AMD falling 2.27%.
In the realm of cryptocurrencies, Ark Invest also scaled back its involvement. The firm divested about $11 million in shares of its spot Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and approximately $6.5 million in shares of crypto exchange Bullish. It further reduced its position in Block (XYZ), a firm associated with Bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey, selling nearly $5 million worth of shares.
The broader cryptocurrency market is facing pressures, with Bitcoin, the leading digital currency, dropping about 4.8% in the past 24 hours to around $66,020, temporarily reaching its lowest price since early March, below $66,000. Bullish, in a similar downturn, has seen its shares dip nearly 3.5% in the last 24 hours and nearly 44% over the past six months.
Despite recent sales, Wood has remained bullish on Bitcoin’s future, previously forecasting prices as high as $1.2 million per coin by 2030. Following Thursday’s transactions, Ark Invest holds around $100 million in ARKB, ranking it as the 35th largest position among the 96 actively managed ARK ETFs.
Earlier this year, Wood expressed her views on market bubbles, suggesting she was not concerned about a potential bubble in artificial intelligence. Instead, she characterized precious metals and the rise in gold as the real bubbles. Notably, gold has seen a decline of about 20% from its peak this year, currently trading around $4,483 per ounce.
