Picture this: It’s early February 2026, and most investors are running for the exits. Crypto stocks are tanking. AI stocks are in free fall. And Cathie Wood? She’s shopping.
The head of Ark Investment Management has made a career out of zigging when others zag. While her flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) is down nearly 10% this year compared to the S&P 500’s modest gains, Wood isn’t panicking. Instead, she’s aggressively buying the dip across multiple sectors.
Her track record speaks to both the promise and peril of this strategy. Sure, she delivered a mind-blowing 153% return in 2020. But she also watched her flagship fund crater more than 60% in 2022. The result? A brutal five-year annualized return of -13.83%, while the S&P 500 cruised ahead at 13.92%.
Yet Cathie Wood remains undeterred, recently loading up on stocks across AI and crypto that have been absolutely hammered.
What did she buy?
1. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) – The 17% crash
This is the headline grabber. On February 4th, AMD announced earnings that beat analyst estimates—and the stock promptly crashed 17% in a single trading session.
The problem? Investors expected even more, especially given the AI chip frenzy. AMD’s Q1 revenue forecast of $9.8 billion wasn’t disappointing on paper, but in a market obsessed with AI growth, it wasn’t the blowout number Wall Street wanted.
Wood saw opportunity. She loaded up on AMD shares across five different Ark funds: Ark Innovation, Ark Autonomous Technology, Ark Next Generation Internet, Ark Blockchain and Fintech, and Ark Space & Defense. AMD is now the sixth-biggest holding in Ark Innovation at nearly 3.9% of the fund.
The thesis? AMD is Nvidia‘s main rival in AI chips, making the GPUs that power everything from model training to real-time AI inference. With the AI market forecast to reach trillions of dollars, Wood believes this is a temporary setback, not a fundamental problem.
The kicker: AMD now trades at just 29x forward earnings—down from over 60x a few months ago. For a company positioned in the AI infrastructure layer, that’s looking like a bargain.
2. Bullish (BLSH) – The coinbase replacement
Here’s where things get interesting. Wood just bought roughly 716,000 shares of Bullish—a Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange—worth about $17.8 million across three of her funds. At the same time, she sold approximately 119,000 shares of Coinbase worth $17.4 million.
This is essentially a strategic swap: out with the market leader, in with the underdog.
Bullish stock has been hammered, down nearly 70% from its IPO price and trading at just $24.90. But the company just beat earnings expectations despite reporting losses, with revenue up 68% year-over-year to $92.5 million. Trading volumes are surging even as the stock price languishes.
Bullish now represents 1.68% of ARKK, 1.43% of ARKW, and 2.37% of ARKF. Meanwhile, Coinbase remains a larger holding overall (around 3.7-5% across funds), but Wood is clearly shifting her bets toward where she sees more upside potential.
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits shows investors are buying the pivot—Bullish sentiment sits in “bullish” territory while message volume remains high.
3. Circle (CRCL) and BitMine (BMNR) – The crypto infrastructure plays
Wood also continued adding shares of Circle, the USDC stablecoin issuer (down 20% from IPO), and BitMine Immersion Technologies, Tom Lee’s Ethereum treasury firm (down 21% in just five trading days).
Combined, these positions represent hundreds of millions in crypto infrastructure bets—not on the tokens themselves, but on the picks-and-shovels companies building the ecosystem.
The contrarian playbook
Wood’s strategy is classic dip-buying: identify innovative companies in secular growth markets, wait for panic selling, then load up for the long haul. But she’s also showing tactical flexibility—willing to rotate from market leaders (Coinbase) to beaten-down challengers (Bullish) when valuations and growth trajectories diverge.
The problem? Wild volatility. One Stocktwits user grimly predicted ARKK would hit $50 (from $70+), warning “she will buy all the dips and this will keep dipping.” Another joked that Cathie Wood and Tom Lee “are the same person.”
The verdict
Wood’s shopping spree across AI and crypto is either genius or madness—we won’t know for years. What’s clear is she’s practicing what she preaches: buying innovation at discount prices, staying flexible, and holding long-term.
For aggressive investors who believe in these secular trends and can stomach volatility, following Wood’s moves might make sense. For everyone else? Grab some popcorn and watch how this unfolds.
Because if there’s one thing Cathie Wood guarantees, it’s never a dull moment.
Sonia Boolchandani is a seasoned financial writer She has written for prominent firms like Vested Finance, and Finology, where she has crafted content that simplifies complex financial concepts for diverse audiences.
Note: Cathie Wood manages multiple ETFs (ARKK, ARKW, ARKF, ARKB, and several others), each operating independently with its own investment strategy. This means you may encounter conflicting reports about whether Ark is “buying” or “selling” a particular stock—one fund might be accumulating shares while another trims its position on the same day. The trading activity discussed in this article reflects net movements across her flagship funds, but individual fund transactions can vary. Always check specific fund holdings if you’re tracking a particular ETF.
Disclosure: The writer and her his dependents do not hold the stocks discussed in this article.
The website managers, its employee(s), and contributors/writers/authors of articles have or may have an outstanding buy or sell position or holding in the securities, options on securities or other related investments of issuers and/or companies discussed therein. The content of the articles and the interpretation of data are solely the personal views of the contributors/ writers/authors. Investors must make their own investment decisions based on their specific objectives, resources and only after consulting such independent advisors as may be necessary.
