Cathie Wood sells Block shares to double down on Nvidia

Quick Take

  • Ark Invest sold over 235,000 Block shares, worth over $20 million based on the price at close on Monday. 
  • The Cathie Wood-founded firm has instead loaded up on Nvidia shares, adding over $65 million dollars worth to three separate funds.  

Ark Invest, the asset manager founded by Cathie Wood, ditched $20 million worth of Block shares on Monday and loaded up on over $65 million worth of chipmaker Nvidia.

Ark Invest sold 235,489 shares in payments provider Block on August 8, all from its flagship Ark Innovation ETF, according to its latest trade filing. The firm instead bought 366,982 shares of Nvidia – 289,229 of which were added to the Ark Innovation ETF, with the remainder added to the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF and the Ark Fintech Innovation ETF. 

Shares in Jack Dorsey's Block closed down a little over 2% on Monday at $85.50. Based on this price, the value of Wood's sold shares was $20.1 million. Meanwhile Nvidia was trading at $177.93 on Monday evening, which means Ark's investment clocked in at around $65.3 million. 

Wood’s fund exited PayPal in April to bet on Block, which Wood discussed with CNBC’s Kate Rooney at the time. The Ark CEO told Rooney her analysts had higher conviction on Block due to organic growth at its Cash App, which she said would be “fired up” by bitcoin. 

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Shares in Block sunk a little over 50% during the second quarter while bitcoin clocked its worst quarter in 11 years as various asset classes suffered major losses amid ongoing macroeconomic turbulence. Last week Block recorded a 6% decline in net revenues year-over-year, which was attributed to a decline in bitcoin revenues.  

PayPal shares also plunged in value during the second quarter. The company, whose Venmo product competes with Cash App, reported positive earnings last week and revealed Elliott Investment Management took a $2 billion stake in the payments firm. 

Monday’s sale came exactly two weeks after Ark sold over 1.4 million shares in crypto exchange Coinbase for $75 million. Unfortunately for Ark, Coinbase shares have almost doubled since then, on the back of partnership news and ahead of the firm's second-quarter earnings today. Wood told Bloomberg TV on Monday that regulatory uncertainty — the SEC is investigating Coinbase over several coins listed on the platform — was the driving force behind Ark selling these shares.


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About Author

Adam Morgan is a reporter covering cryptocurrency, financial markets, and economics – anything from price movements, earnings reports, and inflation to the U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate decisions and everything in between. Adam is based in London.