Cathie Wooden, chief of Ark Funding Administration, likes to commerce round earnings season.
Typically, Wooden provides or sells shares proper after their earnings. Typically, she makes strikes days forward of outcomes, betting on potential features. That’s what she simply did, shopping for shares of a megacap tech agency forward of its earnings subsequent week.
In 2025, the flagship Ark Innovation ETF gained 35.49%, far outpacing the S&P 500’s return of 17.88% in the identical interval. To date this 12 months, Wooden’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) is up 1.84% 12 months thus far, whereas the S&P 500 surged 4.27%, Yahoo Finance knowledge reveals.
Wooden gained a fame after the Ark Innovation ETF delivered a 153% return in 2020. However her fashion additionally brings painful losses in bearish markets, as seen in 2022, when the Ark Innovation ETF tumbled greater than 60%.
These swings have weighed on Wooden’s long-term features. As of April 21, the Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized return of -8.52%, whereas the S&P 500 has an annualized return of 12.73% over the identical interval, in keeping with knowledge from Morningstar.
Within the 12 months by April 21, the Ark Innovation ETF noticed roughly $1.12 billion in internet Getty Photos
Wooden focuses on high-tech corporations throughout synthetic intelligence, blockchain, biomedical expertise, and robotics. She thinks these companies have sturdy progress potential, although their volatility typically causes fluctuations within the Ark’s funds.
From 2014 to 2024, the Ark Innovation ETF worn out $7 billion in investor wealth, in keeping with a March 2025 evaluation by Morningstar’s analyst Amy Arnott. That made it the third-biggest wealth destroyer amongst mutual funds and ETFs in Arnott’s rating. The analyst hasn’t up to date the 2025 rating outflows.
In a March Bloomberg podcast, Wooden says the worldwide economic system isn’t heading right into a downturn, however into what she calls a “nice acceleration” pushed by AI and different breakthrough applied sciences.
“We’re not going into the Nice Despair, we’re going into the nice acceleration,” Wooden mentioned, pointing to how previous technological revolutions reshaped financial progress.
Associated: Cathie Wooden buys $2.5 million of tumbling megacap inventory
She famous that world actual GDP progress averaged simply 0.6% between 1500 and 1900, earlier than the Industrial Revolution lifted it to round 3% for greater than a century. Now, she argues, a brand new wave of innovation might push progress a lot increased.
“We predict [technologies] are going to take progress into the 7 to eight% vary,” Wooden mentioned, including that the quantity may very well be conservative.
Wooden additionally famous that AI is driving down prices throughout industries.
“These applied sciences are deflationary,” she mentioned. “AI coaching prices are dropping 75% per 12 months, and inference prices are falling as a lot as 85% to even 98% yearly.”
In a letter revealed in January, Wooden rejects the “AI bubble” speak, saying it “is years away” and “essentially the most highly effective capital spending cycle in historical past” is coming.
“What as soon as was the cap in spending appears to have develop into a ground now that the AI, robotics, vitality storage, blockchain expertise, and multiomics sequencing platforms are prepared for prime time,” she mentioned.
However not all traders agree with Wooden’s optimism. Within the 12 months by April 21, the Ark Innovation ETF noticed roughly $1.12 billion in internet outflows, in keeping with knowledge from ETF analysis agency VettaFi.
On April 21, Wooden’s Ark House & Protection Innovation ETF purchased 3,492 shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), in keeping with Ark’s each day commerce data. These shares are valued at roughly $891,717 based mostly on the newest closing value of $255.36.
Shares of Amazon have surged greater than 24% over the previous month, pushed by optimism round Amazon Internet Companies (AWS), now the corporate’s AI hub, and a broader market rebound following the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.
The e-commerce large is about to report its first quarter 2026 earnings subsequent Wednesday (April 29).
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Within the fourth quarter of 2025, AWS gross sales jumped 24% 12 months over 12 months to $35.6 billion, the quickest progress in 13 quarters. The phase introduced in $12.5 billion in working revenue, making up about half of the corporate’s complete.
Financial institution of America raised its value goal for Amazon inventory to $298 from $275 forward of earnings, in keeping with an April 20 analysis word despatched to TheStreet. The financial institution has a purchase ranking on Amazon shares.
“We proceed to see Amazon as very properly positioned to learn from rising company demand for AI capability,” Financial institution of America analysts led by Justin Put up wrote.
The analysts count on a wave of optimistic AWS knowledge factors pointing to enhancing capability and a stronger business place in contrast with 2025.
This week, Amazon introduced plans to speculate as much as $25 billion in Anthropic as a part of an expanded settlement to construct out AI infrastructure.
In February, Amazon revealed a $50 billion funding in OpenAI, Anthropic’s greatest rival. The identical month, Amazon mentioned it expects $200 billion in capital expenditures this 12 months, most of which will likely be for AI infrastructure.
“With such sturdy demand for our present choices and seminal alternatives like AI, chips, robotics, low earth orbit satellites, we count on to speculate about $200 billion in capital expenditures throughout Amazon in 2026, and anticipate sturdy long-term return on invested capital,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassymentioned in an announcement.
Amazon isn’t a prime 10 holding in both the Ark House & Protection Innovation ETF or the Ark Innovation ETF.
