Cathie Wood's Ark Invest executed a series of major trades on Monday, offloading shares in Palantir Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices while buying heavily into Block and Circle Internet Group. Ark discloses its fund trades daily, making such moves closely watched signals for growth- and innovation-focused investors, and the trades fit the firm's long-standing focus on fintech, crypto infrastructure, and artificial intelligence themes.

Ark Buys Block and Circle

Ark picked up 456,059 shares of Block across its ARKF, ARKK, and ARKW funds. With Block closing at $82.02, the purchase came to roughly $37.4 million. Block fell 1.85% on the day.

The purchase follows Block's second-quarter earnings report from early August, in which the company posted earnings of $1.02 per share on revenue of $6.62 billion, beating expectations on both counts. Block also raised its full-year profit forecast to $12.5 billion, representing 21% growth. Analysts at Mizuho, however, flagged concerns about rising operating expenses despite a 40% staff cut in February.

Block's Bitcoin Holdings in Focus

Block has deep ties to the crypto space. The Jack Dorsey-led company holds 9,177 Bitcoin, currently valued at around $714 million. Bitcoin gained 23.73% this month, while Ethereum rose 31.44%.

Ark also bought 35,192 shares of Circle Internet Group for roughly $3.36 million. Circle's stock jumped 9.65% on Monday to $95.55, recovering from a 7.5% drop the previous Friday. Circle went public on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2025, and its shares have been volatile since then as investors weigh the growth of stablecoins against the company's interest-rate-sensitive revenue model.

Bernstein analysts gave Circle an Outperform rating last week with a $140 price target, citing growth in stablecoin payments, blockchain capital markets, and the use of stablecoins for agentic payments. The stablecoin sector gained a clearer regulatory framework in July 2025, when the GENIUS Act establishing federal rules for payment stablecoin issuers was signed into law in the United States.

Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, is up 52.6% over the past month. Cathie Wood has previously spoken about Circle's potential in the digital payments space.

Ark Sells Palantir and AMD

On the sell side, Ark offloaded 139,456 shares of Palantir across its three main ETFs at a closing price of $186.38, bringing the total to around $26 million. The sale came after Palantir reported strong second-quarter results, with revenue of $1.94 billion beating estimates of $1.80 billion. Adjusted earnings came in at 41 cents per share against an estimate of 35 cents. Palantir has been one of the best-performing large-cap software stocks amid surging demand for AI platforms, and trimming the position despite strong results suggests the sale was driven at least in part by portfolio weighting considerations rather than fundamentals alone.

Ark also trimmed its AMD position by selling 8,623 shares through ARKF, worth approximately $4.1 million at AMD's closing price of $470.72. AMD had recently announced AI infrastructure expansion in Saudi Arabia alongside Cisco Systems and HUMAIN. Ark has been reducing its AMD stake consistently over recent weeks, part of a broader pattern of the firm paring positions in chipmakers as AI-related valuations have climbed.

Portfolio Rules

Ark's rules prevent any single holding from exceeding 10% of a fund's portfolio, a constraint that frequently triggers rebalancing trades when a holding's price rises sharply. Circle closed Monday at $95.55, and Bernstein's $140 price target remains the most recent analyst call on the stock.