Cathie Wood Sells $5.5 Million of Snowflake Stock Ahead of Earnings

Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Investment Management, has a well-known habit of locking in gains when her high-conviction technology stocks rally. Her latest move fits that pattern: trimming her position in Snowflake Inc. (SNOW) after the cloud data platform's shares surged nearly 10% over five trading days leading into its earnings report.

On July 31, the Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) sold 18,855 shares of Snowflake, according to the fund's daily trading disclosure. At the most recent closing price of $293.28, the transaction was valued at approximately $5.5 million. The sale remains modest relative to Ark's total Snowflake holdings, which were built up substantially in June.

ARKK's Performance Context

In 2025, the Ark Innovation ETF gained 35.49%, comfortably outpacing the S&P 500's 17.88% return over the same period. However, year-to-date as of July 31, ARKK is down 8.51%, while the S&P 500 has advanced 9.41%, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Wood rose to prominence after ARKK delivered a 153% return in 2020. That aggressive growth style has also produced steep losses in bearish markets — most notably in 2022, when the fund fell more than 60%.

Those wide swings have weighed on long-term results. As of July 31, the Ark Innovation ETF has posted a five-year annualized return of -9.75%, compared with 11.25% for the S&P 500 over the same period, according to Morningstar data.

Over the decade ended 2025, the Ark Innovation ETF erased nearly $5 billion in investor wealth, according to an analysis by Morningstar analyst Amy Arnott, ranking as the fourth-largest wealth destroyer among mutual funds and ETFs.

Investor sentiment has reflected those challenges. Over the 12 months through July 30, ARKK experienced approximately $1.49 billion in net outflows, according to ETF research firm VettaFi.

Wood's Macro Outlook: Deflationary Impact of Tech Innovation

Wood typically invests in high-growth companies across artificial intelligence, blockchain, biomedical technology, and robotics. While she contends these sectors carry strong growth potential, their volatility frequently drives swings in Ark's fund performance.

Wood has argued that investors are misreading the macroeconomic landscape. In a June post on X, she said the bond market is increasingly pricing in the deflationary effects of technological innovation — particularly AI — rather than the inflation risks many still fear.

Wood pointed to the continued flattening of the Treasury yield curve despite a sharp rise in oil prices over the past year. In previous economic cycles, she noted, an energy shock of comparable magnitude would have driven long-term yields higher.

Wood argued that the bond market is "discounting something much more powerful: the deflationary impact of technological innovation, particularly artificial intelligence, which is beginning to increase productivity across broad swaths of the economy."

She also cited easing tensions with Iran and a decline in oil prices as factors that could push inflation lower.

"The next phase of this cycle could be characterized by accelerating growth, declining inflation, falling interest rates, and a strengthening U.S. dollar," Wood said. "That combination would create a remarkably supportive backdrop for innovation-led equities and the technologies driving the next productivity boom."

Her Snowflake position sits squarely within that thesis: the company is positioning itself as foundational infrastructure for enterprises deploying AI, a category Wood views as central to the productivity-driven deflation she expects.

Snowflake's Recent Rally and Wells Fargo Upgrade

Snowflake, which provides cloud-based data warehousing and analytics solutions, has faced concerns earlier this year that generative AI tools from large language model providers could commoditize parts of the traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Competitors including Databricks, which raised $10 billion in a late-2024 funding round, have intensified the race to become the default data layer for AI workloads. Those fears have not materialized for Snowflake, however.

Shares of Snowflake climbed 9.41% over the five trading days leading into the sale, driven largely by a bullish note from Wells Fargo. On July 29, the bank raised its price target on SNOW from $320 to $500 — the highest target on Wall Street — while reaffirming its Overweight rating. The bank said "the game has changed," according to The Fly.

The revised target implies roughly 70% upside from the July 31 closing price of $293.28. Wells Fargo believes AI agents are accelerating customer spending on Snowflake's platform and that investors are underestimating the company's AI-driven growth potential. The analyst described Snowflake as a near-term AI beneficiary "without capex requirements or model dependence," meaning the company can generate returns without heavy infrastructure investment — a notable contrast to cloud providers and chipmakers that require massive capital expenditure.

Snowflake's Fiscal Q1 Results and Guidance

Year-to-date, Snowflake stock is up 33.7%. That includes a record 36.48% single-day jump on May 28, following stronger-than-expected earnings and the announcement of a plan to spend $6 billion on Amazon Web Services infrastructure over five years — one of the largest cloud infrastructure commitments disclosed by a SaaS company, reflecting the compute-intensive demands of AI workloads.

For its fiscal first quarter, Snowflake reported adjusted earnings of 39 cents per share on revenue of $1.39 billion — a 33% increase year-over-year. Analysts had projected earnings of 32 cents per share and revenue of $1.32 billion, per CNBC.

Snowflake also issued guidance that exceeded Wall Street expectations. The company forecast fiscal second-quarter product revenue of $1.415 billion to $1.420 billion and an adjusted operating margin of 12.5%, compared with consensus estimates of $1.37 billion in product revenue and an 11.9% operating margin.

Snowflake is expected to report its fiscal second-quarter results on August 26. Investors will be watching whether the AI-driven consumption growth Wells Fargo highlighted translates into sustained product revenue acceleration and margin expansion.

"AI continues to be a powerful tailwind for Snowflake, and Q1 marks a clear inflection point in that journey. With Cortex Code and Snowflake Intelligence, we are extending from the trusted foundation for enterprise data and context to become the control plane for the Agentic Enterprise," Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a statement.

"We are seeing strong momentum from both AI-driven acceleration of our core platform and growing adoption of our first-party AI products, positioning Snowflake to lead in this new era," Ramaswamy added.

Wood's Snowflake Trading History and Broader Activity

Wood had significantly increased her Snowflake stake on June 18, purchasing 223,690 shares valued at approximately $52 million at the time. Her funds subsequently began trimming the position, including a sale of 14,684 shares on July 20 — likely a profit-taking move ahead of earnings.

Snowflake does not rank among the Ark Innovation ETF's top ten holdings.

Top 10 Holdings in the Ark Innovation ETF by Portfolio Weight (as of July 31, 2026)

• Tesla (TSLA) – 9.42%
• SpaceX (SPCX) – 4.92%
• Tempus AI (TEM) – 4.81%
• CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) – 4.66%
• Coinbase (COIN) – 4.54%
• Shopify (SHOP) – 4.54%
• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) – 3.96%
• Circle Internet Group (CRCL) – 3.82%
• Robinhood Markets (HOOD) – 3.54%
• 10x Genomics (TXG) – 3.43%

Beyond the Snowflake sale, Wood's latest round of trades included purchases of CoreWeave (CRWV), Circle Internet Group (CRCL), Pony AI (PONY), and a small position in Kodiak AI (KDK). She also trimmed holdings in Shopify (SHOP), 10x Genomics (TXG), Brera Holdings (SLMT), Figma (FIG), Strata Critical Medical (SRTA), and Iridium Communications (IRDM).

This story was originally published by TheStreet on August 2, 2026.