Cathie Wood’s Surprise Mid-June Trades: Dumping Robinhood, Loading Up on Coinbase and Big Pharma

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(SeaPRwire) –   By: Christian Pierce

Investors have puzzled over ARK Invest’s conflicting picks for months. Robinhood’s short-term World Cup prediction market boom looked made for Cathie Wood’s disruption playbook. But she’s pulling back from the retail brokerage anyway. The market misread Coinbase’s latest product drops as minor updates. It missed the long-term shift Wood is clearly betting on right now.

On June 17, ARK bought 111,799 Coinbase shares across three ETFs worth $18.4 million. It also picked up 236,759 Block Inc. shares worth roughly $17.2 million, and 41,138 Eli Lilly shares worth $46.2 million, the day’s largest purchase. On the sell side, ARK offloaded 275,572 Robinhood shares worth about $26.7 million, following a smaller sale the prior Thursday. It also sold 239,267 Roku shares totaling around $33 million, after a larger disposal earlier that week. Coinbase closed down 2.57% that day, while Robinhood jumped 8.78%. Coinbase had launched tokenized stock trading and an AI advisor the day prior, while Robinhood announced a 10% workforce cut that same Tuesday.

Wood’s trades are not a rejection of retail fintech entirely. She’s betting platforms building end-to-end financial infrastructure will outperform those relying on temporary event-driven trading spikes. Eli Lilly’s high-margin drug pipeline fits her long-term healthcare disruption thesis. Retail investors chasing short-term Robinhood gains are betting on the wrong timeline. Anyone holding Robinhood for long-term growth should reconsider their position immediately.

Author bio: Christian Pierce, chief financial columnist and markets commentator with 12 years covering disruptive tech and public equities.