ARK’s Cathie Wood Cuts Exposure To China-Based Names And Dumps $100 Million In Tesla This Week

Cathie Wood is cutting her exposure to China…and to Tesla. 

The revered fund manager, often seen as the second coming by retail investors and financial media, drastically cut her ties to China-based companies amid the growing tensions between the Chinese Communist Party and many U.S. listed Chinese companies. 

Wood only held onto names that were identifiably “currying favour” with Beijing, FT reported this week. Wood expounded on her thought process on Thursday of this week at the Mizuho Securities investor conference.

The environment in China is “quite different” than it was last year, Wood said, parroting headlines that broke here in the U.S. weeks ago, before billions in value were wiped off Chinese equities across the board. 

“Anything deemed by Beijing as too profitable was at risk of being torpedoed,” FT reported her as saying.

Wood pointed back to China’s regulatory changes related to for-profit education, as well as the Chinese government’s seemingly arbitrary and unilateral power to rope in large corporations based in the country, as reasons to cut ties with the country. 

Wood said this week: “We have not eliminated our positions but we have reduced our positioning in China dramatically and we have swapped some of our holders, which became losers, into companies that we know are courting the government with ‘common prosperity’.”

“I think it’s basically investing for free to help the government,” she continued, talking about Pinduoduo’s investments in the grocery sector and supply chains. 

“We think they’ll reconsider some of these regulations with time and we won’t give up on China because they are so focused on innovation and they are so inherently entrepreneurial,” Wood concluded.

Speaking of Chinese names that Wood wants to distance herself from, ARK also dumped $100 million worth of Tesla shares this week. According to 24/7 Wall Street, Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF sold 119,487 shares of Tesla, ARK’s Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF sold 7,229 shares, and ARK’s Next Generation Internet ETF sold 15,992 shares earlier this week.