Cathie Wood Just Bought 81,000 Shares of Tesla Stock. Should You Back Up the Truck Too?
Cathie Wood has always been a Tesla (TSLA) bull, so there are no surprises here… or at least you’d think so. Whatever your opinion may be about Cathie Wood, she knows Tesla like the back of her hand, and this is the stock that she researches the most. TSLA stock is the largest holding for Ark Invest, with 9.5% of its holdings dedicated to it.
The reason I’d call the latest buy a surprise is that Cathie Wood hasn’t been buying mindlessly. She has had a history of timing Tesla’s highs and lows multiple times in the past few years, and the latest buy could mark Tesla turning the corner before making a recovery. TSLA stock is down 27% from its 6-month high. A full recovery implies 37% upside. If the market cooperates, this time TSLA stock could finally break through $500.
Cathie has been bullish on Tesla when the rest of the market has been bearish. There have been times when she quietly took profits, then bought heavier with the profits later on. This is undoubtedly what is happening. But first, let’s pivot to the past for a moment and take a look at her moves.
Cathie Wood’s TSLA buys stretch back all the way to 2016, and she accumulated the stock through 2018 before taking profits during the February 2020 peak. She then bought back in on Q2 2020 and continued selling and buying all the way up to Tesla’s peak. Wood sensed the stock was overvalued and sold TSLA stock every quarter from Q2 2021 through Q3 2022. This paid off in spades.
Q4 2022 is when speculative stocks (like Tesla) started finding a bottom, and she accumulated in both Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, and this was immediately rewarded by a rally in 2023.
It’s an apparent trend that played out in 2024 and 2025. And is playing out yet again. Cathie’s investment vehicles sold 18.8% of their Tesla holdings in Q4 2025. Wood is now buying since the stock’s fall from its highs back then.
On April 6, ARKK (ARKK) acquired 29,563 shares, ARKQ (ARKQ) added 9,209 shares, and ARKX (ARKX) bought 919 shares, for a combined 39,691 shares worth approximately $14.3 million.
On April 7, ARK purchased additional Tesla shares. That day’s Tesla buy was valued at $2.4 million.
And on April 8, ARK picked up 33,210 shares through the ARKQ ETF alone, worth roughly $11.4 million, the single largest day of buying. This marked ARK’s first Tesla purchase since early February.
ARK’s buys came right after Tesla’s Q1 2026 delivery report, where the company posted 358,023 vehicle deliveries, which missed the 365,645 analyst consensus by 7,622 units. Production exceeded deliveries by over 50,000 vehicles, though deliveries still grew 6.3% year-over-year (YoY). The energy storage segment also disappointed.
Tesla ended up deploying just 8.8 GWh against Q4’s 14.2 GWh. Analysts expected sequential growth to 14.4 GWh, so this was a very surprising decline. Perhaps the crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz is something that could rescue growth here in later quarters as energy storage gains momentum, but I wouldn’t rule out more disappointments here.
Cathie Wood’s buys so far are still quite small. I expect buys amounting to hundreds of millions in the medium to near term. A buy similar to that in Q3 2025 is likely since the stock is down to similar levels.
Sure, there have been disappointments in many areas, but Wood likely doesn’t care much about the energy storage segment. Wood’s conviction rests almost entirely on Tesla becoming an autonomous transportation platform rather than a car company. ARK sees robotaxis contributing 63% of Tesla’s revenue by 2029, with energy storage at just 10%.
If you are making a tactical bet and just want to get some upside from the next leg up, I wouldn’t shy away from buying. TSLA stock has rebounded consistently from deep drawdowns, and I don’t expect this time to be any different.
Where I would diverge from what Wood is doing is bullishness. ARK expected $4,600 per share for TSLA stock in 2026 back in 2022. Back then, robotaxis were still their biggest upside catalyst. TSLA stock isn’t even a tenth of the way there. Other analysts are not in agreement either, as the analyst consensus comes out to “Hold” on TSLA stock, and the highest 52-week price target is $600.
The best thing you can do is follow the money. If you like Cathie Wood, simply do what she is doing by being opportunistic.
On the date of publication, Omor Ibne Ehsan did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com