Cathie Wood’s Calculated Gambles: Three Stocks in Her Sights

The market’s tide ebbs and flows like the Salinas Valley’s seasonal rains, and Cathie Wood, that relentless farmer of capital, has bent her plowshare toward fertile ground once more. On Thursday, the founder of Ark Invest sowed seeds in three stocks-Figma, Amazon, and Toast-each a testament to her belief that even in drought, there are fields waiting to be tilled.

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1. Figma

Figma’s journey has been one of fire and frost. A summer bloom, it erupted from its IPO at $33 a share to $143, only to wither to the mid-$50s by autumn’s chill. Yet its roots run deep in the soil of innovation-cloud-based design tools, AI-driven creativity, and a revenue growth rate that hums like a well-oiled tractor. Investors, many of whom never caught the IPO’s elusive hay, now watch as the stock trades at 30 times sales, a price that whispers of both promise and peril.

Adobe once sought to claim Figma as its own, but regulatory thorns pricked that ambition. Now, Figma stands alone, a phoenix risen from the ashes of a $20 billion deal gone awry. It is a company that knows the weight of scrutiny, yet presses on, as do all who dare to build in the digital frontier. Wood, ever the contrarian, sees not just numbers but narrative-a story where resilience and reinvention are currency.

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2. Amazon

Amazon, titan of the digital plains, is no stranger to the market’s fickle winds. At 5% from its all-time high, it looms like a redwood-ancient, unyielding, yet capable of shedding its bark to grow anew. Its latest quarter showed a 13% sales rise, a modest step forward in a world accustomed to sprinting. Yet within that number lies a subtler truth: the AWS cloud, a river of profit, flows at 18% growth, while net income surged 33%, a testament to the company’s ability to turn margin into muscle.

Wood’s hand here is not one of desperation but of patience. She does not chase the bottom but plants her flag where the ground is firm. Amazon, for all its size, is a creature of cycles. Its valuation, though lower than Figma’s, is not without dignity. To see it as a tech services provider rather than a mere retailer is to glimpse the horizon where growth and stability converge.

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3. Toast

Toast, that quiet steward of the restaurant trade, operates in a world where the air is thick with uncertainty. Chains falter, comps sag, and the specter of recession looms. Yet Toast’s wings are spreading. With 148,000 locations served and gross payment volume rising 23%, it is the unseen hand that helps chefs turn flour into bread, waiters into cashiers, and patrons into loyalty. Its net income, fivefold in the latest quarter, is the reward of a model that scales like a well-tended vine.

Wood’s bet here is on the underdog. For every struggling diner, there is a Toast. For every closed menu, there is a system that survives. The market may have forgotten the dignity of the small operator, but Wood remembers. She knows that when the industry turns, it will be the platforms like Toast that carry the weight forward, not the chains that falter in the wind.

In the end, these are not just stocks but stories. Each carries the weight of its laborers, its innovators, its dreamers. Cathie Wood, with her eye for the long row and her heart for the plow, sows with the hope that in time, the soil will yield not just profit but purpose. 🌱

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2025-09-12 19:54