Circle is the stock I pay the most attention to. I've always believed it takes a cross-disciplinary player to truly understand this company. I've written a lot about it, and the investor I find most astonishing is Cathie Wood. Her maneuvers with this asset are textbook: from "surging at the opening," to "selling at highs," to "buying back at lows," she netted hundreds of millions more through this back-and-forth.
Interestingly, she isn't a swing trader; she's the type who focuses on long-term narratives and holds through volatility for the ultra-long haul. But her moves on this particular stock make me think she simply grasped the short-term fluctuations with such clarity that even a long-term holder felt compelled to execute a simple trade.
With QNT about to go public, it's quite valuable to review Cathie Wood's operations on Circle.
I. Surging at the Opening: Why a New Stock Can Double Before It Opens
For this IPO, Circle publicly issued 34 million shares, priced at $31, raising approximately $1.1 billion. The underwriting syndicate (led by J.P. Morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs) initially set the price range at $24-$26, later raised it to $27-$28, and finally settled at $31—the upward price revision itself was a signal of strong demand.
According to Bloomberg, the offering was oversubscribed by about 25 times; BlackRock also planned to take 10% of the offering.
What truly determined the opening jump was the float.
At listing, Circle had a total share count of approximately 223 million shares. The shares actually available for trading in this offering were only the 34 million publicly issued shares, representing about 15% of the total shares. The remaining ~85% of shares, held by founders, early investors, and employees, were locked up and couldn't be sold in the short term.
With supply capped at the small number of 34 million shares, and demand piled up from 25x oversubscription, the price had nowhere to go but up. Thus, Circle opened directly at $69 (up 123% from the offer price), intraday hit a high of $103.75 (up 235%), and closed at $83.23 (up 168%).
This 168% first-day gain was the highest among U.S. IPOs raising over $1 billion in the last thirty-plus years.
This is the mechanics of "surging at the opening": A hot sector, a tiny float, and heavy oversubscription, when these three converge, the opening inevitably gaps up violently. It has little direct relation to whether the company is worth that price; it's purely about "money wanting to buy" far exceeding "shares available to sell" in the short term.
But lock-up periods don't last forever. Once that locked-up 85% is released, the extreme supply-demand imbalance at the opening is gradually corrected. Circle's subsequent crash bears this out.
II. Cathie Wood's Three Steps: Subscription, Selling, Buying Back
Cathie Wood's bullishness on Circle wasn't a judgment made on listing day. ARK has long bet on crypto assets and digital financial infrastructure, and she has publicly expressed optimism about stablecoins multiple times. So, she started acting even before the listing.
1. Pre-IPO: Securing Core Chips at the Offer Price
In Circle's prospectus, ARK indicated its subscription intent, planning to buy up to $150 million worth of stock in the offering. It ultimately received about 4.49 million shares, distributed across the ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF actively managed funds. At the $31 offer price, the cost was approximately $139 million, essentially hitting its self-set subscription limit.
To bet on Circle, ARK sold portions of other crypto-related holdings on the listing day: about $39 million of Coinbase (COIN), $18.5 million of Robinhood (HOOD), and $10.4 million of Block (XYZ). It didn't increase its overall crypto exposure but shifted allocation from other crypto assets to Circle.
With the first-day closing price of $83.23, ARK's 4.49 million shares were worth about $373 million, leading many media outlets to report "ARK buys $373 million of Circle." But $373 million was the market value of this position at the close, not the cash cost she paid. Her actual cash outlay was approximately $139 million at the offer price. The primary market shares had already more than doubled on paper before ordinary investors could even touch them. This portion of profit belongs exclusively to those allocated shares at the offer price in the "surging opening" play.
The first price ordinary investors saw in the secondary market was $69; ARK's cost was close to $31.
2. Selling Amid Policy Boost
Circle kept rising after listing. What truly sent it soaring was policy.
On June 17, 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the "GENIUS Act" (the stablecoin bill) with a vote of 68-30, establishing a federal regulatory framework for dollar-denominated stablecoins for the first time. When the news broke, Circle rose 33.8% on June 18, closing at $199.59; it continued rallying on the 20th; and on June 23, it intraday touched $298.99, which remains its all-time high, corresponding to a market cap of approximately $66 billion. Consider this: at that time, the total circulating supply of USDC was about $61.7 billion. That means Circle's equity was once worth more than all the stablecoins it had issued combined.
It was during this policy-driven rally that Cathie Wood began systematically reducing her position.
The first sale occurred on June 16, around 340,000 shares, at that day's closing price of $151.06. Then she made additional sales on the 17th, 20th, and 23rd, selling about 300,000, 610,000, and 420,000 shares respectively. Over four transactions, she sold approximately 1.7 million shares, raising about $352 million, with an average price around $210 when calculated using the respective closing prices. These shares had a cost close to the $31 offer price, resulting in a substantial price difference.
Why did she choose this point to sell? There are two reasons.
First, discipline. ARK has a mechanical rule: if a single stock's weight in a fund approaches or exceeds 10%, it triggers rebalancing. Circle's surge pushed its weight up passively, forcing her to reduce due to the rule itself.
Second, supply. As mentioned earlier, the locked-up 85% would eventually be unlocked. In fact, Circle had an early release trigger: if the stock price closed above 15% of the offer price for five consecutive trading days. J.P. Morgan released 11.5 million shares as early as August 13; on August 15, Circle conducted a secondary offering of 10 million shares priced at $130, with 8 million shares coming from existing shareholder sales.
While policy pushed the price to the sky, the floodgates of supply were opening one by one. Smart money knew this well. Cathie Wood didn't sell at the absolute peak. Her first two sales were around $150, and her last sale was only at $263, while the stock intraday reached $299. Looked at individually, none were sold at the very top. But she wasn't betting on the peak; she was cashing out incrementally at different points on the way up—this is precisely a repeatable approach, a reflexive logic she later applied when buying back.
3. Buying Back During the Deep Decline
After peaking on June 23, Circle began a months-long decline.
The downward forces were cumulative:
· The $66 billion market cap valuation had long detached from fundamentals;
· Unlocked supply gradually flooded the market;
· Plus, the market began pricing in Fed rate cuts, and Circle's revenue heavily depends on interest income from reserves. Rate cuts directly hit its earnings outlook.
When it rose, everything was a tailwind; when it fell, everything was a headwind.
On November 12, Circle reported Q3 earnings: net profit of $214 million, triple the previous year's, EPS of $0.64, far exceeding market expectations of $0.20—the numbers were excellent. Yet the stock fell 12% that day, closing at $86.30. Three factors converged:
· The main lock-up period was expiring in two days (November 14), meaning another batch of insiders could sell;
· The company raised its expense guidance;
· And concerns about interest income due to potential rate cuts.
Good earnings became a case of "selling on the news."
It was on this day that Cathie Wood re-entered. On November 12, she bought about 350,000 shares for approximately $30.4 million; bought more the next day. Over two days, she bought about 540,000 shares for ~$46 million, with an average buy price between $82 and $86—this was her first purchase of Circle since the June reduction.
She continued buying along the decline. In March 2026, Circle fell back to around $100 in another drop, and she bought an additional ~$16.3 million worth. Circle's lowest point was $49.90, an 83% retracement from its peak.
By the end of Q1 2026, according to 13F filings, ARK's Circle holdings had returned to approximately 4.5 million shares, similar to the size on the listing day—she bought back the position she had sold in the $200s, now in the $80 to $130 range. Currently, CRCL is the sixth-largest holding in ARKK, with the ARKK fund alone holding about $300 million worth.
Her buyback process was also imperfect. The earliest buys were in the $80s, while the stock later plunged to $50—these early purchases were immediately underwater. But she continued averaging down along the downtrend, relying on the same unchanged judgment: she remains bullish on Circle's business model for the long term.
III. What Can Truly Be Learned
After this review, besides the advantage of "low cost," three points were executed brilliantly:
First, having an independent judgment on Circle's endgame. The judgment comes before the trade. She dared to take a heavy position near the offer price and dared to start buying back when it fell to the $80s because she believes stablecoins are the underlying infrastructure for the digital dollar, with USDC being a core pillar. Without this conviction, the so-called buying at highs and buying back during deep declines are just fancy terms for "chasing highs and selling lows."
Second, scaling in and out, not betting on points. Scaling out in segments on the way up, scaling in in segments on the way down. She reduced in four tranches in June, averaging ~$210; then accumulated through many buys on the decline, from the $80s all the way down to near $50, and continued adding at $100 and $130 on the rebound. Individually, none were optimal, but together they form a clean "sell high, buy low" strategy. This approach doesn't require predicting tops and bottoms, only executing with discipline when extreme prices appear.
Third, having a position cap. What forced her to reduce in June was largely that mechanical "rebalance if single-stock weight exceeds 10%" rule. This rule locked in profits for her when Circle surged to $299 and gave her the cash and position capacity to buy back when it fell.
Position discipline is what ordinary retail investors lack the most.
For most people, "surging at the opening" is precisely the most dangerous move. The opening jump is the bonus prepared for those who got allocations pre-IPO; by the time ordinary people can buy in the secondary market, the easiest part to catch is the highest segment pushed up by supply-demand imbalance. Circle fell from $299 to $50, an 83% drawdown. Those who chased above $200 are likely still deeply underwater today. Participating in the same Circle, Cathie Wood executed brilliantly because of her judgment on the endgame, the offer price cost basis, independent thinking, and position discipline. Missing any one, the outcome could have been completely opposite.
