Ark Invest's Cathie Wood Reveals the One Stock She'd Pick If She Had Only One Choice — and It's Not FAANG

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood is known for bold, contrarian trading strategies that helped her company generate over 100% at the height of the pandemic. She invests in disruptive technologies across industries like space exploration, AI, genomics, and robotics.

In a recent interview with investor Steven Bartlett on his 'The Diary of a CEO' podcast, Wood was asked to name one stock she would invest in if she had only one choice. Wood said it was Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA).

Wood's fund issued a £1,928 ($2,600) stock price target for Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker in June 2024. 'Because think about it. It is a convergence among three of our major platforms. So, robots, energy storage, AI,' Wood said of Tesla in the interview recently aired on YouTube.

'And it's not stopping with robotaxis; there's a story beyond that with humanoid robots, and our $2,600 number has nothing for humanoid robots. We just thought it'd be an investment, period,' she added.

Tesla has been navigating a wild ride, from weakness in car deliveries to boycott movements due to Musk's federal actions as a special government adviser. The stock has been extremely volatile, and shares nosedived over 14% last week, wiping out £111.24 billion ($150 billion) in market value over a spiralling public spat with US President Donald Trump.

However, the stock has rebounded fast from a low of £202 ($273) per share on Friday to close at £228 ($308.58) yesterday after Musk indicated he is willing to settle the public feud with Trump. Shares were trending higher during premarket hours today, up 2%, ahead of its highly anticipated robotaxi rollout on 12th June in Austin, Texas. The upward stock price trend is despite two back-to-back downgrades from Argus and Baird.

The Tesla stock hit a record high of £355 ($479) in December 2024, after Trump won the presidential election in November. Musk was a prominent supporter of Trump's campaign.

Wood Maintains Her Tesla Target Price

Wood told Bloomberg in March that she is sticking with her previously set target of the Tesla stock reaching a price of $2,600 per share in five years. She told Bartlett that Tesla's Optimus robots would ramp productivity across the company and boost revenue to new highs.

Musk told CNBC in May that he expects the EV maker to produce a million Optimus robots annually by 2030. 'We expect to have thousands of Optimus robots working in Tesla factories by the end of this year, beginning this fall. And we expect to scale Optimus up faster than any product, I think, in history to get to millions of units per year as soon as possible,' he said.

On Musk's potential break-up with Trump, Wood said in a video published by Ark Invest's YouTube channel that the quarrel was for Musk to decouple himself from the Trump Administration.

'One of the hypotheses out there is that what has happened was partly — not entirely — orchestrated,' Wood said. 'Clearly, there has been some brand damage to Tesla, which he readily admits, and I think he's trying to disengage from the government and being associated with one party or the other.'

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