Sister Mu Tou's god-level moves on Circle

Author: Dayu; Source: Yushi Eleven

Circle is the stock I pay the most attention to. I’ve always believed that only cross-boundary players can better understand this company. I’ve written a lot about it, and the investor I find most astonishing is Woodie. Her moves on this stock are truly textbook-level: from “breaking open the open,” to “selling at high levels,” and then to “buying back at low levels”—in the end, she made billions of dollars.

What’s interesting is that she isn’t a swing trader. She’s the kind of person who looks at the story long-term and holds for the super long term, ignoring volatility. But her moves on this stock make me feel that she simply has an extremely clear grasp of short-term price fluctuations—so clear that even a long-term holder would have to make a simple adjustment.

As QNT is about to go public, it’s valuable to do a recap of Woodie’s operations on Circle.

1. Breaking open the open: Why can a new stock double before the bell

Circle’s IPO this time issued 34 million shares in the public offering, priced at $31, raising about $1.1 billion. The underwriting syndicate (led by JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs) set the initial range at $24 to $26; later it was raised to $27 to $28, and finally it was set at $31. The fact that the price was adjusted upward all the way is itself a signal of strong demand.

According to Bloomberg, this offering was over-subscribed by about 25 times; BlackRock also plans to take 10% of the offering size.

What truly determined that jump at the open is the float.

When Circle listed, its total shares outstanding were about 223 million shares. But this time, the number of shares actually made available to trade in the market is only the 34 million shares from the public offering—about 15% of the total share count. The remaining roughly 85%—the portion held by founders, early investors, and employees—is locked up with a lock-up period and cannot be sold in the short term.

Supply was effectively constrained to that small figure of 34 million shares, while demand was piled up at 25x over-subscription. When these two things collide, the price can only jump upward to find equilibrium. So at the open, Circle reported $69 (123% above the offering price). Intraday, it briefly touched $103.75 (235%); it closed at $83.23 (168%).

This 168% first-day gain, is the highest among billion-dollar-scale U.S. IPOs over the past thirty-plus years.

This is the “physical structure” of breaking open the open: a hot sector, a small float, and high-multiple oversubscription—all three line up, and the opening gap has to be violent. It has nothing to do with whether the company is worth that price. It’s purely because, in the short term, the “money that wants to buy” is far greater than the “shares that can be sold.”

But the lock-up won’t keep those shares locked forever. Once that 85% is released, the extreme imbalance between supply and demand at the open will gradually get filled. Circle’s subsequent plunge confirms this.

2. Woodie’s three steps: subscribe, sell off, and buy back

Woodie’s bullishness on Circle didn’t start on the listing day. ARK’s long-term bet is on crypto assets and digital financial infrastructure, and she has also repeatedly expressed her own public optimism about stablecoins. So for this deal, she started acting even before the listing.

1. Before listing: using the offering price to secure core chips

In Circle’s prospectus, ARK stated its subscription intention and planned to buy up to $150 million worth of shares in this issuance. In the end, it obtained about 4.49 million shares, spread across three actively managed funds—ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF. At the $31 offering price, the cost was about $139 million—basically maxing out the subscription cap she set for herself.

To back up its bet on Circle, ARK sold some other crypto-related holdings on the day of the listing: Coinbase (COIN) about $39 million, Robinhood (HOOD) about $18.5 million, and Block (XYZ) about $10.4 million. It didn’t add any new crypto exposure; instead, it moved its position from other crypto targets into Circle.

On the first day, Circle closed at $83.23. The market value of ARK’s 4.49 million shares was about $373 million, so the media widely wrote “ARK bought $373 million of Circle.” But $373 million is the market value at the close of that holding, not the cash cost she paid. Her actual outlay was the offering-price cost of about $139 million. In the primary market, before ordinary investors even got access to the shares, her paper gains had already more than doubled. This portion of the profit is the part of the IPO that’s “exclusive to the initial allocation at the offering price surge.”

For ordinary investors, the first price they see in the secondary market is $69, while ARK’s cost was close to $31.

2. With policy as a tailwind, selling off

After Circle went public, it kept rising all the way up. What truly propelled it sky-high was policy.

On June 17, 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the 《GENIUS Act》 (the Stablecoin Act) by a vote of 68 to 30, establishing—at the federal level for the first time—a regulatory framework for U.S. dollar stablecoins. When the news broke, on June 18 Circle jumped 33.8% in a single day, closing at $199.59. On the 20th it pushed higher again. On the 23rd, it even reached $298.99 intraday—its highest level to date—corresponding to a market cap of about $66 billion. Note that at that time, the total circulating supply of USDC was about $61.7 billion. That means the equity value of the company Circle was, at one point, worth more than all the stablecoins it had issued combined.

During this policy-driven rally, Woodie began to reduce her position in a systematic way.

The first sale was on June 16: about 340,000 shares, corresponding to the day’s closing price of $151.06. After that, on the 17th, 20th, and 23rd, she sold another tranche each day: about 300,000 shares, 610,000 shares, and 420,000 shares respectively. In total, she sold about 1.7 million shares across four sales, raising about $352 million in cash—with an average price of about $210 calculated based on the day’s closing prices. The cost basis of these shares was close to the offering price of $31, so the price spread from sell-back was very significant.

Why did she choose to sell at this point? There are two layers of reasons.

One is discipline. ARK has a mechanical rule: when the weight of a single stock in a given fund approaches or exceeds 10%, it triggers rebalancing. Circle surged too fast, and its weight was passively pushed up—forcing her to cut.

The other is supply. As mentioned earlier, the 85% that was locked up would be released sooner or later. In fact, Circle had set early unlock provisions: when the stock price stays 15% above the offering price for 5 consecutive trading days, it triggers unlocking. JPMorgan Chase released 11.5 million shares on August 13. On August 15, Circle also issued an additional 10 million shares priced at $130, with 8 million shares coming from existing shareholders trimming their holdings.

While policy was pushing prices to the sky, the gates of supply were opening one by one. Smart money clearly understood this. Woodie didn’t sell at the absolute top. Her first two sales were around the $150 level, and her last sale was only at $263—even though the stock’s intraday high had touched $299. Looking at any single trade alone, she didn’t sell at the very top. But she wasn’t betting on the very highest point; she was monetizing gains in segments at different rising points—and that is exactly a repeatable method. Her subsequent buybacks also followed a similar “reflection” logic.

3. Buying back during the deep decline

After peaking on June 23, Circle began a multi-month slide.

The downward forces piled up in layers:

• A $66 billion valuation had already moved far beyond fundamentals;

• The unlocked supply kept streaming out;

• Plus, the market started pricing in Fed rate cuts, and Circle’s income highly depends on interest income from reserves—so rate cuts directly damage its profit expectations.

When it rises, everything is good news; when it falls, everything is bad news.

On November 12, Circle released its Q3 earnings. Net profit was $214 million, three times the figure for the same period last year. Earnings per share were $0.64, far above the market’s expectation of $0.20. The numbers looked great, but the stock fell 12% that day, closing at $86.30. There were three reasons layered together:

• The main lock-up period was set to expire two days later (on November 14), and another batch of insiders would be able to sell;

• The company raised its expense guidance;

• And there were concerns about the impact of rate cuts on interest income.

Great earnings turned into “good news exhausted.”

On that very day, Woodie moved again. On November 12, she bought about 350,000 shares, totaling about $30.4 million. The next day she bought again; over those two days combined, she bought about 540,000 shares, totaling about $46 million. Her buy average price was between $82 and $86—this was her first buyback of Circle after reducing her position in June.

After that, she continued buying as the price kept dropping. In March 2026, during another big selloff, Circle fell back near the $100 level, and she bought again for about $16.3 million. Circle’s lowest point fell to $49.90, a pullback of 83% from the peak.

By the end of Q1 2026, based on disclosed 13F filings, ARK’s Circle holdings had already returned to about 4.5 million shares, roughly the same size as on the first day of listing. The tranche she sold when the price was just above $200 was bought back again between $80 and $130. Today, CRCL is the sixth-largest holding in ARKK, and within ARKK alone that fund holds about $300 million.

Her buyback process was also not flawless. The earliest bids were in the $80s, but later the stock probed down further to $50. Those earlier buys were still underwater after getting filled. But she kept averaging down along the decline, relying on the same unchanged judgment: Circle’s business model looks promising in the long run.

3. What is truly worth learning

After the recap, beyond the advantage of “low cost,” there are three things done exceptionally well:

First, an independent judgment on Circle’s endgame. The judgment comes before trading. She dares to take a heavy position using a cost close to the offering price, and she dares to start buying back when the stock falls into the $80s, because she believes that stablecoins are the underlying infrastructure of digital dollars—and that USDC is the core pillar within them. Without this judgment, what’s called “buying at high levels and buying back at deep lows” is just “chasing rallies and selling selloffs” with different wording.

Second, doing it in segments—without betting on points. When it rises, she sells in segments; when it falls, she buys in segments. She reduced her position in four trades in June, with an average price of about $210. During the decline, she bought many separate tranches, accumulating from the $80s down toward around $50. After the rebound, she added again at $100 and $130. Any single trade alone wouldn’t be the optimal one, but taken together they form a clean “trim high, add low” line. This method doesn’t require predicting the top or the bottom—it only requires executing according to discipline when extreme prices appear.

Third, position size has limits. What forced her to cut in June to a large extent was that mechanical rule: “rebalance if the weight of any single holding exceeds 10%.” That rule locked in profits when Circle surged to 299, and it also ensured that when the price fell back, she had cash and room to buy again.

Position discipline is something most retail investors lack.

For most people, “breaking open the open” is precisely the most dangerous action. That jump at the open is the dividend for those who received allocations before the company listed. When ordinary people are finally able to buy in the secondary market, what they’re most likely to receive is the highest segment that gets pushed up by a supply-demand imbalance. Circle fell from 299 to 50—an 83% drawdown. People who chased in above 200 are likely still deeply underwater today. Same participation in Circle; but Woodie’s approach—based on judgment of the endgame, cost at the offering price, independent judgment, and position discipline—is what makes her execution successful. If she lacked any one of those elements, the outcome could be completely different.