Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood on everything from deflation to Elon Musk
A year ago, she managed more than $60bn. Now she faces the toughest battle of her career
Cathie Wood’s favourite scripture is Psalm 91, the hymn of protection. The founder of Ark Invest starts telling me the story of the Miracle of Dunkirk, when Allied soldiers were rescued from doomed French beaches in 1940. “A group of soldiers were huddled saying Psalm 91,” she says, “and they were one of the few groups of soldiers saved on that day.”
Wood’s eight-year-old investment management firm is named after the Ark of the Covenant – the chest said to have held the Ten Commandments – which was taken by the Israelites into battle. “Ark also has to do with battle,” Wood continues. “Battling the traditional world order is what we’re doing.”
In less than a decade, Wood has emerged as the public face of a tech-driven bull market on steroids. She championed actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), a type of investment that combines the stock-picking normally associated with mutual funds with the convenience and tax benefits of ETFs.
Her big, concentrated bets on “disruptive innovation”, borderline outlandish predictions on everything from shares in electric carmaker Tesla to the price of bitcoin and her savvy use of social media helped to drive assets in Ark’s overall stable of ETFs to a value of $61bn at their peak in February last year, making her the most prominent and scrutinised female investor in the world.
Ark rose during a period characterised by retail trading, meme stocks and surging cryptocurrencies, with thousands of punters opening new brokerage accounts online and using Twitter and Reddit to exchange investing ideas. By freely sharing Ark’s research, Wood developed a cult following online, where to her disciples she is “Auntie Cathie” or “Cathie Bae” and where she has spawned a range of merchandise, including a T-shirt that depicts her riding a bull with the slogan “The Queen of the bull market”. Another just reads “In Cathie We Trust”.
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