With her bets on disruptive tech stocks, US investor Cathie Wood (66) has become a superstar in the financial world over the past two years. With her fund company Ark Invest and her flagship ETF Ark Innovation (ARKK), she was able to post massive gains during the Corona crisis and during the boom in technology stocks. In the meantime, “Queen Cathie” even surpassed old master Warren Buffett (91) in terms of performance. Nothing is left of that now.
Compared to the highs in February 2021, the actively managed fund has lost more than three-quarters of its value. This year alone, the ARKK has lost more than 58 percent – a phenomenal drop. Wood and her risk managers couldn’t do enough to counter the slump in tech stocks. They also seem to have been surprised by inflation. Wood had long argued that deflation posed a greater risk to stocks than price appreciation. Inflation figures are now in the United States and Europe beyond the 8 percent mark. Alone after Announcement of the current US figures Last Friday, Wood’s largest fund lost more than 7 percent of its value.
The current crisis is attacking the stock picking nimbus of the investor, who set out to explicitly focus on disruptive tech companies. The electric car maker is one of the largest positions in its main fund, which is still worth $8.5 billion Tesla, the crypto exchange Coinbase or the platform provider Zoom. Their other funds, which focus specifically on robotics, mobility or fintechs, have also lost at least a fifth of their value this year. The assets managed in their funds have now almost halved to just $15.6 billion.
Especially among younger investors has Woods celebrity cult obtained. Above all, their extremely optimistic statements caused a stir and were repeatedly quoted in Internet forums such as Reddit. Last year, for example, she predicted that Tesla would reach a market value of $5 trillion by 2026 – it is currently around $720 billion. For Bitcoin, Wood even predicted a price beyond the million dollar threshold by the end of the decade (currently: around $27,500).
The special thing: even in this horror year, numerous investors entrusted her with fresh capital, according to Bloomberg
The Ark funds recorded net inflows of more than $167 million. This is “definitely quite unprecedented,” according to Bloomberg’s ETF analyst Athanasios Psarofagis. “Most would probably collapse if they had the same performance, but Cathie and Ark have a strong following.”
Wood continues to believe in her strategy despite the tech quake. This time everything is different than in the dot-com crisis of 2000, she said recently
, the sales of their portfolio companies grew by 50 percent. Wood has always emphasized that she chooses stocks for their long-term potential, and that what counts for her is the five-year perspective. If you look at the past five years, Wood’s top fund has increased by 40 percent. However, the US stock market index S&P 500 rose by more than 60 percent in the same period. So Wood’s selection wasn’t as good as if she’d just bet on all the big stocks.