Cathie Wood: religious, Reddit hit, Trump supporter? Meet Ark Invest’s rock star stock picker who even has her own merchandise
- The devout Christian investment adviser looks up to Elon Musk and supported Donald Trump’s re-election because of his innovation-friendly policies
- Innovative stock firm Ark Invest focuses solely on disruptive tech like AI, robotics, energy storage, DNA sequencing, blockchain and autonomous ride-hailing
Cathie Wood is widely recognised as one of the most influential fund managers in the industry right now. After working for more than four decades at leading investment firms, she founded Ark Investment Management LLC (often shortened to Ark Invest) in 2014 to focus on innovative companies with a vision to reimagine the status quo – after finding inspiration in the writings of the Christian bible.
As I began to get this idea of a firm going and realised that I was fighting this war, I knew I had to name my company ‘Ark’ for Ark of the Covenant
While backing emerging players may be a risky move, Wood’s strategy has paid off, big time: last month, Ark’s exchange-traded fund assets under management hit US$50 billion. From her investment style to her raucous Reddit following, here’s what to know about the star stock-picker.
She named her investment firm after the Ark of the Covenant
A devout Christian, Wood found inspiration for her company while reading The One-Year Bible. She often came across passages describing the Ark of the Covenant – the chest said to have held the Ten Commandments – being taken by the Israelites into battle. On the daily devotional podcast Jesus Calling, Wood said her company was founded on faith and added: “As I began to get this idea of a firm going and realised that I was fighting this war, I knew I had to name my company ‘Ark’ for Ark of the Covenant.”
One analyst’s trash was a young Wood’s treasure
Wood’s eye for “disruptive innovation” was honed in the early days of her career at Jennison Associates. As a young equity research analyst, she didn’t have first pick of what to cover, meaning that she ended up with what others didn’t want, which at the time were emerging internet and wireless stocks. Wood saw first-hand the value of these companies and how they had the potential not just for financial returns but to transform the way the world worked. She’s since continued to identify and back disruptive innovators, with Ark focusing especially on firms in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, energy storage, DNA sequencing and blockchain.
