Cathie Wood is one of the few women who has been getting attention as a leading tech investor. She is the CEO and CIO of ARK Invest. Her investment management firm operates the world’s biggest actively traded ETF. With a solid investment portfolio, Cathie Wood has a net worth of $250 million in 2022.
Background
On November 26, 1995, Catherine Duddy Wood was born to a family of Irish immigrants in Los Angeles. Her dad was a radar system engineer in the US Air Force and Irish Army.
She graduated from the all-girls high school Notre Dame Academy in 1974 and went to the University of Southern California in 1981 to earn a degree in finance and economics.
Catherine was a student of economist Arthur Laffer, the creator of the Laffer Curve, a theory that hypothesizes the connection between tax revenue and tax rates.
Early Career
Wood was hired at Capital Group to be an assistant economist in 1977. Her mentor Arthur Laffer was a big help in landing her first job. She worked in her first company for three years. She moved to New York City in 1980 to work for Jennison Associates.
For 18 years, she was a portfolio manager, analyst, managing director, and chief economist. Lulu C. Wang helped her establish Tupelo Capital Management. It was a New York-based hedge fund that started in 1998.
She decided to join AllianceBernstein in 2001. She was their chief investment officer of global theme strategies, a position she held for the next 12 years and managed $5 billion there.
Founding ARK Invest
Cathie departed AllianceBernstein when her concept for actively handling exchange-traded funds based on groundbreaking technology was deemed too reckless. So, she started ARK Invest in 2014.
ARK invests in a wide range of cutting-edge technology businesses, including gene editing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, automation, space exploration, and cryptocurrency. This has helped Wood build a substantial portfolio.
However, expert analysts feel that ARK has highly leveraged stakes in a number of overbought tech firms. Because of this, Cathie’s ETF has lost approximately 25% of its value in the past year, and the selloff is still ongoing. Still, she is one of the richest female fund managers today.
Market Predictions
Even with the recent failures, Cathie believes that it’s not a big deal. The market specialist stood her ground as an enthusiastic Tesla advocate. She trusts that, in the future, the electric car company will be worth over $3 trillion.
She is also a major supporter of the crypto movement. ARK Invest traded a large amount of its Tesla stock to buy Coinbase shares once it became public. Wood also thinks Bitcoin is significantly undervalued.
In February 2021, she predicted that Bitcoin’s price would reach $250,000 if big organizations began adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Cathie Wood’s most recent crypto-related move was filing to purchase Canadian Bitcoin ETFs.
Personal Life
Robert Wood, Catherine’s ex-husband, died in 2018. They had three children together: Robert, Caroline, and Caitlin. Now, Wood is living in Wilton, Connecticut.
