Controversial Investment Guru Cathie Wood Wants to Help You Trust the Stock Market Again

Controversial Investment Guru Cathie Wood Wants to Help You Trust the Stock Market Again

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Cathie Wood is CEO, CIO and founder of ARK Invest, a closely watched investment fund known for its prescient high risk, high reward strategy (Wood was early on Bitcoin and Tesla) and radical transparency (she explains her decisions to buy and sell in a public newsletter). ARK has had a wild ride in the last two years. Its flagship innovation ETF was up 150% in 2020, gaining Wood celebrity status, but has been down 38% in the past 12 months. Wood spoke with TIME about her long- and short-term predictions for the business world and what she has learned from her fund’s bumpy ride.











This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.



In this era of unpredictability, are you leaning into the risk or are you leaning away?



Typically, we lean into it, and this time is no exception. We tend to concentrate our portfolios towards our highest conviction names, during risk-off periods [times when most investors are selling off risky stocks and investing more safely] in particular. One of the reasons we do that is