About Cathie Wood
Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO of Ark Invest, has recently discussed several investment themes, including Bitcoin, autonomous vehicles, and the broader economy. Regarding Bitcoin, Wood stated that her conviction in the asset has not diminished and that she would consider increasing exposure, describing the current period as a "bottoming process." She argued that stablecoins are likely to increase the U.S. dollar's influence by exporting dollars to emerging markets, and she contrasted Bitcoin's non-government, seizure-resistant nature with stablecoins, which she described as an extension of government money. Wood also expressed a contrarian view that the dollar will move up as returns on invested capital in the U.S. rise due to deregulation and tax cuts.
On the topic of autonomous vehicles, Wood said she believes Tesla will be a "winner take most" market participant in robotaxis, citing its years of training data. She predicted that auto production has already peaked, partly due to ride-hailing services, and that the cost of transportation could fall significantly. In macroeconomic commentary, Wood characterized the economy as moving into "boom territory" but noted that markets were plummeting, attributing this to uncertainty around new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh. She argued that the Fed's past attempt to solve a supply shock with higher interest rates was a mistake, and she predicted that productivity gains would lead to lower-than-expected inflation. Wood also highlighted a boom in capital spending and suggested that labor shortages, rather than a glut, would be a surprise in the coming years.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Cathie Wood's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Shepard Smith0:00
Kathy Wood is our guest now. Kathy, thank you so much.
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Cathie Wood0:04
It's nice to meet you. Oh, I'm very happy to meet you, Shep. Thank you for having me.
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Shepard Smith0:08
You know, my unbusiness-educated self would say you seem to bet on companies, not so much per se as you bet on the world changing. Do you ever worry you're too early or too optimistic?
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Cathie Wood0:22
Well, actually, the way we run our research, and research is the key to our success, we focus on it's called Wright's Law. It's a relative of Moore's Law in the semiconductor industry, just giving us a sense of how quickly costs are going to decline associated with new technologies. And it gives us a really good idea when different layers of demand are going to increase. I'll just give you a quick example. Electric vehicle sales, for example, we think are exploding. We think they'll go up 80 percent on average per year over the next five years. Why? Because the costs have dropped to a low enough level, and the total cost of ownership today is lower than that of gas-powered vehicles. So we're going to see exponential growth in the auto industry for the first time in a hundred years.
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Shepard Smith1:20
Wow. So given that, what's next in the mind of Kathy Wood?
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Cathie Wood1:24
Well, I think, you know, we've, Tesla absolutely is still next because Tesla's in other sectors. Others, yes. Sector? Yes. Well, we're very excited about digital wallets. So Square's Cash App and PayPal's Venmo are leading the way. Here in China, it was WeChat Pay and Alipay. And we really think that these digital wallets and two-sided marketplaces, merchants and consumers on both of them, are going to usurp a lot of the role the banks play today. It's going digital, going mobile, a little bank branch in your pocket or your pocketbook. And we're going to have all kinds of financial services available through them, including loans, debit cards, credit cards, stock buying, Bitcoin buying. So we think that's a huge, huge trend out there. We also think genomics in the healthcare space. We, for the first time, thanks to DNA sequencing, again, costs have come down low enough. DNA sequencing is going to introduce science into healthcare decision making for the first time. We can honestly say that until now, more than half of all healthcare decisions were in some part made through guesses or experiences. Now we're going to have the data. What has mutated in your genomic profile? What in the six billion bits of code in your genome, what's gone wrong? It's like a needle in the haystack, what's gone wrong. For the first time, we'll be able to identify exactly what's gone wrong. And with CRISPR and other gene editing technologies in gene therapy, along with artificial intelligence, so it's this convergence of DNA sequencing, artificial intelligence, and gene editing, we're going to be able to cure diseases that we never thought it would be possible to cure, including cancer. Certainly, we'll be able to discover cancer in stage one. A lot of companies, Invitae, Exact Sciences, are helping us do that. And if we're able to discover where the mutations are now, the technologies are coming along that we'll be able to cure them in stage one. That's the next big thing.
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Shepard Smith4:04
Yes, incredible. I'm so short on time, but you know, like other trailblazing women, you're a very successful leader in an industry that's really led almost exclusively by men. What have you had to overcome to get from where you were to where you are?
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Cathie Wood4:21
Well, you know, I've, to be honest, I've loved being a woman in this industry. It's an incredible industry. The world is our oyster. I remember entering the industry in Los Angeles at Capital Group and saying, 'Wow, I get to learn, and I'm paid for learning. This is amazing.' What happened to our industry, however, is it's gone passive, which is the opposite of the industry I joined. We're trying to bring active back into the equation because the changes we're seeing from the innovation platforms evolving today are so profound that we really need real research.
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Shepard Smith5:02
And you're getting it, Kathy Wood. I can't thank you enough for the time. I hope to see you again very soon, and all the best. Shepard Smith here. Thanks for watching CNBC on YouTube.
