Last Updated on 23 July, 2024 by Abrahamtolle

As cryptocurrencies joined the mainstream market, investment bankers, money managers, hedge fund managers, and other financial professionals have become more involved in it. But one woman, Cathie Wood, has in recent years become the talk of the financial world. She is regarded as a top tech investor. She founded ARK Invest, an investment management firm that manages the some of most actively traded ETFs on Earth. But who is she, and what is her net worth?

Cathie Wood is an American investor and the CEO of ARK invest. As of the time of writing, Cathie Wood’s net worth is around $250 million, which makes her one of the most successful and wealthiest female fund managers in the world.

This article talks about Cathie Wood and her current net worth.

Who is Cathie Wood and how did she become famous?

Cathie Wood is an American investor and the CEO of ARK invest. She is regarded as a top tech investor. She founded ARK Invest, an investment management firm that manages the some of most actively traded ETFs on Earth. The company has been known for investing in disruptive technology and cutting-edge industries such as electric vehicles and gene editing. ARK has currently been making significant moves in the cryptocurrencies mArket and has recently made a move to purchase Canadian-based Bitcoin ETFs.

Cathie Wood started her journey in the financial world in 1977 as an assistant economist in Capital Group, where she worked for three years before moving to New York City to take a job at Jennison Associates. Over the next 18 years, she served the firm as the chief economist, portfolio manager, analyst, and managing director.

In 1998, Cathie Wood together with Lulu C. Wang founded Tupelo Capital Management, a New York City-based hedge fund. By the year 2001, she joined Alliance Bernstein working as the chief investment officer of the global thematic strategies. She worked there for 12 years before moving on to found ARK Invest.

ARK Invest has been performed so well that in 2020, Cathie Wood was awarded the best stock picker by the Bloomberg News Editor-in-chief Emeritus Matthew Winkler. She is known for her courageous and stone-set predictions. She has also received popular media coverage in February 2018 after she predicted Tesla’s share to reach a price of $4000 in five years, i.e. a 1,100% increase in value from its original share price at that time. And, she repeated the same statement in May 2019, despite Tesla’s share price slipping downward about 29%.

However, Tesla did hit her target price in early on a split-adjusted basis. She also made note that she believes that the price of bitcoin could hit the $500k mark.

How did Cathie Wood become rich?

Cathie Wood became rich from managing ARK Invest, a company that currently boasts over $50 billion in assets under management (AUM). However, she didn’t just end up there overnight. She graduated with honors from the Notre Dame Academy and earned a degree in finance and economics. After that, she worked in various capacities with different financial firms, including Capital Group and Jennison Associates.

Obviously, her educational background and work experience laid the foundation for her success with ARK Invest. Her career in investment management has not been always rosy. During her time with Jennison Associates, she suffered a lot of criticisms, especially during and after the 2008 financial crisis. However, she was able to overcome all those challenges before founding her own investment company, ARK Invest in 2014.

While Cathie earned good wages working for other firms, she made her fortune through the management of her investment company. ARK Invest holds more than $50 billion in assets under management at the moment.

Cathie’s investment philosophy and performance

Ark Invest’s main focus is on companies with disruptive innovations. These are companies whose products and services are created to solve the needs of a planet battling with different environmental crises.

The firm’s biggest bet is on technology. See what its website has to say about the tech industry: “Technology is the best method applicable to the world’s problem, and disruptive technology is the fundamental path to greater returns. Those focusing on benchmarks, which are backward looking, are not about the future. They are about what has worked. Ark invest is all about finding the next great investment. We’re all about what is going to work.”

Cathie Wood had been right most of the time as her stock picks have been profitable. Although some of ARK Invest’s ETFs (ARKK and ARKG) have shown some slow growth recently, they both have outperformed the market for five years. The ARKK fund comprises the big tech companies such as Zoom, Tesla, Shopify, and Coinbase amongst others which have grown by almost 450% since 2016.

ARKG, on the other hand, focuses on technology like molecular diagnostics and genetics; it buys stocks of companies such as virtual health care provider Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Teladoc Health which has seen a growth of about 340%.

Cathie Wood’s net worth

Cathie Wood had already been a millionaire before she founded ARK invest. She supposedly reached that mark in the early years of her career when she was a portfolio manager and economist. When she became the Chief investment officer of Alliance Bernstein, her net worth was seven-to-eight figures.

Currently, Cathie Wood is one of the successful and wealthiest female fund managers in the world. Her net worth is around $250 million.

What has Cathie Wood been buying and holding

Below are some of the stocks that Cathie Wood has been holding in recent times.

• Zoom (ZM), a video conferencing software that became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Square (SQ). Square is a financial service provider and acts as a digital payment gateway for many e-commerce businesses.
• Teladoc (TDOC), a telehealth provider that became crucial for many patients since in-person doctors’ appointments were impossible due to social distance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What has Cathie Wood been selling in recent time

Below are some of the stocks Cathie Wood and Ark invest have been selling:

• Auto stocks especially General Motors (GM); Wood believes their performance will be overshadowed by electric cars like Tesla.
• Intel
• Illumina etc.