Wall Street investor
Today we will talk about Catherine Duddy Wood. Bloomberg called her “the best investor you’ve never heard of.” And in fact, not only is she not widely recognizable, but she undeniably has a knack for making money. Although there are relatively few women in the world of finance, their work and achievements do not go unnoticed. The same is true of Cathie Woods’ work output. However, it is worth starting from the beginning.
Cathie Wood was born in the United States in 1955 as the eldest child of an immigrant family from Ireland. She attended a Catholic girls’ school in Los Angeles and then enrolled at the University of Southern California. She graduated with honors and from her student days Arthur Laffer became her mentor. Thanks to this relationship, Wood landed her first job as an assistant economist at Capital Group. After only three years, she moved to New York and took a job at Jennison Associates. For the next 18 years, she was successively chief economist, analyst, portfolio manager and managing director.
In the late 1990s, she founded a hedge fund called Tupelo Capital Management, co-founded by Lullu C. Wang.
Soon after, she started working with Alliance Bernstein as director of investments in global thematic strategies. There, she managed funds amounting to USD 5 billion.
The year 2014 turned out to be a breakthrough for Cathie because she founded an investment fund called Ark Invest. Her deep faith is reflected in the fund’s name. She got it from the Bible. She is responsible for designing the fund’s development strategy and is responsible for understanding, managing and monitoring the asset portfolio. The success was not long in coming. The company’s philosophy is a new technological revolution — its goal is to break into the future and change the world. ARK Invest in 2020 had the best return out of 584 funds, 165%.
The first four funds were provided with capital from Bil Hwang’s Archeos Capital.
Soon after, it was recognized by Bloomberg as the Best Stock Picker in 2020
The following awards include a place on the list of the 10 largest funds run by women in terms of total net assets.
Unfortunately, 2022 was a loss and Ark Innovation lagged behind the S&P 500 for five years.
Wood at that time managed to get into the Forbes ranking — 50 over 50 2021. This is a prestigious group of entrepreneurs, leaders, creators and scientists.
She was dubbed the new Wall Street star. Her opinion matters in the world of finance, investments and cryptocurrencies. She was known as an investor making excellent investment decisions as well as recognizing and avoiding risk.
Cathie is also keenly interested in cryptocurrencies. Its strategy is to invest in shares of cryptocurrency companies and buy them in the so-called hole. Last year, the fund invested in Robinhood Markets and Coinbase, and analysts believe that the crypto winter will not last long and the sector will be in a bull market again.
Despite her success, she has not forgotten her roots. She supports her high school, where she developed the Duddy Innovation Institute project aimed at developing girls’ willingness to study innovation.
