Cathie Wood: the superstar investor shooting for the stars

Cathie Wood has quietly built a reputation for picking the unloved and misunderstood stocks that go on to thrive. She has just launched a new ETF that seeks profits in space exploration.

Cathie Wood
(Image credit: © Alex Flynn/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

New York-based asset manager Ark was “one of the hottest investors of 2020”, thanks to its emphasis on backing “disruptors”, says Bloomberg. Founder Cathie Wood’s “magic touch is so powerful that she can trigger gains for funds she doesn’t even run”. When Wood announced plans last month to launch a new space exploration ETF, she sparked a rally in stocks “linked to everything from intergalactic travel to out-of-this-world broadband”, as well as putting a rocket under rival space funds. “People want to follow her,” says James Pillow of wealth manager Moors & Cabot. “She pounded the table on battery technology and electric vehicles when no one else was interested… and she was right. People don’t forget that.”

The stocks that fall through the cracks

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.