Cathie Wood (Photo: Bloomberg)
Everyone should know Cathie Wood by now.
That's because whatever benefits central bankers bequeathed to shareholders with next-to-zero interest rates and the record $14 trillion global money supply increase in 2020, Wood beat every stock picker by betting on the innovators in DNA development who are rescuing the world from the global pandemic.
Among the 367 U.S.-based mutual funds with 60% of their $5 billion (or more) in American equities, her ARK Genomic Revolution ETF, ARK Innovation ETF and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF are far ahead, reaping bonanzas of 203%, 159% and 157%, respectively.
Wood left her closest competitor trailing by 60 percentage points.
She also delivered a total return (income plus appreciation) that is 11 times the gain for the S&P 500; 19 times the average of equity-exchange traded funds; 17 times the advance for the health-care benchmark, and 5 times the similar measure for technology, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Wood achieved these feats with investments she considers so transformational that they have created enough wealth to change the economy's trajectory before and after the coronavirus killed more than 1.7 million people this year.
Her five favorites in ARK Genomic Revolution appreciated a combined 431%. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, they comprise:
- Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings, the San Diego-based biotech focused on treatments for diseases, including the coronavirus, representing 4.7% of the fund and returning 750% in 2020
- Teladoc Health Inc., the Purchase, New York-based health-care services company, 4.6% of the fund and up 136%
- Crispr Therapeutics AG, the Basel, Switzerland-based biotech maker of gene-based medicines, 6.2% of the fund and returning 177%
- Pacific Biosciences of California Inc., the Menlo Park life science and diagnostics maker of inexpensive DNA sequencing, representing 7% of the fund and returning 432%
- San Francisco's Twist Bioscience Corp., specializing in synthetic DNA, including genome engineering, which gained 661% and is 5.9% of the fund.
The 65-year-old Wood, a summa cum laude graduate in finance and economics from the University of Southern California, has made disruptive innovation her calling card since Ark Investment Management LLC became a registered adviser in January 2014 at a point when money management increasingly was a passive, index-driven business.
Her focus on genome sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage and blockchain technology proved prescient: ARK Genomic Revolution has attracted record monthly inflows in December, bringing the fund's new money total for 2020 to $4.7 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
