Cathie Wood is dropping off Forbes’ list of America’s richest self-made women this year. Her estimated net worth of $140 million is sharply down from $400 million last year. SelfMadeWomen
in early 2021 after Tesla surged more than eightfold the previous year, Wood was riding high as a “disruptive innovation” evangelist, with investors piling into her funds.
This year’s bear market has been much worse, and Ark’s concentrated portfolio of tech stocks is taking the worst of it. The Ark Innovation ETF has crashed 60% this year, nearing its March 2020 low point, and the firm’s assets under management in all of its ETFs declined from a peak of more than $60 billion in February 2021 to $16 billion by the end of April. Based on that asset slump and stock declines for publicly traded asset managers like T.
She, for one, is not backing away. “We have continued confidence in the long-term outlook for ARK and its ability to expand its strategies into additional geographies, markets, and business lines,” an Ark spokesperson said in a statement.
“This might be people doubling down, people being unwilling to lock in their losses,” Greengold says. “And I think there's probably something to be said about Cathie Wood’s charisma and her continuous presence in publicly available webinars, YouTube videos and also in the media. She seems to inspire a lot of confidence in retail investors.”