People are Dismissing Cathie Wood to Quickly

Cathie Wood has gotten a lot of criticism lately, even from me, and that is largely because she has made some very questionable trades lately through her investment funds at Ark. A lot of her stocks are also down pretty severely right now, and this has led many people to lose faith in her as an investor. Even though I have also been very critical of her investing decisions as of late as well, I feel obligated to defend her when people suggest that she herself is not a good investor.

If 5 years ago, one had decided to invest into her most popular fund Ark Innovations, they would have not only beaten the market, they would have doubled the markets gains. Ark Innovations increased by almost 173% over the last 5 years while a total stock market index increased by around 80%. This is even after the huge draw downs that Ark has experienced over the last two years. 

While it is true that the last 2 years have not been great for Ark, those who have invested in Ark over a long period of time have experienced some pretty massive gains. Cathie Wood has made a lot of moves that I personally would not have made as of late, and I do disagree with a lot of what she says. For instance, she famously said that she believes Tesla should be worth $3,000 dollars a share which is an absolutely insane valuation for the company. This is an opinion that I very much disagree with, but I also think that saying things like this puts her in the news which brings more attention to her funds and that she does things like this for that reason. 

I do think that people should criticize her for the bad trades that she makes, and I personally do not invest into Ark, but I do think that she has done a very good job as an investor over a long period of time and that she gets a little too much criticism.

An issue I do have with her investment strategy is that she trades very frequently for an ETF. This is something that she has gotten a lot of criticism for, and it is definitely abnormal. 

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