Cathie Wood is as bullish as ever.

An interview with ARK Invest's founder and CEO.

The bear market has silenced plenty of tech bulls.

Not Cathie Wood.  

ARK Invest’s founder and CEO sounds as bullish as ever.

“Many people have said the types of portfolios ARK manages represent the old leadership. We beg to differ,” Wood told me in a recent television interview.

“We believe what happened (with tech stocks) during Covid… was a warm up for what we’re going to experience in the future.”

Wood is used to swimming through skepticism.

Nearly a decade ago, she sought to create actively managed ETFs, based around the theme of innovative businesses.

Her employer at the time, AllianceBernstein, was not interested.

So she started her own company.

“Most people expected us to fail,” Wood told me.

Instead, she thrived.  

Prior to the downturn, ARK’s assets under management swelled to $50 billion by early 2021.

And plenty of big players — including her old firm — have since followed her lead.

ARK’s investment philosophy is tied to five main areas: DNA sequencing, robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.

Wood believes innovation in those fields will disrupt industries and deliver outsized growth to investors in the long run.

“Right now in the global equity markets, truly disruptive innovation is priced at roughly $7 trillion.  We believe that number is going to $210 trillion in 2030.  So, it’s going from less than 10% of the market to more than 50% of the market.”

Within artificial intelligence, for example, she used the example of DALL-E’s AI-generated art.

“It’s astonishing.  What used to take $150 for a graphic designer to create now takes $1 or less.  And it’s going down to 30 cents and then 5 cents.  We’re seeing this massive compression in costs that will allow the creator economy to explode.”

While optimistic, Wood is also realistic about the market’s soured view on the sector.

The firm’s flagship ARK Innovation ETF has declined more than 60% this year.

“We had no idea the drawdown would be this steep, but that’s also the opportunity.”

Some of its big holdings include Zoom, Tesla, Roku, Block and Teladoc.

“If you look at the fundamentals of our companies, the growth rates are still far superior to that in the general economy. The margin structures — gross margins in particular — are higher on average.”

Speaking with me in Toronto, Wood singled out Canadian tech darling Shopify, which is another notable ARK holding.

Last year, it was briefly the most valuable company in Canada.

This year, it’s been the worst performing stock on the TSX.

“Shopify introduced us to the concept of social commerce.  My son buys clothes off TikTok and Instagram — Shopify enabled that. We think it’s going to be a spectacular stock, going forward.”

Meanwhile, Wood is also using her megaphone to call out what she sees as policy mistakes.

In our interview, she pointed to several deflationary indicators.

On Twitter, she has argued that if the U.S. Federal Reserve does not pivot from its interest rate hiking cycle, we could end up with a Great Depression, rather than our own Roaring Twenties.

As for the companies ARK is backing, Wood is encouraging many of them to stay focused on the road ahead.

“We want them to invest aggressively now because these opportunities involving genomics, robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology — and the convergence between them — the opportunities for exponential growth have multiplied here.”