No bottom in sight for Cathie Wood’s ‘spec-tech’ investments

High-profile technology fund manager Cathie Wood took the Federal Reserve to task last week in an open letter warning that its ongoing rate-hiking policy risked an economic bust.

Her displeasure isn’t surprising, given rate hikes have decimated the speculative growth stocks that dominate Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF. The fund hit another 52-week low last week and is now down 77 per cent from February 2021′s peak, almost matching the Nasdaq’s infamous 78 per cent collapse during the 2000-2002 dotcom bust.

Like many analysts, Datatrek Research views the Ark fund as a proxy for US “spec tech” – speculative technology stocks that crashed after enjoying stratospheric price gains. It cautions that Ark will likely go even lower and rebound more slowly than the Nasdaq did in the early 2000s, noting the 34-stock fund doesn’t own “as many large, seasoned companies” as the more broad-based Nasdaq index.

Wood can complain about the Fed, but it’s hard to disagree with Michael Burry, the investor who was immortalised in Michael Lewis’s The Big Short. “This was coming because it has always been this way before,” Burry said in a now-deleted tweet last week. “How anyone over the age of 40 did not see it coming is a riddle. The answer is Greed.”