Cathie Wood: New ETF focused on transparency to be launched

According to Bloomberg, ARK Fund founder Cathie Wood revealed in a document on Tuesday that it will launch a new exchange-traded fund (EFT) focused on transparency. If approved, this ETF will become the second ETF launched by Ark Investment Management this year.

In March, the firm launched a fund focused on space-related investments that is up about 4% since its debut and now has more than $600 million in assets.

Meanwhile, the firm's flagship Ark Innovation ETF, which has a size of $22.5 billion, is down 2% year to date.

In June this year, according to documents submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Cathie Wood's Ark Invest is creating a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund designed to track the performance of Bitcoin. If the fund is approved, it will trade under the ticker "ARKB."

Cathie Wood has long advocated for transparency in her funds, publicly revealing her stock picks. This has helped her attract loyal individual investors as her funds delivered stunning returns in 2020 and catapulted her to financial stardom, earning her the title of "The Goddess of Stocks."

She is known to insist that disclosing her choices does not hurt her strategy but rather earns her more trust from those who buy her funds. ETFs have been her vehicle of choice since she launched Ark in 2014, and she began appearing on television a few years ago, with stock prices moving based on her comments.

Wood led the actively managed ETF revolution, and more cash is pouring into these funds than ever before.

The transparent fund will join eight other ETFs from Ark, six of which are actively managed and two of which passively track indexes. Ark currently has about $45 billion in ETFs, making it the 11th-largest ETF issuer in the U.S.

“Index-based ESG ETFs don’t necessarily scream ‘disruptive innovation,’ but ARK has branded themselves that,” said Nate Geraci, president of the ETF Store. “It will be interesting to see how they market this ETF given that its strategy doesn’t seem to align with companies like Tesla and DraftKings, which hold a large number of core holdings in other Ark ETFs.”