Corporate America is regaining its appetite for risk as expectations build around Donald Trump’s push for deregulation and tax cuts, according to ARK Investment Management founder Cathie Wood.
Speaking on Bloomberg’s Trumponomics podcast during the Founders Forum Global conference in Oxford, Wood said major US firms are ramping up capital spending in response to a more business-friendly policy outlook. She cited Meta Platforms Inc.’s reported investment in the AI startup Scale AI as one sign of that shift.
“We are seeing massive capital spending out of these companies,” she said. Wood argued that the dominance of megacap tech stocks in recent years reflected a flight to safety, as investors favored firms that were hoarding cash amid regulatory uncertainty by the Biden administration. That mindset, she said, appears to be fading.
“The investor base in those companies — they were looking for safety,” she said, speaking alongside Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “This doesn’t feel as safe any more. So I think there’s a rebalancing.”
ARK’s $6.3 billion Innovation ETF, which focuses on so-called disruptive technologies, is up nearly 12% this year, outpacing the S&P 500. Still, the fund has underperformed the broader market over a longer horizon.
Wood reiterated her bullish stance on Tesla Inc., the ETF’s largest holding, calling it “the largest AI project on earth” due to its autonomous driving ambitions. ARK has added to its Tesla stake after trimming it earlier this year.
While high equity valuations have prompted some rotation out of US stocks, Wood said the dollar may resume its long-term rally as corporate risk-taking returns.
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