Cathie Wood Unveils ARK Invest's Big Ideas for 2026

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1:27IBM. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, 2026, as you know, off and running, follows three years of double digit gains for the S &P 500, a total gain of around 80 % over those three years, three years of back-to-back gains as well. That's the S &P. Three years of back-to-back gains also for the NASDAQ 100, a total gain of about 130 % there. And yet, even with the stock market gains in the U.S. in 2025 last year, measured against equities worldwide minus the U.S., stocks have risen around 30%, roughly double the S &P 500's gain.

2:21That's according to the MSCI's index. Here to talk about 2026, the economy, investment ideas. Great to have back with us the founder, CEO, and CIO of ARK Invest, Kathy Wood. She joins us from St. Petersburg, Florida. Kathy, great to have you here. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Carol and Tim. Very happy to be here again. Well, it's great to have you here. And I want to start with what stocks did here in the U.S. really well last year. But if you look at global stocks, you could say that there was certainly some underperformance by the U.S. You've invested in a lot of U.S. names, but also a lot outside the U.S.

2:54And I think about Chinese companies, BYD, Baidu, Alibaba. Are you looking for more opportunities outside the U.S. at this point? And I wonder if you think it's time for maybe U.S. stocks to take a look. I think we're very focused on the deregulation, lower taxes, and what we believe will be lower inflation, much lower inflation, and lower interest rates in the U.S.

3:18Cathie Wood:And we think the combination of those is actually going to drive the returns on invested capital in the U.S. up relative to those in the rest of the world. And I think many people are underestimating, especially on the corporate tax side, that thanks to the new depreciation schedules, our effective corporate tax rate, not the statutory, but the effective, will drop to one of the lowest in the world at roughly 10 percent. Certainly near a record low for the U.S. So do you think, Kathy, that's not priced in yet to U.S. equities? Like, have investors not realize that and therefore it's not priced in yet?

4:01So it's very interesting.

4:04Cathie Wood:Maybe a lot of your guests have been talking about the depreciation schedules, how massively they are going to encourage capital investment here in the United States. So we've never had full depreciation in year one of manufacturing facilities, full depreciation in the first year of service. That means corporations will get huge tax refunds that they will be able to reinvest into innovation because we also equipment, domestic R &D, and software. Those three, full depreciation, first year of service, that has been legislated. Normally we get, oh, a few years of this cut and that cut. But that has been legislated.

4:59Cathie Wood:Now it's all the time. So we don't think people understand how profound some of these tax changes are. So what does that mean for something like the AI trade specifically, Kathy, where I think people are worried about pockets of it being in a bit of a bubble? Does it benefit everyone who is somehow associated, whether it's the chip companies, whether it's the energy companies? Do you see the benefits playing out there and giving it more room to move to the upside? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we're having huge buildouts of data centers and power facilities. All of those depreciation schedules will apply to this boom in investment and contribute to it.

5:48Cathie Wood:So, yes. In fact, Carol, I was just going to say, many people think we're in a bubble. And yes, the data center spending last year was about$500 billion. And you can see all of this in our Big Ideas report. We just released it yesterday. And thank you, Bloomberg, for featuring it. But$500 billion is a two and a half times increase from where it had been trending for years. So big increase, no doubt about it. But we think that number needs to go to$1.4 trillion in the next five years to accommodate the AI boom that is now underway and is going to drive productivity gains incredibly. I want to get into that in just a moment.

6:32I'm really also interested in the health care aspect of it because I feel like there's a lot going on. Before we do so, we also have your 2026 outlook. And what's interesting is you note that this is an important economic historical moment. How so? Well, we are in a technology revolution. And many people thought that the Internet was a technology revolution, and to some extent it was. But today, instead of just one major platform evolving, we have five.

7:06Cathie Wood:So robotics, energy storage, AI, blockchain technology, and multiomic sequencing in the life science space, which we believe is the most profound application of AI, health care. And so this boom, if you look back at the railroad boom, the amount of investment that we saw back then was about 6 % of GDP at its peak, 5 % to 6%. The Internet boom was more like the auto boom in the early 1900s. was more in the 3 % to 4 % of GDP range. We believe this five-platform innovation strategy, or boom, is going to move to 12 % of GDP. And we do believe also that productivity growth will accelerate to the 4 % to 6 % range and be sustained there.

8:14Cathie Wood:Normally, we see a cyclical peak around there, and then it falls back. We think it will be sustained, and we think that by the end of this decade, real GDP growth could be averaging more than 7 % per year. And I know that sounds shocking, given that we've been at 3 % for 125 years. But it is the history associated with technology revolutions, a step change up in GDP growth. The productivity increase, the GDP growth that you are forecasting as a result of these disruptive technologies, to what extent is that the result of fewer people doing more? My question is about job losses as a result of this technology, because if everything that investors are betting on when it comes to this AI revolution comes true, it means that companies aren't going to need as many people to do a lot more.

9:08What does that look like?

9:11Cathie Wood:Well, GDP growth at 7 % plus per year tells you there's going to be a lot of economic activity, more economic activity from a sustained growth point of view than we've seen in quite some time. The history of technology is it's a net job creator. In the early 90s, when developers were evolving the internet, we could not have imagined Uber, or Airbnb back then. And I think the same is true now. We cannot imagine the kinds of jobs that are going to exist in the future. And the other thing that we're excited about from a job creation point of view is we're seeing new worlds being created. And by that, I mean, most of us think about Earth.

10:02Cathie Wood:But now we're moving into space, even data centers, we think, Elon leading that charge, will start moving into space. And we won't have the not in my backyard and the bureaucracy associated with data centers. There's going to be huge job creation around the space exploration and all of the opportunities out there. And then the other one, and you'll find this in our digital assets section of big ideas, is the digital world, immutable private property rights. We know from economic history, the best way to lift people and countries out of poverty is with private property rights that are immutable.

10:50Cathie Wood:Well, that is now moving into the digital world for the first time, thanks to blockchain technology. So we're not worried about job creation. But for those who are, because there is something happening that I know is concerning to many people, the unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds has moved to 12 percent. 12%, big increase. And what is that saying? That's saying that entry-level jobs are not being created the way they used to be. To those people, I say, you know, you must have in your mind an idea for a new business, something that frustrates you, an unmet need. Well, now you can go to ChatGPT, you can go to Grok, and you can have an assistant help you build out that business.

11:48Cathie Wood:Just interview for jobs, but also think about new business ideas. I think we're going to see entrepreneurial explosion here. Well, and, you know, speaking of entrepreneurial explosion, I think about, you know, how long you have certainly been with Tesla and a backer of Elon Musk. a long time. And I think about, you know, when we first talked and you likened him to Mr. Einstein, Albert Einstein. But I just wonder, Elon at Davos earlier today, and he talked about the carmaker's fortunes will be increasingly dependent on humanoid machines. Kathy, how are you modeling this? I mean, into the thesis of Tesla.

12:24And is that where the growth is more so than EVs for Tesla going forward?

12:29Cathie Wood:Without a doubt. We've always said Tesla is not an auto company. It is actually the convergence of three of the platforms I mentioned. So robotics, energy storage, and AI. Each one of those technologies has its own S-curve. And now they're feeding each other and we're seeing that in robo-taxis. Robo-taxis, we believe, will account for 90 % of Tesla's valuation by the end of the decade. We're in print at$2 ,600. That includes nothing for Optimus robots. And we're beginning to understand how quickly Tesla is moving on that front. Why? Because it's the convergence of the same three technologies, robotics, energy storage, and AI.

13:22So I think that price target, obviously, if Optimus is successful, and we believe it will be, we think that humanoid robots is evolving into a$26 trillion opportunity, half in the home, half in manufacturing plants. We're speaking with Kathy Wood, CEO and CIO of ARK Invest. Kathy, you mentioned Tesla. We're talking about Tesla, the regulatory environment. Certainly, it's a less favorable regulatory environment for Tesla than it was just a few years ago, just two years ago, just one year ago. You also talked about the Trump administration and the ease of regulations that we're going to see through the Trump administration.

14:08You've talked about that with us in the past. I'm wondering, a year into his presidency, what do you still want to see in terms of deregulation? What have you not seen yet that you want to see? Well, I think it's constant chipping away. In his first administration, I think President Trump said for every regulation you put in place, you have to take away too.

14:37Cathie Wood:And so it's a mindset in this administration and I think we have it. We're seeing amazing deregulation in the healthcare, on the healthcare front and I don't think many people understand that the FDA has decided that animal testing is no longer necessary for monoclonal antibodies. And I don't think they're aware of how the FDA is harnessing AI itself and encouraging the companies it regulates to start using AI. So I think it's a mindset shift, and I think it is happening. I think the most profound deregulation is taking place in the energy realm. And that's not just oil and gas and so forth. It's nuclear.

15:41If we, in the 70s, had not started regulating nuclear the way we did and driving construction costs up. Electricity prices today would be 40 % lower than they are. And so we think as nuclear comes on stream, that it will serve to take some of the edge off of the increase to electricity prices that data centers are causing now. Hey, Kathy, just big broad in terms of, you know, all of the different funds that you have in the exposure, I'm just curious where you're seeing flows in and out. We've done some reporting on this, and we know some of your funds certainly showing some interest among investors, but we also talked about earlier this week about some of the withdrawals from the ARK Innovation.

16:30What can you tell us specifically when it comes to flows and performance so far this year? What's working? What are investors interested in?

16:39Cathie Wood:Well, we have had, year to date, I think, our ETFs have roughly a billion dollars in inflows, heavily skewed to space exploration and defense for obvious reasons. And then autonomous technology and robotics. I think that autonomous taxis and drones, very big parts of that fund as well. And then our flagship strategy is also starting to inflow. it had been held down by the multi-omics theme. So this is what we used to call the genomic revolution. And it was a very difficult space. Even though the innovation was taking place, the investment markets were not interested in it for a couple of reasons.

17:37Cathie Wood:One, Lots of investment necessary, therefore not very high, if any, cash flows, and the cash cushions needed to be built up. We think they've done a lot in the last few years to become more efficient. And so we're beginning to see outperformance from that space as well because now many people are beginning to understand we're seeing cures to disease. We're seeing early diagnosis thanks to AI and sequencing technologies. I want to pursue this further with you at a later date and some of the companies that are in that. Just 30 seconds. So what's your best idea, you think, for 2026 at this point?

18:21And I know there's a lot in your research, but is there a best idea or a narrative? Just quickly, if you could.

18:27Cathie Wood:Well, so the top three stocks in our flagship are Tesla. We think it has miles to go. we do take profits from time to time, but it could break out here in a big way as more and more analysts do their homework on robo-taxis. CRISPR Therapeutics has moved into the second position. That company is curing sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia and has its eyes set on not just rare diseases, but curing the bad cholesterol problem, especially for those who have hereditary issues in that realm. That could be an enormous market. And I don't think anyone is doing the modeling work there the way we are.

19:14I love it. All right. Hopefully we can check back with you as the year plays out. Kathy, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Kathy Wood, of course, Bewell, former CEO, former founder, CEO, of course, and CIO of ARK Invest joining us.

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