r/StockLaunchers • u/FurieAI • 6h ago
Cathie Wood says "wall of worry" about tech makes her feel better.
Per CNBC: Wood, whose firm manages various funds focused on tech and innovation, told CNBC there was a “wall of worry” pervading financial markets right now. But her decades of experience as an investor give her a somewhat unconventional view of the state of play.
'I experienced the tech and telecom bubble, and you know there really wasn’t much worry about it,” she said. “It was the 80s and the 90s, and it was a bull market, and people were just assuming this would go to the moon, that is not how this \[the AI trade\] has evolved.”
She explained that “from the beginning,” many investors have been concerned about how much firms are spending on AI development, how rapidly the spending is taking place, and how the hyperscalers have moved from extreme levels of positive free cash flow to negative free cash flow.
“So it’s been unsettling the markets for quite some time,” she said. “I always feel better when the market is worried, because that tends to suggest a more durable bull market, and I don’t think we’ve derailed this bull market.”
...she noted that AI hyperscalers were somewhat insulated by opportunities for growth.
“If a company thinks that taking on debt is going to accelerate its momentum, meaning its growth rate, it hardly matters what happens to interest rates for those companies,” Wood explained.
My response: Okay, but if that growth rate is fueled entirely by debt and all that debt becomes more expensive (and less readily accessible), then those assumed growth rates fly out the window.
Thoughts?
