Cathie Woods ARKK ETF Has Zero China Exposure Following Tech Crackdown

• Tech investor Cathie Wooden’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF now has zero publicity to China property.
• Wooden stated on Thursday the fund began paring its stake in China following Beijing’s tech crackdown.
• Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma was one of many highest-profile targets of the crackdown.

China’s crackdown on Alibaba spooked tech investor Cathie Wooden a lot that she slashed the China publicity of Ark Make investments’s flagship fund down from a big proportion in 2020 to zero now.

“We noticed the difficulty that Alibaba, Alipay obtained into — Jack Ma particularly, and we started to marvel ‘Oh no, is that this a broad-based crackdown by the federal government on any firm or particular person with an excessive amount of energy?’ And that is precisely what it was, because it seems, in hindsight,” Wooden, Ark’s CEO and CIO, stated in a webinar on Thursday.

Ma angered Chinese language authorities after giving a speech in October 2020 by which he criticized China’s monetary regulatory system and claimed Chinese language banks had been working with a “pawnshop” mentality. His phrases prompted intense regulatory scrutiny of his companies — together with Alibaba and fintech agency Ant — and a broader crackdown on tech companies in China.

Wooden stated the Ark had invested in China notably because it was impressed with the nation’s “restraint” throughout the pandemic.

“They weren’t throwing cash on the downside. They had been very disciplined by way of their financial and financial coverage responses,” stated Wooden. Ark Innovation ETF, the flagship fund, neared a 25% publicity to China and different rising markets — with stakes in tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, amongst others.

However the fund’s publicity to China is now all the way down to zero after fund managers pared its stakes down steadily. The fund has practically $9 billion in property beneath administration, per Morningstar, a monetary providers agency.

Wooden additionally stated on Thursday she was involved concerning the nation’s real-estate disaster.

She stated China’s economic system — which has been throwing up one purple flag after one other — has been a “huge disappointment” because it ended its COVID-zero coverage following practically 15 years of double-digit actual GDP progress.

“Development like that may cowl a number of sins and people sins often contain debt importantly within the property house, and so we do consider that China is dealing with its day of reckoning on this regard,” she stated.

The Ark Innovation ETF closed 0.4% increased at $47.93 on Friday. It’s up 54% thus far this yr.