Transcript for:
Investment in Disruptive Technologies

I've read through a decade of your research to figure out what the best investment is so anyone can get rich in the future. And you've predicted that this will grow by at least 5,000%. Yes. And my conviction is so high because of what I do on a day-to-day basis. Is there a woman on planet Earth that manages more money from an investing capacity than you? Maybe not. I'm overseeing nearly $30 billion. Okay, so I might have $500. What should I be doing with that? So, this is all you need to know. Kathy Wood built a multi-billion dollar fund by spotting trends before anyone else. And now, with over 40 years of market insight, she's showing you how and where to invest, too. AI is the biggest technological disruption in history. And this incredible rate of change is making people uncomfortable. But if you are on the right side of change, investment opportunities and job opportunities are going to be enormous. But people don't know what to do. For example, many people think Apple is a very safe investment. It's probably going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence, but yet Tesla is going to be the biggest. You've invested just over 2 billion in Tesla. Yeah. Because Tesla is the largest AI project on Earth. So AI has to be a top priority, not an afterthought. So I've got questions. What's your top 10 public stocks that anybody could invest in? What's the philosophy towards investing that will make one rich over time? And then if I want to invest in AI, how should I be investing my money? According to our research, these investments will go up more than 10fold in the next 5 to 10 years and create incredible opportunities for investors. So, number one, this has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. [Music] Kathy Wood, is there a woman on planet Earth that manages more money from an investing capacity than you? Well, there's probably not someone overseeing, yes, nearly $30 billion. Uh, but I know there are teams out there, including women, that manage maybe a lot more than that. What is it that you do? invest in companies that are going to that are technologically enabled and that that are going to transform the world as we know it. Robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and multiomic sequencing in the life science space. The last is the most complicated. And how long have you been an investor? I started when I was 20 years old at a company called Capital Group and I was introduced to the firm by Art Laugher. Now Art Laugher, he's one of the most important economists of our time. He created something called the Laffer Curve. He's advised most presidents since President Nixon and he's advising President Trump as well. And how is these five big innovation platforms that you speak of, how is that going to have an impact on the average person's life? Like why do they need to know this stuff? How is it going to change their decision-m and change their career? Now that the world is moving so quickly into this new world uh and Bitcoin has become uh so successful an investment many people are trying to figure out okay how how do I get involved with the new world and when I say get on the right side of change we think there's going to be a lot of disruption to the traditional world order when I say that in terms of people understanding What I mean? I think many people think Apple is a very safe investment because huge hoarde of cash, very successful smartphone, you know, number one market share of smartphones in terms of profitability by far. And yet we can tell you and this was one of what's called the mag six that led the stock market over the last few years. The top six stocks the top six stocks the market was very narrowly focused on this ilk of stock. And we were saying you know what Apple is probably going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence. And one of the reasons we started asking questions very early is what is the ultimate mobile device? Ultimately, it's going to be an autonomous vehicle. Apple should have been all over that and they were trying and we saw one management turnover after another. This is an AI project and what we were learning as they were turning that team over uh time and again is they they weren't getting AI right. They were not positioning correctly. Your concern for Apple? I think Apple it has so much cash. It has such a loyal customer base. uh it will be fine but maybe it's revenue growth has slowed to almost nothing and so maybe it'll be a mature cash cow that's not what we do we invest in technologically enabled disruptive innovation AI is the biggest dis technological disruption in history and if they're not going to get it right we're not going to be there so if I want to invest in AI if I agree with you Kathy and I said you know I think I think you're right that AI is the biggest technological wave coming into shore and the biggest opportunity h how should I be investing my money in in in your view how are you investing your money to capitalize on AI many people used to invest in AI through one stock that was Nvidia that was the check the box I own the GPU the chip manufacturer which is the most important uh chip manufacturer in the AI age and its valuation meaning its uh price relative to earnings um really got up to very heady levels and we were saying at the time well if Nvidia's valuation is correct there there there are going to be a lot of other winners who are they uh well our largest position and the flagship strategy ARK is Tesla and as we were trying to help people understand why we were swapping away from Nvidia to stocks like Tesla and Palunteer which is a software provider. Um we were trying to explain that this new world around AI is going to happen very quickly and uh Tesla is the largest AI project on earth. Uh I posted that on X and Elon liked it. So it must be true. But it is true if our research is correct. Uh we believe that um the entire ecosystem associated with autonomous uh taxi networks is going to be worth 8 to10 trillion dollars in terms of revenue generation in the next 5 to 10 years. And if you want to put that in context, the the entire GDP of the world today is about 130 trillion. So 10 trillion is going to move the needle. Tesla are launching their first cyber taxi, I believe, in Austin in June potentially. Yes, it so the Cyber Cabs will launch next year, but in Austin in June, those will be Model Y's. and I'm looking to buy another Model Y because it will in effect be a cyber cab. Okay? And if I chose to, I could have my Model Y drive me to work and then let it out for the day and earn money on it, have it pick me up at the end of the night. And some people will do that. And Tesla will provide the platform for that. I think a lot of people don't realize just how much of the economy is about driving. Yes. So taxis, deliveries, these kinds of things. It's a hu is it the single I think it's the single biggest employer in the world. Yes. Transportation broadly defined. Yes. And and it's not just on the ground of course. Uh as we've studied uh autonomous taxis uh moving forward uh we believe the cost of transportation will come down fairly dramatically. So, uh, in the US today, an Uber costs roughly $2 to4 per mile. Mhm. Um, at scale. Now, this may not be for 5 to 10 years, but this is the direction that Tesla certainly is headed. Uh, we believe that Tesla will be able to offer a service for 25 cents per mile. And because of that, we think there will be much more congestion in the roads. When you cut the price of something, you get more of it. Yeah. And that led us into the air. And so we've been stud studying EV talls. Um what's an EV tool? EV tall is an electric vehicle takeoff and landing like a drone type. A drone but for for people. Yeah. So we own Archer in our portfolio. And of course AI is a part of this new world as well. Um, and it's a part of the defense world as well as we are trying to save our soldiers and um, and move out there with autonomous drones. So, autonomous uh, mobility on the ground, in the skies, ultimately on the water. So, so Tesla, so that's one big we we think that's going to be the biggest in the short term in terms of revenue generation. The biggest application of AI. We think the most profound application of AI is going to be in healthcare because of AI and this is already beginning to happen. uh we are able to diagnose cancer with a blood test in stage one. Think about that. If you discover cancer in stage one, you can save most people, right? And maybe even before stage one. Why? This is the convergence of sequencing technologies. So DNA, RNA, protein sequencing uh technologies and then the third uh technology that is breakthrough and already making a difference is crisper gene editing. The convergence of those three technologies is beginning to cure disease. So, uh, a company called Crisper Therapeutics, which is one of the largest in our ARKG fund and in the top 10 in our ARK fund, uh, has developed a therapy uh, to cure sickle cell disease with and betthalmia. Both of those are blood related diseases with one treatment. Think about that. Now, the preconditioning for that is gruesome. It's it's it involves it's almost like chemotherapy which is going to change. Uh but nonetheless there's huge demand for it because you know these people go to the emergency room 10 to 20 times per year for blood transfusions to save their lives. Of course they're going to go through a tough regimen. They want to live a more normal life. Uh so it's already generating revenue. Both both of those are already generating revenue for Crisper Therapeutics and a company called Vert.Ex. So there's there's well there's three or four different companies you've mentioned here. Tesla, the other one was Archer. Archer is the EV tall company. Yes. Which is your flying cars, basically your drone cars. Yes. And Chrisper and Tesla. So if I start with Tesla, you were bullish on Tesla. You were making big predictions about Tesla before pretty much anyone else out there. I think in 2015. Mhm. And at the time in 2015, you said that you believed the stock would get above 4,000 roughly right on the old stock. Yeah. On the before the stock split. And you were right by some significant margin. Um I think you predicted it would be 4,000 before the stock stock splits. And I think at its peak that equates to about 18,000 maybe 12,000 at its peak. Yes. Well, in that region, we we we were right about two early years or Tesla was got to where we believed it would go two years before most expected. You know, in 2018 and 19, many people, as Elon was des discussing and describing production hell for the Model 3, um, many people thought the company would go bankrupt. And uh and yet we knew that if Elon Musk could create a reusable rocket that could land on a barge in the water, he would be able to figure out how to produce at scale the Model 3. That was to us a simple um conclusion. Now as in hindsight as we're learning from Tesla production hell and they themselves were worried that's why Elon slept on the floor in the production factory and just became maniacally involved which is how he works uh as uh so yes and now our prediction the stock is I'm not going to be exactly right on this 270 280 uh dollars uh our prediction in five years is 2600 And 90% of that valuation comes not from the electric vehicle but from this robo taxi platform. Uh because the electric car if you think about it is you know a one-shot sale. You know sell and hope they come back when they're replacing their car. This essentially means that we'll be driving cars that we can click a button and then then it becomes an autonomous taxi. So I go on holiday, I have my my Tesla car at my house. When I go on holiday, the car turns into a taxi and starts chauffeering people around. It makes me money. But also from the consumer's perspective that are trying to hail a taxi. At any point I can go on my Tesla app, I press a button, a autonomous car comes to me with no one driving it and it takes me to my destination with no driver at all. Right. Um and then the recurring revenue model I believe is you sub you subscribe. It probably could it it could be a sub you could subscribe to the network or they could uh you know maybe it could be either or subscription or allocart if you don't think you're going to use it that much. So now when I'm here in the UK and Europe many people do not believe what what you just said and and they don't because your regulators have not allowed FSD here. I think they might I somewhere in Europe I think they're beginning to consider it. Maybe even in the UK here they have are considering it. Um in St. Petersburg, Florida where we're based, um I can go from my house to anywhere and flawlessly the car will take me there. Now, we still have to sit in the driver's seat for now, but in June, uh, or soon thereafter, when they turn the system on, if regulators permit, right now we're state byst state. I think that's going to change so that we'll have federal regulations so that this can happen a lot faster. One other thing about Tesla though in that 2600 uh dollar number, we do not include much for humanoid robots. Now I this and and this is happening faster than we thought. Um h and the reason it's happening faster is humanoid robots they are the convergence of the same three technologies or innovation platforms as robo taxis robots robotics so actuators and so forth getting them to work energy storage battery operated and AI so Tesla is way ahead of the game on humanoid robots and yet we have very little. Now, Elon thinks that the humanoid robot business is going to dwarf the robo taxi business and we think he's right. Uh, but longer term. So, as I mentioned, we expect all in around the world, including China, not just Tesla, but the entire ecosystem, an 8 to uh 10 trillion dollar market uh in the next 5 to 10 years. for humanoid robots. Uh we expect a $26 trillion revenue market. Now that's going to be a little further along. Uh robo taxis will happen faster, but it may not be as distant as we were once thinking. For anyone that doesn't know, humanoid robots are basically robots that we'll have in our home and at work. Mhm. So these are there was a video that I think um Elon retweeted the other day showing one of the human humanoid robots dancing. Dancing. Yes. Was that real? I was like looking at that video thinking surely that's not real. But he confirmed I believe that it was real. Yes. Yes. Now when we went to the Cyber Cab event, uh there were some humanoid robots dancing there, but they were tethered and they were remotely controlled. Yeah. Uh now Cyber Cab, I think was about a year ago. Yes. Maybe. So since then they've been able to untether them and uh I do believe that those that dancing robot was was um not tethered and not remotely controlled. It was quite shocking to see a robot doing that because if a robot can have that dexterity and mobility and then you overlay that with the AI technologies that are accelerating rapidly, it begs the question and the question is quite clear which is what about humans? Yes. Um, and just to put a finer, you know, note on this, um, Elon will not be satisfied until these robots can thread a needle. So, that's where we're going. What does that mean for humans? So, you know, the history of technology is that it has been a net job creator throughout history, but humanoid robots are getting awfully close to what we do, right? So, it's a good question. I I think creativity is a big part of that. Ingenuity and creativity. And, you know, I think there's going to be a there are going to be a lot of new inventions uh in the future. So, let's see what those are. But even today there's something called vibe coding. Have you heard of it? Okay. Because we've moved into the world of natural language programming. What is vibe coding for someone that doesn't know? It's vibe coding means you know a natural language. I know we all know a natural language. Ours is English for the most part but could be any language. Um, we're going to be able to go to chatgbt or to especially now they just launched I think last week something called codeex replet uh and anthropics fantastic for for um programming and we'll say this is what I'm attempting to do in English language and and I've seen demos of this just internally we we're going to replace some of our software that we're buying from outsiders and customize it for us because, you know, we don't have to buy offtheshelf anymore, one sizefits-all. I think there's going to be a lot more customization and personalization and creativity explosion here. You know, it's interesting that this is happening when the demographic profile of the developed world is as it is. We have a very low unemployment rate in the US. I know the unemployment rates in Europe and the UK have been dropping. to much lower levels than where where they were stuck for years. I remember thinking, "Wow, double digits." Uh we have a demographic issue. I mean, if you if you watch what uh Elon Musk worries about the most, he he worries about the population implosion uh because collapse collapse in population in the developed world um because we're not uh u we're not producing children above the fertility rate. We're we are setting up for a shrinkage with China is going there, Japan is going there. And so we're going to need productivity uh productivity to help us if we can't find human beings. Uh okay. So you're so you're saying that the robotics and AI could actually fill the gap that we lose in terms of productivity because our society is going to be like an inverted pyramid. It's going to be more um elderly people and less young people. Yes. Yes. So the robots are going to Yes. Absolutely. It's productivity is going to be essential. So, as we're looking at real growth ahead and when you think about real growth, uh you should be thinking, okay, somebody's benefiting from this. Um, and I'm going to set what I I'm going to set up the number here, uh, by describing what has happened historically. If you look from 1500 to 1900 and you try and figure out what real GDP growth was back then, real economic growth, um, as best as uh, Brett Winton, our chief futurist in consultation with academics can determine, it was roughly 0.6% per year. And then we had the industrial revolution. Uh we had the internal combustion engine, telephone, electricity. And for the past 125 years, real GDP growth has been 3%. And and most li living standards have gone up over time. Some more than others. I know that's a debate, but most have gone up. If we as we look forward based on the five innovation platforms around which we have centered our research and investing, if we're right, real GDP growth in the next five years could accelerate to 7.3%. And that gives you a sense of uh the economic e uh activity wealth generation out there. And what when we are presenting to investors, we are actually presenting to them not only because they're investors, but because they have children or grandchildren who need to adapt to this new world. And our mantra in giving away our research, which we do, is get on the right side of change. We also do podcasts. Um we we try we do a lot of outreach because we think this is a very important moment in time. Uh seize the moment grab hold of these new technologies because that growth rate is more than twice where we've been. And if you are on the right side of change, we think the opportunities are going to be enormous. Uh investment opportunities and job opportunities. Yeah. I I feel like I've I feel like um I feel like I can't figure out what how the displacement rate meets the creation rate. So the destruction rate of of current jobs will meet the creation rate of new jobs because many of these new jobs I I guess there's some of them we can't predict yet. I understand that. But even the ones that we can't predict yet would need to be inherently human i.e. need the skills of a human for them to be occupied by by humans. Um, so what category of stuff is that? Like my my girlfriend's a breath work practitioner. She's upstairs now with 10 women and she's teaching them breath work. Okay. So she's fine. Yeah. Like cuz they're doing that in person. What? Whatever. She's fine. Well, and maybe she's not if people decide to do it on. Yeah. On chachi. But but if they want to be with a group of women Yeah. and you know learn from an expert whom they respect. There's as much the social experience that's going to become more important. Relationships are going to become more important. Many people in our business I think are going to be out of jobs because uh the business has become really nothing I I shouldn't be this disrespectful and it's not not quite right but uh at all uh but you know so many are just hugging benchmarks uh whether it's S&P 500 or MCI world or the NASDAQ that a machine can do that a machine can do that easily and that is what passive investing is is machines doing it. I think in order to earn a place in the new world, you've got to add a lot of value, more value than a machine can. So, in our case, we're saying, okay, well, our stocks are not in those benchmarks. Uh, and therefore, you know, they're they're we are doing original research trying to figure out who they are and where they are. these these companies that are going to transform the world. Why can't AI replace what you're doing in terms of so and we think about that all the time. So AI can use pattern recognition. It's all based on history, right? Uh it can use pattern recognition maybe to do what we're doing. What are the three characteristics that define an innovation platform for us? The most important one is they follow something called rights law which measures the learning curve. How fast the costs are going to decline with this new technology. Technology is deflationary. Costs fall over time and they're passed through into lower prices or better performance one or the other. Um that is the most important. A machine can figure that out I'm sure. But asking the questions are going to be important. Like there wasn't before 2014 when we started arc much on autonomous mobility or EV talls or for that matter AI. AI had become science fiction. There weren't any breakthroughs in recent years but then we got some breakthroughs. So could so rights law is the first figure out that cost curve decline and and see how quickly the technology can prolificate uh proliferate across sectors. That's the other criteria criterion here. The technologies that we are following are going to cut across economic sectors and apply uh to more than one group of people. And then the third is that these technologies serve as launching pads for new technologies. So in the case of DNA sequencing, which was the base technology, we needed that before crisper gene editing uh could be created. We needed to be able to understand what was mutating in the genome, where the programming errors were so that gene editing could come in and edit out those programming errors. And do you think in five 10 years from now that unemployment is going to be higher or lower? In five or 10 years, um let's let's assume we don't have a policy mistake and and a recession. So just just steady state I think it will be the same or lower and most of this is because those baby boomers are retiring. Uh so they come out of the employ they come out of the labor force and uh and the generations following them are smaller. Even now what's happening is uh we're we're passing through the baby boom echo meaning the children of the baby boom that cohort was I don't think it was any bigger than the baby boom uh the baby boom population. Do you think there's because of the speed of and the acceleration of AI the like just the the length of careers has radically reduced because you would go to like you would go to school then you go to university you qualify as I don't know an accountant and that's like a 10 15 year process you get a job as an accountant you start working your way up but now with AI coming in these some of these jobs are being completely annihilated extremely quickly at the same time vibe coding yeah is booming. So I think what's going to happen and this will be very healthy for productivity. We're going to have a lot more experimentation and people taking risks on themselves. Uh and maybe this idea of a corporation as we know it is going to change radically. You know crypto is enabling distributed autonomous organizations. uh just like Bitcoin there's there's no no one governing it right uh that it's a distributed network and you know let's see how these do and how vibe co coding and AI integrate into the crypto I and I'm going to stop calling it crypto because it's really should be called digital assets world which legitimizes it more crypto sounds nefarious digital assets is where you know more than young people and I'll say young people are spending more than half of their discretionary their free time online and so property ownership online is becoming more important it's it's being legitimized by the way people are spending their time on this point of robotics and AI your your biggest position I believe is Tesla isn't it in your fund yes um but obviously Elon decided Ed that he wanted to go into politics and he wanted to do oh Elon the department of government efficiency called Doge. So teaming up with Trump to try and eliminate government waste. Now as an investor Mhm. you must not love that. Well I I have two um I have because it did impact two points of view performance of the company. Do you know I have I drive a Tesla when I go to America and it was the first time ever on the last trip to America in January. I live in LA now um where I'm driving my you know my cyber truck. It's the full self-driving. It's incredible. But it was the first time ever I thought I like I could be attacked. So I probably shouldn't get a cyber truck. I should probably get something else cuz I heard of all these reports of people being attacked. And so it was quite interesting to hear in the earnings report which I listened to that there's been this decline in revenue um in profitability in vehicle sales growth etc. in Q1 of this year which I think even Elon in that in that earnings call highlights is a consequence of him becoming political. Yes. Uh I think that surprised him. Um so I have many thoughts about this. Our government has become so bloated. It is scary and uh our indebtedness is growing. And if we want to remain the reserve currency of the world, we're at risk of of losing it. And and on our tail is the whole digital asset world, right? So, um, government spending is taxation. It's either taxation that's going to happen immediately or will happen in the future or will happen through inflation, which is the most regressive tax at all. So I think his that the the sentiment was was right in terms of you know getting in there and seeing what technology can do for the government which is really what's happening. I'm watching it in the FDA how they're starting to use AI. It's phenomenal what's happening. Uh so the question I usually get so I I'm very happy that ha half of the solution is understanding the problem that someone is in there with that focus and determination. He of course has said he's stepping away uh this month as a matter of fact to spend more time with his companies which you must be happy about. Well, of course I'm happy about it, but I I have with the exception of this political dynamic, I don't think that Elon uh not being there on a day-to-day basis is what has caused the problem in the first quarter. It was much more macro. We had a negative quarter in real GDP growth in the first quarter. So macro which is hitting everyone and the overlay of this political dynamic the news cycle thank goodness moves fast and so we'll we'll be through that I think and by the way there are news reports even this weekend saying those who were feeling about him you know as it relates to Doge and you know one party are having a change of heart because tax rates are going to come down because we're being more disciplined on the on the government spending side. Elon's way of managing his companies is to attract the best and the brightest not only scientists, engineers but also business people. Uh they these are people who want to solve the hardest problems in the world. um he sets a timeline that seems uh reasonable to him for milestones to occur and he doesn't interfere unless they start missing those milestones or the timing of those milestones. Then he gets involved and that's where you hear he'll go in and he'll just fire people wholesale and you know and and you know get the program going again. And he's he's done that certainly at Tesla. He's done that at all of his companies. And so he's really troubleshooter in chief. Once he understands and has set a strategy, he then becomes troubleshooter chief. Have you met him? Oh, yes, we did. Actually, our uh first podcast with him was in 2019. Oh, I saw that during during production hell. Yeah. And uh we were so happy. So, as you know, we have a social strategy. So, we push our research out through social media as we give it away or as we're evolving it. And uh he liked a piece of research that Tasha Keiny had put out on autonomous back then. And I was on a phone call. I couldn't get off, but I heard this whooping and screaming through the office. And I I I thought it sounded good. It wasn't an emergency, so I I didn't have to leave that call. But I got out. I said, "What happened, Elon?" And I said, "Okay, ask him if we can do a podcast." And we were there the next week. Oh, incredible. Yeah. What do you think of him as an entrepreneur? I think he's the Thomas Edison of our age in terms of uh in terms of his um in innovative ingenuity. And I also think having met him a number of times, I think he's a very good person. He wants to do the right thing. If I had to say one thing, he wants to do the right thing to transform the lot of most of humanity. And he started uh w with Tesla, SpaceX and Tesla. SP Tesla, you know, was a an environmental move, which I think a lot of people attacking his cars, who are probably very um supportive of the environmental movement, uh they they've forgotten sending a a rocket to Mars and with humanoid robots and ultimately people um he thinks will transform life on Earth as well Because as we've learned from space history, uh what we learn about material science and technologies that help us break through into these very difficult or problems to solve is going to help us here on earth as well. Uh so I think he's a very good person and wants to do the right thing that if I had to describe him that's what I say other than genius of our time. I often wonder I you know because he's had such a profound impact on the world in many many ways through the companies he started. I think the uh the biggest risk really is just his own his own health. He doesn't seem to sleep much you know though he he says that he does sleep. I think he he he he recommends I think if I'm right on this getting seven hours sleep a night. Uh uh and yes but when when he is focused you know it I mean people even look they they there were many pictures of him whether it was standing you know with other policy makers and then he zones into something and you know he's zoned in and thinking about only that and a problem that he wants to solve. So you've invested what? Just over two billion in Tesla. Let's see. So it would be roughly Yes. In that region. Mhm. Bitcoin. Mhm. You invested in Bitcoin very very early. What was the the first price what that you bought Bitcoin for in I think it was 2015. Yes. It was in um the summer of 2015. Uh we got in at roughly $250. Uh today it's $104,000 I think roughly. So we did get in very early and we knew we were on to something really when people were making fun of us saying okay that's a marketing trick. You're you're new to our business and you know new to our to the new fund world and uh you're trying to attract attention. And we were thinking wow they have no idea how much research we've done on this. and Art Laugher, uh, my professor again from USC, we had him, uh, we had him read our first white paper on Bitcoin. Bitcoin, could it serve the three roles of money? So means of exchange, what we use every day uh to to buy things, store of value, uh like gold, and unit of account, would prices be quoted in terms of Bitcoin? Chris Berniski was our first analyst on Bitcoin, wrote the paper, art read, and you know, from added to it enormously in terms of economic theory, which was great for us. And then he said to us, he said, "This is what I've been waiting for since the US closed the gold window in 1971. A rules-based global monetary system like Bretton Woods under the gold exchange standard." And I said, "Art, that's a very big idea. How big is it?" and he said, 'Well, how big is the the monetary base of the US? Back then it was 4 and a.5 trillion and Bitcoin's market cap or network value was 6 billion. And I said, "Okay, that's a very big idea." And we were trying to get it into our portfolios. regulators were hesitant and uh but I bought it right then for for myself and haven't sold it and I'm very happy with it. You bought it for yourself personally personally because we couldn't buy it $250. So, we couldn't buy it back then, but we finally got through the regulatory process and we were able to put the New York Stock Exchange said, "Okay, you can put a 1% position in the portfolio and it was of a grantor trust called GBTC." So, we did and we just never sold it. They didn't tell us we had to keep it at se at 1%. So, Oh, it's risen to be more than Yes, it it ballooned. And what is it about Bitcoin that you believe was and is still a a good investment opportunity for the average person? Yes. So at this at this price it's about a $2 trillion uh market cap and so halfway to that original $4.5 trillion. But our price target actually has expanded since then. Um because it's not just a global monetary system. It is a new asset class. And that's a very big idea as well. What makes a new asset class? And we haven't had one truly since uh equities in the 1600s. When you say a new asset class, you mean a completely new category of of funding companies. Yes. Right. And so an asset class would be something like technology is an asset class, right? No, it would be like stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate. This is a new asset class and most people will agree with that. We we did a study on it. If this asset does not perform like other assets, in other words, it provides diversification for funds and because it is behaving differently, institutions have to consider it uh because they're competing against each other and if one puts it in, they all know they're competing against each other. So others have to consider it. And uh we believe that part of the opportunity has not been tapped. And just to put some numbers on this, right now we're approaching 20 million Bitcoin outstanding, which means the number of Bitcoin that uh have been minted over time uh by Bitcoin miners. So there's 21 million in total, right? There will be at the end of the minting process 21 million. So we have only 1 million to go. Yeah. Uh 1 million would be what is that? That would be a hundred billion dollar worth a little more than that right now. So, just for someone that might not know much about Bitcoin, Bitcoin is mined using computers and so far they've mined 20 million of them and there's 1 million of them left to mine. Yeah. So, institutions really just started considering Bitcoin because the SEC gave the great uh the the green light uh to Bitcoin with uh the the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF in January of last year. And it takes a while for institutions to do their research and and commit. Uh and so they're just now committing. And there's only a hundred billion dollar of new market cap uh that is going to be created whereas they have trillions of dollars under management. Um and so we think there will be a lot of incremental demand and uh to satisfy a lot of that demand someone's going to have to sell which means the price goes up which yeah if people don't want to sell because Bitcoin's been awfully good and our forecast right now it's um right now the Bitcoin is around 100 105,000 our forecast uh for 2030 is $1.5 million. And we do that uh the building blocks for that, the three biggest building blocks are institutional, we just barely started. Uh store of value or digital gold. Young people are much more uh comfortable with digital gold than gold. So on the institutional side that means institutions, investment institutions start investing in it, young people start investing it in it as a way to save and store their money. Yes. Yes. And then uh the the the the very important use case that many people do not discuss is how important bitcoin and stable coins which are backed by US treasuries are going to become to the emerging markets. uh in emerging markets, many of them are at the whim of policy makers who uh show no discipline in fiscal or monetary policy. And so they they're used to going through booms and busts and booms and bailed out by the IMF and they need an insurance policy. So if you're in Venezuela, you need a currency that's going to be stable. Exactly. Well, this Bitcoin is uh so stable coins are stable visav uh the dollar u Bitcoin is more of an investment because it does appreciate over time. Now you go through it's volatile no question and that's the first thing people have to know about it. Uh but it is becoming less volatile as more and more investors hold it. So, you think Bitcoin will potentially multiply in value by 15 times in the next five years? Wow, that'd be pretty crazy. It's a very big idea because it is a new asset class. It does represent a global monetary system unlike any other digital asset out there. Um, it is backed by the largest computer network in the world. the the layer one which is the base layer has not been hacked. Think about that since 2009 when it was released not been hacked. How many ho how many systems can say that? And it is a technology. It is native to the internet. And again digital assets or any Bitcoin, Ether, Salana, all of them exist because they're vying to be the native currencies to the internet and to to enable smart contracts and really transform the financial services industry. Why did you invest in Coinbase? Coinbase is um an exchange for for digital assets and uh and increasingly derivatives. It has just it has gone global. It just bought Darabit which is the largest options uh exchange out there. uh and it owns a futures. So, it's really going after uh the derivatives market where there's a huge amount of activity which is fantastic because it's all legitimizing digital assets and it is the most regulatory compliant exchange in the world. Um, Binance is a another major exchange, but has had more run-ins with regulators around the world and really hasn't been allowed into the United States. It also wants to become part of the new payments infrastructure and so is evolving strategies that way as well. Um, we've gotten to know management very well. They fought the fight against regulators in a magnificent way and they have educated policy makers um importantly who understand that this innovation we almost lost this innovation to the rest of the world because of our regulatory stance. uh they've helped policy makers understand that hey you know this this infrastructure is what developers did not build in to the internet in the early 90s because they didn't know finance or commerce would take place that's all this is that simple right so if I'm trying to invest in just to summarize then if I'm trying to invest in AI that your key positions there and your key thoughts are companies like Tesla I heard you invest in Twilio. Uh we we had invested in Twilio. They had a ma they had a management turnover. So we moved away from that. But uh Palunteer Palanteer Yes. Palanteer is a platform as a service company which we think uh is not only going to help governance move governments move into the digital age like our defense department and now it's moving into other departments but also these huge huge enterprises because it's not forcing them to rip and replace anything. they'll build on top of whatever technology infrastructure is there and over time just usurp the role of the legacy technologies. So very important company we think in uh the digital age it's had a very big run. We have taken profits and you know while it was having a big run Nvidia was selling off it was down more than 50% so we put some of our Palunteer proceeds in back into Nvidia. Is there anything else in the AI bucket when you're thinking about stocks? Well, when you're thinking about uh chip companies in particular, uh TSM is the platform for chip manufacturing. It doesn't matter who wins. We we do think there are going to be many more competitors to Nvidia. Nvidia is still number one. Have you heard about Grock? Oh, yes. Grock we are invested in in our um in our private fund. Oh, okay. So, just for people that might be confused, do you mean with a Q? Oh, yes. That's that's in our private fund. We don't we do own Grock and that's a very important company on the inference side of um of the equation. I've invested in Grock as well. Yeah, I should probably disclaim that. Well, I think I think you're going to do very well. Um so TSM though is where all the chip manufacturers go uh for production. It is the most sophisticated manufacturer of chips uh in the world. Uh there is geopolitical risk there. Most of its business is in Taiwan. It is diversifying into uh certainly into the US and I think even into Europe. Uh so I think uh that will continue to be a very important company as well. So, what are the what are your what's your top 10 in terms of public stocks that anybody could invest in if you had to give me your top 10? So, I'd have to give you and they're listed on our website and I won't go in order, I'm sure, but of course Tesla, Coinbase, uh Robin Hood, uh Roku is uh an operating system for connected TVs, highly misunderstood stock. Crisper Therapeutics which uh is gene editing gene editing for cickle cell disease and uh betaththalmia uh palunteer I think I've mentioned uh in the AI software space archer just moved into the top 10 it's the EV tall company which and it also signed a deal an exclusive deal on both sides which was quite impressive uh with anderol which anderil which is the u most sophisticated defense tech play uh and is growing like gang busters. So so that's terrific. Shopify uh which is a shopping platform back end and really using uh AI Roblox. Oh that's the one we're missing. Roblox which is a game right? Yes. It's a usergenerated gaming company. Uh the fascinating and it's also a social platform. Uh it started for children younger than 13 years old. And what's interesting about it is uh they've stayed with it because 60% of its user base now is above 13 which is very interesting. It's the largest userenerated uh um content provider out there. And what is fascinating about it is I know one of my friend's daughter has started her own dress shop on Roblox and what she doesn't understand is that she's she's learning about business but she's also learning how to code especially in this new vibe coding world. So I think it's going to be a very important uh company going forward. The the interesting thing about gaming and technology transitions is that it is the only entertainment medium medium that has not fallen apart with technology transitions. Um it has actually grown because those who love their games from 25 years ago still play them. It's grown with each technology revolution. So, uh, and user generated content in gaming is, um, the next big thing. A business is only as good as the people inside it. 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I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind the-scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released and so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes. So, if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to daccircle.com. I will speak to you then. If you had $1,000 to invest Mhm. and you had to invest it somewhere, where would you be investing it? Well, and how would you be like the general philosophy towards wealth creation at such a stage? If you had $1,000, how would you be thinking about creating wealth for yourself? A couple of things. averaging into um either an ETF. What's an ETF? ETF, exchangeraded fund. So, it treats a group of stocks like one stock. Mhm. So, ARK is it's nearly it's 35 36 stocks, but you can buy them by purchasing ARK. And you can do that on your mobile phone by download. You can do it on your mobile phone. A bunch of different apps allow you to just buy that one ETF, which means you own 35 stocks. Yes. And and your team are basically choosing what those 35 stocks are. Yes. Based on your research, right? and ARK are our highest conviction stocks. Uh, and they they they offer an exposure to all of the innovation platforms that we've talked about. Whereas ARKI here in Europe is focused primarily on artificial intelligence and robotics because we think that convergence is going to be pretty explosive. what you don't get there uh and you do get in ARK we also have in another very focused fund ARKG which is really healthc care applications of AI um and and other health care other healthcare names that we think uh are going to be pretty transformative in the new world as regulators really understand how important AI is going to become to discovery uh research trials development uh to diagnostic tests and to curing disease. Another question popped up which is about Ethereum and these other cryptocurrencies. Do you invest in any of these these others? Yes, we have uh we have well in our public funds we've put them I I don't think we can own them here in the UK yet, but in the in the US uh we have them in um some of our funds, both of them. They're key to the financial services revolution. So, uh to get people to understand and feel comfortable with that, uh we don't call it the crypto revolution. It's the digital assets revolution. And it's simply the internet, the financial internet. Okay. So that so we do we do and do you believe are you more bullish on the price potential of Bitcoin than Ethereum? Yes, we think Bitcoin is the biggest idea. It serves the three three revolutions. Global monetary system, they do not. Um new asset class, they are part of a new asset class, but Bitcoin is going to be the biggest. and new technology. It's the most secure uh blockchain technology out there. What about all these other Salana and all these other So, Ether and Salana. So, the big three are the are those are the the big three. Um and we think they'll all be successful, all three of them. Bitcoin the most. We're very interested in stable coins, but that's just like cash. Uh and you know, there are millions of crypto assets out there. We think most of them die. Is there any way to invest in stable coins? Like how do you invest them in? So indirectly right now it is through Coinbase. They have a deal with Circle. Um any any revenue that Circle generates it's it's stable coin is USDC. Yeah. Any revenue they split 50/50 uh in the US. uh circle itself has announced that it is going public and so we're looking forward to that and what's what's the the sort of psychology or mentality one has to adopt to be a good investor depends what you've bought if you buy a strategy like ours which would be in the aggressive growth strategy put it in you know averaging in over time just like with Bitcoin as I mentioned earlier uh averaging in over time what does averaging in Averaging in means, you know, buy a little every month, maybe every payday. I think one of my daughters was buying Bitcoin every week, but not a Bitcoin. She couldn't do that. A Satoshi, you know, so and close your eyes. Like you're this is a long-term investment. If we're right, uh, according to our analysis, now you this is our research, our analysis. No promises. We can't do that. But according to our research, the technologies around which we have centered our research uh and which have focused our investments, they we believe will go up more than tenfold in the next five to 10 years. And that's how much explosive growth we have ahead of us as these technologies converge and create incredible opportunities for investors. And you know I'm hearing a lot of invest a lot of people um as they get into investing of course they have their day jobs but once they have acred enough you know they're making choices about dialing down their day jobs and spending more time investing. You asked what are some of the jobs of the future going to be. I think individual investors are going to be providing for themselves if they are investing on the right side of change. So if you're right, that means that by investing your fund, I would make a,000% return roughly. Yes. No promises. But this is all based on research and you can find it in our big ideas. Uh big ideas 2025 is on our website arc-invest.com. Uh, and you can find a lot more of information about our funds on arc-funds uh.com. And I should probably say this is not in investing advice. It is not. And and I want to do your own research. Do your own research. You can lose all of your money. Yes, you can lose all of it if you decide to do any of these things. But that's why we put Arc Dash Invest separate from the fund site because that's just research. learn learn what you're investing in or learn why we've invested uh the the way we have you know that's that's what we do all day long is we try and help well first of all we're doing the research we are making the investments but I think one of the most important things we do is communicate what we're doing and why we're doing it what do you think of Trump tariffs everything that's going on in America at the moment, what's, you know, for the average person, should they be concerned? Are you bullish? You think Trump's got it right? If you look at what happened to the equity market when Trump was elected, the stock market, yes, the stock market, it went crazy to the upside, as did our strategy. And why the promise was deregulation and that I think is underestimated uh how important it is because we're strangling in regulation. It's just this is not our DNA. We we got to get out from under this. Lower taxes, lower interest rates is what he wants, of course. Um and lower tariffs. What he didn't tell us was exactly how he was going to go about that process. And it has it has felt chaotic. And I've had to go out and explain what's going on. Try to explain what's going on. And I I have to tell you, it scared me silly to see what was going on because I knew that businesses were paralyzed and that we could have a mess on our hands. And I certainly communicated through my channels. Art communicated through his channels. In fact, I think in one publication he said, "I have never been more scared in my career." And we were trying to really get into Trump's head and and I know President Trump listens to art, but he also listens to a lot of other people, one of whom was Peter Navaro, who seemed to have a hold on Trumpet when it came to tariffs. And yet when I saw Treasury Secretary Bessant really push aside Navaro and that could only happen with Trump, I knew we were going to be okay. I knew we were going to be okay because throughout all of this chaos, I think what he is trying to do is not only get tariffs on the US down throughout the world, but maybe more important, get non-tariff trade barriers down. Like for example, I didn't even know the UK would not accept our beef or ethanol. Well, now you're accepting our beef and ethanol. I I don't know if I don't know if people in the supermarkets will buy it, but uh anyway, this one, but other countries much many many more non-tariff trade barriers. And so he is just trying to bust that up, you know, make it more visible. You know, for example, Canada, I think they charged a 250% tariff on our milk. And one of President Trump's promises was to take care of the farmers. Okay, that's why you see the rhetoric around Canada. Now, do I agree with his style? I would never do it that way. I'd never do it that way. I And it was unfathomable, you know, for me because he is sensitive to business and he must have known that everything was going to stop. And uh but he also knows that he has to sound crazy for other people to take him seriously. And he has and people have to believe he will do crazy things in order for people to take him seriously. And he does do crazy things. So do you think it's going to work out? I do. You do? And I think the stock market is beginning to smell it. If I if I just had to invest in one stock right now, what stock would you recommend I invested in? Okay. Well, I have to give you our portfolio pick. So, it would be Tesla. It would be Tesla if I if I had to give you one stock. Okay. Interesting. Because think about it. It is it is a convergence among three of our major platforms. So, robot robots, energy storage, AI, and it's not stopping with robo taxis. There's a story beyond that with humanoid robots. and our $2,600 number has nothing for humanoid robots. We just thought it'd be an investment period and you know the re but I think he's going to start generating not only productivity gains internally but revenues from humanoid robots. What are you concerned about in terms of the way that the world is going and everything that's happening? What are the things that keep you up at night? I've got many a concern. So, I've got many unanswered questions and worries about how things might play out, but keen to hear yours. I am such an optimist. I really do have to dig down deeply. If you had asked me this a few weeks ago, I would have said, you know, this tariff situation is going to blow the global economy up if we're if we're not careful. So, I'm much more settled about that right now. I'd have to say I am concerned that there are going to be people caught out um by these new technologies and for whatever reason not willing to adapt because there are going to be huge opportunities if they do. And so one of the reasons we give away our research, you know, I'm very honored to do a podcast like this is to get that word out. There is so much information available. You can just go to our site and listen to our podcasts and if anything inspires you. Go for it because it's going the opportunities are going to be enormous. When you say you're concerned people might get caught out caught out in you know disrupted industries. I mean we think the whole transportation industry is going to be disrupted. Um we think retail as we know it's going to be disrupted as we retail is in like shops and stuff and yes although if they adapt with more social personal experiences I think that anything physical you'll want to have a social dynamic associated with it but in terms of what I think is going to happen to retail is we're going to have our personal shopping assistants and they're going to they're going to anticipate ate what we want, which I can't wait. I hate shopping. Uh, anticipate what we want. Uh, or basically flag something that they know we would like if we knew it were available. And they'll be disintermediating all of the traditional sources because they can go anywhere in the world. Um, so just think about almost every sector is going to be disrupted. Healthc care is going to be disrupted enormously, I think, for the better. for the better. But those who are wedded to doing things the old way are probably going to be disrupted, you know. Yeah, that is my concern as well and and just how we handle that as a society. But I think if we can help people understand that they have a lot of control over this if they're willing to learn and dream and use their imaginations. Not everybody is though as you know but they have to do it for their children at least right if we took the general population in London and said 100 people how many of you understand what AI is or how many of you use chat GBT we'd have a certain percentage maybe I don't know 50% or more if I went to the countryside yes and I stopped a lovely person shopping in their local village and said do use chat GBT it'd probably be significantly lower percentage they they would care about that? What is that? Whatever. Um I I wonder about the inequality of like education but just initiative and how those that really do have a proclivity to lean in and to experiment and to mess around and to learn because maybe there's an incentive because they work in a city and their employees asking them to will or be off to the races with this disruptive technology. And there's just like a lot of the rest of society of middle America and the countryides and those types of people who are just not even going to see it coming. But that's why we're out there. And the the important word that you used was initiative because I really think you know when people hear the word inequality uh they like to blame something, right? There will be no reason for this. I'm sure someone's going to come back at me for saying that, but of course there are people who who we have to help along the way. No question about it. But for those who are healthy and uh are listening to this podcast and are saying uh you know I don't I don't know exactly what she's talking about but I'm going to start reading up on some of these new ways of doing things and make sure to at least understand it. I think within that kind of initiative they'll find it. They just will find it. There's going to be so much opportunity. It's going to be so exciting and I think again creativity and you know especially young people using their imaginations you know they're they're not held back by any preconceived notion. So I ask all the questions I ask because I'm trying to like solve little question marks I have in my head about the future and it's really difficult at this time to see around the corner because so much is changing so quickly and there's all of these converging technologies as you describe like robotics and AI and then when I put robotics and AI together I go do you know what I mean? Because there's like I keep coming back to this question of like what am I going to do and not in you know what's good about that? You know what's really good about that? That will motivate you. It does. Of course it does. It's great. It motivates me to ask people like you the questions 17 times in a row to try and find the answer. But it's a real point cuz I run businesses. We have at our headquarters which is around the corner. It's about 25,000 foot office. we have, you know, hundreds of people in that building and I'm thinking about the roles that we're hiring for and I'm we're now looking at them through the lens of agentic AI, so AI agents and and then if I overlay that with robotics and AI and you know I'm what roles would we need to hire in the future because theoretically like can you name a single role in a media company that would when I'm talking about in the robotics era that would really need to be done by a human I guess other And one could say humanto human sales will still have some kind of element of human touch to them. You know though I mean we've learned a lot from the ancient game of go. Yeah. So you've heard about Alph Go which was uh Alphabet Google um basically devising a program to compete against the Go champions. Go is much more complicated than chess. Yeah. It's like a game, a board game basically, right? So I think the the champion of the world at the time was a South Korean and he was sure he was going to beat this m machine. Well, the machine bit beat him and he was crestfallen. And then he got his to use New York word back and he said, "Wait a minute. I'm going to start playing against machines." And so now he's playing against machines. His game is so much better that when he competes against humans, and those competitions are the more important ones, right? when he competes against other human beings, the machine has kept him at his champion. And of course, everyone's using the So, we're all we're going to artificial intelligence. But he still can't beat a machine, can he? He still can't beat the best machine in the world. No, he can't. And but I mean, he can occasionally, but but people don't want to go see machines competing against machines. I get that in because human humans like human error and they like to be able to relate and to aspire. But as it relates to the world of work, the incentive is productivity. And my my humanoid robot isn't going to get sick and it's going to have a PhD in everything. So I don't want to see a human failing at their desk. I want the humanoid robot. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. But then you your your robot and your AI is really focused on the past. Right? That's what it's ingested. It can make predictions though based on that pass pattern recognition, which is how my brain works, right? Like a neural network. But that's why we chose the word disruptive. Disruptive means the traditional world order and patterns therefore that you know the the robots and others will recognize is going to change. Right. I'm sorry. What does that mean? as so what when we're doing our research we have a white sheet of paper there's no history for this right and so we're doing a lot of original research so AI machines might use our research as there because we put it out there but how does the AI think differently to to a human though in terms of is I thought the human brain was building you know predicting essentially something based on lots of information and AI is basically doing the same thing with neural networks It's making a prediction based on lots of new information and therefore if we get to AGI it can create new information. Yes. And and and it will but I mean AGI Elon will say it's two years away and it does seem you know we're able to generate PhDs and rocket scientists now in the AI world. So he's probably right. But I also think about this as giving us super intelligence. So, could chat GBT do what we've done? Maybe. I don't know. Actually, it's a very interesting exercise. I'm going to ask our team to do that before I put it out. uh to do to do a model, a SpaceX model, financial model, income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement between now and 2050 when we have in 20 in the 2040s Elon, if not sooner, to colonize Mars. Uh I I'll see what kind of model it comes back with in terms of how much in terms of how correct it is and what it uses to get there. Okay, I'll do that now. SpaceX, a financial model or income statement. Okay. Income statement. That's the really smart model. Let's do 3.0. Make a space. You're an investor in SpaceX. Yes. In the private fund. Yes. So am I. Make a SpaceX uh income statement. income statement based on uh Elon's predictions. Yes. Elon's predictions. Yeah. This will be very interesting now until 2050. Mhm. Okay. I'll put that on the screen so everybody can watch. And this is essentially going to look at everything he said about going to Mars and colonizing Mars and then tell you how valuable that company's going to be essentially. Yes. I'm not sure if you asked the question that way. Did you Did you say I just said make a SpaceX income statement based on Elon's predictions from now until 2050 and then I can ask it what the market cap would be. I wonder how long it's going to think. It's thinking for a while. Yeah, it's going to think a long time, I have a feeling. And then it's going to take you through. And I think uh you know what was interesting? Deep Seek uh the breakthrough it had on the reasoning side was it kept asking questions so it could get to the right answer faster. Mhm. I think they're all adopting it now because because Deep Seek's open source. Yeah. And they didn't need to spend much as much money on the training side because they That's what they say. They said $6 million trained on a high-end workstation. And that that of course caused a trillion dollars worth of damage in the US market with Nvidia, one of the biggest uh casualties because people said, "Well, wait a minute. We're doing these data centers. You mean we don't need all those big data center servers to to do this work? We could do a high-end workstation for $6 million. The answer is the pre-training for that model was done on a 50,000 GPU cluster that the hedge fund had. And the last step of the large language model was the $6 million step. Okay, it's made its mind up now. Oh, so it says Starlink revenue in 2050 would be 250 billion. Mhm. It says launch and Starship revenue would be 120 billion. So the total revenue would be 370 billion. Cost of goods sold would be 172 billion. Gross profit therefore would be 200 billion. Operating expense is 37 billion. Operating income would be 161 billion. after tax. So the net income would be 128 billion. All right. And I have to to be honest I haven't seen the last stage of this model. We haven't that would be very interesting. I'd love to get a a copy of that. If you could send it to me 100% I'll email it to you straight after. You know when I asked Chat GBT earlier I said who is the number one woman in the world in investing? It repeatedly said your name. So that's a pretty remarkable thing to have accomplished, especially in a male-dominated industry where there isn't many women that managed to rise to the top of that industry. So what what is it about you in hindsight? You know, it's difficult to be objective about oneself, but what is it about you that meant that you were successful in a male-dominated industry, in an industry that's incredibly difficult to be successful in? My advice to all young people getting into their first job especially, but even later jobs is my mission when I started was to make my boss look brilliant. Now, why do I why do I say that? It's much more applicable today and possible today than it was back when there were no computers and no cell phones, which is when I started, right? But what did I do? My boss wanted to communicate. He was an economist. Wanted to communicate in charts that, you know, he couldn't find. So, I figured out a way. I went to our time sharing system. That's all you could do back then. Time sharing is an ancient mainframe technology. And I figured out a way to make these charts and delight him. And and and I loved doing it. And I loved learning. I loved learning about technology. I learned tech and about economics uh through him. So that was the first thing. And then why is it important to make your boss look good? Well, I think because if you do make him look good, um first of all, you should you owe him a debt of of gratitude if he turns around and gives you more grow growth opportunities. So, but if he or she doesn't, then you know it's time to go to the next place where you make that next boss look brilliant and maybe you have the growth trajectory. I had bosses who they they love the fact that I loved what I was doing that I had such high conviction in what I was doing and I and I'm going to give Art Laugher a lot of credit for that. When I walked in to the financial world, I knew more about economics than most of the people in the room. And that was a great source of confidence. A great source of confidence. And when I was leaving that firm, uh, someone said my my boss at the time said, I was moving from LA to New York. My my boss said, "You've only been doing this for three years. You're not ready to become their economist." And um and I just thought I was ready. And more important, the company to which I was going thought I was ready. And as I was leaving um both he and and others said, "Remember, you know more about economics than anyone else in the room. You'll so take that with you." And I did. And I think that sense of confidence in understanding the way the world works from a macroeconomic uh point of view was critically important. Now when I got to New York, I could not even speak Art Laugher's name because the LER curve says if you cut tax rates that are too high, you will get more revenue. And what had happened is Ronald Reagan had cut tax rates, but Paul Vulkar at the Fed was trying to starve the economy of inflation. So we were in backto-back recessions and no, the government wasn't getting more revenue. So Art Laugher was, you know, on I I couldn't say anything, but you know, it was fine. I I knew he was going to be right and we were right. That was the story of the 80s and 90s. And that's why uh Jennison Associates and the chief investment officer there uh Sig Sagalis um gave me an opportunity to get into equity research. I wanted to grow. I loved the stock market and he loved my conviction and so he started me on cyclical companies which of course I would know a lot about. But Jennison was primarily a techoriented firm and of course knowing that I wanted to delight the boss. I wanted to get into the technologies and I made it my business to know as much about them and and I was the only one willing to uh research stocks outside the US. Think about that now. Art Lather Arthur Ler. Yes. He wrote this letter. Oh, he did. He wrote this letter describing you. Oh, to you? To me? Oh. He said, "There was this young lady named Kathy Duddy, later Kathy Wood, whose face was the map of Ireland, and whose ambition was over the moon. I was a tough teacher and grader, and Cathy's first steps were shaky, but in short order, she rose to the occasion and aced the course. impressed as I was and believe me I was very impressed. I helped Kathy land her first job at Capital Group in LA and from that point in time it was game on. I followed her career closely after Capital Group then on to Tillo and her final job as an employee at Alliance Alliance Bernstein. As you may imagine, she was the star investor at each stage. And in 2014, Kathy took a giant entrepreneurial leap in the founding and funding of Arc Invest. And the letter goes on to say, "She's a mega success and God bless her. She never has forgotten her now aged professor." Well, that was very nice of him. Um uh so he he has been so important to my career. Now I'm going to get a little weepy, but um I gave him 1% of my company when I started it. And uh so he deserved it. He deserved it because he gave him a big big break. He believed in me first. Why does that make you emotional? I don't know. We have we've gone through our life together and what's so interesting now is um so interesting and and fun is Bitcoin has rejuvenated art. He's 85 years old or 84 and I'm seeing his excitement and he wants to spread the word around the world and now we're going into stable coins together and he just started an account on X. He has a flip phone. He doesn't do email and yet he has just started an account on X. And so we now have this technology relationship because he wasn't going to technology but he knows he's seen like Arc alto together we have 3.3 million followers and he's seen the reach that X has and he's also I think the other thing and I'm I'm haven't answered your question. It's just very nice of him to do that you know I see it's a typed one page and very sweet. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is great question for you. What is the craziest idea you ever had that turned out to be right? Well, there are just a a few one thing that it's it's not that crazy, but it just gives you a sense of how not obvious in the early days of ARC. I remember saying I remember saying, "Well, you know, autonomous vehicles are robots." And I was in a research meeting and everybody said, "No, they're not." And of course they are. You know, it's a crazy idea, but and there was something I mean there some things I'll say and the reason that's important from our point of view is this convergence idea, robotics, AI, energy storage. It's wait a minute, this is a very big idea. So it seemed it seems like no. It's like I think it is. And and so it was like we were we were, you know, feeling our way in the dark because that was 2014 and nobody was really talking about them. And there's something like that very recently. Oh, we were talking. It's not a crazy idea. It's just we're trying to solve problems. Um someone as we were going on and on at our brainstorm on Friday about humanoid robots, uh someone he he's our um what do we call him? What do you call kermagin? Uh, no. Good way. In a good way. I don't even know what kmagin means. Kromagin means kind of contrarian or kermagin like yeah yeah yeah that's not going to work you know. Um he humanoid robots. He said he said I don't think that's going to be a thing. He said, "We really need robots that are going to be able to carry a lot more in terms of weight than those things will on those stilts." And in my mind, kind of flashed um transformer robots, they'd have legs and all of that. You'd be able to fold them up so they look like a tamp tank. Mhm. And so that's what I said on uh I know this doesn't sound so crazy to you, but uh I don't I just imagining the future going to Disneyland when I'm 11 years old. We had just come over uh from Ireland and seeing someone holding a phone on the carousel for progress and you know saying I'm going to have one of those. Um, it sounded crazy at the time and I felt a little crazy but always. So, you think we're going to have transformer robots? Yeah. So, the robot that cleans my house can transform and maybe become and everybody laughed at me but I think that's going to happen. Another one was and this was on these are just little ideas in terms of how things hit my brain but uh someone was talking about boring which is another one of Elon's companies the underground transportation thinks tunnels and stuff. Yeah, I forget what someone said in a post on X, but I my answer was Mars obviously. And people were laughing at that. And then as they were talking about they're saying, of course they're going to put that transportation system underground. We learned why you shouldn't have it on top of the ground from Earth. So just a little things look catch me in a funny way. It's not the craziest. They're just like, "Oh, maybe that is the way things are going to work." I wonder if if Elon dies before we get to Mars, or if he just dies in the next 10 years from anything, from any cause, how much of an impact that will have on our rate of progress generally with space and electric vehicles and humanoid robots could be quite profound. He is getting us so far along that, you know, there's just going to be a runway he's created for years and years. Think about it. Mars 2040 50 you know Kathy thank you thank you for doing what you do and um that's a a sort of multifaceted point of gratitude because you do so much um you do so much in educating all of us in terms of innovation investing and what the future looks like but also from your fund's perspective and your company's perspective you do so much in open sourcing and putting the research and the work that you guys do out into the world when you don't necessarily have to but as I've heard you say it's a great benefit both to the world but also you do it because it also brings people to your fund right and um it certainly did for me that's how I came across you many many years ago when I had was reading some research with my brother um around investing in the future and innovation and understanding your thesis around all of those things but also from the education side you're distilling this complex research into simple um language and information that the next generation can understand so that this moment of transition doesn't catch them off guard and that's an incredible thing but I but I have to say as well you're such an inspiration for the very fact that you have achieved what you've achieved in your life. It's it's exceed it's extremely rare for someone and I don't always like to talk about gender or race or the those kinds of things but it's a point of it's a particular point a pertinent point in this case because you have succeeded in a very maledominated industry and I think just your presence your existence alone is going to inspire lots of women um and men people like me um to pursue finance and investing as a career. So thank you so much for doing what you do and thank you for being who you are. It's incredibly important and you've demystified so many things for me over the years even though we've never met. Um, but watching your videos and reading the research that you guys put out. So, I'm going to link all of that below and linked your websites and your funds and all those things so people can learn more. But yeah, thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for doing what you do and and it's been an honor and a privilege and I know you have an incredible audience. So, you've built a fantastic business here, and I have a feeling uh that this new world that that you're fearing is going to be very good to you. I hope so. Yes. Thank you. The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid. But what if you had the right question to start them with? Every single guest on the diary of a co has left behind a question in this diary. And it's a question designed to challenge, to connect, and to go deeper with the next guest. And these are all the questions that I have here in my hand. On one side, you've got the question that was asked, the name of the person who wrote it. And on the other side, if you scan that, you can watch the person who came after who answered it. 51 questions split across three different levels. The warm-up level, the open up level, and the deep level. So, you decide how deep the conversation goes. And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms, alone at night, and on first dates and everywhere in between. I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below, and you can get yours at the diary.com. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. [Music] [Music]