저자: CathieWood · 외국인
요약 보기
Fed 금리인하는 옳다는 입장. 경기 부문(주택·비주거건설·자동차)은 침체이며 디플레이션 압력이 지속된다고 봄. 물가는 3% 아래로 내려왔고 연내 마이너스 가능성까지 언급. 실업률 5% 이상 가능성 언급. 투자 측면에서는 엔비디아는 괜찮은 주식이나 소프트웨어 계층(팔란티어 등)과 비공개 AI 기업(OpenAI, SpaceX)에 주목, 테슬라는 자율주행 기회로 장기 긍정적이며 2029년 목표가 제시. 코인베이스 보유를 언급했으나 방향 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
Well, it's good to have you here.
There is a lot going on. We want to start with macro, which we often do with you. First up, the upbeat labor market, and the Fed finally cutting interest rates. You've been beating the drum for some time about the Fed cutting rates.
At the same time, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said the half-point cut was a mistake. Stanley Druckenmiller, the hedge fund billionaire, believes the Fed shouldn't have cut rates at our most recent meeting. He thinks the central bank has boxed itself into a corner by guiding for even more rate cuts ahead.
Do you think the Fed rate cut was a mistake? Absolutely not. Not at all. It's been very interesting to watch the revisions in economic activity. The revisions to the employment numbers have been down, and they were much, much weaker than originally reported. When we look at earnings reports and their revenues, we're seeing a lot of companies showing negative revenues.
So the headline numbers have recently been heavily influenced, certainly by upward revisions in personal income from transfer payments. That's government stimulus, and interestingly, dividends. But if you look at the economy, the cyclical part is sick. It's sick. If you look at the sectors one by one, they've been falling into recession no matter what the headline numbers say. Housing went down immediately when the Fed started raising rates, and we're down 20 to 40%. That's still a recession. You've got non-residential construction in recession, and autos are weak.
Kathy, I know it's a backward-looking number, but what do you make of today's payrolls report? 254,000 jobs added to the economy in September. It doesn't seem recessionary.
Let me finish, Tim, I'll get to that in one minute. We've got those sectors, and then the small and medium business sector. Their confidence is at 2008-09 levels, and certain pricing measures, certainly the cyclical ones, have actually been deflationary. One thing I do think is going on, and that is helping, is that as prices come down, consumers are getting better and better deals, and they're spending. So I think that is sustaining activity.
A lot of people say real growth causes inflation, but in this case, and historically in most cases, if you cut prices, you'll get more activity. As long as the labor market holds in here, and yes, today was very reassuring that way, and companies like Walmart, Costco, and other auto companies either increase their discounts or cut prices, I think activity will come and the labor market will continue to hold.
But if they try to jack prices back up, it was very interesting to see FedEx, after turning positive in revenues and then turning negative year over year, basically say they're going to use prices to make it up. I think that's going to backfire. Over the next year, many people will understand how deflationary the undercurrents in the economy are.
Deflation is not always bad. Part of it is because of innovation, technologically enabled innovation. If car prices are coming down, their costs are coming down too. There's a lot of confusion about what's going on out there, because productivity is stronger than expected, giving companies the latitude to cut prices and still protect margins, if that sustains.
Kathy, when we talked with you earlier this year, let's go back to March for a moment. You mentioned the possibility of inflation going negative this year. You also talked about unemployment going above 5%. Are those still your calls?
Yes, though we'll have to push it out, because inflation did levitate as companies tried to price to make up for shortfalls in unit growth. It levitated in the 3.5 to 4% range. Now it's broken below 3%, and we're hearing more and more companies basically trying to attract attention with lower prices.
If you look at money growth on a year-over-year basis, it was negative for about a year and a half, maybe more. Money is a leading indicator for inflation, and we believe inflation will go much lower than people expect right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see it go negative, especially if consumers are worried about job loss, whether because of AI and automation or otherwise. The saving rate tends to go up during those periods, which means companies will have to price even more aggressively.
On unemployment above 5%, we could see it. I will say today gave me pause in terms of this productivity dynamic. If companies get productivity growth from existing employees, they may not feel like laying people off. They can lower prices to keep consumer demand going.
Hey, Cathy, the election is front and center, just a month and change out here in the U.S. How does this dynamic change, in your view, whether President Trump is re-elected or we see a Harris administration? Who would you support, in terms of what's good for the U.S. economy and America?
Our focus is on innovation. Something very important happened this past year. We were very concerned that excessive regulation was driving innovation off our shores, particularly when it came to crypto or digital assets. We've had a very hostile regulator, and I'd say the same is true of the FTC in denying M&A, which has prevented many innovative companies from enjoying liquidity events by selling to bigger companies.
I think we're hearing from both candidates that those two jobs are on the line, perhaps for that reason, and we're seeing more alignment that innovation solves problems, so we should not discourage it. From that point of view, I'm happy to see bipartisan movement. I'll favor lower regulation every day when it comes to innovation. I don't think tariffs are a great thing at all for innovation and economic activity. So there's something on both sides that gives us pause. But the biggest impediments to innovation are what we're focused on. We're developing clarity around what will happen at the FCC and the FTC.
Do you think one candidate is better for the investment environment for companies than the other? Here I'll revert to being the CEO of a company. I'm representing both sides and focusing on innovation, which is of primary concern to us. I've given you a sense of where we think both sides stand on innovation regulation. The one that will lower more regulations, because regulations are strangling this economy, strangling small business and big business, that's a very important one. That would be good as well.
Fair enough. Let's talk innovation, which is your world. Big news this week: OpenAI raising $6.5 billion in new funding at a $157 billion valuation. ARK put in $250 million. The Wall Street Journal reminded us that's the minimum required to access their financial documents. Why this investment? What did you learn about the company and its growth trajectory?
Well, we've been doing research on AI for ten years now, which is why we were so early into it. We've obviously taken it down in most of our portfolios, out of the flagship. We've been looking for the next big play. We think Nvidia is still a fine stock, but in terms of the unexpected, we think the opportunity is in the software layers. As you know, Palantir is a big position for us in the top ten, and UiPath as well. It had a stumble, but it's coming back, and as more people understand how well-positioned it is, it will do very well.
But many of the software companies we think will benefit are in the private sector. I'm thrilled that we have a venture fund. Our purpose is to democratize venture capital, so for $500 anyone can get access to OpenAI, which is the third-largest position, or SpaceX, which is the largest. If you look at software, many people say we have so many software companies in the public markets. What we mean is that we think the software world is going to change fairly dramatically, and we'll see a share shift away from software as a service toward platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service, like cloud. Think about Palantir and Snowflake.
The reason is that engineers are going to be made much more productive by OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Google, and others. We're going to see companies customizing their own software for their own needs, as opposed to just going automatically to one-size-fits-all software as a service.
Cathy, forgive me, we only have a couple of minutes left, so I want to get in a few more questions. You mentioned closing. You did that in the flagship ARK Innovation Fund last year. But you also told us back in March that you used some of that to buy into Coinbase since February 2023. Coinbase is up a bit more than 150%, a great return, but Ark Venture is up nearly 500% since then. Do you regret that move last year? If I had bought both Coinbase and Ark Venture and sold something else, would I have been happier?
Sure, I would have been happier. From the time we bought Coinbase to when we were talking to you, or whenever we measured it, Coinbase actually did better than Ark Venture. It has come back and had another big run, but we're now really focused on the future. Software is going to be huge for us. We think foundation models will deliver $15 trillion in market cap over the next 5 to 10 years, starting from a standing start. We'll see what happens to Ark Venture over that time.
Is there something that could make you buy into Nvidia at this point, or add it to your flagship? I know you own some.
If the price came down, yes. I must say one of my weaknesses in a momentum market is watching a lot of momentum drive the stock and realizing that many people who never owned it are getting in, and they might be weak holders. That factored into my thinking. We got into Nvidia at $0.40 per share in 2014, so wherever we got out, we were extremely happy with where it's been. It was the third-largest contributor to our flagship fund. Technically, we would have loved to still have a bigger position in the portfolios. But we're all about the future, and our research is focusing us on this software layer, which has huge amounts of appreciation ahead.
Let's go to Tesla, the number one holding in your flagship ARK Innovation ETF. It's down about 40% from its all-time high in November 2021, with little change year to date. When do you decide to change position in a market you understand better than ever? What is your thinking about Tesla today? You have a 2029 estimate of $600 a share. What gets us there? We've only got about 30 seconds.
Autonomous mobility. October 10th is going to focus analysts not just on Tesla, but on the autonomous opportunity. Tesla is the largest AI project in the world. Talk about shifting resources from ARK Venture into Tesla: we think, longer term, that is going to prove to be a very good move.
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