Benzinga | Mar 6, 2021 09:38AM EST

Why Cathie Wood Launched Ark Funds

Ark Funds CEO and Founder Cathie Wood took a risk when she created the fund management company, Wood said when she joined Benzinga's "Raz Report" this week.

Wood on Ark Funds: Wood said people asked her why she didn't retire after leaving AllianceBernstein, where she was the CIO. But she still had more she wanted to do.

"I love this business," Wood said.

The opportunity for Ark Funds to do things differently from traditional asset managers was appealing to Wood.

"I wanted the opportunity to demonstrate that we didn't have to pay attention to benchmarks to guide our investing," she said.

Analysts are graded on how they perform against benchmarks. Wood wanted to run funds that focused on overall performance. The fund manager saw an opportunity with lots of innovation set to take off in the technology market.

People thought Wood and Ark Funds was risky in the beginning. Wood said people are starting to have the same thoughts about Ark Funds being too risky with its investments once again.

"The big risk is in the benchmarks, not what we're doing," she said.

Related Link: How Amazon Helped Cathie Wood Make Her Name On Wall Street

Fund Performance: Ark Funds had three of the six best performing ETFs in 2020, according to data from ETFDB.com.

Ark Genomic Revolution ETF (NYSE:ARKG) was up 180% in 2020.

Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (NYSE:ARKW) was up 157% in 2020.

Ark Innovation ETF (NYSE:ARKK) was up 153% in 2020.

Ark Fintech Innovation ETF (NYSE:ARKF) was up 108% in 2020.

Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotic ETF (NYSE:ARKQ) was up 107% in 2020.