Cathie Wood Responds To Jim Cramer's Call To Close Off Ark Funds

Ark Investment Founder and CEO Cathie Wood joined Benzinga's "Raz Report" this week to discuss the company's ETFs. She also got a chance to respond to Jim Cramer.

What Cramer Said: On CNBC last month, Jim Cramer gave the fund manager a suggestion: "Memo to Cathie Wood, close your fund."

Cramer wasn't suggesting Ark Funds shut down or for Wood to stop managing funds. The suggestion was rather to close off the Ark Funds from new investments.

"Concentrate on performance, not on trying to deploy capital," Cramer said.

Cramer said many of the great fund managers closed off their funds from new investments, such as Peter Lynch, who ran the Fidelity Magellan Fund closed off the fund. Fidelity Magellan Fund was the best-performing mutual fund in the world from 1977 to 1990 with annualized returns of 29%.

Related Link: Why Does Ark Investment Send A Daily Email On New Positions? Cathie Wood Explains

Wood Responds: Wood believes Cramer is referring to the mutual fund industry, which is not what Ark Funds is.

“It is not possible to close an ETF,” Wood told Benzinga, noting Ark is being opportunistic and is a liquidity provider. The fund manager said there is some misconception on how Ark Funds works, saying she has nothing to do with the inflows and outflows the Ark ETFs get.

"The irony is all I'm doing is concentrating on investing," she said.

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ETFs are for investors, Wood added, calling them superior to mutual funds.

Ark Funds Performance: The call from Cramer to close off the Ark Funds from new investors comes after a stellar 2020:

• Ark Genomic Revolution ETF ARKG was up 180% in 2020.
• Ark Next Generation Internet ETF ARKW was up 157% in 2020.
• Ark Innovation ETF ARKK was up 153% in 2020.
• Ark Fintech Innovation ETF ARKF was up 108% in 2020.
• Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotic ETF ARKQ was up 107% in 2020.

Ark Genomic, Ark Next Generation Internet and Ark Innovation were the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-best returning non-leveraged ETFs in 2020, according to data from ETFDB.com.