Cathie Wood testing 'ARK on steroids' short strategy, backs Zoom, Tesla and Bitcoin

Famed investor Cathie Wood said Wednesday that her ARK Invest firm is testing a short portfolio that she characterizes as "ARK on steroids." In terms of individual stocks, the founder and CEO of Ark Invest told CNBC that she backed Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). She also described herself as a "net buyer" of Bitcoin (BTC-USD), saying she makes strategic investments in the cryptocurrency, even though she doubted the need to use it as an inflation hedge. On the short fund in development, Wood reported that it's currently being tested internally for employees. The portfolio would short stocks in the "big benchmarks," particularly targeting "value traps." "We think the benchmarks are where the big risks are longer-term, because they are filling up with value traps -- those companies that have done very well historically but are going to be disintermediated and disrupted by the massive amount of innovation that's taking