How Cathie Wood Pulled a 29% Year Out of a 2025 Fintech Dumpster Fire (Definitions Optional)...

POV of me and my homies at Stocks.News deleting old articles comparing “Mama Cathie” to Jim Cramer…

Because while fintech as a category spent 2025 wheezing into a paper bag, Cathie Wood somehow pulled a +29% year out of her ARK Investment Management ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF… largely by squinting really hard at the definition of “fintech” and saying “f*** it, close enough.”

Payments stocks? Cooked. Crypto prices? Slid. Bitcoin? Down 7% for the year. Yet, like Dua Lipa, ARKF kept levitating. Why? Because Cathie (smartly) ignored the label on the box and chased whatever was working.

Instead of crying over sad payment processors, ARKF leaned into AI-adjacent chaos merchants like Palantir Technologies (up 135%) and Roku (up 46%). Are those fintech companies? Depends how many drinks you’ve had… but the returns didn’t ask questions.

Even ARK’s own portfolio managers admitted it. Dan White summed it up as “pulling levers.” Translation: we went where the money was and let the theme catch up later.

(Source: Bloomberg)

Meanwhile, the “pure” fintech crowd got absolutely folded. Payment names like PayPal, Block, and Global Payments bled anywhere from 25% to 35%, while Fiserv played “how low can you go” (-67%) after an October implosion that still hasn’t been emotionally processed.

Crypto didn’t help either. Coinbase fell 9%, and the October crypto rug pull reminded everyone that you don’t get a +123% Bitcoin year every single calendar cycle (tragic, we know).

The irony? Crypto miners that super-glued themselves to the AI hype actually did fine. Names like Hut 8 (+112%) and Riot Platforms (+14%) jumped higher after realizing their warehouses of GPUs could be repurposed for something other than prayer.

ARKF also quietly nailed a couple actual fintech winners. Robinhood exploded 204%, Shopify added 51%, and even Circle Internet Group had a monster year… despite giving back 70% from its post-IPO high.

So yes, Cathie Wood once again survived a year that theoretically should’ve buried her. But before we all declare her as a genius, let’s pump the brakes…

Despite the performance, investor flows stayed mostly flat. A $600M September pop came and went, and the rest of the year looked like people circling the pool… refusing to jump in. After years of emotional whiplash from ARK’s flagship fund, people are understandably selective about when they re-enter the Cathie Cinematic Universe. 

As easy as it is to clown Mama Cathie, 2025 belongs in the record books. The real test comes in a market that isn’t lifting all boats.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Bitcoin and Robinhood as mentioned in the article.