Cathie Wood is the co-founder of ARK Invest—an investment management firm known primarily for Ms. Wood’s appearances on financial news networks and her penchant for chasing high-flying tech stocks and other speculative assets.

Even a small sampling of Ms. Wood’s television appearances and reporting reveals little aptitude for investing or critical reasoning. Rather, she is a trend-chaser, buying stocks and other assets that have already gone up sharply and made splashy headlines in the process. 

[Chicken in a Strange Way by Melanie Thomas Armstrong (Ballast Books, 2026), 461 pp.]

Modern economic life no longer unfolds within reality as it emerges from human action. It operates within a constructed order that substitutes itself for real processes. Governments do not engage with the economy as it is lived and experienced. They act upon abstractions that stand in for it. What is presented as analysis is in fact a replacement.

As Kevin Warsh takes over as chair of the Federal Reserve, investors and financial media outlets are looking closely for any hints at how his appointment will impact monetary policy.