Elon Musk will be 'vitally important' in Trump admin: Cathie Wood

M&A could be back on the menu for companies looking forward to a second Donald Trump presidency — major banks anticipate a slew of beneficial deregulations while Big Tech believes it has found a new friend in its antitrust battles with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

To expand more upon how Corporate America is interpreting Trump’s 2024 election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, ARK Investment Management CEO and CIO Cathie Wood sits down with Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton on Market Domination Overtime. Wood’s firm manages the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), which has a variety of holdings in tech players like Tesla (TSLA), Palantir Technologies (PLTR), and Coinbase Global (COIN).

Wood calls Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler “a menace” to crypto-adoption in the US, and says replacing FTC Chair Lina Khan will “break the M&A logjam” for most companies.

“I think venture capital has been harmed dramatically in the last few years, for lack of liquidity events. Liquidity events, very importantly, involve mergers and acquisitions, and those ground to a halt, even in mergers or deals where the two companies were not competing with each other,” Wood tells Yahoo Finance.

A long-time supporter of Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Wood believes he will play a “vitally important role” in Trump’s government efficiency initiative while remaining “focused” on the plethora of companies he owns.

“As he says, and I’ve always believed, government spending is taxation, and we are bloated right now. We’re just overwhelmed with taxation as well,” Wood explains. “So I think that he’s going to be really important in two ways — introducing new technologies, and actually cutting out a lot of middlemen in the government, just like he did at Twitter.”

Tesla currently makes up 14.21% of the ARK Innovation ETF, the holdings worth just over $900 million. Wood is forecasting Tesla stock to reach $2,600 in five years time; while confident in the EV maker’s ability to bring safe fully autonomous vehicles to market, she disagrees that Tesla’s most recent stock jump has to do with Musk’s affiliation with Trump.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.