Florida-based stock picker and proud Gaeilgeoir Cathie Wood earned cult status during the pandemic with well-timed bets on disruptive innovators such as Tesla and Zoom – and now inhabits a world where even her smallest trades are parsed by investment blogs.

The daughter of Irish immigrants, who lived for a period as a child in her mother’s native village of Castlegregory in Co Kerry, Wood has taken followers of her ARK Invest on a volatile journey since the lockdown era, trying to make calls on the next big winners.

Its flagship ARK Innovation exchange-traded fund (ETF) is changing hands almost 45 per cent below its peak in January 2021. The S&P 500, which tracks most of the largest US-listed companies, has, meanwhile, soared more…