In the investor community, cannabis is smoking hot | Hacker News Reader

In the investor community, cannabis is smoking hot

thememo.com

37 pointsmorehuman9 comments

A couple years ago when Colorado legalized it I made a list of openly traded companies, thinking it'd be a huge investment opportunity.

I was too risk-averse to jump in, but I found my list of potential stocks and their prices about a year later. Of the dozen or so stocks, about half were delisted, one or two were at about 80% of what they'd been then, and the rest were on life support.

Anecdotally, I took it as a good thing I'd stayed out. Really, each of these companies I had very little information about other than that they were "doing that new thing everyone's excited about". So... if you're going to invest, make sure you know the company you invest in and aren't just following the advice of a puff piece courting your cash.

Given the US federal regulations against cannabis (and lack of interest from the banking system at large) I'd put forward that the bulk of the interesting deals in the space aren't publicly traded, so there would definitely be a negative bias to the public tickers you mention.

In support of the above post. I made ceremonial investments in GWPH PHOT TRTC and TRXC. All down between 60% and 30%

I think I've mentioned this a few times now, but more than half the fund I know that beat the market last year did so in no small part due to Marijuana stocks. Infact the space has been hot since about 2015.

Canada in particular has seen the a proliferation in growers listing on the venture exchange and we're in the middle of a round of consolidation in the industry. As a side note, this is one are that Canada leads the US, in small IPO's for junior companies, we've got a better setup for getting small companies listed and available for taking public money.

The Canadian government is gearing up to legalize it next year and there is a huge rush on to become one of the main suppliers, most analysts figure that Canada alone can support 4 -5 major growers.

My current thoughts on pot stocks is that there is lots of money to be made selling gear and being a grower, There probably own't be too many profitable companies started to sell weed to the public, as its up to individual provinces to determine distribution.

I went to an industrial grower trade show last year: "Cultivate 2016". Interestingly, there was one Cannabis exhibit, but it's clear more are coming. Once one of the big dutch-owned greenhouse operations starts growing cannabis, it's all over for the little guys :-)

http://cultivate17.org/

These guys are mentioning Cannabis support:

http://cultivate17.mapyourshow.com/7_0/exhibitor/exhibitor-d...

Interesting. I would think the only safe investment in this industry are the ones that don't touch cannabis itself since a dispensary can't use traditional banking and is mostly cash business. What I've seen are vertically integrated cannabis business that start as a dispensary, become a producer, and if successful own head shops, edible wholesale, cannabis wholesale, tools of the trade collaboration, etc. The problem is if the federal government wanted to, that whole business can be turned off overnight. So the only safe investment I would imagine are companies that invent technology used in the industry but detached from marijuana itself.

Are there publicly-traded companies that are invested in this market, or is this a case of, "you have to be rich to make money"?

You could invest in an ETF like this, or pick some companies from its holdings: http://www.horizonsetfs.com/ETF/HMMJ

One of the underappreciated beneficiaries of cannabis legalization is going to be the food industry. Millions more people are going to be constantly getting the munchies and spending a lot more money on food.

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