Special Report: Investing in Marijuana Stocks
Marijuana stocks are gearing up to be huge this year and beyond. Some investors have already banked gains of over 2,000% on some budding marijuana stocks. And as more and more states legalize both medical and recreation weed, those profits are going to keep on growing.
Here's why grass is greener than practically anything else you can invest in right now...
I'm not going to bother with any ethical issues here. Whether you support pot smoking or not, this industry is going to be massive.
For better or worse, marijuana is immensely popular. And its popularity is increasing each and every day...
A recent survey revealed that 7.3% of Americans 12 or older regularly used marijuana in 2012, up from 7% in 2011. That's 7.6 million Americans that light up almost every single day of their lives. Countless millions of others use it occasionally...
And more people use marijuana than are actually estimated (in no small part because people don't like admitting incriminating things about themselves). The real number of smokers has been estimated as high as 50 million.
Most telling is that the new generation of teenagers is smoking more pot than ever. Today's teens are lighting up 80% more than they were in 2008. In fact, more teenagers smoke pot than cigarettes... and you know what a profitable business cigarettes have been — even after they were proven to give you cancer. Marijuana has no proven health effects anywhere near that serious.
It stands to reason that as more and more states open up to legal weed, this new crop of Americans will be buying it up in record numbers.
In fact, the legal marijuana industry in the U.S. already pulled in $5.4 billion last year. That's billion with a 'B'. Just think about that...
Of the 50 states, only four currently have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes and 24 have legalized it for medicinal purposes.
Once the others fall into place, we could be looking at a $200+ billion industry. Whatever your opinions on marijuana may be, there is one thing that cannot be argued: there aren't many chances to get in on the ground floor of an industry that size.
"The demand for marijuana is insatiable," according to Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp Inc. (HEMP). "It's a feeding frenzy for the birth of a new industry."
The trend is clearly growing in favor of marijuana growers and distributors. You can choose to turn up your nose, or you can start cashing in on the feeding frenzy while it's still on the way up. In other words, the time has finally come for marijuana stocks...
After years of wild stock price swings, evolving legislation, and political posturing, the marijuana sector has finally found its first major backer and the big money has already started to stack up behind both recreational and medical marijuana.
PayPal founder and famed venture capitalist Peter Thiel sank $75 million into the space by investing in Privateer Holdings — a Seattle-based company that has large investments in several marijuana-related enterprises.
Thiel’s Founder’s Fund has been in on the ground floor of many other disruptive and wildly profitable sectors like Facebook, Spotify, and Airbnb. It’s safe to say that he knows an emerging industry when he sees it...
And the marijuana industry is going to be massive.
Here’s why the stars are aligning for marijuana right now... and why you should get on board before the next billionaire dumps a ton of money into the sector.
Privateer Holdings currently operates three large companies in the marijuana space.
It operates Canadian medical marijuana producer Tilray, which is a mail-order business for medical marijuana companies in Canada — where medical marijuana regulations are much more relaxed than here in the U.S. Last year alone, it unloaded 35,000 shipments of marijuana.
Privateer also holds Leafly, the world’s largest resource for information about both medical and recreational cannabis. Leafly allows you to explore different cannabis strains for their medical effectiveness, flavors, and overall quality — much like an Angie’s List or Yelp for marijuana.
Leafly is hugely popular in the space: It averages over 4 million monthly visitors to the website. It expects to be profitable by next year.
Now, while both of those companies operate in the medical marijuana space, Privateer is positioning itself for the widespread legalization of recreational use as well.
And right now — especially in the recreational markets — it’s the Wild West out there. If early investors place the right bets, they’ll be rewarded with one of the biggest growth markets in the recent history of investing.
“There are no standards, no leaders, no significant brands — we’re at the point where the industry is being ‘productized,’ where suddenly someone buying cannabis might begin seeing it packaged nicely, in a way that implies safety, consistency and quality. That’s a big leap from buying something in a Ziploc bag,” noted co-founder and CEO of Privateer Brendan Kennedy.
I’ll say...
Here's how Privateer Holdings co-founder and Chief Financial Officer Michael Blue explains the industry growth:
Since we announced that Founders Fund made the first institutional investment in the cannabis industry in January, we’ve seen the profile of our investor base change in ways that would have been unthinkable five years ago when we set out to transform this industry
We closed the Series B round with a group of sophisticated family offices and institutional investors who made seven- and eight-figure investments. That’s a vote of confidence for the entire industry and an important step forward in finally ending cannabis prohibition.
That round of financing has closed now, after raising $75 million in series B funding — the largest private capital fund raising the industry has ever seen. All told, the start-up has raised over $82 million and doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon.
"This is the fastest-growing industry in America,'' according to Troy Dayton, CEO of ArcView Group. "Despite all the stigma, people are recognizing this could be the next great American industry.''
ArcView is a research and investment firm focused on "canna-business."
It just released a market study that found a 74% increase in marijuana sales in the U.S. from 2013 to 2014. That massive jump is due primarily to legalization in Colorado and Washington. This will continue. In fact, next year Oregon and Alaska will start selling legal pot — and many more will follow.
Another factor is more relaxed regulations regarding medical marijuana. While only a couple states have outright legalized it, 23 states have already approved medical marijuana. Medicinal marijuana sales in California alone could account for nearly half of a $2.7 billion market.
ArcView is predicting that market will swell to $10 billion in five years' time...
Now, that is an impressive number, but when marijuana is totally legalized and destigmatized, ArcView expects it to become a $100 billion to $200 billion-a-year business.
