Global Market Comments
May 18, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WEDNESDAY JUNE 29, 2022 LONDON STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(HOW “HIGH” CAN MARIJUANA STOCKS GO?)
(TLRY), (CGC), (TOKE)
(TESTIMONIAL)
Posts
I called one of my long-time northern Nevada clients the other day to find out why he hadn’t renewed his subscription.
He told me he was quitting the stock market for good and going into the marijuana business. There were no values to be had in stocks anymore and fortunes were to be made growing pot on an industrial scale.
Then what I learned was astonishing.
In the last year, marijuana cultivation in Nevada has soared from 1,000 to 5,000 acres. The number of licensed growers has rocketed from 11 to 220. The industry now injects $50 million a year into the Reno economy. You can’t go anywhere in town without running into a pot shop.
A big impetus was the passage of the 2018 US farm bill which largely decriminalized marijuana at the federal level. States have been legalizing weed for a decade. Local banks are now allowed to accept the proceeds of marijuana sales without getting hit with money laundering charges.
And here’s the real shocker. Pot growers can now get federal crop insurance for growing weed, eliminating much of the risk for farmers! Industry associations expect marijuana to become a $25 billion a year industry by 2023. It’s all proof that if you live long enough, you see everything.
Marijuana is actually quite hard to grow. Not only do fields have to be weeded every day, requiring a large labor input, marijuana is unusually sensitive to literally hundreds of plant viruses. One virus can wipe out an entire crop in three days.
The opioid epidemic has become a major factor in the explosive growth of the pot industry. Thanks to crackdowns at the federal and state level, it is almost impossible to get Vicodin any longer. In Nevada you are tracked like a dope dealer, requiring monthly urine tests to prove you’re actually using and not selling it.
However, the pain is still there. As the baby boomer generation ages (boomers are now 58-74), arthritis is becoming rampant, as are other painful maladies. Since marijuana research has been a career killer for scientists for 100 years, very little is known about the potential benefits. Today, it is being applied to migraine headaches, aching joints, and chemotherapy (it’s a great appetite builder).
When the state of Colorado legalized pot a decade ago, every family in the United States with a child afflicted by certain types of juvenile epilepsy moved there. It was the only cure.
Early during the marijuana boom, I met with the CEO of Tilray (TLRY), the largest publicly listed marijuana company, to see if there was a real trade there.
There wasn’t.
All I heard was pie in the sky predictions, rosy forecasts, and unrealistic business models. What he didn’t mention is that the listed companies still suffer from massive competition from the black market, where prices are 40% lower (it’s tax-free).
I ran a mile, deciding instead to buy more Apple (AAPL) and Tesla (TSLA). That worked. The market has heartily agreed with my analysis, taking (TLRY) down a gut-punching 98% since that meeting. Nice miss!
I talked to my own doctor to see if there was any value in the hundreds of the marijuana-based medicinal products now flooding the market. His assessment was that most products were so diluted that it was impossible to assess whether the active ingredient in marijuana, CDB or cannabidiol, was effective or not. Some contained little more than green food coloring.
We may not know the true effects of CBD for years until years of research has taken place, which is only just now getting started.
As for the public investment opportunities in marijuana, it’s another one of those industries where it’s better to use the product than buy the stock.
Avoid pot stocks like a bad trip.
Investment Opportunity?
Global Market Comments
October 6, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(HOW “HIGH” CAN MARIJUANA STOCKS GO?)
(TLRY), (CGC), (TOKE)
(TESTIMONIAL)
Global Market Comments
December 18, 2020
Fiat Lux
FEATURED TRADE:
(HOW “HIGH” CAN MARIJUANA STOCKS GO?)
(TLRY), (CGC), (TOKE)
(TESTIMONIAL)
Global Market Comments
January 7, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MONDAY FEBRUARY 3 BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA STRATEGY LUNCHEON),
(HOW “HIGH” CAN MARIJUANA STOCKS GO?)
(TLRY), (CGC), (TOKE)
Global Market Comments
October 5, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17 HOUSTON STRATEGY LUNCHEON INVITATION),
(OCTOBER 3 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A)
(SPY), (VIX), (VXX), (MU), (LRCX), (NVDA), (AAPL), (GOOG), (XLV), (USO), (TLT), (AMD), (LMT), (ACB), (TLRY), (WEED)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader October 3 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.
As usual, every asset class long and short was covered. You are certainly an inquisitive lot, and keep those questions coming!
Q: Will the market keep increasing for the rest of the year?
A: We haven’t had the pullback yet, so the short answer is yes. My yearend target of and S&P 500 (SPY) for the end of 2018 still stands. You can’t argue with the immediate price action. That said, the market is wildly overbought for the medium term and is approaching valuation levels we haven’t seen since the Dotcom peak in 2000. That why I am running a 70% cash trading book now.
Q: Should I be buying the Volatility Index (VIX) here?
A: Look at the bottom where we broke back in August, if we go down there and sit for a couple of days, then go out and buy the March 2019 $40 iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) calls—way out of the money, way far in the future—and that way if you get any bounce in the (VIX) in the next 6 months, you’ll make a ton of money on that. You can buy them today for 50 cents. Plus, we could get one of these situations where there’s a major selloff once we’re into the new year, so a 6-month (VXX) call option would hedge that.
Q: Given the choice of Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG), which would you buy?
A: If you’re a conservative, old lady, widow and orphan type, you’d probably want to buy Apple— it’s almost turned into a utility, it’s so reliably safe, going up and has a nice dividend. If you want to be aggressive, swinging for the fences young stud and are looking for a double, I would go with Google—much higher growth pattern, pays no dividend and has had a 3-month consolidation going sideways. The only thing that could hurt this company would be government regulation, but with the Democrats possibly taking control of Congress in November, the prospect of government regulation of the entire technology sector could rapidly fade away.
Q: When should I get into Health Care (XLV)?
A: I think you have to wait at this point. To me, it’s tremendously overbought at the moment, but is still enjoying a long-term bull move. This is one of my two favorite sectors in the entire market. It has been rising for four months now, even though the Trump threat of price cuts are constantly overhanging the market.
Q: Is oil (USO) going to 100?
A: Because of the disruptions caused by the Iran sanctions and the tearing up of the Iran Nuclear Treaty, Trump has created a short squeeze in oil prices. He is threatening to boycott any country that buys oil from Iran, so Iran is shipping their oil through China, which is already under sanctions itself. However, that is easier said than done. The oil business is much more complicated than people realize. For China to take Iranian oil, they literally have to build new refineries from scratch to process the crude from Iran; no two crudes are alike. When you build a major supply, you have to build refineries to match that, and you have to get it there. This market will eventually stabilize, but in the meantime, there is a big short squeeze going on in Europe.
Q: Do you see the economy going strong into the end of the year?
A: Yes, I do—we still have the tax cuts, global liquidity, and deregulation kicking in, and those things will all work until the end of the year. I think we close at the highs of the year, and after that we’re going to have to start to work hard for our money once again in 2019. The US economy is like a supertanker; it takes a long time to turn it around.
Q: Will the interest rate spike kill the market?
You think? Investors are so used to ultra-low interest rates that a transition to normal rates will be traumatic. Next Friday, we get Core CPI, and if that comes in hot we could see another spike to 3.35% in the ten-year US Treasury bond (TLT). There are now a ton of people desperate to get out of their bond holdings at last week’s prices. This is why I have been selling short the bond market for the past three years and selling as recently as Monday. The next leg down in a 30-year bear market has begun.
Q: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has shot over $30—would you sell it?
A: We love the company long term but short term it is just way overdone; take the double and run, and then buy back on the next dip.
Q: Are you still bearish on the chip company?
A: Short term yes, long term no. This sector is now totally driven by the trade war with China. This includes NVIDIA (NVDA), Micron Technology (MU) and LAM Research (LRCX). Lam is particularly exposed because they had ordered to sell ten entire chip factories to China which is now on hold. That said, the day the trade way ends these stocks will all start a 50% run up. If China gets the same free pass and symbolic treaty that Canada did, that could happen sooner than later. If you can’t sleep at night until then, cut your position in half. If you still can’t sleep, cut it again.
Q: Do you think Lockheed Martin (LMT) is a buy Here at $350?
A: No, there is a double top risk for the stock right here. And if the Democrats get control of congress, the whole Trump trade could unwind. That would give the opposition the purse strings and the first thing they’ll do is cut defense spending, which Trump bumped up by $50 billion.
Q: Do you have any views on pot stocks like Aurora Cannabis (ACB), Tilray (TLRY) and (WEED)?
Stay away in droves. They’re this year’s bitcoin stocks. It’s still illegal. That’s why these companies are all based in Canada. And after all it’s a weed. How hard is it to grow? The barriers to entry are zero.
