One of the things I love about working at PBRG is, my publisher is unafraid of sharing both bullish and bearish advice about the same investment.
For instance, back in 2016 and 2017, I was running around the world writing about bitcoin.
I lost count of the number of negative articles I saw bashing bitcoin during that period. But it never fazed me when my publisher ran them because I always had the chance to write counterarguments to you.
Unlike the mainstream press, we don’t make our money from corporate sponsors. And unlike Wall Street, we don’t take commissions or fees. Our business model relies on sharing bold ideas – sometimes, with differing opinions.
I bring this up because recently, you may have read an article run by my publisher predicting cannabis stocks would go to zero.
And perhaps you’re wondering if this is a reasonable possibility.
Now, I’m sure that some pot stocks will, in fact, go to zero. But the whole sector? No, that’s just hyperbole.
I’d also wager none of them would go to zero for any of the reasons laid out in the article.
Typically, businesses fail due to fraud, poor management, lack of access to capital, or just plain bad luck. But the logic of that article was built on something quite ridiculous.
Its thrust was: Because people can grow their own cannabis, somehow, that’ll sink the entire cannabis industry.
But let’s examine this logic…
Anyone can grow their own tobacco. Has that killed the cigarette, cigar, and roll-your-own tobacco business?
Sure, tobacco use is down. But it has nothing to do with people growing tobacco for their own personal use.
People are smoking fewer cigarettes for health reasons. Yet, even with that headwind, global tobacco firms rang up nearly $134 billion in sales last year.
Now, maybe it’s too difficult to grow your own tobacco. So let’s look at something easier, like cooking hamburgers.
Anyone can buy ground beef and fry up some patties at home, right? It’s a lot less work than buying cannabis seeds, setting up grow lights, and messing around with smelly fertilizers.
But if burgers are so easy to make, why has McDonald’s sold over 100 billion of them?
Weird, right? Imagine someone paying for something they can easily do themselves.
And what about coffee?
Surely, coffee is the easiest thing in the world to make at home. So why would anyone buy coffee from a store? And who in their right mind would pay $5 for a cup of coffee they could make at home?
Shhh… Don’t tell this to Starbucks or its 91 million customers per week about the making-coffee-at-home trick. It might send the stock to zero.
My point is: If someone wants to attack the cannabis industry, there are plenty of credible ways they can go about it.
In fact, I’ve mentioned many of them – including overpaying for acquisitions, doing dilutive offerings, and poor control over corporate treasuries.
Come to think of it, those problems plague just about every publicly traded company.
Perhaps they’re all going to zero, too? What do you think? Is that the trade of the century or what?
Of course, it isn’t.
But you can see how weak logic leads to weak decisions. And the logic behind the idea that all cannabis stocks are going to zero because people can grow their own is the weakest I’ve ever seen.
For me, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve always done for my subscribers. And it’s doing deep research that can only be done in the field.
That’s why I was on the road 173 days this year. It’s why I flew over 200,000 miles.
I put myself behind the scenes of the cannabis and crypto industries to unearth the real winners that’ll emerge from these nascent megatrends.
In closing, I’ll remind you to always remember: For every person who believes something is going up, there’s another person who believes the exact opposite.
This is what makes a market.
Your job is to pay attention to the quality of the research and the logic of the argument… and make a rational choice based on rational analysis.
Let the Game Come to You!
Teeka Tiwari
Editor, Palm Beach Daily