I just returned from the Orlando MoneyShow, where I was a featured speaker alongside a motley crew of Angel Publishing colleagues.
These conferences are great barometers of the hot sectors that will really start cranking in the subsequent months.
In between keynote speeches by Peter Schiff and Steve Forbes, a half-dozen cocktail hours, and some back-room IPO presentations, I was able to take inventory of the crowd at large…
Now, I spoke on the compounding power of dividend aristocrats — which I’ve been harping on for a while. From my experience the dividend presentations are some of the most well-attended. There was a pretty packed house for my speech, while I attended others that only brought a smattering of attendees.
I thought I had a good crowd until I wandered by a door that was buzzing with excitement. Lines were literally out of the door and snaked around the hotel corridors. I approached the schedule sign and it read: Cannabis: Our Gold of the Future. It was a presentation about marijuana stocks, but judging by the crowd noise you’d have thought Bob Marley came back from the dead for some posthumous jammin’…
I couldn’t even get into the standing room-only area.
This may not seem like a big deal, considering the media attention for all things marijuana right now, but I will say, it was a marked difference from the Toronto MoneyShow a mere few months ago, when the marijuana rooms had plenty of empty seats.
This goes to show you that the time for marijuana-related stocks has finally come, and if history is any guide, we’ll see a hyperbolic interest in marijuana stocks for the next few years…
The big money is quietly pouring into both the medical and recreational marijuana spaces.
As I told you a few weeks ago, PayPal founder and famed venture capitalist Peter Thiel just 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 backing legitimizes this young, budding industry. His 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.
But he’s not the only one…
Other big-time tech investors — who are generally ahead of the earth-shaking trends — are also starting to take their pieces of the market.
Take Tom Bollich for example. He founded the wildly popular game company Zynga, which developed social online games FarmVille and Words With Friends.
He has gone “all-in” on the marijuana space.
“This is a basement industry looking to put on its big-boy pants,” Bollich told USA Today.
Bollich is using his tech background to make himself a player in the commercial cannabis grower space. He is currently the CEO of Surna, which provides growing equipment and software for marijuana producers.
And if recent studies are any indication, he’ll have plenty of business for his new venture…
“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. And it is betting on it accordingly…
“Everybody here thinks there will be federal legalization in five to 10 years,” according to Dayton. “This is a chance for small players to get a shot at the big market before the big players.”
That scenario barely ever happens. So, if you aren’t a Silicon Valley tycoon or a fat-pocketed, accredited investor, you have a few ways to play this…
Now, caveat emptor: most marijuana companies are still in their infancies, which means they carry a high degree of risk.
But as I discussed at my MoneyShow speech, the only true way to grow your wealth without losing your shirt is to buy index funds and enroll in IRM (72) programs. You simply cannot time the market and you certainly can’t outright beat it…
Once you stake down your “safe money”, you should really free up some capital to take a home run swing on a few positions that have incredible upside.
That’s why I compiled a full report on companies embracing medical marijuana technologies — with three degrees of risk for any investor.
- One is a solid blue chip that offers an IRM (72) program…
- One is a growing biotech that has already shown the ability to make money and reward investors (we’re already up 50% with plenty of room to run)…
- One is a speculative “home run” play that could deliver life-changing gains…
Add them all up, and it’s a fully diversified medical marijuana portfolio that will protect you from the wild market swings while setting you up on the ground floor of a serious profit opportunity…
Unless you want to find yourself in the standing room-only seating while the rest of us have comfy chairs, I suggest you take a look today.
