How Will Election Night Affect Marijuana Stocks?

Election Night 2016 is obviously going to have a major impact on the world of marijuana law reform. With so many issues and measures and propositions and questions on ballots nationwide, it will be the biggest night in the history of the movement. Politically and culturally, things will never be the same. But the night will have reverberations throughout many aspects of people’s lives that may get overlooked. One of those areas is financial markets.

For cannabis businesses, legality is the difference between growth and death. Their market, for the most part, already exists; it just needs to be brought out into the open. And when more states legalize, more legal customers are created. On Election Night 2016 there is the possibility for tens of millions of new customers to be created in states across the U.S.

This means it could be a very good night for cannabis stocks. “With this election cycle and states such as California, Nevada & Florida (to name a few) voting on either recreational or medical marijuana laws the cannabis industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift,” Jason Spatafora, the fabled “Wolf of Weed St.,” told The Marijuana Times. “If the votes go as they should the industry will be flooded with capital raised in both the public & private markets. Many investors in the public markets will be looking to companies that are ancillary in nature which are either providing the ‘picks & shovels’ for industry expansion or technology utilities to service the consumers of cannabis or the companies actually touching the plant via cultivation and dispensaries. For more astute investors there are companies in the biotech industry that are trading on the Nasdaq right now and developing drug therapies based off of the endocannabinoids found within the plant.”

While investing in the stock market carries a lot of risk and you should do extensive research before putting up your own money, the Wolf did have a couple of picks he thinks will benefit from favorable votes on Election Night: “Two companies that stand to benefit greatly are MCIG Inc (MCIG), a company that specializes in not just CBD related lifestyle products, but also has a division called Scalable Solutions which builds large scale cultivation facilities in Nevada,” he told us. “Nevada is important because as it stands it is the fastest growing market in the United States. Whether the vote passes in November MCIG is insulated by any changes since Nevada already has medical marijuana laws. Due to its current revenues, growth and the fact they are relatively debt free I see them out performing many companies that are saddled with toxic debt. The grow operation will be a continued source of revenue for the company on top of the revenue they currently have coming in from their CBD based products.

“For a tech company with a user base set to explode and many companies and products that need advertising portals outside of Google & Facebook, MassRoots (MSRT) is worth a look. While there have been growing pains with any start-up the current trajectory is less expenditures and growing revenues which is exactly what investors should be looking at. With a shift in the cultural consensus on marijuana happening now, I’m guessing their user base continues to expand.”

In seeming preparation for favorable votes, the North American Marijuana Index, a group of 23 stocks that includes some of the fastest-growing companies in the sector, has shown big gains over the last few months. This means many investors are looking for the legal cannabis market to open up extensively in the near future.

So where is the Wolf putting his money? “With the buzz after the vote surrounding marijuana stocks my opinion is that biotech is the safest bet for long term investors. The companies that have made up my personal portfolio in the last 12 months have been GWPH, ZYNE and INSY.”  

If you ever wanted to get into marijuana stocks, now may be the best time ever.