Pot Stocks Are Getting Crushed. What You Need to Know.
2 min
What goes up, must come down. But not necessarily this fast.
Canadian marijuana stocks that posted staggering gains on Wednesday fell just as fast Thursday, while U.S. multistate operators, or MSOs, were dragged down, but fared a bit better.
Tilray stock (ticker: TLRY) fell 49.7% Thursday, erasing all its gains from the prior trading day. Aphria stock (APHA) closed down 35.8%. Those companies expect to close a merger in the first half of the year. Under the deal announced in December, an investor would receive about 0.84 shares of the combined Tilray for every share of Aphria that they owned. Aurora Cannabis shares (ACB) were down 23.5%, while Canopy Growth (CGC) fell 22.1%.
ETFMG Alternative Harvest (MJ), an exchange-traded fund with exposure to the pot business, fell 24.6% from its Wednesday close. The ETF is still up about 74.5% year-to-date.
Meanwhile, Curaleaf (CURLF), a U.S. operator that lists shares over-the-counter in the U.S., fell 7.2%. Peers Green Thumb Industries (GTBIF), Cresco Labs (CRLBF), and Trulieve Cannabis (TCNNF) were down between 6% and 8%.
Canadian pot stocks, especially, have rallied in recent months on a wave of sentiment-driven gains as investors bet on positive political developments. Meanwhile, U.S. growers, which would benefit from an improved legal landscape, have lagged their competitors that operate in the smaller Canadian market.
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Pablo Zuanic told Barron’s in an email that the recent action in pot stocks involving Reddit traders makes it hard to predict day-to-day moves, especially with the more-liquid Canadian growers.
“A look at the [GameStop] stock chart should be cautionary,” Zuanic added. “That said, we continue to think the top US MSOs are attractively valued taking a long-term view, even though they will get some of the Canadian downdraft.”
Ironically, some observers last month likened the move in GameStop (GME) to Tilray’s brief parabolic jump in 2018. The WallStreetBets forum on Reddit was recently littered with posts about pot stocks. One of the top posts Thursday morning likened the recent action in Canadian pot stocks to a casino.
Zuanic said on Wednesday that the gap in performance between U.S. and Canadian licensed producers, or LPs, could signal interest from the Robinhood crowd. Robinhood users can’t trade over-the-counter stocks on the platform.
“Sure, the news flow backdrop has also helped (the notion the US will open soon and Canadian LPs will benefit; news about exports), but we think this does not explain the big delta in Canada vs. US performance,” he said. “We wonder if the average RH retail investor knows the difference between an MSO and an LP, and the very different fundamentals of both cannabis markets.”
Ihor Dusaniwsky, a managing director at short-selling analytics firm S3 Partners, noted on Wednesday that there’s also a short-selling angle at play. Tilray began the year with short interest at about 48% of shares available for trading, according to S3 Partners. S3 estimates a recent short interest at 23% of shares available for trading, implying a large amount of covering, which helps drive prices up.
Short sellers sell borrowed shares with the hope they can replace the stock by purchasing it at a lower price. Dusaniwsky notes that Tilray and Cronos (CRON) saw the largest yearly decrease in short interest as a percentage of shares available for trading. He added that the top 20 cannabis shorts in the sector were down $4.32 billion in net-of-financing mark-to-market losses in 2021 by Wednesday.
“The yearlong rally has spurred short squeezes in most of the top 20 most shorted stocks in the sector and we should see the squeezes continuing, especially if the potential for nationwide U.S. cannabis legalization continues to increase,” Dusaniwsky added.
As with GameStop, the traditional buy-and-hold investor might want to stay away until things cool down.
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Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
Government spending, including Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, has helped drive a gap between clean-energy spending and fossil-fuel investments
3 min
Investments in solar power are on course to overtake spending on oil production for the first time, the foremost example of a widening gap between renewable-energy funding and stagnating fossil-fuel industries, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.
More than $1 billion a day is expected to be invested in solar power this year, which is higher than total spending expected for new upstream oil projects, the IEA said in its annual World Energy Investment report.
Spending on so-called clean-energy projects—which includes renewable energy, electric vehicles, low-carbon hydrogen and battery storage, among other things—is rising at a “striking” rate and vastly outpacing spending on traditional fossil fuels, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director said in an interview. The figures should raise hopes that worldwide efforts to keep global warming within manageable levels are heading in the right direction, he said.
Birol pointed to a “powerful alignment of major factors,” driving clean-energy spending higher, while spending on oil and other fossil fuels remains subdued. This includes mushrooming government spending aimed at driving adherence to global climate targets such as President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“A new clean global energy economy is emerging,” Birol told The Wall Street Journal. “There has been a substantial increase in a short period of time—I would consider this to be a dramatic shift.”
A total of $2.8 trillion will be invested in global energy supplies this year, of which $1.7 trillion, or more than 60% will go toward clean-energy projects. The figure marks a sharp increase from previous years and highlights the growing divergence between clean-energy spending and traditional fossil-fuel industries such as oil, gas and coal. For every $1 spent on fossil-fuel energy this year, $1.70 will be invested into clean-energy technologies compared with five years ago when the spending between the two was broadly equal, the IEA said.
While investments in clean energy have been strong, they haven’t been evenly split. Ninety percent of the growth in clean-energy spending occurs in the developed world and China, the IEA said. Developing nations have been slower to embrace renewable-energy sources, put off by the high upfront price tag of emerging technologies and a shortage of affordable financing. They are often financially unable to dole out large sums on subsidies and state backing, as the U.S., European Union and China have done.
The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have marked a turning point for global energy spending, the IEA’s data shows. The powerful economic rebound that followed the end of lockdown measures across most of the globe helped prompt the divergence between spending on clean energy and fossil fuels.
The energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year has further driven the trend. Soaring oil and gas prices after the war began made emerging green-energy technologies comparatively more affordable. While clean-energy technologies have recently been hit by some inflation, their costs remain sharply below their historic levels. The war also heightened attention on energy security, with many Western nations, particularly in Europe, seeking to remove Russian fossil fuels from their economies altogether, often replacing them with renewables.
While clean-energy spending has boomed, spending on fossil fuels has been tepid. Despite earning record profits from soaring oil and gas prices, energy companies have shown a reluctance to invest in new fossil-fuel projects when demand for them appears to be approaching its zenith.
Energy forecasters are split on when demand for fossil fuels will peak, but most have set out a timeline within the first half of the century. The IEA has said peak fossil-fuel demand could come as soon as this decade. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel of the world’s largest oil-producing nations, has said demand for crude oil could peak in developed nations in the mid-2020s, but that demand in the developing world will continue to grow until at least 2045.
Investments in clean energy and fossil fuels were largely neck-and-neck in the years leading up to the pandemic, but have diverged sharply since. While spending on fossil fuels has edged higher over the last three years, it remains lower than pre pandemic levels, the IEA said.
Only large state-owned national oil companies in the Middle East are expected to spend more on oil production this year than in 2022. Almost half of the extra spending will be absorbed by cost inflation, the IEA said. Last year marked the first one where oil-and-gas companies spent more on debt repayments, dividends and share buybacks than they did on capital expenditure.
The lack of spending on fossil fuels raises a question mark around rising prices. Oil markets are already tight and are expected to tighten further as demand grows following the pandemic, with seemingly few sources of new supply to compensate. Higher oil prices could further encourage the shift toward clean-energy sources.
“If there is not enough investment globally to reduce the oil demand growth and there is no investment at the same time [in] upstream oil we may see further volatility in global oil prices,” Birol said.
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
