The cannabis space has been an interesting environment for investors and traders for the past few years. Ever since the first indications about a possible legalization process in Canada the sector has been through turbulence from so many perspectives. New companies popped up in the environment like mushrooms after the rain, stocks went up hundreds of percent just with a speculation in the market or with an announcement that they intend to deal with the cannabis plant.
Veterans in that space probably remember those days as good days for traders that knew how to play the game and take advantage of the hyped situation to gain profits. On the other hand, aside from the obvious big Canadians LPs (like CGC, ACB, APHA etc.), it was really hard to pick the right horse especially with the US MSOs - there were too many new companies, all of them were (and still are) trading on the OTC and TSX. It was very hard to do proper due diligence and understand whether the company is for real or just a speculative choice jumping on hype.
Creating an ETF for such a sector is a very challenging task, and back in the beginning, I think it was impossible.
Just a few weeks ago, Dan Ahrens, the portfolio manager of AdvisorShares that manages two cannabis ETFs (YOLO) and (MSOS) was hosted by Rena Sherbill on the great podcast, "The Cannabis Investing Podcast" which I really recommend to anyone who wants to become an expert on investing in the cannabis space. He said:
Just a couple of years ago, we started to get lots of inquiries from people that wanted to launch a fund perhaps with us or through us about cannabis, and what I told them was "no, it won't work, you can't do a cannabis ETF, there is a bunch
