Monday, 9 April 2018

Weed-Related Stocks Moving Up Despite Cannabis Industry Headwinds

In our report "Closed Off WEED Short; Buying More Of A Cannabis Related Play Close To Turning A Profit", we disclosed that we closed off a short on Canopy Growth Corporation (TWMJF) (WEED.TO) in the mid-$20's from around $33. However, we think that WEED and cannabis stocks in general will continue to have a weak April. We saw more of that on Monday as WEED dropped 7% in Canada to close at $25.74, below the price we closed our short position. We will look at going back long on Canopy if it hits $22 or by the end of April, whatever happens first. Some people have vehemently disagreed with our suggestion that weed stocks are tanking because people who made a lot of money on realized capital gains in the sector in 2017 have a huge tax bill and may be forced to sell stocks now to pay that off. That is their choice to disagree with it if they want to ride out the volatility while traders profit on both long and short positions. If you are bullish on cannabis, we think that now is the time to invest in cannabis-related stocks that offer good value proposition and the potential for news related to partnerships instead.

We have seen our strategy work quite well so far. Despite the drop in the weed sector, our two top cannabis-related picks, Pascal Biosciences Inc. (BIMUF) (PAS.CN) and Snipp Interactive Inc. (SNIPF) (SPN.CN) have remained robust and did particularly well on Monday. PAS increased 30% to $0.69 in Canada, which is the highest close we have seen since we highlighted the stock on February 28 in our report "Pascal Biosciences: The Cannabis Immunotherapy for Cancer?". SPN moved up 7% to $0.155 and has remained steady since we first chose it in "Snipp: The Next Weed-Related Stock To Skyrocket" on March 21. In addition to these two stocks, we are also looking at a turnaround in the cryptocurrency industry with a stock that currently has only a 2.6x P/E ratio. More on that later. We are up to 576 followers despite not giving out a lot of alerts, a fact that we think is indicative of a diligent and prudent stock picking history. If you like our picks you can follow our blog by clicking the follow button on the top of the left hand panel. You can also follow us on Twitter handle @StockTradePicks.

Why did Pascal move so much today? There appears to be increased speculation that the company will announce a partner to help develop its novel cancer immunotherapy. We agree with this type of speculation as it will be necessary for Pascal to recruit someone with deep pockets if it is to develop a drug to market (which will take a few years and over $100 million to do). In our report "Pascal Biosciences: The British Connection" we found it unusual for  Regents Park Securities, a British firm to take such an interest in a Canadian company. So let the speculation run rampant. We think that PAS is a $2 stock. But now that it has increased to $0.69 from our recommendation at around $0.40, we suggest to readers to consider taking some profits over the next few days while letting the rest of their shares ride. No matter how bullish we are on a stock, it's never a bad idea to lock in a bit of profits when you have them on speculative stocks.

Snipp is a bit different. While we are merely speculating on Pascal that a partnership is coming, on SPN there is no such ambiguity. We know that Snipp has and will continue to get partners, because the CEO is telling us so. Snipp has already announced a deal with WeedMD, or should we say that WeedMD announced a deal with Snipp, and we strongly believe that more deals with bigger cannabis producers are forthcoming. This is what the CEO had to say in the fourth quarter conference call held last week:

"Before getting into the numbers, I want to highlight our experience in our newest market segment, the cannabis market, which we officially launched just three weeks ago on March 13th, 2018 with the announcement of our Cannabis Marketing Resource Center. The CMRC, as we call it, is an educational tool for what will certainly be one of the fastest growing markets in North America. Our purpose was fairly simple – to create an educational resource for companies in this new and exciting field and to introduce those companies to the advantages of using our platform in their highly-regulated industry.

Snipp has a multi-year history with many of the largest companies in established regulated industries, particularly major consumer categories such as alcohol, pharmaceuticals and tobacco. Every industry is slightly different, but the basic tenets are the same – enable more effective marketing and/or loyalty programs that drive sales and grow a brand’s base of repeat customers within the parameters of what is legally permissible for each such industry.

The $250,000 investment in Snipp by WeedMD, coming just a week after we announced our resource center, was an affirmation by a key player in the Canadian market. WeedMD was quick to see that Snipp can help move this industry forward with the kind of professional tools that will be needed as this industry grows and develops its systems, regulations, and infrastructure – virtually from scratch. In particular, Snipp’s advanced and highly customizable proprietary platform allows companies like WeedMD the much needed flexibility to tailor promotional and loyalty programs in what is clearly a sector with rapidly changing and evolving legal parameters and guidelines.

We are very encouraged by the level and depth of interest, so investors should expect future announcements as our interaction with members of the resource center transition from dialogue and education into customer relationships. In fact right after this call I am hopping on a flight up to Canada to meet with a leading vertically integrated Cannabis player to talk about a twelve month contract so wish me luck!"

There will be more contracts announced here. Out of the many publicly listed weed stocks in Canada and many more private companies, it is ludicrous to think that Snipp won't procure at least several contracts based off of the Cannabis Marketing Resource Center. It could become one of those situations where the company constantly feeds the market with good news and the stock price reacts with a sustained rise up, catching many burnt shorts in the process.

In addition to the potential of news related to the weed market pushing SPN up on hype, the company itself is undervalued, according to the words of the CEO on the call:

"Clearly, industry statistics show how much room is in front of us in terms of unlocking shareholder value, simply by reaching industry averages. To put this in perspective, if you look at numbers from industry sources early in 2018, you find that Snipp is trading at a deep discount to the market and all of the technology industry groups. For example, as of January 2018, the average price to sales for the entire market was about 2.1 and the technology sectors where Snipp fits best trade at 6.4X to 7.9X sales. As of yesterday, our price to sales ratio was a modest 1.4X current sales barely above cyclical industries such as trucking. We sometimes wrongly get lumped with internet advertising companies, a group that has struggled in recent quarters, but that designation is wrong – because we provide the tools, not the creative content for marketing."

We think that SPN can hit $0.50 in the near-term. The stock will be pushed there on hype from the cannabis industry and speculation over what company SPN will recruit next. The stock price will stay at its new level on fundamental valuation and continued improvement of SPN's financials.

Have cryptocurrency and blockchain stocks bottomed out?

While cannabis stocks have remained reasonably strong despite the drop in the overall market on both sides of the border, the same cannot be said of blockchain and cryptocurrency stocks which have tanked quite a lot. This has resulted in some very cheap stocks that still have a ton of speculative upside, especially once blockchain gets hot again. For instance, this one stock with $0.05 EPS has a P/E ratio of just 2.6x:


We are holding off on an official report until more due diligence but if you want a sneak peak, follow our Stockhouse profile NNR1000 as we have talked about this stock on there before.

Disclosure: We are long stocks listed in this report.

Bitcoin has gone from a concept worth pennies a few years ago to worth thousands of dollars. It may appear to some who are late to the game that the opportunity to get rich is gone. However, there are still plenty of ways to make some money trading in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. Here are some links to valuable reports and strategies:

The Cryptocurrency Codex from the Cryptocurrency Institute 

Secrets To Unlimited Free Bitcoin 

The Crypto-Currency Evolution eBook

Bitcoin Complete Guide for Dummies

The Bitcoin Miracle Guide

The Bitcoin Cheat Code Book

The Crpytocurrency Course

Bitcoin Investing Live


If you're interested in making money investing or trading the stock market, here are some good resources to assist you. This includes technical analysis, investing in the weed sector, dividend stock investing, gold and commodities, sector rotation, options trading and microcap trading strategies.

Microcap Millionaires Free Video: Cheap Gold Miner Set to Soar in Fall 2017

The dividend stock report from dividendstocksonline.com



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