Since the beginning of 2016, you could have practically thrown a dart at any marijuana stock and come out a winner far more times than not — and it’s not hard to understand why. The consumer pool for the legal cannabis industry is growing by leaps and bounds, with Canada becoming the first industrialized country to legalize adult-use pot in October, and two new states (Missouri and Utah) joining the previous 30 in giving the green light to medical weed. Residents in Michigan also voted in favor of becoming the 10th state to OK recreational marijuana.
The opportunity for the legal pot industry is…
huge. Investment firm Cowen Group, which has arguably been the biggest cannabis cheerleader on Wall Street, projects that aggregate annual sales could hit $75 billion by 2030. For added context, North American legal-channel marijuana sales in 2017 totaled “just” $9.7 billion, according to research firm ArcView. North America boasts what’s arguably the greatest sales growth opportunity for the marijuana industry, demonstrating just how much room is left for expansion in the years to come.
The big question has been, and continues to be: Where should you put your money to work?
Investors flock to pot dispensary stocks
The challenge with investing in marijuana stocks is that the U.S. market could easily be the most lucrative in the world. Yet, with the federal government holding firm on its Schedule I classification, the industry has a lot of red tape to work around. Meanwhile, Canada is legalized, but it will trail the U.S. significantly in peak sales potential.
For some folks, the most logical solution would be to consider an area of the U.S. cannabis industry that already appears to be thriving: vertically integrated marijuana dispensary stocks. By vertically integrated, I mean retailers that also operate growing and/or processing facilities, thereby controlling their supply chain of product.
There are three brand-name dispensaries that currently offer rapid growth potential in the U.S.: MedMen Enterprises (NASDAQOTH:MMNFF), Curaleaf Holdings (NASDAQOTH:LDVTF), and Trulieve Cannabis (NASDAQOTH:TCNNF). These three vertically integrated dispensary stocks account for a quarter of all the pure-play pot stocks that have a billion-dollar market cap right now.
Aside from their respectable size, the fact that these three pot dispensary stocks are seeing tangible sales growth clearly has investors excited…
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