One year ago, marijuana stocks were all the buzz on Wall Street. In October 2018, Canada became the first industrialized country in the modern era to green-light the sale of recreational cannabis, with the expectation that derivative pot products (vapes, edibles, infused beverages, and so on) would go on sale by no later than October 2019. We'd also been witnessing plenty of momentum in the U.S., where new states were legalizing medical and/or recreational weed.
But the green rush has mostly gone up in smoke in 2019. Supply issues have hit the Canadian marijuana market hard, while select U.S. markets have been pulverized by high tax rates and a persistent black-market presence. Perhaps no collective group of stocks has performed worse this year than pot stocks.
And yet, during the third quarter, billionaire money manager Jim Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, added to or opened positions in six cannabis stocks.