Back in 1960, representatives from five countries met in Baghdad and changed the world.Their goal was simple: to coordinate and unify petroleum policies among member countries in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers.Together, they formed what we know today as OPEC.The five founding members of OPEC - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Venezuela - were among the largest...Read More

$34 billion.This is how much U.S. consumers spent on beer last year.That ain't chump change.But apparently, some of that market share is about to be taken over by the cannabis industry.According to analysts from Cowen and Co., the beer industry could soon lose more than $2 billion in retail sales to legal cannabis:While recreational cannabis has only limited availability, the rise of cannabis cons...Read More

Organigram (TSX-V: OGI) is expanding, Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences (TSX: HMMJ) launches a new ETF, and prohibitionists are trying desperately to stop Michigan from legalizing. This and more in today's Green Chip Minute ...Read More

Lithium has been the most relevant energy metal over the past few years.In recent months, cobalt has become the energy metal favored by investors.The demand for both of these metals is set to increase rapidly as demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to grow. But the energy metal with the biggest upside right now is one you might not associate with energy, or even know: vanadium.There's nothi...Read More

Stocks are tumbling.Markets are bracing themselves for more volatility. The blood is flowing freely.The bulls are cringing.This time was different, right? It's perfectly normal for the S&P 500 to run nearly 300% since February of 2009 without a major correction.But hey... at least Elon Musk shot one of his cars into space. He's the Flavor Flav of the EV world, without the clock. Pay no attention t...Read More

Crypto-mania has peaked.The hype surrounding cryptocurrencies reached a fever pitch in mid-December when Bitcoin prices flew to nearly $20,000. Prices were up over 1,900% in 12 months.December 2017 also saw a record in both the number of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and the amount of money raised by new ICOs. There were a total of 74 new ICOs in December, which raised over $1.6 billion in funds....Read More

One of the best pieces of investment advice I ever got was from a hedge fund manager in New York.His name was Jimmy, and he acted exactly as you'd expect a hedge fund manager to act.Cocky, self-assured, and completely disassociated from humanity.For him, life is all about making money. And he's never made a single apology for it.Truth be told, he's not a very nice person, either.He treats his empl...Read More

Thank the gods of the Dow for this market sell-off. It's been almost impossible to find anything to buy for over a month now.I've been sitting here in the penthouse of 111 Market Place just off the harbor in Downtown Baltimore. The light reflects nicely off the water, but it is February, and the boats don't come as often. It's predictable; the same thing happened last year.We live in a world of re...Read More

A few years back, a major crime was committed against patients battling cancer or fighting HIV.This crime had the potential to cause thousands of deaths, and the law couldn't even prosecute the perpetrator.In fact, this "crime" was only a crime in the eyes of the public, who could do nothing but watch in horror.In 2015, the 32-year-old CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, increased the p...Read More

It's time to get very excited about gold again.2018 is going to be a breakout year for the yellow metal.And smart investors are preparing now.The price of gold has increased almost 9% since bottoming out in December. Gold for immediate delivery was last seen trading near $1,350 an ounce. This is the highest the yellow metal has traded since Brexit in the summer of 2016. And there are many catalyst...Read More

While sitting in my Barcalounger in the nice relaxed atmosphere one gets after a trip to the gym, I happened to catch the first half of the Donald Trump State of the Union. Like all SOTUs, it was a snoozefest - a laundry list of pats on the back and goals for next year.Here's a sentence the speech needs: "Please save your applause until the end." Is there any other speech format where the clappin...Read More

WTI crude is trading for $64.31 per barrel as I write this.And it's not just my veteran readers who believe it's going to move higher in 2018. It was only a few weeks ago that I told you we could be in for another price jump... with some of my colleagues even more bullish than me.Yes, WTI is going to continue this run. Remember, prices have jumped roughly 43% since early July and over 130% since b...Read More

In 2011, Morgan Stanley put out a 50-page investment note on Tesla with a price target of $70, up from the price at the time of $23.71.Obviously, it was a good call even if it took two years to play out...The basic logic of the note was that in 1900, there were almost no cars in New York City.And 13 years later, there were almost no horses:It is true that Tesla's stock price has done very well ove...Read More

Governor Jerry Brown is a hero to progressives and a villain to conservatives.But to me, he's little more than a prime source for invaluable investment intelligence.Last Friday, Governor Brown signed an executive order that is an absolute gift to the electric vehicle market and, of course, investors who have skin in the electric vehicle game.Under the terms of the executive order, $2.5 billion is...Read More

I know it's going to sound weird, but I actually stumbled upon this potential billion-dollar industry on YouTube.I was scrolling through a series of educational videos when I saw a title that sparked my interest. What I watched was the unfurling of one of the greatest innovations of our lifetime.This video, through cute animated people and plants, explained a new gene-editing method called CRISPR-...Read More

Ford is barreling toward a crisis.We're not even a full month into the year, and its CEO came out and lamented that 2018 would be a bad year due to more expensive raw materials. We know full well what he was doing: tempering expectations ahead of the company's next earnings release. Last year, Ford had to shell out an additional $2 billion thanks to exchange rates and higher steel and aluminum exp...Read More

A couple of days ago the White House announced that the President issued a 30 percent tariff on imported solar cells and modules, citing unfair competition from the Middle Kingdom.Today, thanks to very generous, and likely unsustainable subsidies, China produces about 60 percent of the world's solar cells and 70 percent of the world's solar modules.That being said, it should be noted that only abo...Read More

This is the worst chart on the internet. It stinks.It's a worthless economic clich?(C). Actually, it's the constantly recurring Shiller P/E (CAPE) ratio chart.It is special because Bob Shiller won a Nobel Prize five years ago, and he uses a cyclically adjusted P/E ratio that includes inflation from the previous 10 years.Here it is:Yes, it looks like this chart is high. If you believe in regression...Read More

Sometimes it just takes the right product to drive a market.When it comes to electric vehicles, that bar has been set by Elon Musk.But even though he's sitting on top, he certainly wasn't the first.Back in the 1970s, the U.S. was immersed in an energy crisis, and the market was ripe for a better option.And a small company named Sebring-Vanguard offered up a solution in the form of its Citicar.Unfo...Read More

When we first started investing in the cannabis space, every stock we bought was a penny stock.We bought Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX: WEED) for $1.60.Today it trades for more than $36.00:We bought Aphria, Inc. (TSX: APH) for $1.13.Today it trades for more than $21.00:We bought OrganiGram Holdings (TSX-V: OGI) for $0.40.Today it trades for nearly $5.00:As you can see, we made an absolute fortune...Read More