Prior Goldman Sachs macro trader Michael Novogratz sees a lot in communal with the cannabis craze and last year’s record-setting crypto benefits. For that reason, he’s betting against it.
“The prices of cannabis stocks today finger like bitcoin and ethereum did in December of last year,” Novogratz, a closely bitcoin evangelist, said Thursday at the Yahoo Bankroll All Markets Summit.
This week, as pot stock Tilray jumped 50 percent, Novogratz replied he “tried real hard” and found a “cool way” to short it.
“The companies mercantilism up to $28 billion on almost no revenue,” he said. “If I was long them, I’d over persuaded them and if you’re a speculator, I’d get short them.”
Bitcoin, which Novogratz has been a vocal investor in, similarly slug up by double-digit percentages last year. The cryptocurrency has plummeted 66 percent since its high-pitched, according to data from CoinDesk.
Novogratz is hardly the only one flutter against the cannabis craze. Data from S3 Partners show that apart from interest in Tilray is around 3.5 million shares, up from far 2.5 million late last month.
This week was an costly time to bet against the stock. Fees for borrowing Tilray stock, which you penury to do to short it, were between 500 and 700 percent, according to S3’s be in charge of director of predictive analytics Ihor Dusaniwsky.
Still, Novogratz is idealistic on the industry long-term and predicted the entire “cannabis business is going to reach, and it’s going to grow relatively rapidly.”
Novogratz launched his crypto travelling salesman bank Galaxy Digital in November, a month before bitcoin hit its all-time lofty near $20,000. The firm took a $134 million hit in the first shelter of this year, according to its first-ever financial disclosure released in Canada after the ensemble went public.
The former Fortress hedge fund manager reported CNBC in November that bitcoin could “easily” hit $40,000 by the end of 2018. He also foreboded ethereum, which was trading near $211 this week, could hit inhumanly $1,500.
Those two cryptocurrencies have gone the opposite direction. Bitcoin is down sundry than 50 percent this year after starting 2018 exposed to $14,000. Ethereum meanwhile has dropped 83 percent from its spacy in January, according to CoinDesk.
— CNBC’s Fred Imbert contributed tell ofing.