O<\/span>n Feb. 26, a Toronto-based medical marijuana investment group\u00a0won approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to become the first cannabis company listed on\u00a0Nasdaq, New York City\u2019s second biggest stock market.<\/p>\n The Cronos Group<\/a> spent six months doing preparatory work for its application to the SEC, which was finally filed earlier this year. After the news broke on Monday, Cronos\u2019s shares jumped up 11 percent to $9.83 dollars. The stock is listed under the ticker symbol CRON<\/a> on the Nasdaq.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very significant for the company and the whole industry,\u201d\u00a0Mike Gorenstein, Cronos founder and chief executive officer, said in an interview with Bloomberg<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge moment \u2014 just shows the stigma is continuing to erode on cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n The company has international ambitions. It\u2019s already exporting to Germany<\/a> (which has a\u00a0tightly controlled<\/a>\u00a0medical marijuana program), is building a growing facility in partnership with a kibbutz in Israel (a country which has a\u00a0growing medical marijuana program), and has received a license through a joint venture in Australia<\/a> (which also has a\u00a0rigid and limited\u00a0<\/a>medical marijuana program), according to CNN Money<\/a>. Eventually, the company hopes to have a presence within the United States too, Gorenstein said \u2014 but only when it is legal at the federal level, he emphasized with perhaps unwarranted optimism.<\/p>\n CNN points out that whether Cronos is indeed the first canna-business to be listed on Nasdaq is to some extent a matter of definition.\u00a0British firm\u00a0GW Pharmaceutical<\/a>\u00a0is listed, and markets a cannabidiol (CBD)\u00a0treatment for epilepsy, as well as other\u00a0cannabis-based products.\u00a0There\u2019s also\u00a0Innovative Industrial Properties<\/a>, a real estate developer and lessor to cannabis cultivators.<\/p>\n But Cronos appears to be the first that directly markets herbaceous cannabis.\u00a0This does seem like something of a watershed, though there is also a sense of inevitability to it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Arcview Group<\/a>, an Oakland, California-based market research firm,\u00a0has\u00a0forecast<\/a>\u00a0that the legal cannabis market will grow to $40 billion in size by 2021. In November, Forbes\u00a0ran a story<\/a> predicting\u00a0that the international market for cannabis will reach $31.4 billion within the next four years, citing a study by the Chicago-based\u00a0Brightfield Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2016,\u00a0Microsoft broke\u00a0what media reports called the \u201ccorporate taboo\u201d on cannabis, announcing<\/a> a new partnership to market software tracking medical marijuana from \u201cseed to sale.\u201d And in 2015, the\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer\u00a0got hold of a\u00a0leaked 45-page internal equity report<\/a>\u00a0from high-finance giant Merrill Lynch, examining the future prospects for North America\u2019s cannabis sector. The report said Merrill Lynch is \u201cbullish on the cannabis testing market.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a strange contradiction that the SEC of the Trump administration has taken this ground-breaking step of approving Cronos. U.S. Attorney General\u00a0Jeff Sessions<\/a>\u00a0is certainly the administration\u2019s \u201cdrug war\u201d hardliner. In January, he moved to revoke<\/a> the Obama-era cannabis-friendly policies that had granted many investors the confidence to move into the industry.<\/p>\n In other ways, the SEC under the leadership of Chairman\u00a0Jay Clayton\u00a0seems perfectly in tune with the Trump zeitgeist. As\u00a0Politico notes<\/a>, he\u2019d long called for lighter penalties on corporations found to be skirting regulations. And indeed, since he took over in January 2017, penalties collected by the SEC have dropped precipitously.<\/p>\n This raises the\u00a0question of whether the Trump administration\u2019s free-market principles will extend to cannabis, or if the sentiments of his cultural-conservative base will prevail.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b> have you bought any cannabis stock?<\/p>\n The post First Cannabis Company Listed on Nasdaq<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In a sure sign of changing times, the first cannabis-industry business has been listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange \u2014 raising questions about how long federal prohibition can hang on in the face of a burgeoning economic sector. On Feb. 26, a Toronto-based medical marijuana investment group\u00a0won approval from theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,50,1228,960,80,170,3157,879,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24139,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24138\/revisions\/24139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\nRead More: First Cannabis Company Listed on Nasdaq<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"