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According to a new report from Fortune, Canadian legal weed company Aurora Cannabis has now become the most popular stock on the commission-free trading app, Robinhood. With help from novice millennial and Gen Z traders using the app to make their first market plays, the much-discussed marijuana company has now overtaken massive manufacturing and tech companies like Ford, GE, Apple, and Tesla in Robinhood’s rankings.
Experts suspect that Aurora stock is so popular on the mobile trading app in part because shares of the Canadian cannabis giant sell for less than $10 a piece. Another reason could be since Robinhood is popular with young traders who do not have access to the financial markets through other avenues, and therefore may be more willing to put their trust, and investment dollars, into cannabis.
“Given the limited amount of pure play cannabis stocks available for US investors, it comes as no surprise that millennials are concentrating in these positions,” Matt Hawkins, managing principal at Cresco Capital Partners, told Fortune. “This generation has never seen Reefer Madness, and does not view cannabis as a stigma.”
Like the gold rush and internet revolution before it, the North American green rush is poised to explode onto the financial markets in the coming years. And despite current complications with US federal law, industry insiders are confident that state-level legalization and nationwide legalization in Canada have opened a can of worms that is unlikely to ever be closed again.
“As this matures from a regulatory standpoint in the US federally, the market is going to get even bigger and bigger,” Hawkins said. “It’s just scratching the surface on how big this industry can be.”
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