The Dales Report

Join us today at 4 PM Eastern for our latest Trade To Black podcast episode. First up, Florida is at it again, where The Florida Police Chiefs Association (FPCA) and the Florida Sheriffs Association (FSA) are urging voters to reject a marijuana legalization. Also, news out of Ohio where The Cannabist Company Holdings (CBOE: CBST) has received approval for adult-use operations, signaling adult use is just about ready to go live. Plus, marijuana stocks and rescheduling news continues to be hot topics leading up to the 2024 presidential election. #cannabis #rescheduling #msos #marijuana #marijuanastocks #election2024

GM Everyone, Yesterday was a red day across the board, giving up much of the gains we had gotten earlier in the week. However, people are overlooking one major thing: the broad market got smoked yesterday, no pun intended. You cannot have irrational expectations when we know it's a bunch of algos essentially trading this market right now and expect otherwise when the macro is cracking.

GM Everyone, The Cannabis Industry Is Buzzing! The powder keg that cannabis has become is building up and ready to have its fuse lit. We are seeing positive signs all around us but the PTSD that the cannabis industry has given many people over the years is still casting doubts amongst many. All we need is for AG Garland to poke his head out and give direction on the final ruling as we are on a train straight to Valhalla.

GM Everyone, Cannabis is now a Presidential Issue! Paging Joe Biden, come in Joe Biden, has anyone seen Joe? Unfortunately not, since over the weekend we saw a post on X saying that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Kamala. This was great for the cannabis space but is starting to create a narrative that might not be good for the Harris campaign. The next week or so is going to be telling in this process, and it would be best for the country to clean this up and focus on the road ahead as it relates to campaigning against Donald Trump. See you on the other side.

GM Everyone, It happened. Joe Biden has stepped down from the 2024 Presidential race and finally bowed out as we expected. This paves the way for a new candidate, presumably Kamala Harris, as Joe has already endorsed her and political pundits have seen a groundswell of support behind her. However, there are also whispers of an open convention, which would be quite interesting. This would set the stage for a spicy DNC and allow people to actually see the diversity within the Democratic Party. Why is this relevant? While cannabis may not be front and center of these talks, you can bet that the topics of legalization and rescheduling will be brought up. Many of the potential candidates in an open convention would be coming from legal adult use states. Today’s tape should be a big indicator of whether we are going to see some sort of sentiment shift. Keep your eyes peeled. FYI $MSOS and $MSOX are making nice moves pre-market to the upside.

GM Everyone, The comment period is ending, an open convention for the Democrats is brewing, and the pace of cannabis rescheduling could be kicking into high gear. The stars are either aligning for our beloved sector, or we could get bogged down in the infighting within the Democratic Party. I strongly think it’s the former rather than the latter due to the Democrats really needing to stack up wins and catalysts to invigorate voters and create a recency bias. Cannabis is low-hanging fruit. It’s going to get spicy here over the next few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled and stay vigilant.

GM Everyone, Biden is under siege from within the Democratic Party as well as some members of his cabinet, reports show. This is bullish for cannabis as I believe replacing him will force them to pull every lever possible to try and muster up momentum, and expeditiously implementing the final rule for Schedule 3 could be one of those levers. This political turmoil could not be coming at a more opportune time with the comment period expiring in the next 4 days, so buckle up.

Donald Trump finally announced his long-awaited VP selection yesterday at the RNC, choosing JD Vance. As far as I’m concerned, Senator Vance is neutral on cannabis and shouldn’t really be seen as a net positive or net negative for the space. He did vote no on SAFE Banking but also commented that he would have voted yes if the language was amended. We call that progress. This is all still very far from being clear on how this will impact the space, so we will be keeping a close eye on this in the coming weeks and months leading up to the election.

GM Everyone, We are coming off quite a tumultuous week of events with many unknown repercussions for the cannabis industry. The consensus is that in light of Saturday's events, Donald Trump should now be able to waltz into the White House. I don’t see it that way, as we have a long way to go before the election, but you can always look to history repeating itself, as it did with President Reagan. We will watch the tape closely today for signs of a sentiment shift and overall headlines around the sector.

We got a nice pop in the market yesterday, much to everyone's surprise. Many believe this was due to cooling inflation numbers, a potential rate cut coming in September, and capital rotation into $IWM. I’m not going to lie, it felt nice. Several cannabis names were up double digits intraday and actually showed strength into the close, with TSND leading the way, up over 16% on the session (thanks, Dougie). We will be watching closely for some much-needed follow-through today.