The Performance of US Marijuana Stocks

Abstract

This study examines the investment performance of US based marijuana stocks. Medical marijuana was first legalized in 1996 by the state of California. During the 1996 to 2020 period the 200 US marijuana stocks as a sector portfolio experienced high: mean weekly return, standard deviation, positive skewness, and kurtosis. Sensitivity analysis, to outliers, was conducted on the winsorized returns (removing the top and bottom 10 percent of returns) generated much the same results. More so, the US marijuana stock portfolio outperformed the NASDAQ, DJIA, and S & P 500 stock indexes. Further, the portfolio beta was negative. Investors should consider including US marijuana stocks in their portfolio for both augmented return and risk diversification reasons.