The Case for a 50-Year Bull Market

As head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Andy Sieg oversees the so-called thundering herd of 14,820 financial advisors, the second-largest workforce among the big brokers.

Barron’s: What advice would you give investors to get the most out of an advisor?

Andy Sieg: We encourage clients to be very specific about what success means to them, and even more specifically what their intent for their wealth is. In many cases, clients have thought about this, but may not have articulated it. When we encourage clients to be more specific about their intentions for their wealth, it produces clarifying conversations—not just with the advisor but also between the members of a couple, or across generations in a family.

Deep into this bull market, where does Merrill see investment opportunities?

It’s very easy right now to talk yourself into a sense that we’re in the late innings of the bull market. We think a much better perspective is to take a step back and say that we’re probably only 10 years into another 50-year bull-market cycle.

The drivers of this bull market are a very powerful extension of the baby boomers’ productive lives, the silver economy, which is powering a lot of economic activity in the U.S. and around the world, and the rise of the millennial generation, which is a larger and even more economically powerful cohort than the boomers. The growth of the middle class in emerging markets around the world will be a lasting, sustained growth engine. And supercharging all of this is the technology innovation cycle, which we see year after year.

Over the last 50-year bull cycle, almost every year there was a reason that people worried. The big risk for individuals is that they become paralyzed by the bears and the negative news at the moment. By not being in the equity market, they’re not participating in the global economic expansion. That’s the real risk that families have.

What is your advice for graduates entering the workforce this fall?

My first advice is to take a careful look at the wealth management industry. It’s a growth industry, and it promises tremendous careers for those who have what it takes. For grads entering wealth management, my most important advice is to remember that this business begins and ends with clients—everyone’s success in the financial industry broadly comes from their ability to serve clients well. The combination of a tremendous work ethic, rock-solid integrity, and an ability to build relationships with people around you are the three ingredients to long and successful careers.

The industry is graying. Are there going to be enough financial advisors to go around 20 years from now?

Yes is the short answer. There’s an awareness that we are in a golden age for wealth management or, as we like to say, a bull market for advice. With boomers moving into retirement, there’s a need for sound, long-term financial planning at a scale we’ve never seen before, and it’s causing ever-greater interest in wealth management as a career path.

We’re sensing much more interest on campus around careers in wealth management, and more universities with degree programs around financial planning. And when people predict a shortfall of advisors, I think they’re very much underestimating how many advisors are eager to extend their careers. There is no such thing as 65 as the normal retirement age for our advisors. I think that is going to help ensure that we have the ranks of advisors we need.

What should investors make of the unusual climate in Washington, D.C.?

You need to avoid getting wrapped up in the day-to-day noise and focus on fundamentals. The fundamentals are that U.S. economic growth is strong. This is a more pro-business climate than we’ve seen in quite some time. The benefits of last year’s tax bill are real and lasting. Our midsize- and small-business-owner clients are very optimistic about what they’re seeing in their local markets. The eternal risk to investors is to be distracted from fundamentals by the day’s headlines or the day’s tweets. My strong advice is to focus on the long term. A bullish perspective has been the right perspective for a long time in America, and I don’t thing that’s changing anytime soon.

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As body mass index increases, blood pressure may as well

Body mass index is positively associated with blood pressure, according to the ongoing study of 1.7 million Chinese men and women being conducted by researchers at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) and in China. These findings appear in the Aug. 17 issue of JAMA Network Open.

In individuals who were not taking an antihypertensive medication, the researchers observed an increase of 0.8 to 1.7 mm Hg (kg/m2) in blood pressure per additional unit of body mass index (BMI). Overall, the population had a mean BMI of 24.7 and a mean systolic blood pressure of 136.5, which qualifies as stage I hypertension according to American Heart Association guidelines.

Researchers recorded the participants’ blood pressure from September 2014 through June 2017 as part of the larger China Patient-Centered Evaluative Assessment of Cardiac Events (PEACE) Million Persons Project, which captures at least 22,000 subgroups of people based on age (35-80), sex, race/ethnicity, geography, occupation, and other pertinent characteristics — such as whether or not they are on antihypertensive medication.

“The enormous size of the dataset — the result of an unprecedented effort in China — allows us to characterize this relationship between BMI and blood pressure across tens of thousands of subgroups, which simply would not be possible in a smaller study,” explained George Linderman, first author and doctoral candidate at Yale.

In China, the frequency of obesity is expected to more than triple in men — from 4.0% in 2010 to 12.3% in 2025 — and more than double in women — from 5.2% to 10.8%. Meanwhile, high blood pressure already affects one-third of Chinese adults, and only about one in 20 of those with hypertension have the condition under control, according to an earlier Yale-CORE China paper for the Lancet based on data gathered in the same Million Persons Project cohort.

“If trends in overweight and obesity continue in China, the implication of our study is that hypertension, already a major risk factor, is likely to become even more important,” said Harlan Krumholz, M.D., the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Cardiology, director of CORE, and senior author on the study. “This paper is ringing the bell that the time is now to focus on these risk factors.”

According to the researchers, one way for the Chinese healthcare system to address these risk factors would be the management of high blood pressure with antihypertensive drugs.A January 2018 study by Yale-CORE China compared the widespread and successful use of antihypertensive drugs in the United States for blood pressure management to their infrequent use in China, suggesting that by prescribing antihypertensives earlier and more frequently, China might begin to take control of its high blood pressure crisis, say the researchers.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Yale University. Original written by Kendall Teare. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. George C. Linderman et al. Association of Body Mass Index With Blood Pressure Among 1.7 Million Chinese Adults. JAMA Network Open, 2018 DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.1271

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Congress is about to legalize cannabis. Just not the kind that gets you high

Lawmakers are poised to fully legalize hemp after a decades-long campaign, setting the stage for the resurgence of a once-common crop that disappeared during the war on drugs.

The legalization provision, championed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and included in the Senate’s farm bill, would officially classify hemp as an agricultural commodity and remove it from the federal controlled substances list. Lawmakers are also expected to advance the measure when they meet next month to draft the final, bicameral version of the legislation.

Hemp landed on the list because it is, like marijuana, a form of the cannabis plant. But growers and farm-state politicians argue the two have been unfairly lumped together, depriving farmers of what could one day become a major commodity crop.

In Kentucky, in particular, hemp has been touted as a panacea for cratering tobacco sales and falling crop prices. Growers there have pinned their hopes for future profits on it. But as legalization looks ever more inevitable, the question now is whether industrial hemp can deliver on decades of hype and promises.

Advocates say the industry is poised for an explosion, particularly as new supply chains develop and researchers discover additional uses for cannabidiol oil, which can be derived from hemp. There are also concerns, however, that the industry may grow too quickly, forcing the price of hemp down to unsustainable levels before there’s adequate demand for it.

“There’s no question that industrial hemp is economically viable,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), an architect of the legalization plan. “I get a call from a farmer every other day. More and more farmers want to grow it.”

The saga of American hemp is essentially one of mistaken identity, farmers say. The tall, weedy plant is botanically the same species as marijuana, but it contains only trace amounts of the psychoactive compound THC that causes a high in smokers.

Hemp has a wide range of other uses, however. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew it, chiefly for use in cloth, ropes, sails and nets. The Agriculture Department also urged “patriotic farmers” to plant it during World War II for use in naval towlines, parachute webbing and other products.

But in the wake of World War II, when demand slackened, hemp began to fall out of vogue. In 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which effectively made it illegal to grow hemp and marijuana.

Today, the roughly $688 million of hemp goods sold in the United States each year — products such as teas, T-shirts, car parts and supplements — are made largely with materials imported from Canada, where industrial hemp has been legal to grow since 1998. The current Senate legislation seeks to give U.S. farmers a piece of that market by removing hemp from the controlled substances list and reclassifying it as an agricultural commodity. Farmers will still have to meet certain requirements to purchase and grow hemp seeds.

“The ideal scenario is one in which farmers can grow this like any other crop,” said Eric Steenstra, the president of the advocacy group Vote Hemp. Many lawmakers now understand, Steenstra added, that hemp has a long history in U.S. farming — and that hemp and marijuana are effectively different plants.

Congress has attempted to revive U.S. hemp before, though farmers and advocates say earlier efforts did not go far enough. The 2014 farm bill opened the door for some growers to plant the crop as part of experimental, state-run pilot programs. Under those pilots, farmers have already planted 25,000 acres of hemp in 19 states, from Kentucky to Oregon.

But growers say a true commercial industry remains impossible as long as hemp is classified as a controlled substance. That’s because farmers face stringent regulations when importing seeds, and many banks won’t loan to farms or processing facilities that work with hemp. The lack of capital has slowed the development of the supply chains and markets that will ultimately make hemp a viable crop.

“There are a lot of people who want to invest in hemp,” said Comer, the Kentucky Republican. “There would be more if it weren’t a controlled substance.”

Comer says legalization has broad bipartisan support in both chambers, and has earned the vocal endorsement of McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Even U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an outspoken opponent of marijuana, told McConnell he would not “oppose” legalization, the Associated Press reported.

Many politicians — including McConnell — say they support hemp because farmers and farm groups have pushed for it. Advocates such as Steenstra have called hemp the next great commodity crop, suggesting it could one day blanket vast swaths of U.S. farmland. Farmers have clamored to grow it because of the potential to earn higher profits than they do on crops such as corn and soybeans, which are now plagued by low prices and trade disruption.

“I think over the last five years there’s been enough discussion about cannabis that people now understand there is a difference,” said Geoff Whaling, the chairman of the board of directors at the National Hemp Association, an industry group. “I see it in Congress. When I first started going, I did not get a great reception. But today if I go in to talk with the Senate Ag Committee, they want to know how quickly we can build a hemp industry to start helping local farmers.”

But it’s difficult to predict if hemp is really the next super-crop for farmers or consumers, said William Snell, an agricultural economist at the University of Kentucky who has studied the state’s pilot programs.

Supply chains and markets for the crop don’t readily exist in the United States yet, which could limit the amount of hemp that gets processed into products. And while farmers can earn large profits on hemp, Snell said, that’s largely at specialized operations growing hemp for cannabidiol oil, a process that’s expensive and labor-intensive. Profits on hemp grown for seeds and fiber have been far lower, according to a 2017 report by Cornell University, ranging from $211 to $733 per acre.

“At this point we feel like the economics of growing hemp for grain and fiber will be similar economics of corn and soybeans,” Snell said. “Some producers have been able to make several hundred dollars per acre. Others have lost money. It’s kind of all over the board to be honest.”

There’s a trickier issue at play here, as well. If legalization prompts too many farmers to start growing hemp, prices could drop suddenly and destabilize the market. In late February, USDA undersecretary Greg Ibach warned that full legalization risked “overburdening the market with supply before there is demand for it.”

And supply is already growing quickly: In Kentucky alone, farmers planted an estimated 7,000 acres of hemp last year, Snell said, more than twice what they planted the year before. The industry in Steenstra’s state, Virginia, is smaller — 87 acres in 2017 — but more farmers have expressed interest in planting it.

Steenstra said he isn’t worried the industry will grow too quickly. For hemp growers, he said, the priority is getting the crop legalized so the industry can grow, period.

That could happen in September, when lawmakers will meet to advance the farm bill.

“I think there may be more demand from farmers than there is market right off the bat,” Steenstra said. “But I think over time hemp is going to be another major commodity crop. … There’s real potential for it.”

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China sacks six senior officials at food and drug regulator over vaccine scandal

China said on Saturday it has sacked six senior officials at its food and drug regulator after a safety scandal at vaccine maker Changsheng Biotechnology Co Ltd revealed failings at the government body including inadequate supervision.

In a posting on its website, the State Administration for Market Regulation said that among officials dismissed were Ding Jianhua, who headed two departments at the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). The same statement was posted on the CFDA’s website.

Changsheng was accused in July of falsifying data for a rabies vaccine and manufacturing an ineffective vaccine for babies, sparking widespread public anger and multiple probes including police investigations.

The Changsheng case exposed that the CFDA officials “did not provide sufficient supervision, strong enough oversight, nor were they strict enough in their inspections”, the posting said.

While there were no known reports of people being harmed by the vaccines, regulators ordered Changsheng to halt their production and recall the rabies vaccine. Changsheng has apologised and said it is cooperating with investigations.

On Friday, Beijing said it had sacked a senior provincial official and was probing a former top drug regulator. Xinhua also reported that more than 40 government officials, including seven at the provincial level, have been held accountable for the scandal and some have been sacked.

In a separate Saturday report, Xinhua said the central province of Hubei has removed six government officials from their posts in relation to another inferior vaccines case involving Chinese company Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.

The company on Friday said on its website that it has dismissed its deputy general manager in charge of production and warned or fined eight other employees.

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Blockchain Holds Promise for Thwarting Drug Counterfeiters

About seven out of ten Americans takes a prescription drug. Though most of us don’t think twice about the journey our medicine takes from factory to pharmacy, the drug supply chain is in trouble.

About 10% of the world’s drugs are tainted or unsafe, and the counterfeit drug market is now a $217-billion industry. Because drugs are manufactured all over the globe, products change hands dozens of times before ending up on pharmacy shelves. That creates plenty of opportunity for fake, expired or contaminated drugs to infect an increasingly chaotic supply chain.

The FDA and other regulatory bodies have tried to fix this problem by asking companies to employ audit trails and barcode-based tracking systems, all with limited success. But according to healthcare experts gathered at the 2018 Blockchain Health Summit here last week, a new technology called blockchain is poised to fix the fractured drug supply chain problem.

Blockchain rose to prominence as the backbone of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but it is now finding a home in healthcare. In essence, it’s a turbo-charged accounting system that encrypts and stores transactional data across multiple computers, making it virtually tamper-proof. Better yet, blockchain provides a coherent record for all participants to see — akin to a shared Google Drive document.

Within the highly regulated drug industry, blockchain could bring regulators, manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies on the same page and provide a verifiable record of a drug’s journey across the globe. Eventually, the federal government could use blockchain to prepare for drug shortages, predicted Jim Nasr, vice president for technology and innovation at Certara’s Synchrogenix unit.

Blockchain exploded onto the healthcare scene about 5 years ago, just as Congress passed the the 2013 Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) — a new regulation designed to fix the broken supply chain.

DSCSA lays out a set of requirements around tracking and tracing drug products over a 10-year period. That means by 2023, pharma companies will be required to have an “interoperable, electronic tracing of product at the package level,” according to the regulation.

Since then, a handful of startups with names like Cryptowerk, Ambrosus, FarmaTrust, Spiritus and LinkLab have sprung up to offer blockchain platforms for supply-chain management. Their clients are pharmaceutical companies, raw ingredients suppliers, wholesalers and pharmacies.

In the U.S., blockchain is taking off because of the top-down regulatory pressures imposed by DSCSA. But in some developing countries, where counterfeit products may represent up to 30% of the drug supply, blockchain is being adopted as a way to combat rampant fraud.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Blockchain wouldn’t fundamentally alter the way drugs move through the supply chain, said John Bass, founder and CEO, Hashed Health. Instead, Bass said, it’s all about monitoring the system that already exists.

“You’re creating a fingerprint for that asset and you’re registering that on a distributed ledger, or blockchain,” Bass said. “Once you’ve identified it, you [can] monitor the state of it as it moves through all the supply-chain actors.”

Blockchain won’t solve all fraud right away, because even a blockchain-fueled track-and-trace system relies on company employees to manually enter data into a computer or scan a barcode, notes Pradeep Goel, CEO of the Solve Care Foundation.

“We can trace a product from A to Z, but that means at the point of creation, you have to have enough sensors in this product that it cannot be altered,” Goel said.

Bass agreed that in the future, the system will work a lot better when all drug products are rigged with tiny wireless sensors that automatically write data to the shared blockchain system, rather than relying on employees to enter that data.

“All blockchain solutions — supply chain or otherwise — don’t solve the ‘garbage-in, garbage out’ problem,” said Heather Flannery, co-founder of Blockchain in Healthcare Global. But, she added, the key difference is that today, any company can alter its records after the fact to cover up fraud and deception.

Today, “the ability to cover up fraud or criminal activity is infinite,” she said. “The fundamental thing that blockchain brings is that everything is persisted [with] little to no possibility of tampering by stakeholders.”

As well, a shared blockchain network could be audited by regulators trying to verify product authenticity, and to recover every single lot of drug implicated in a product recall.

Low Hanging Fruit

Though blockchain has been proposed as a panacea for a wide range of healthcare woes — including fixing the tangled mess of electronic health records — experts agree that it’s not ready for prime time for the majority of its potential applications.

The supply chain is one of the few areas where blockchain is being used now, and shows real promise for the future.

“Supply chain is a really exciting use case for blockchain in general because it’s very low lift,” said Jake Dreier, director of growth and operations for SimplyVital Health, speaking at the 2018 Blockchain Health Conference here. “It’s what blockchain’s initial use case was — an immutable audit trail. You can track anything from point A to point B.”

“Supply chain to me is so obviously perfectly attuned to this technology,” said Flannery.

“There’s just no comparison between a value chain that that had a [blockchain] ecosystem … and one that did not — not in speed, not in efficiency, not in compliance, not in track and trace.”

“There’s no benefit to not using blockchain in supply chain,” she said. “It’s such low hanging fruit.”

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‘Removing the C-Word From Low-Risk Diseases’

Recent advances in genomics and molecular biology have helped make a case to stop calling certain low-risk tumors “cancer,” authors of a review of the issue concluded.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that some tumors never grow and others grow so slowly that they will never pose a threat, even if undetected. Examples include low-risk subtypes of papillary thyroid cancer, localized prostate cancer, and cellular abnormalities found on a Pap smear.

A similar, and growing, body of evidence has shown that describing such low-risk tumors as “cancer” leads to overdiagnosis, overtreatment, and unwarranted patient anxiety, Kirsten McCaffery, PhD, of the University of Sydney in Australia, and co-authors wrote in an article published online in the BMJ.

The authors acknowledged obstacles and resistance to renaming low-risk tumors but encouraged discussions among clinicians and sciences to achieve satisfactory solutions.

“The evidence suggests to us that this it is time to stop telling people with a very low-risk condition that they have ‘cancer’ if they are very unlikely to be harmed by it,” co-author Ray Moynihan, PhD, of Bond University in Queensland, Australia, said in a statement.

Outdated Concepts

The authors’ arguments resonated with American Cancer Society chief medical and scientific officer, Otis Brawley, MD, who has written on the topic. Armed with a wealth of data on breast cancer incidence and mortality in the U.S., most epidemiologists today agree that 15% to 25% of breast cancers — and possibly as many as 40% — were never destined to cause a woman’s death.

“It was not going to grow, spread, and kill. It was just going to stay the same,” Brawley told MedPage Today. “Some might actually run out of blood supply, shrink, and even go away. I’ve just described overdiagnosis.”

Contrast the epidemiologic viewpoint with pathologic perspective. The term “cancer” dates back to 1853 and the German pathologist Rudolf Virchow, who provided the first detailed description of breast cancer and how it spread throughout the body, working with primitive microscopes and candlelight.

With modern imaging techniques, “we can now detect a breast tumor the size of a green pea, stick a needle in it and get a piece of it, and send it to a pathologist, who will do the same thing Virchow did in 1853 — mount it on a slide, stain it, and look at it,” said Brawley. “The only big difference between what the pathologist is going to do today, working with a piece of a pea-sized lesion, and what Virchow did in 1853, working with a huge tumor obtained at autopsy, is look at it with an electric light bulb as the source of light.

“The pathologist is going to look at it today and say, ‘This looks just like what Virchow said killed that woman in 1853. This is cancer.'”

The English translation of Virchow’s book was Profiles of Cancer, “meaning ‘this is what cancer looks like,'” Brawley added. “Until recently, the assumption has been that every time a woman has that in her breast or a man has it in his prostate or person has it in the thyroid, you call it cancer. We have been assuming that, because it killed in 1853, it’s going to kill in 2018.

“In a number of these diseases, we’ve started to realize that these things that we say look like cancer under the microscope are going to behave in an indolent way.”

A growing number of cancer authorities have started advocating for a transition away from a mid-1850s definition of cancer into a 21st century definition that combines what the pathologist sees with what the tumor genes indicate, said Brawley.

Not a New Idea

McCaffery and co-authors reviewed a combination of epidemiologic, pathologic, and laboratory evidence supporting the use of terms other than cancer for low-risk tumors. They began with papillary thyroid cancer, citing autopsy studies showing a “large reservoir” of undetected tumors that never posed a threat to human life. The incidence of thyroid cancer has risen substantially in developed nations, driven primarily by diagnosis of small papillary tumors. At the same time, thyroid cancer mortality did not change.

They cited similar evidence of excellent long-term outcomes for low-risk ductal carcinoma in situ and localized prostate cancer. Recognition of the indolent nature of many low-risk prostate cancers has led to widespread adoption of active surveillance as a safe and effective approach to management with no increased mortality risk. More limited evidence suggests existence of low-risk melanoma in situ, small lung tumors, and small kidney tumors that might be overdiagnosed and treated, the authors added.

The concept of renaming low-risk tumors is not new. More than 20 years ago the World Health Organization and the International Society of Urological Pathologists renamed certain low-risk bladder tumors as “papillary urothelial neoplasia of low malignant potential.” Similar terminology has been adopted for low-risk cellular abnormalities identified by Pap smears.

To facilitate “progress on removing the cancer label,” the authors suggested that physicians and other clinicians initiate discussions about low-risk/benign disease with patients and provide information about true risks associated with indolent diseases. Medical educators might introduce curricula specific to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of low-risk disease and help improve public awareness of the issue. Medical researchers might pursue studies to produce more precise estimates of patients affected by changes in nomenclature, to quantify long-term outcomes with less invasive management of low-risk diseases, and to test possible alternative terms for low-risk diseases.

“Ultimately, removing the cancer label will create controversy and take time,” the authors acknowledged. “If done through a broad multi-stakeholder process, however, it should help ensure appropriate, evidence-based care for future and current patients.”

The authors reported having no relevant relationships with industry.

• Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine (Retired), Harvard Medical School, Boston

• Primary Source

  BMJ

  Source Reference: Nickel B et al “Renaming low-risk conditions labeled as cancer” BMJ 2018; doi:10.1136/bjm.k3322.

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6 Cannabis Companies Make Their Investment Pitch

Six cannabis executives gave investors their elevator pitch in demos Friday at the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference in Toronto.

Ianthus: ‘The Tide Is Turning’

Ianthus Capital Holdings Inc. ITHUF 1.84%, a vertically integrated cannabis operating company with operations in six states, is excited for the future of an industry for which the “tide is turning,” CFO Julius Kalcevich said during the conference. The industry is seeing support from all levels of government, including President Donald Trump, the CFO said.

The estimated market demand for recreational cannabis is $50 billion, which is more than double the market for doughnuts at $19.9 billion, he said. To target this market, the company’s “winning formula” is simple, Kalcevich said: avoid large markets like Denver and focus in “somewhat muted” markets where competition is limited.

Aurora Cannabis: Focus On The ‘Real Big Prize’

Canada is certainly a big market for Aurora Cannabis ACBFF 4.63%, but the company is focused on the international market, which is the “big prize,” said Marc Lakmaaker, Aurora’s vice president of investor relations.

Europe is “much more compressed” compared to Canada, and the U.S. market is “fragmented,” he said.

An estimated 2.5 percent of any country’s population will use medical cannabis, so a country like Germany — with a population of 82 million people — should have a market of 2 million, Lakmaaker said.

Patience may be required for investors, but “today is the smallest the cannabis industry is going to be — and I’m going to say the same tomorrow,” the VP said.

Medicine Man: ‘Everyone Can Grow’

There is no wrong way of growing cannabis, but only companies with the lowest cost producers with high quality will thrive in the market, Medicine Man Technologies Inc. MDCL 6.92% CEO Brett Roper said in Toronto. Medicine Man’s aim is to help companies come online in the cannabis market at reasonable prices, he said.

“If you don’t keep track of what’s going on, don’t find good teams, good cultures, you are going to miss out,” the CEO said.

His best advice for companies: follow what General Motors Company GM 0.22% does. The automaker doesn’t manufacturer brake pads for their cars — they assemble finished products, Roper said.

Golden Leaf: Cannabis As ‘Health And Wellness’

The cannabis industry should evolve away from the “stoner culture and bongs” and focus on how cannabis can be used within the “health and wellness” space, said Golden Leaf Holdings Inc. GLDFF 1.48% CEO William Simpson. Many people are open to taking multiple Advils a day, but will never consider cannabis as an alternative, he said.

People whoo are converted from an anti-cannabis stance will become the “strongest advocates” for the industry and be motivated to tell others, he said.

Terra Tech: ‘Beyond Irritating’ Stock Performance

Shares of Terra Tech Corp. TRTC 0.56% were hard-hit over the past year, peaking at $9.45 and now trading near the $2 level. The move is “beyond irritating,” said CEO Derek Peterson.

The cannabis-focused agricultural company doesn’t expect to tap the capital market for additional funding, even though its best years are ahead, he said. Over time, the market should correct itself and create a better form of equalization, Peterson said.

Cannex Capital: The ‘$100 Wine’ Of Cannabis

Cannex Capital Holdings Inc CNXXF 1.23% has a simple business model: build a consolidated portfolio of high-quality assets with a focus on manufacturing, extraction and distribute at scale, said CEO Anthony Dutton. What sets the company apart is that it wants to be the “$100 wine” that attract the most discerning customers who know how to find quality, he said.

Before commanding a premium price, the company knows that brand is important — but what’s more important is “what goes on behind the brand,” Dutton said.

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