The world’s first cannabis-related exchange-traded fund began trading yesterday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Horizons Medical Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, which offers exposure to the performance of a basket of North American publicly listed life science firms and other companies with significant business activities in the cannabis industry, is being traded under the ticker symbol HMMJ.
The ETF is a passively managed index seeking to replicate the performance of Solactive’s North American Medical Marijuana Index net of expenses. The Index selects from a current roster of companies whose operations may include biopharmaceuticals, bioproducts, medical manufacturing, distribution, and other ancillary businesses related to the cannabis industry.
Steve Hawkins, president and co-CEO of Horizons ETFs, called the offering “another made-in-Canada ETF milestone” noting that the nation “is the birthplace of ETFs.”
“The rapid growth of the medical marijuana industry, which includes the growth in the size of companies and the number of companies that are publicly listed on North American stock exchanges, has created enough market depth and liquidity to make launching an ETF with this unique theme possible,” Hawkins said in a press release. “It’s rare that investors get an opportunity to invest in what is essentially an entirely new sector of stocks. Despite the recently strong performance of many of these companies, we do think that we’re still in the early stages of what could be a unique long-term growth opportunity.”
Horizons ETFs has more than $7 billion of assets under management, with 77 ETFs listed on the TSX.
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