Marijuana Business Magazine April 2020

Marijuana Business Magazine | April 2020 18 ETF manager says market correction is forcing discipline among cannabis management teams Macro Conditions Improve for Long-Term Investment T im Seymour is the owner and manager of the New York-based Amplify Seymour Cannabis Exchange Traded Fund. The ETF, which has about $7.5 million in assets, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CNBS. The fund, which launched July 23, 2019, currently contains 28 holdings. Under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, Seymour’s fund is able to invest only in federally legal companies, meaning that U.S. multistate operators remain off limits. Seymour also helps manage the JWGrowth Fund, a cannabis hedge fund with assets of about $300 million, and is a regular contributor to CNBC about the cannabis market. How and why did you get into cannabis investing? I spent 15 years in a hedge fund focused on emerging markets. I see the macro elements of investing in the cannabis sector as similar to emerging markets. It’s not that I’m disinterested in the social and cultural aspects, but the legislative changes—both in the likes of California, Canada and Colorado, originally, but also now around the world—that is interesting. I started a dialogue with producers, mainly through my work at CNBC, and people can see that I am meeting with companies, that I know the sector and that I have managed portfolios before. Why do you remain positive about the cannabis industry in investing terms? Raising money has been challenging for the past nine months—I would have preferred it if I had started the ETF fund in July of the previous year—but we are here to hopefully be thought leaders in the space. The macro conditions continue to get better and better. While there is unlikely to be federal descheduling anytime soon, things are going better than could be expected in the United States. We have South Dakota and Missouri, and then there is the Northeast bloc: New York is trying to get its legislative act together. And then we have Illinois and Michigan, where things are going better than expected. We actually have a better story than we did a year ago. Also, we know there isn’t likely to be a debt crisis in the industry. The real issue is that there needs to be more leverage. MoneyMatters | Nick Thomas The macro conditions continue to get better and better. We actually have a better story than we did a year ago.” —Tim Seymour Owner and manager of Amplify Seymour Cannabis Exchange Traded Fund