What if you bought Tilray in 2020?
Hype · Cannabis. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0.0× · S&P 500 same money: $2,092
$1,000 in Tilray at the start of 2020 would be worth about $35.29 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Tilray was a Canadian cannabis producer that became the first cannabis company to list on Nasdaq in July 2018. As Canada prepared to legalise recreational cannabis that October, the shares rose many times over within weeks, briefly giving the company a valuation larger than many established consumer giants. The legal weed boom attracted major investments from Constellation Brands into Canopy Growth and Altria into Cronos.
The economics disappointed. Producers built enormous greenhouses, prices fell as supply flooded the market, and illegal sellers remained cheaper. Canadian cannabis companies wrote down billions in assets. In 2021 Tilray merged with Aphria and later diversified into craft beer, spirits and other consumer goods, trying to build a business that did not depend on cannabis prices. US federal legalisation, long anticipated, did not arrive. Repeated issuances of new shares to fund acquisitions and operations diluted holders, and the stock fell to well under a dollar.
The lesson: Legalisation or a new market opening does not guarantee profits, because easy entry often attracts so much supply that margins disappear.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $17.00 | $35.29 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2020, turning $1,000 into $35.29. The S&P 500 from that same year: $2,092.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Tilray is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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