Charting Man Dan on Blue Sky Breakouts and Market Movers in the Cannabis Space

Charting Man Dan McDermitt, founding partner and analyst with the Chart Guys, discusses seasonal trends in the US cannabis space. McDermitt points out that historically MJ stocks run up in the fall and early winter, before experiencing a sell-off in the spring and summer in the US space. He suggests the S&P’s nine-week bullish run has lulled investors into a false sense of security, but there is still reason for optimism in Tier 2 and Tier 3 names. Charting Man Dan addresses recent blue sky breakouts and highlights the impressive runs by Khiron Life Sciences Corp (CVE:KHRN) (OTCMKTS:KHRNF) (FRA:4KH) and Village Farms International Inc (TSE:VFF) (NASDAQ:VFF) (FRA:02V). He notes that Village Farms’ stock soared on news that it was uplisting to a major US exchange and expects to see a similar run for CannTrust Holdings Inc (TSE:TRST) (NYSE:CTST) (FRA:C9S) as it moves to the NYSE.

Transcript:

Fraser Toms:  Hey, we’re with Charting Man Dan once again – one of our very most popular guests, actually. Maybe not as popular as Cam Battley or something, but close. Everybody likes these chart breakdowns, so Dan, thanks for joining us again.

Dan McDermott: Glad to be here.

Fraser Toms:  Awesome, yeah. So we’re just chatting a bit off air, wouldn’t mind kicking this off with, you had mentioned you’d made this observation as well: it seems to be like things are breaking away from Canopy up, everybody up; Canopy down, everybody down, for at least the last little while. So, why don’t you expand on that a little bit?

Dan McDermott: Yeah, it’s an important observation; we’ve obviously noticed the correlation significantly in the past where everybody’s doing the same thing, and it seems like money is shifting around in the sector these days where, you know, people are hopping around. They’ll hop on one name, and run some momentum while other names are pulling back, and then they’ll jump around to other names. So it’s a lot more of a fluid environment in terms of where capital is going, and as traders, that’s ideal for us, because you know, if everybody is doing the same thing, we pick our names and that’s that; but in this scenario, we can be jumping from different names, because everybody has a bit of a different set up, and everybody, you know, some names are seeing oversold bounces and some names are breaking out.

So there’s all different kinds of setup styles, depending on what your preference is, and that’s my favourite environment to be in. a little bit hectic to keep up with, but you know, if you can get beyond that, there’s some great opportunity out there.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, I was just going to say, instead of, you know, your job is like, 100 times harder, because everybody has to be analyzed on their own terms. It gets a little bit more tricky to follow all the names, or maybe you just follow less of them, I guess. So –

Dan McDermott: Yeah, I was just going to say, it’s definitely, the videos that I make these days are half an hour long, the end of the day videos, and you’re right, it used to be, you know, go over CGC and then I’d just run through everybody else because it’s same setup, same setup, same setup. But that definitely has changed the past week or two.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, and when you first – so, when did you first see that, and how confident are you that it’s going to continue? So I’m just asking because clearly there is some type of a break. I wonder why that is the case, and then if we can sort of expect that to, moving forward.

Dan McDermott: Well, I started to notice it at the end of last week, and then this week it was, okay, very clearly that’s what’s going on. And I think it has a lot to do with some of these smaller names giving really big percentage gains, you know, they’re running in blue sky breakout, and that’s the ideal scenario for traders. So money recognizes these smaller-cap names that have bigger percentage risk and reward scenarios, and they’re jumping in on those as opposed to, you know, CGC, which requires way more capital in terms of getting a 5 percent move; you know, you need hundreds of millions of dollars, whereas these smaller names, you know, if you can get a hundred million dollars, they’re going to run hundreds of percent.

So I think it’s just people jumping on opportunity, and trying to find who the next big runner is, and who’s at a discount in the space. and I think that’s why some people, you know, the long term safe bet, CGC, absolutely, but short term, there’s better opportunity in other places.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, and that brings us to a similar point, which is, you know, we’re winding down February now, and for you, you’ve noticed a trend over the last – well, quite long time – and that’s sort of these, James says, sell in May and go away or something like that. But essentially, you’re going to be looking for a bit of a selloff moving into kind of that April/May zone, is that right?

Dan McDermott: Yeah, there’s definitely a seasonality trend in the MJ sector. I’ve been trading marijuana stocks since 2010 and that’s the whole reason I got interested in trading, was industrial hemp and CBD. And they were only US penny stocks back then, and those companies now at this point are a bit of a joke compared to, you know, the legitimate companies. I can remember saying back then, “I can’t wait till we have legitimate companies on legitimate exchanges” and here we are.

But in the last nine years, there’s a very, very clear seasonality pattern on those names, where you see a run-up in the fall and into the New Year. Some of that has to do with voting season in November, and some of that has to do with the New Year being when laws get enacted; there was a huge run-up when Colorado and Washington had their first day of sales. But we see a selloff in the summer, and in the penny stock sector back in those days, 2010 through 2014, you just stopped trading during, you know, March, April, May, June, or you’re just going to give money back. It was a very, very difficult environment to trade in.

And we’re seeing in the Canadian MJ space, a couple of times it’s lined up, but it’s not a clear pattern; and if anybody’s going to break that pattern, it would be the legitimate names in the Canadian sector.

So I’m very aware of the seasonality, and it’s the kind of scenario where, as I head into March/April/May this year, I’m going to be anticipating consolidation, and it’s going to be up to the bulls to prove to me that they are breaking that correlation that we’ve seen for so many years in the MJ sector.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, I mean, that’s very interesting to me, but also the fact that, you know, when you look at the States, almost every week you see a new headline about well, this state is doing this, and that state is de-criminalizing and medical here and medical there. So I think, you know, as things move forward, it might get a little less predictable; there might be more money flying around, too. Are you looking at that, too?

Dan McDermott: Absolutely. And if it’s going to break that seasonality, you know, now’s the time when it’s going to happen, in the next couple of years. And that is a steady news flow cycle that is keeping a little of hype, a little bit of momentum; everybody’s just on the edge of their seat waiting for the US to start to change some laws, and really, it’s going to start with de-scheduling, because once you de-schedule, then you can get the banking sector involved.

Right now, I watched a banking hearing fairly recently – it might have been less than a week ago – and they said pretty much, like, yeah, you know this, we need changes, but until it’s de-scheduled, we can’t go against Federal law. So that’s step number one to really start opening the floodgates.

Fraser Toms:  Very good. Well, why don’t we take a look at some of the charts of the seasonality that you were just referring to? One thing, though, I find it amazing that, you know, it’s 2019; you’re trading in 2010 US penny stocks, where it’s the Wild West and a lot of bad stuff goes down. But you have a constant company that’s been hanging around since then, that you can show that long of a chart for?

Dan McDermott: Oh yeah. I’ve got, you know, six or eight of them, but like I said, share structure and debt structure is not ideal, dilution plenty, but they’ve been around, and they make their 100 percent bull move in January-February and then they pull back 40 percent, and then they do it again next year. So it was a cash cow, and as I was learning to trade in that environment, I really, you know, lucked out, because I had no idea what I was doing just like everybody else who starts trading, and I walked into that bullish environment.

So it kind of kept me afloat, and you know, was very forgiving of me not knowing what I was doing, to allow me to profit and build capital and then realize I need to learn a whole lot more if I’m actually going to do this. And yeah, these stocks are still around, still kicking, but they’re not the kind of –

Fraser Toms:  No, but I mean, they’re legitimate in one sense, that they’re still there. I mean, they must be an operating business, you know.

Dan McDermott: Yeah, and they haven’t been shut down by the government, which was another important thing to be watching.

Fraser Toms:  Cool. So let’s get to it and take a look at that over some of these longer time frames. So what are we looking at there, Dan?

Dan McDermott: Well, here we’ve got MJNA, and this is a penny stock in the US space. It’s been around since about 2009; this is the first stock that I ever bought or ever traded before I had any idea what I was doing, and that was back around here in about 2010, the end of 2010. So I just want to talk about the seasonality in how predictable this was on this ticker, where we can see, you know, right here, heading into the New Year, we get this pop in 2011. And these pops are, you know, 500 to 1000 percent moves in one or two months.

Fraser Toms:  Wow.

Dan McDermott: So we had that big pop in January of 2011, and that was actually just after maybe February, there. So the start of the new year –

Fraser Toms:  Sorry, that’s going from $0.02 to $0.23 or something like that?

Dan McDermott: Yeah.

Fraser Toms:  Okay, wow, yeah.

Dan McDermott: And then here, in the low of the end of December 2011, we shot up 1000 percent in February 2012, and then from that point, we consolidated. So again, all of these periods of consolidation are in the summer, and here we had another run-up into the New Year where we ran to $0.50. So essentially, from the end of 2011 to the start of 2013, there were gains of, you know, 4000 to 5000 percent.

Then we consolidate again in the summer. Here we go heading into the New Year of 2013 heading into 2014, another big pop. Then we consolidate and we miss a year; 2015 did not see a bull move for the new year, that was an anomaly. Then here’s your bull move in 2016, a little bit sooner because we had votes for legalization that had the run happen in October-November instead of January, and then here we are in 2017 to start the new year, and here we are starting the new year of 2019, and we’re not really seeing that strength. And a reason for that would be traders like myself who normally were all over this market, could care less about this market at this point because we have liquidity and legitimacy in the Canadian MJ space, as well as higher exchanges.

So just going over that seasonality: very clear, new year runs, summer consolidation. And we compare it to CGC, and this is the monthly time frame where every candlestick is one month: and I’m just going to be looking at pretty much 2016 onward, because that’s when, you know, we really got the bull move and really started to capture some attention, and we had one year in 2017 where we did see this summer consolidation. Here’s our February bull move, and then we consolidated March, April and May, and then last year in the summer, didn’t really get as much consolidation. And that’s the kind of scenario we’re heading into the first day of sales, and all the votes and everything, that was, you know, keeping things propped up a little bit.

And so it’s again, looking at just a small sample size of CGC, I can say, okay, pretty much half the time, one year we did see the summer consolidation, the other year, not really so much. So this year I’m going to be paying close attention. I’m going to anticipate that we’re likely going to see some summer consolidation, and it’s going to be, like I said, up to the bulls to prove to me nope, we still have strength and we’re going to see continuation.

But the way this monthly chart looks, it certainly looks like we saw a big bull move to form a lower high compared to the all-time high, and we may need to consolidate to form a higher low and see this range tighten up.

And the other point, and keeping this all in mind is that, you know, the S&P 500 here on the weekly chart has been an absolute vacuum of a bullish environment. So the last nine weeks of trading in the MJ space, it’s almost lulled us into a sense of complacency where we’re just taking it for granted that the market is bullish, because it’s been bullish every single week for the last nine weeks. So we have to remember that, you know, if we do see some S&P 500 consolidation into the spring and summer, even if it’s just, you know, a few weeks of pullback, that, in my opinion, is only going to further the narrative that we do see some summer consolidation.

So it’s something we’re keeping an eye out for and going to be prepared for, and taking it one day at a time as always.

Fraser Toms:       I just feel like December was so brutal that a lot of people are sort of just looking to get back where we were before the brutality started. [laughter]

Dan McDermott: Yeah, that was definitely a flush.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah. So I mean, like, I don’t know if it’s even a potential scenario where you have a pullback that’s that drastic where that could maybe cancel out the potential seasonality, because it was sort of an unexpected event, at least for me.

Dan McDermott: Yeah, it could definitely –

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, I don’t know if you saw that coming, how bad it was going to be, but –

Dan McDermott: No, absolutely not. We saw the pullback coming, but certainly could not anticipate it would be that extended. But you have to keep in mind that we did just run, you know, 80 to 85 percent in less than three months, so I do believe that we need to level out a little bit. When you see crazy volatility, equilibrium patterns are the most likely scenario, and that’s your tightening range where you have the high, the low of the dump, watching the lower high being set. And here on the weekly timeframe, now that we are seeing consolidation, we’re going to be looking for a weekly higher low to form, and for this tightening range to continue to tighten up through most of 2019, in my opinion.

Of course, you know, any kind of news can potentially shift that, but without bad news, I am going to be looking for a pullback and a weekly higher low, and a continued tightening range.

Fraser Toms:  Cool. So yeah, I mean, I was going to look into your penny stock, but I mean, after what you said before, I guess it’s not really worth it anymore. Which kind of brings me to a point I wanted to ask you, is, you know, you’re very strong with technical analysis and charts, but because there’s so many names out there, what entices you to put the effort in and continue the effort on certain names? How do you kind of learn about them and pick them and stick with them in terms of watching what the TA is doing?

Dan McDermott: So it was easy a while ago when there were a limited number of names, and liquidity was a huge, you know, hurdle that a name had to be liquid enough and have a good amount of dollar volume for me to want to cover it. But these days, you know, liquidity and volume is aplenty everywhere, so really it goes to my audience and to the members of our chat room and the chart guys where if, you know, a lot of people are interested in a certain name, I’m certainly going to covering that. And usually the interest from them derives from the fundamentals as well as the technical setup.

So you know, if you have a name like VFF, Village Farms, who gets an upgrading to uplist on the NYSE and they’re in blue sky breakout, those are two – you know, that’s fundamental aligning with technical to give you the perfect storm for bullish gains.

So in a scenario like that, you know, it’s interest picking up; more people are asking about the ticker, you know, people keep asking me every day about the same ticker, I’m going to start paying attention to it a lot more. So it’s almost like a social metric where it’s the collective of a group of people interested in a sector that are coming at me with, you know, certain tickers that they’re interested in, and then that leads to interest in me to cover those names.

Fraser Toms:  Cool. Well, can we see that blue sky example? Because for me, it’s sort of like, it’s great when you see that, but if you weren’t already there, you always have this feeling of, like, it’s got to be too late to jump in. I mean, with Canopy that happened to me several times where you think the gains have all been made so you don’t jump in, and really what ends up happening sometimes is that you leave a ton of potential profits on the table.

Dan McDermott: Absolutely, and that’s, you know, the trademark of blue sky breakouts is they usually run way more than you think they will. And that’s actually why I got involved in the cryptocurrency space in 2017 knowing nothing about it; I saw the charts are in blue sky breakout, I know what that means, and that was enough to coax me to get involved in that space.

But here on VFF, so, yeah, I mean, 9.80 was the blue sky breakout level; we’ve surged through that, and it’s really just being comfortable with shorter-term patterns that can allow you to get into moves that you might otherwise feel are over-extended. So here we had, you know, we already saw a huge surge of 100 percent move over a few weeks or a month here, but we had this equilibrium pattern that I just mentioned: the tightening range. So after a lot of volatility, we had the high, the low, a double-top rate of resistance, another higher low, a lower high – it just got tighter and tighter and tighter.

So we are very confident playing that bull break, knowing that we’re likely going to see follow-through, because a lot of other traders just like us are going to be looking to jump into this name on that bull break as it approaches that all-time high, and then since then, it’s been, you know, nothing but strength. So it’s being comfortable with these patterns and knowing, you know, putting in stop losses to protect yourself in case you are wrong, and you know, you don’t want to be buying the top and then just holding a bag. But if you’re using a stop loss to have some risk mitigation, and you’re comfortable with these patterns, then it’s easy to jump in what otherwise might feel as too late.

And KHRN is another one here where I’ve only been starting to keep an eye on this one the past couple weeks, but it’s just blue sky breakout, and the last time I was on, maybe three or four weeks ago talking with James, I was highlighting how CRON had the most attention for us because it was blue sky breakout and we know what that means, and we saw what CRON did, and now we’re seeing what these smaller names are doing as the volume just surges in, because all these traders recognize blue sky breakout; that means there’s a nice opportunity for some significant gains.

Fraser Toms:  Is that first massive green candle the signal for you? So there’s a bunch of, you know, small ones, and then that first big one, is that where a lot of traders would jump in? That one, yeah.

Dan McDermott: Yeah, I mean, the all-time high broke at 2.07, so breaking that on 207, that’s the surge in volume. Everybody’s saying, all right, blue sky breakout, let’s do it. Let’s look on the daily time frame and see: we had that run right up to resistance, and then just yeah, increasing bull volume and big-time follow through, and then here’s that tightening range again, that tightening pattern. We had the high of the big bull move, we pulled back and formed our support level. We tried to bounce, we formed a lower high; we pulled back, we formed a higher low, so it’s just this tightening range that gets the bull break, and then there’s another surge. The new all time high…you can just see, every time we hit an all-time high, there’s a huge volume surge and a big push up.

Fraser Toms:  And that’s, each candle is a day there? Is that what we’re seeing?

Dan McDermott: Yep. That’s correct.

Fraser Toms:  Oh, okay, yeah. So that was – what was the breakout day for this one? That was just a few days ago.

Dan McDermott: The first –

Fraser Toms:  Oh, yeah, that’s right.

Dan McDermott: Yeah, four days ago. So this was Tuesday was the big follow-through move.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah. Wow.

Dan McDermott: So other names that we want to be paying attention to, knowing how powerful blue sky breakout is, is OGI is definitely one of them. The all-time high is $8.55; we’re currently sitting about 10 percent below that level. So again, just scouting out and keeping an eye out in case the bulls make their way up to that resistance level, because if it breaks, we would anticipate a big volume surge and a nice push of follow-through.

And another one in the US space is Curaleaf. This is the weekly time frame. We have the all-time high; we set the all-time low, and we got close to the all-time high here. This is actually a cup and handle pattern where we’re keeping an eye on, where we have the left side of resistance, then we get our nice consolidation for the cup. We have the inability to break resistance, which leads to consolidation, and as long as this consolidation stays in this healthy little channel, which is what the handle of the cup and handle pattern is – so if we can just stay some healthy weekly consolidation and then try and break out, that’s a pattern that we’re looking for.

And if you hop on Google and check out cup and handle pattern, you can get some more information on that setup.

Fraser Toms:  And does seeing other companies having the breakout sort of motivate you to look for that potential in others, or does it not work that way? So in other words, like…

Dan McDermott: Oh, it definitely does.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah? So you see one and then you can sort of expect more to follow that?

Dan McDermott: Yeah, it’s all human psychology.

Fraser Toms:  So you’re looking more for the breakout now than you would have been earlier, because –

Dan McDermott: Exactly.

Fraser Toms:  Ok, cool.

Dan McDermott: Because VFF and because KHRN and because all these names are running, and people are just, like I said, traders like myself are just jumping to the strongest names, and it’s all human psychology. So if we see names running to all-time highs and we see, oh man, look at all those gains on that ticker, that’s the collective of traders saying wow, there’s a lot of bull money moving in this market; there’s a lot of profit, and then you anticipate that, you know, if VFF’s going to go up 100 percent, there’s a lot of capital that traders are accruing. And when they sell, they’re going to have more capital to trade with, and they’re going to want to put it to work somewhere else.

So that’s absolutely something that we look for, and it’s going on with TRST right now, because it’s a similar set up where we had VFF with the uplisting, and now we have TRST getting the same news of their uplisting as well. So VFF, the first day of uplisting, which was yesterday, was up 15 percent at the high. So now the TRST bulls are saying, well, wait a minute: if VFF’s going to go on its first day of listing on the major exchange, that first day for TRST is this coming Monday. So that’s going to be psychologically a reason that bulls are going to hold on longer, be less likely to take profit, and shorts certainly aren’t going to want to jump in at this point.

And it’s again, like you said: it’s looking at the other name and saying, Okay, this was a similar scenario, and anticipating that scenario to potentially play out in another name that has a similar setup.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, and even if the stocks don’t behave similarly up until that point, as you were saying, it is just sort of collectively people looking for the next, like, Oh, this one’s lining up nice, let’s jump on that one.

Dan McDermott: Yep. And again, like I mentioned, the cryptocurrency space, it was rampant. When that was this euphoria frenzy, everybody was just jumping from one name to the next: who’s the next major runner, where are the next significant gains, and like I said, it’s just this continuous positive feedback cycle where you make profit in one name, you have more money to trade in the next name, and it’s just this game of musical chairs.

Fraser Toms:  So for TRST, on Monday, if you’re watching it closely, obviously you’re expecting it to jump up. Is that the – what would you look for, exactly? Like, just in the morning if you’re seeing a spike, higher than average volume and a 5 percent gain, is that when a bunch of traders jump in? Or how would you -?

Dan McDermott: Well, we’re assuming that a lot of traders are already in it right now, because the uplisting news came out days ago. So the early money and the smart money got in on that news coming out, and in my opinion, the buyers on the day of the actual uplisting are going to be either, you know, institutions or hedge funds that don’t have access to the OTC market.

So if you’re trying to trade some of these names on the OTC market, it’s extremely illiquid, and if you’re trying to trade with, you know, a couple million dollars, you can’t really do it. It’s huge risk, and you know, if you have a $2 million position, you’re not going to be able to get out of that position easily.

So once you get listed on the higher exchanges, Village Farms instantly saw its highest volume day in the US ever, by a long shot. So we’re anticipating that, potentially, there are groups of people or bigger money that does not have access to getting into OTC names, and there’s, you know, hedge funds that even have, or institutions that even have rules that prevent them from trading OTC stocks or getting into those positions. So once that changes, that opens the doors to bigger money to get in.

Fraser Toms:  And a lot of those American funds, they wouldn’t bother with the TSX, or is that – how do you see that?

Dan McDermott: They would. I’m sure they would, that some would, but it is, you know, I’m sure they get some special treatment as well, but there’s currency conversion fees that we need to worry about in the US, and there’s – like I said, there’s probably people that do get in, and that’s the smart money that’s getting in on the Canadian side of things.

But in terms of, I mean, looking at what VFF did the first day, you can look at that right here. So we had a huge run-up into the first day, and that was yesterday. So the three days leading up into the first day we ran from, let’s see, about $9.15, we were at 15 percent before that day even happened, and then we went another 15 percent that day.

So it’s just this all-out surge of volume coming in, and exposure to more capital pools by getting onto these larger exchanges.

Fraser Toms:  Okay, great. We had another name or two we wanted to look at before we skedaddle. What were we – we’ve gone through a bunch, but oh yeah, C21.

Dan McDermott: CXXI, C21. So yeah, this is what I’m not very familiar with. If you want to say a word or two about it?

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, they’re, C21 Investments, they’re an American operator trading on the CSE, I believe. You’re seeing a lot of chatter about them, and you know, on different bulletin boards, and they’ve been on the show. And for me they’re interesting because the market cap is quite low. I think it’s – I don’t want to, it’s around $70 million or so, let’s say, but their revenue projections are quite high to I think potentially eclipse that number.

But yeah, so there’s definitely a lot of eyes on that company; at least it feels that way. So it’s definitely one I’m looking at. I don’t know –

Dan McDermott: So yeah, here is, it’s on the weekly time frame. We hit the all time low pretty much when everybody was dumping in December, and we can see the bounce the last nine weeks is correlating with the S&P 500 bounce and the entire sector bouncing. So we can tell that there’s that correlation, at least, you know, it’s part of a group. And we have changed the trend in terms of breaking lower highs and seeing continuation, and this is one of the higher-volume weeks in the history of the stock.

But on the daily time frame, this is the kind of move where we saw end of next week and early this week where I would say, Oh, man, that’s a huge move, great gains, but I missed it. But now we’re getting this consolidation, and I would much rather be entering on consolidation as opposed to like you said, not wanting to be chasing into a move.

So we’re seeing low bear volume. We had the big bull volume on the way up, we have the low bear volume on the consolidation. So it’s definitely a setup where I would be looking for a daily higher low to be established somewhere down here in the 130s.

So definitely worth watching for this daily uptrend to continue after this big bull move we had to start this week, and I will keep an eye on it from here on out, as like I said, it’s a newer name in my repertoire.

Fraser Toms:  Yeah, cool. Awesome as always, Dan. Thanks so much for joining us.

Dan McDermott: See you next time.

Original article: Charting Man Dan on Blue Sky Breakouts and Market Movers in the Cannabis Space

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