Departures Capital Inc CEO Aaron Missere Shares His Cannabis Investment Story

Departures Capital Inc Founder and CEO Aaron Missere shares his cannabis investing journey from his initial interest in the space to the launch of his investor-focused site, Departures Capital Inc. Missere built his reputation through YouTube and wrote a book about the top 10 cannabis stocks. Missere has always been a long-term investor in the cannabis industry and has made some great buys in the space, like Aurora Cannabis Inc (TSE:ACB) at $2. As 2019 approaches, he’s excited for the first reporting of recreational earnings and continues to watch MPX Bioceutical Corp (CNSX:MPX) (OTCMKTS:MPXEF) and Hemp Inc (OTCMKTS:HEMP), but wants to see more stability in the US space. In terms of Canadian names, Missere is interested in aeroponic grower James E Wagner Cultivation Corp (CVE:JWCA) (OTCMKTS:JWCAF). Departures Capital Inc produces a detailed weekly newsletter for investors; interested readers can visit the company website to sign up.

Transcript:

James West:   Hey, Aaron, welcome.

Aaron Missere: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

James West:   Aaron, tell me a bit about how you got involved in Departures Capital? What is it all about, what do you do?

Aaron Missere: So Departures Capital: it’s actually really funny. I was living in China for three years, and I was stick of travelling, so I wanted to start a YouTube investment channel. So you know, the first ever video I shot was on the 32^nd floor of my apartment in downtown Guangzhou, just talking one minute about the stock market.

James West:   Guangzhou in China.

Aaron Missere: Yep.

James West:   Really.

Aaron Missere: You know where Guangzhou is?

James West:   In Chinese?

Aaron Missere: Guanghzhou.

James West:   Okay.

Aaron Missere: Do you speak Chinese?

James West:   No, although I’d like to. But okay, you started doing this in Guangzhou, and now you live in Waterloo?

Aaron Missere: Yeah, so I was always from Kitchener-Waterloo; my mom was born in Toronto, my dad was born in Kitchener-Waterloo.

James West:   And how did you get into the cannabis space?

Aaron Missere: So my dad and I, we stumbled – we’ve always been investors, real estate, the stock market, but it was funny, because our financial advisor told us not to buy cannabis stocks.

James West:   Your financial advisor told you not to buy cannabis stocks?

Aaron Missere: Yeah. Our financial advisor –

James West:   I hope he’s doing something else for a living now.

Aaron Missere: He’s fired now. [laughter]

James West:   He’s not your advisor, at least.

Aaron Missere: No, no, no, we fired him last year. But anyways, so we bought ACBO, it was the first stock we ever bought at $2, and it was right before it took off, like the initial pop in 2017, I believe it was. And then I wasn’t on YouTube at the time, so I was actually in China and I remember just calling my Dad at like, it would be 12:00 there, it would be 12:00 here, and it would just be Holy, ACB is up like crazy, you know?  Its just like, so we got, I got a big interest in the sector.

But then when I started YouTubing, you know, my original plan for my channel was to talk about, like I love commodities, gold, silver, mining companies, I’ve always like, my first stock I bought was a bunch of mining stocks like Barrick Gold and all that kind of stuff.

James West:   Wow, we have similar trajectory there, that’s hilarious.

Aaron Missere: Yeah, exactly, so I’ve always been a precious metal bull and also into oil. But yeah, so when it comes to YouTube of course, you know, it’s all about trending topics, and I just found my first YouTube video that popped was when Cronos was shorted – I believe it was after the –

James West:   It was after the Citron research report came out.

Aaron Missere: Yes, exactly, Citron research report came out. Cronos was shorted; that day, it dropped 21 percent, and that was the first video to hit like 1,000 views, and I was just like, because usually I was a pretty small channel at the time; I was getting like 100 views. I went to the gym, I just checked my phone, and like, 1,000 views?! Wow, this is hot! You know what I mean?

So then I was just like, all right, and then also I was just playing around trying to find different ways to, you know, make money online, so I wrote a book on the Top 10 cannabis stocks; it’s actually still on Amazon.

James West:   Really?

Aaron Missere: It only sold a couple of copies, but –

James West:   Well, are the Top 10 cannabis stocks you wrote about in your book still the Top 10 cannabis stocks?

Aaron Missere: Oh we’ve got Aurora in there, we got Canopy in there, we got a bunch in there, so…

James West:   Yeah, that’s a brave undertaking, to write about the Top 10 cannabis stocks because they change around so much.

Aaron Missere: I know, for sure.

James West:   So then tell me, what’s your style of investing? Like, so are you a long strategist so to speak? Are you opportunistic? Are you more of a trader, where you’re in and out of the market in small time frames, or are you more of a buy and hold guy?

Aaron Missere: I would say, you know, we used to be, I used to trade a bit; now we’re just long term buy and hold, because we like a lot of dividend stocks, and then we like the big cannabis companies, like Aurora is our biggest holding. We just want to hold that for a long time. I mean, we bought and sold Canopy, we bought and sold Cronos and a couple others, but now we’re just like accumulating, that’s what I want to do now.

James West:   Okay, so if somebody was to ask you, you know, cause I get this all the time: which is the better stock, Canopy or Aurora? And you know, it’s always a long preamble to sort of qualify well, depends what you mean, what’s your time frame, what’s your risk profile. But if you were to – so you’re telling me that you’re a buyer and holder of Aurora, but not of Canopy?

Aaron Missere: Yes, that’s correct.

James West:   Okay, so I’m going to infer that you believe in Aurora’s model more so than Canopy’s?

Aaron Missere: Yeah, I mean, I just think that, you know, Canopy already has the deal; Aurora doesn’t have the deal. If they’ll ever get a deal, we’ll see, but I’ve always felt like that’s one of the most controversial topics I feel like, because I YouTube about this, I collab with Rich, I collab with another guy all the time and we’re constantly talking about those two big companies and which one we like more. But I’ve always been a fan of, because I always feel like ACB is kind of the underdog.

James West:   Right.

Aaron Missere: You know, Canopy has got the hoard of cash from Constellation, and Aurora is kind of just like –

James West:   Aurora had to borrow money.

Aaron Missere: Yeah, exactly.

James West:   Or they got to borrow money, depending on your perspective. Okay, so when the Cronos, when the short report came out from Citron Research, were you short? Did you go short?

Aaron Missere: No, I’ve never shorted a cannabis stock.

James West:   Oh, okay. And so was that because you believed in the longer term fundamentals of the cannabis industry, or because you just didn’t believe in the research that Citron had put out?

Aaron Missere: I don’t know, I’ve just never been one to short highly volatile – like, it’s obviously that’s how you make money, it’s highly volatile stocks, but I’ve always been long on the cannabis space. Whether there are different, you know, companies like Citron Research that are going to put out reports and probably will bring the stock down, I just – the only thing I’ve ever shorted, and it’s actually a really funny story – I shorted the financials back in 2013, I believe?

James West:   Just when everything was making a recovery.

Aaron Missere: Well, it was starting to dive and then it went super volatile, and then I actually lost on that investment and actually just invested it onto real estate. So there was like, two different, two different sides to this. But yeah, no, after that, I was like, not really going to trade short at least. More so just –

James West:   So what’s your long term outlook, then, for the cannabis stocks in 2019?

Aaron Missere: 2019, I think the next thing is going to be earnings. I’m really excited to see how they did, because rec sales weren’t in last quarter, right? And so, Aurora did have a phenomenal quarter compared to Canopy, right, this last quarter. So I’m excited to see what happens and, you know, if we can get all our issues sorted out with the government stuff. And it’s funny how there’s a lot less, there’s a supply – I’m trying to think here – there’s a lot less supply than there is demand. There’s more demand than supply, that’s exactly what I was trying to say.

James West:   Yeah, well, so far, you know, that’s true, but that’s the interesting thing about 2019: is that going to turn around or not. So do you, are you interested at all in any of the US names?

Aaron Missere: I follow a bunch – MPX, that’s one of them that we follow. I know hemp’s been really hot recently, with the US Farm Bill and all that kind of stuff. So we saw hemp explode.

I do believe there’s huge opportunity in the US. They just, I want to see more stability first in terms of where the sector is going before investing into that, but the longer it takes for the US, I feel like the Canadian companies will have time to establish themselves, right?

James West:   Right. So, do you go visit any of the LPs’ growing operations at this point?

Aaron Missere: We plan to go to James E Wagner, because it’s just in Waterloo, right?

James West:   Right, right, right.

Aaron Missere: So we’re in contact with them, we’re talking with them about going to tour their facility. Now I know that you’ve been on some pretty exciting –

James West:   Well, James E Wagner was pretty exciting. Because they’re the only aeroponic grower, so I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed then, and certainly the management team is one of the most knowledgeable around in terms of, especially, aeroponic growing.

Okay, so then, do you actually offer a newsletter in your departures capital capacity?

Aaron Missere: Yes, so we’ve got, now we have a VIP trader program, that’s what we call it. It’s like, they sign up and subscribe. It’s a paid service, and every Sunday before 12 we send then a detailed report on the market. It’s about, oh, the last one, I think it was like 40 or 50 pages long; it’s just all about different sectors, crypto, cannabis, so…

James West:   Okay. Where do interested parties go to sign up?

Aaron Missere: Just go to www.departurescapital.com and you can see all the information there. There’s a sample up there. And another thing I do for anyone who’s joined my group, we do giveaways every two weeks. So the first giveaway, we were sponsored by a company out of Shenzhen, if you know where Shenzhen is, right beside Guangzhou, it’s funny, like we used to live there, and they sponsored us for some CBD vapes. So they sent us two, and we said we might as well give them away to our community, right? And then we just got a really cool microbrewery beer keg, so we’re giving that away. So we really like to do –

James West:   Oh wow, I’m going to sign up and try to win it.

Aaron Missere: [laughter]

James West:   All right, Aaron, we’re going to leave it there for now. I’m going to have you back in due course; thanks for joining me today.

Aaron Missere: Sure, that’s great. Thank you.

Original article: Departures Capital Inc CEO Aaron Missere Shares His Cannabis Investment Story

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