RE:Geat readyYou're at least half right. Leave the conspiracy theories out of it and you seem to be on the right track.
The price profile over the last year or so up until today was driven by the hype. Large, experienced investors (the establishment) are not overly affected by hype. Instead they use it. Here’s what happened. Once legalization was announced, a lot (and I mean a lot) of first time ‘investors’ started to get on board buying relatively small amounts. Especially in the last 2 months. Pie in the sky expectations in tow. Certainly the SP increase in those last 60 or days ‘confirmed’ their expectations for them. I personally heard people like this speculating that all weed stocks would sky rocket on the 17th of October. Double, triple, even more – overnight. Well, that’s not what happened. The (much fewer) experienced investors, realizing the hype was at an end, began selling quietly on the 15th of October and continued on the 17th. This caused the SP to move lower triggering the uncontrolled selloff by the ‘pie in the sky’ crowd that began on the 18th and has continued.
The worst enemy of reasoned investing is the unreasonable expectations of inexperienced investors. “I be a millionaire overnight – Wheeeeee!!!) There was no conspiracy here, just idlots. The really big investors have not sold off everything, and most will just be entering the market now as they are adverse to the effects of hype. Most smaller but experienced investors have probably leveraged the hype to some extent, but I would bet many are still in the game or will re-enter the game shortly.
However, you are right. These companies now have to stand on their business results from this point on.