Speaker 1: Well, can a trillions. I'm Joel Weber, So Eric, we
Speaker 1: had this discussion about a new sector that I think
Speaker 1: is a really interesting one. Um. Marijuana has obviously had
Speaker 1: a ton of attention over the past decade and change
Speaker 1: now as it's become more and more legal, but psychedelics
Speaker 1: and mushrooms are sort of viewed as the next potential chapter.
Speaker 1: And we even have states in the US that are
Speaker 1: starting to legalize some of this, and there's even a
Speaker 1: need a new et F that's all about this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember I was at my dad's in Florida around
Speaker 1: the New Year's Eve weekend and I looked at my
Speaker 1: e t F clips, which I get sent from Google
Speaker 1: every day, and I was like, a psychedelic eat psychedelic stocks.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that just mean? Like really cool stocks?
Speaker 1: And then I looked into it. I'm like, oh my gosh, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's track mushrooms. And then I did a little
Speaker 1: more research and it it's really crazy that there's a
Speaker 1: whole shroom scene. If you go on Twitter, there's like
Speaker 1: a lot of people and it reminded me of like
Speaker 1: the early days of cannabis. I don't know, it's stuck
Speaker 1: out to me, and I was just very curious about it,
Speaker 1: especially because the company who did it is the one
Speaker 1: who kicked off the marijuana E t F category essentially,
Speaker 1: which is named Horizons. So I was watching this from
Speaker 1: the get go. Now it's finally launched and it's up
Speaker 1: in Canada. So joining us on this episode of Trillions
Speaker 1: is Steve Hawkins, who is the man behind it, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to him about what it was like
Speaker 1: to come up with this idea and bring it to
Speaker 1: market and what he hopes to have happened. Do you
Speaker 1: know him, Eric from from your days at inside et F?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, would be happening right about now and the
Speaker 1: sunny climates. I know, you guys love when I dropped
Speaker 1: the word circuit. But I have seen him a lot
Speaker 1: on the E t F circuit. I mean you'll bump
Speaker 1: into Sieve at the conferences, especially the ones in Canada,
Speaker 1: and I'm up in Toronto a lot um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a great guy. He honestly was. Like I said,
Speaker 1: he was ahead of everybody with the marijuana et F
Speaker 1: and now that's well over a billion dollars that whole category,
Speaker 1: so um, and they have a lot of other e
Speaker 1: t s by the way, but that's the one that
Speaker 1: is most like this, this new when they have this
Speaker 1: time on Trilliance Psychedelics. Steve, Welcome to Trilliance, Joel, Eric,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for having me today. So Eric
Speaker 1: and I were wondering, UM, as we were inviting you on,
Speaker 1: how can we get some samples or do you can
Speaker 1: we get some in kind? Do you do in kind
Speaker 1: redemptions with the underlying well, you know, as Americans, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of ways for you to buy Canadian
Speaker 1: e t F yet there's you know, there's only a
Speaker 1: couple of little different brokerages. UM, and this e t
Speaker 1: F has listed on the neo stock has changed here.
Speaker 1: If you find a US brokerage to buy the units
Speaker 1: of the e t F, you can redeem the main
Speaker 1: kind directly with Horizons ETF and we will somehow deliver
Speaker 1: you some samples cross border. Wow. That's and I can
Speaker 1: tell you've actually been asked this question before. It was honestly,
Speaker 1: when we launched h MMJ in two thousand and seventeen,
Speaker 1: it was the very first question that we we got asked.
Speaker 1: I went on Bloomberg TV and and Amberg Candlar is like,
Speaker 1: I don't like the ticker, but can I redeem in
Speaker 1: kind for some samples please? I mean, you know, we
Speaker 1: joke and it is funny because I was just talking
Speaker 1: to Joel. I'm like, it's not only mushrooms. There's ketamine
Speaker 1: in there. There's basically a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: we took in the nineties at parties is now like medicine.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we were actually medical pioneers. We
Speaker 1: were way ahead on curing depression. And you know, what
Speaker 1: do you think about that? Isn't that kind of crazy?
Speaker 1: That's why it's funny is because this used to be
Speaker 1: the stuff that you weren't supposed to do, and you
Speaker 1: did it parties. Well, the sixties and seventies are back,
Speaker 1: is the way that I'm looking at it. And people
Speaker 1: are going to start wearing the tied eye shirts again.
Speaker 1: I put I wore a pretty fancy shirt at the
Speaker 1: market open the other day. Um. But you know it
Speaker 1: is absolutely it's not just psilocybin. It's not just magic mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Ketamine is a very important ingredient out there. There's a
Speaker 1: company that's also creating a synthetic psilocybin. So I mean
Speaker 1: one of the Uh. One of the knocks that we
Speaker 1: got when we launched h MMJ is we had in
Speaker 1: an investing company in there that was creating UM synthetic
Speaker 1: CBD and people didn't like that. It's like this is
Speaker 1: anti marijuana. But you know, this is all really a
Speaker 1: part about the drug industry and therapeutics for you know,
Speaker 1: the over seven hundred million people in the world that
Speaker 1: are suffering from mental illness and eating disorders and depression,
Speaker 1: uh and addiction and uh. You know this is these
Speaker 1: are being tested drugs. This is not a recreational thing,
Speaker 1: even though that's where sort of a lot of the
Speaker 1: marijuanas industry is very focused. UM. The psychedelics industry is
Speaker 1: really focused on science and going through the rigorous f
Speaker 1: d A and Health Canada drug testing protocols to bring
Speaker 1: real therapeutic drugs to marketplace. And I mean that that
Speaker 1: is a really interesting thing to talk about. And if
Speaker 1: you followed UM journalists like Michael Pollen, who has been
Speaker 1: writing about a lot in this space for actually for
Speaker 1: years now, UM, you know, it does feel like it
Speaker 1: could be the sort of the tip of the spear
Speaker 1: for how we treat a lot of things like PTSD
Speaker 1: UM depression. So how big of an opportunity do you
Speaker 1: think this could be, Steve, I mean, right now, it's
Speaker 1: we just really don't know. I mean, there's a there's
Speaker 1: over according to the World Health Organizations, there's over seven
Speaker 1: night er million people that are suffering some from some
Speaker 1: form of mental illness. In this regard, you know, depression
Speaker 1: and clinical depression really haven't seen any advancements in treatment
Speaker 1: in decades UM, and it's really only as a result
Speaker 1: of some of the things that Eric mentioned earlier, like
Speaker 1: state laws changing, um, new exemptions coming in for companies
Speaker 1: in Canada. You know, we've we've created new rules around
Speaker 1: health Canada. I mean, we were the first, you know,
Speaker 1: G seven company to country to legalize marijuana. But the
Speaker 1: drug market itself, for the illicit drug market, is starting
Speaker 1: to the government is really starting to look at things
Speaker 1: a little bit differently and allow companies to do more
Speaker 1: and more testing in this regard to open it up. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, with J and J as as an example,
Speaker 1: is a company that's in here because they came to
Speaker 1: market with Academie drug, which was developed from a molecule
Speaker 1: from a Canadian psychedelics company, which then sold it to
Speaker 1: a company which then J and J bought and now
Speaker 1: they have a nasal based spray depression drug which is
Speaker 1: hit the marketplace. Uh. And you know, a VA, another
Speaker 1: very large drug company, is also working on on a
Speaker 1: ketamin um anti depression drug as well, which is still
Speaker 1: in testing. But there's so many different new psychedelic opportunities
Speaker 1: and therapies that are going there. But like some of
Speaker 1: the companies are working strictly on the delivery mechanism of
Speaker 1: those therapeutics as well. So it's not it's you know,
Speaker 1: how can we do micro dosing of LSD more efficiently?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean I've never micro dosd LSD yet,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think it's something that I might
Speaker 1: have to think about if I was a depressed person.
Speaker 1: I'm not really, but uh, you know, I have other
Speaker 1: potential addictions that I might have to treat with my
Speaker 1: micro LSD. So we'll go from there. Well, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can cope with some new et f ideas. If
Speaker 1: you start doing that, I'm sure we'll get even more
Speaker 1: creative over there. Um. But in serious, all seriousness, I
Speaker 1: think one thing I thought I thought about cannabis and
Speaker 1: shrooms and all and all this stuff becoming a little
Speaker 1: more accepted in mainstream is the fact that there was
Speaker 1: an opioid crisis and people are looking for some other
Speaker 1: way to treat a lot of things that aren't that
Speaker 1: is that did that open the gateway to this or
Speaker 1: do you think this all of this stuff would have
Speaker 1: would have happened regardless. I mean, I think that was
Speaker 1: a big genesis to the sort of cannabis revolution that
Speaker 1: we started to see in in late and becoming significantly
Speaker 1: more stream, more mainstream. I think you're absolutely right from
Speaker 1: a medical therapeutics perspective, because cannabis, like CBD especialty, is
Speaker 1: significantly safer um than fent and all and other opioids
Speaker 1: which can significantly which are very very addictive. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the thing with micro dosing and psilocybin and ketamine is
Speaker 1: it's still in the early stages of sort of approvals
Speaker 1: and testing and things like that, and we and they've
Speaker 1: been they've been highly addictive in the past, but it's
Speaker 1: really the micro dozing um and that is sort of
Speaker 1: moving away from the addictive opioids that we're saying. And
Speaker 1: so I would h P agree that it was a
Speaker 1: genesis of of an entire movement in pharmaceutical therapeutics UM
Speaker 1: to move away from opioids, and doctors are so much
Speaker 1: more inclined to prescribe UM non addictive therapies to treat
Speaker 1: like clinical depression and things like that. And that's where
Speaker 1: I think back to Joel's point, there is a huge
Speaker 1: opportunity from a global perspective for this industry. I mean,
Speaker 1: the one thing that we really have to think about
Speaker 1: from behind the scenes though, is still is there's still
Speaker 1: a stigma to magic mushrooms and to psychedelics and um.
Speaker 1: You know, cannabis is much more mainstream from a everyday
Speaker 1: recreational use. This is really you know, psychedelics is not
Speaker 1: doesn't really have a recreational opportunity except in a very
Speaker 1: very small portion of the marketplace. I'm actually curious about
Speaker 1: that the stigma that you mentioned though, because as we
Speaker 1: saw with cannabis, really it just takes time and suddenly
Speaker 1: that that perception can change. I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: that's true of this opportunity in in the psychedelic space
Speaker 1: or is the is the stigma completely different than than cannabis. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, because this is going to be like doctor
Speaker 1: prescribed medicines for you. I think that stigma is going
Speaker 1: to go away very very quickly as soon as we
Speaker 1: see real results happening with people. And we've already seen
Speaker 1: that in a lot of their drug testing already. I
Speaker 1: mean there's probably twenty five to thirty drugs specifically in
Speaker 1: drug testing right now in in phase two Phase two A,
Speaker 1: phase two B testing. That there's some in phase three
Speaker 1: testing UM. And I really think that as there are
Speaker 1: more drugs approved, there are more doctors that are prescribing
Speaker 1: these medicines. Just like you see with CBD CBD oil
Speaker 1: CB treatment, CBD UM ointments on your knees. Uh, We're
Speaker 1: going to see a significant ramp up in the use
Speaker 1: of psychedelic based therapies. So the actually really interesting thing
Speaker 1: there to have that many drugs and development and frankly
Speaker 1: only a handful that are already sort of out there
Speaker 1: and available. I mean that kind of presents a challenge
Speaker 1: for you to bring an e t F to market.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious when you look through your holdings. You
Speaker 1: know your top ten there, you mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: them already, but how are you navigating that challenge? And
Speaker 1: then what of those top holdings do you find to
Speaker 1: be really really interesting. Well, I mean we put a
Speaker 1: couple of big farming in there that are that are
Speaker 1: you know, touching this space, that are not necessarily that active,
Speaker 1: and we had to do that to sort of round
Speaker 1: out the portfolio and get enough diversity in in the
Speaker 1: explosure of the portfolio, I mean similar and only launched
Speaker 1: d MMJ. We had Scott's Miracle grew in there, which
Speaker 1: people are why did you putcot Smoker. Well, it's very
Speaker 1: very active in the in the cannabis space, cannabis growing
Speaker 1: opportunities here. We as I mentioned, we have J and
Speaker 1: J and Abbey. Um. You know, but some of the
Speaker 1: bigger companies that have out there recently my Men, which
Speaker 1: did a very very large I p O which is
Speaker 1: a New York based company, but it's obviously it's listed
Speaker 1: on a Canadian stock exchange because no u S stock
Speaker 1: exchange will list potentially illegally operating company at this point
Speaker 1: in time. UM. But Cybin, which is one of my
Speaker 1: near and dear favorites, which is one of the largest
Speaker 1: companies in there as well from a way perspective, has
Speaker 1: so many drug therapies UM in process. But not only
Speaker 1: that is, they're very very focused on the whole delivery
Speaker 1: mechanism and you know, micro dosing through a mental health
Speaker 1: professional in the past it's taken like three to four hours.
Speaker 1: Like that just doesn't you can't sustain a significant amount
Speaker 1: of population and therapeutic addresses with that long of a treatment.
Speaker 1: You know, there's got to be a better way to
Speaker 1: do this. Micro LSD implementation and the therapeutic applications of
Speaker 1: the mechanisms and the devices is going to be very
Speaker 1: very important to this industry as well. But I mean
Speaker 1: those are sort of like the compass um Compass Pathways,
Speaker 1: which is a UK based firm listed in the US.
Speaker 1: UM is also very big in this space as well,
Speaker 1: and they're the ones that are sort of creating the
Speaker 1: the synthetic psilocybin um and they have some derivatives that
Speaker 1: they're making out of that, which has been very very
Speaker 1: positive as well from a from a physical test perspective.
Speaker 1: Um to your point about you know, how could we
Speaker 1: create an et F, it was really the changes in
Speaker 1: the capital markets in with UM, some of the state
Speaker 1: rules changing, some of the company's being coming more active.
Speaker 1: You know, it's still I'm gonna say you know, a
Speaker 1: microcap small cap portfolio on an overall basis, but it's very,
Speaker 1: very focused on the psychedelics industry itself. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: just you know, we have more names in the portfolio
Speaker 1: now though than we launched when we launched the first
Speaker 1: marijuana e t F because we only had fifteen names
Speaker 1: in the portfolio. We launched with seventeen names in the
Speaker 1: portfolio this week. Yeah, I actually wrote about it in
Speaker 1: a note and two things struck me. One was just
Speaker 1: the seriousness of all of the medical research, the grants.
Speaker 1: You know, you go on Johns Hopkins has a whole
Speaker 1: team dedicated to this, and it quickly realized this is
Speaker 1: serious business, um, even though we joked earlier. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing is how small the companies were. And
Speaker 1: you address this a little bit, but for let's use
Speaker 1: et F nerd out a little bit here. If you're
Speaker 1: designing the CTF and you obviously want to capture this
Speaker 1: as best you can, but then you see like Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson in there. Obviously, I'm sure psychedelics are a
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of their overall revenue. Do you plan to
Speaker 1: sort of um work out those bigger names as the
Speaker 1: smaller eyes get bigger and go turn into small and
Speaker 1: mid caps. How does that process work when you're trying
Speaker 1: to capture this as purely as possible. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's a great question, Eric. And and you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at the evolution and the maturity of the
Speaker 1: cannabis market, right from the very start to the end.
Speaker 1: I mean, our our underlying index to h MMJ has
Speaker 1: changed seven times since we launched in seen as that
Speaker 1: market has evolved, as market caps have significantly grown. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we've actually had to reduce them the portfolio,
Speaker 1: we've reduced the sort of non marijuana focus names. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what's here. I mean with Big Farmer,
Speaker 1: we actually there's a cap in the fund for individual
Speaker 1: and overall exposure, but that actually will go down over
Speaker 1: time as the rest of the industry sort of UH
Speaker 1: grows and matures. As you said, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of we had to build this
Speaker 1: index so that it would actually change. And sure with
Speaker 1: the industry itself and the UH, the underlying stock price
Speaker 1: will increase, the average daily trading volume will increase, the
Speaker 1: market cap threshold to get into the index, all of
Speaker 1: those things will increase UM as the industry itself matures,
Speaker 1: and that's that was very very important to us as
Speaker 1: building UM in building this index for the fund. I'm
Speaker 1: actually curious just on that idea of of you know,
Speaker 1: this the evolution if you will, of the e t
Speaker 1: F and the holdings and the waitings. What did you
Speaker 1: learn from having the cannabis cannabis et F before that
Speaker 1: helped you navigate the launch of this one. Dealing with
Speaker 1: third party service providers which was one of the biggest
Speaker 1: pains in my butt when launching HMMJ and like getting
Speaker 1: your auditors, your custodian, the stock exchange, UM, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the regulator. The stock regulators are fund regulators. What was
Speaker 1: right to the easiest part um And here going into
Speaker 1: the psychedelic space, there was for a lot of the
Speaker 1: third parties. Again, there was a lot of i'll call
Speaker 1: it reputational risk. So I had to go to a
Speaker 1: different stock exchange that allows psychedelic companies to be listed
Speaker 1: on it UM, and I had to go through a
Speaker 1: significant amount of uh sort of approval processes with our
Speaker 1: third party service providers like you know we B and
Speaker 1: y Melon as our custodian and they are the largest
Speaker 1: global custodian out there, and UM, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a process to to get the approvals for that, and
Speaker 1: UM you know that was getting all of those approvals
Speaker 1: in advance was very very important for the timing of
Speaker 1: we wanted to get launch, because when we tried to
Speaker 1: launch h M M J, I mean it took us
Speaker 1: four months to get those approvals. Here, I got all
Speaker 1: those approvals at a time. But going back to Eric's
Speaker 1: point about the sort of the evolution of the underlying industry,
Speaker 1: I would say that is the single biggest lesson we
Speaker 1: learned was how to build an index that changes over
Speaker 1: time as an industry with years. So we're in here
Speaker 1: early for sure, and we know that. But one of
Speaker 1: the great things about an et F is it supports
Speaker 1: the underlying industry itself. There's almost like a self fulfilling
Speaker 1: UM promise here to to do well because you're supporting
Speaker 1: this psychedelic industry itself. And we're very very happy to
Speaker 1: be in this industry where it can be so beneficial
Speaker 1: to the UH, to the public itself at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. And you know, another kind of E
Speaker 1: T F NERD question. But I think important as an investor.
Speaker 1: One of the things about HMMJ that was fascinating is
Speaker 1: you guys broke the record for positive tracking error or
Speaker 1: tracking difference. In other words, if you look at the
Speaker 1: first year and a half of this fund, it was up,
Speaker 1: but the index is only up normally an e t F,
Speaker 1: you're lucky if it tracks perfectly. This was giving you
Speaker 1: twenty six percentage points have doubled it. It was almost
Speaker 1: like you're an active manager. And obviously this is because
Speaker 1: you were lending out shares of the stocks because people
Speaker 1: wanted to short them, and they'll pay you a fee
Speaker 1: for it, and you're able to put that back into
Speaker 1: the fund. Um. It has gone down a little bit.
Speaker 1: I guess the interest to short has subsided a bit
Speaker 1: on cannabis. But do you see that as being something
Speaker 1: that would also help with the new ETF in terms
Speaker 1: of having some of these smaller, harder to get stocks
Speaker 1: and then being able to use some of that money
Speaker 1: to to use performance a little Absolutely that is going
Speaker 1: to happen here as well. You know, I mean Robin
Speaker 1: Hood really changed the lending market last year, and you know,
Speaker 1: after three very very strong years of lending in the
Speaker 1: cannabis space, UM lending rates. As soon as robin Hood
Speaker 1: went on line and started lending, lending rates in the
Speaker 1: cannabis sector went down almost from where they were or
Speaker 1: from a hundred UM. And in this day, in this space,
Speaker 1: it's still very very early. There's still a lot of
Speaker 1: founder stock, there's still a lot of restricted stock, the
Speaker 1: floats are much smaller in these companies, and there's a
Speaker 1: significant lending opportunity. So again we're gonna do We're gonna
Speaker 1: be dealing with UM. The average lending rate in our
Speaker 1: portfolio is uh probably minus thirty or three thousand basis
Speaker 1: points minus thirty we call it in the in the
Speaker 1: lending terms UM from an annualized lending rate, so that
Speaker 1: that could you know, we're allowed to lend up to
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the portfolio at this point in time.
Speaker 1: In theory, we're going to be paying you to own
Speaker 1: psychedelic stocks between ten and fift on an annualized basis
Speaker 1: without any stock movement at all. That is an amazing
Speaker 1: This is Joel, I mean, we talked about you know
Speaker 1: this whole Wall Street bets wants to like stick it
Speaker 1: to the hedge funds. This is a this is a
Speaker 1: very safe and legal way to do that, because hedge
Speaker 1: funds are the one who liked to short stock. So
Speaker 1: a lot of ETFs, not just horizons. We talk with vanguards.
Speaker 1: Jerry O'Riley, he does it with the biggest fund in
Speaker 1: the world. Where you get money from hedge funds to
Speaker 1: subsidize the the e t F. In Jerry's case, it's
Speaker 1: a few BIPs. In this case it's it can be
Speaker 1: a lot. I find that fascinating that the small investor
Speaker 1: is getting paid by the hedge funds through the e
Speaker 1: t F lending process. I don't know. I just that's
Speaker 1: a people don't talk about it much, but in this
Speaker 1: space it can be very dramatic and really give you
Speaker 1: extra return. Okay, So I I hate to bring just
Speaker 1: a little bit of anxiety to the party, but it
Speaker 1: seems fitting since you know, we're talking about psychedelics and
Speaker 1: there's always going to be like a little bit of
Speaker 1: weirdness um associated with trips. But Steve Um, you know,
Speaker 1: there are considerable challenges that you're going to face yet,
Speaker 1: and some of those are gonna be probably regulatory and
Speaker 1: adoption and results of of the clinical trials and everything
Speaker 1: else that we've talked about, UM, how are you thinking
Speaker 1: about what that downside and what those risks might look
Speaker 1: like for this opportunity, because it does seem like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's early and things could change dramatically. How are you
Speaker 1: assessing that? I mean, those are those are all very
Speaker 1: good points, Joel. I mean the big thing here is this,
Speaker 1: we believe that this is a very early stage opportunity,
Speaker 1: much like cannabis was in seen and we've seen some
Speaker 1: significant highs and significant lows to that industry as it
Speaker 1: has matured UM, and I don't doubt that we're going
Speaker 1: to see that here. The one nice thing is all
Speaker 1: of these companies have been able to raise significance amount
Speaker 1: of capital of late, very very easily. They've been going
Speaker 1: out to marketplace UM and not like Amazon or not
Speaker 1: Amazon AMC who recently did that interesting stock offer. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is an early stage industry. For sure,
Speaker 1: they need a lot of capital. UM. We're going to
Speaker 1: be there to help support that through the e t F.
Speaker 1: But the companies themselves have been able to very access
Speaker 1: the Canadian capital markets and even the the US hedge
Speaker 1: funds and family offices and things like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got big names like Kevin O'Leary and Bruce Litton
Speaker 1: that are throwing millions of dollars in its industry supporting
Speaker 1: some of the companies. They're on the boards or advisors
Speaker 1: to these companies. Um. You know, these are guys that
Speaker 1: are very, very active out there as personal investors. And
Speaker 1: when I when I see that, um, it makes me
Speaker 1: stand up and say, hey, hey, you know, there might
Speaker 1: actually might be something do this. And to Eric's point,
Speaker 1: like I had no idea the followers of the psychedelic
Speaker 1: stock industry until we filed that prospectus and I got
Speaker 1: a thousand emails and it was unbelievable from all of
Speaker 1: these followers. I mean, um, it's been. It's extremely active
Speaker 1: in Reddit and and all of these other stock forms. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's been fantastic to watch. And the hype that
Speaker 1: we've seen, like the number of hits on our website
Speaker 1: has gone up simply because of psychedelics and uh h
Speaker 1: m n J has always been the most active et
Speaker 1: f on our website by a long shot. That in
Speaker 1: our leveraged in an inverse leverage oyle this past year.
Speaker 1: But but outside of marijuana, like, psychedelics has been been
Speaker 1: a windfall. Just from a press and activity and hype perspective,
Speaker 1: It's been great to watch Canada. I feel like you
Speaker 1: guys have very liberal regulators. Um. You know, Joel, we
Speaker 1: did the whole documentary on the first TTF and they
Speaker 1: designed it here in the US, but Canada was able
Speaker 1: to sort of, I don't know, take the idea so
Speaker 1: to speak, and get it listed there earlier. And if
Speaker 1: you think about it, like the Spack episode that we
Speaker 1: did the stack Guy was earlier. Julian, Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: do feel like in many ways, Um, you know, we're
Speaker 1: just following your lead. Uh, Steve, what is it about
Speaker 1: Canada and your capital markets that allows you to be
Speaker 1: so adventurous and innovative. I have to say, our regulators
Speaker 1: you're just smarter than the SEC. You know. It's it's
Speaker 1: probably just as simple as that. I mean, we we
Speaker 1: brought active ets to the marketplace over ten non transparent
Speaker 1: active ets over ten years ago. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's just we we can evolve the underlyings of the
Speaker 1: et F industry a lot faster. Unfortunately, our markets are
Speaker 1: you know, significantly smaller from an investment capital perspective overall. Um,
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean, I take a little bit
Speaker 1: of offense to Eric's point that we copied the U
Speaker 1: S filing on marijuana, because you know, they filed their
Speaker 1: perspectives on Thursday and my perspectives got received by the
Speaker 1: regulators on the Friday, and then I was able to
Speaker 1: launch within two months, and they took eight months to
Speaker 1: launch from there. But you know, time out, guys. Let
Speaker 1: me clarify something here. I was talking about the originally
Speaker 1: t F s p y. Okay, so are not you no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not. Yeah. That's a case where I even got
Speaker 1: what's his name, Peter Haynes, one of the founding fathers
Speaker 1: up there, and he said, yeah, okay, the idea was
Speaker 1: hatched in the US, but we launched it here sooner,
Speaker 1: you know, what can I tell you? So he admitted it,
Speaker 1: even though every time you go to a Toronto E
Speaker 1: t F conference they do this touchdown dance about having
Speaker 1: the first et F and I'm like, well, Eric, come on,
Speaker 1: it was Toronto, but the idea was here and we
Speaker 1: just have an sec It took four years. Steve, I
Speaker 1: gotta ask you the closing question that we we love
Speaker 1: to ask many people on trillions, which is what is
Speaker 1: your favorite E t F ticker that is not your own?
Speaker 1: I like MJ in the U S. It's very very simple,
Speaker 1: it's very very straightforward. They were a nice follower to
Speaker 1: our E t F. Wait wait, wait, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1: How could you not pick toke if you're going to
Speaker 1: be in that category here? I mean, that's a plus.
Speaker 1: It's a verb verb tickers are the best toke. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that one's Mount Rushmore, but maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I'm I'm just biased. Well, there will there will
Speaker 1: soon be stocks that have the ticker like trum or
Speaker 1: you know, something along those lines. I mean, we went psych,
Speaker 1: but there was already a stock that was p s
Speaker 1: y c um, so we went p s y K
Speaker 1: with with our new we we thought. So there was
Speaker 1: one that just launched here called Dude. I thought that
Speaker 1: might have been a decent one. And also Ben Johnson
Speaker 1: at morning Star head t RPN tripping. But then again,
Speaker 1: I guess that deviates that. This is not recreational. This
Speaker 1: is serious depression curing. Not a party I went to
Speaker 1: in the nineties. I don't know what else they were
Speaker 1: serving out. Those parties you went to in the nineties
Speaker 1: are but so anything goes pre cell phone, San Francisco,
Speaker 1: I think too right areas economy. It was a beautiful
Speaker 1: no cameras, Yeah, all right, Steve Hawkins, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on Trillions, Joel, Eric, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me today. I had a great time
Speaker 1: and hope we have a lot of fun with Magic
Speaker 1: my shins going forward. Thanks for listening to Trillions until
Speaker 1: next time. You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever else you
Speaker 1: like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're
Speaker 1: on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webber Show, He's at Eric
Speaker 1: fall Tunas, and you can find more about Steve Hawkins
Speaker 1: and Horizons at Horizons et f s dot com. This
Speaker 1: episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. Francesca Levy
Speaker 1: is the head of Bloomberg Podcast by