The combination of cash and cannabis has proved a heady mix for the sharemarket recently. But nothing prepared the market for the astounding reaction to Tuesday's news that the "King of Cannabis" Nevil Schoenmakers is acting as a strategic adviser to another dope hope, the ASX-listed Singaporean biotech Stemcell United.
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The stock rocketed more than 3800 per cent to a peak of 50?? on Tuesday afternoon. And continued its dizzying ascent Wednesday hitting a high of $1.085 in morning trading.
To put this in perspective, someone holding $1000 of stock on Monday evening would have seen their shares top out at $83,460 by Wednesday morning.
Keep in mind that Stemcell United has not even entered the medicinal cannabis business yet. It has merely appointed Schoenmakers to help the company "assess opportunities in the medicinal cannabis sector".
Schoenmakers, an Australian/Dutch dual national is a legend in the world of cannabis due to his work in the 1980s cultivating the potent and hardy varieties of cannabis that have become the basis for most of the strains widely used around the world today.
Not all of it appears to have been legal. Which is why he was forced to flee US government attempts to extradite him from Australia to face a raft of drug-related charges in the 1990s.
A more sanitised version of these details made it into Stemcell United's press release.
"Mr Schoenmakers was referenced in the industry magazine High Times as the "King of Cannabis", and he brings a wealth of sector experience to SCU," the company said.
"SCU's ability to attract experts the stature of Mr Schoenmakers demonstrates tremendous confidence in our prospects in this market," said Jamie Khoo, the chairman of Stemcell United's parent company SCU.
Stemcell United listed on the ASX less than two years ago offering expertise in the traditional Chinese medicine plant extract business.
It is not the only hot pot stock on the ASX. Auscann's share price has tripled since its ASX debut last month.
And even Pnina "Diamond Rose" Feldman - sister of "Diamond" Joe Gutnick - is steering her crew at Queensland Bauxite into the sector, as CBD reported last week.
Its stock price has doubled since the announcement.
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