Are you of legal age to consume cannabis related news?
Smoking with your friends who are into the stock market, and cannabis stocks in particular, can be incredibly rewarding financially… if they know what they’re talking about. Sifting through to see what is actually decent advice (“Let’s invest in CuraLeaf!”) and what might just ruin your livelihood (“Let’s invest in whatever Dan Bilzerian is doing!”) can be all the more difficult when you’ve just finished a fat blunt between the two of you.
Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be a minefield. Here are the questions to ask yourself to see if you should listen to your friend’s weed stock advice, or if you should just laugh in their face and go back to talking about that scene in “Breaking Bad” when Walter White smokes a jay:
Who is higher?
This is the first and most difficult question. We all know that asking yourself this while smoking is a one-way ticket to getting paranoid, which will make you feel even more stoned, which might make you forget the advice in the first place (good or bad). Don’t make it a mental exercise. Instead, use clues that you can hear and see: which one of you said most recently, “I’m so fucking high?” Are you currently eating a bag of chips the classic way with your hand in the bag, or have you been tilting the bag back straight into your mouth? There’s much to consider before contacting your bank.
Does your friend actually know the name of the stock, or are they calling them “Weed Stocks?”
If your friend remembers the actual name of the company, you may want to put the bong down and listen up, or at least make a note on your phone. WARNING: Be sure to Google the name first, because sometimes a friend will say “this company is like the Uber of weed” and while that sounds super legit, it’s almost definitely not an actual company’s name.
Are you both sitting in front of a lava lamp? If so, how many lava lamps?
One lava lamp in the room is the limit for taking their advice to heart, and even that comes with sub-questions to ask.
- How tall is the lava lamp? Because if it’s large enough for you to notice, it’s too big of a lava lamp and you should not trust this friend’s judgement.
- Is the lava lamp turned on for ambience, or for warmth? Everyone’s got their own aesthetic tastes, but if they can’t afford the heat bill, they sure as heck can’t afford whatever stock they’re telling you to get. Or any stock, for that matter.
- Is the lava lamp normal-sized, but comes with some sort of additional theme? Don’t be fooled by a friend who owns a regular sized lava lamp that is also an official Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Lava Lamp.
What’s your friend’s favorite movie?
This should be the easiest one for someone to pass. All they have to do is mention any movie that is not “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Wall Street,” or “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”
How well do you know this friend?
This is a bigger-picture question: how annoyed will you be with this friend if you end up losing money? Making a bad investment from a best friend versus someone you barely know will affect you emotionally in very different ways. Squandering away an enormous amount of cash because a guy you haven’t seen in 10 years just happened to be passing through your city and called you on a whim will not produce any future belly laughs.
Trust me, I’m never listening to my “friend” Aaron again. God damn piece of shit Aaron.
So. Did your friend fail most of the questions? Probably, but we expected this. Let them down easy — you won’t be investing in “the Sharper Image of Weed” anytime soon.
But did your friend ace every single question? Hope you got your bank on speed dial, because you’re about to buy several tickets on the gravy train express! Next stop: Weed Moneyville.
Michael Tannenbaum is a writer and actor. You can find him on Twitter: @iamTannenbaum
