Alan Brochstein

Alan Brochstein was born in Texas on March 3, 1965, and grew up in Houston, attending The Kinkaid School and later Memorial High School. He earned a B.A. from Northwestern University in 1986, majoring in Economics and in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS), and began his career on Wall Street that same year. He earned the CFA charter in 1997. Over the following two-plus decades he worked as a portfolio manager, trader, and equity research analyst in institutional settings, and in 2007 he founded AB Analytical Services to provide independent research and consulting to registered investment advisors. He has contributed investment analysis to Seeking Alpha since 2007.

In early 2013, Brochstein became one of the first investment professionals to pivot to covering the cannabis industry exclusively. That year he launched 420 Investor, a subscription-based due-diligence service for people investing in publicly-traded cannabis stocks — described as the first and still one of the largest platforms of its kind. He moved 420 Investor onto Seeking Alpha's Investing Groups platform in 2023, where he closely covers roughly 20 names, publishes earnings previews and post-mortems, and maintains model portfolios.

In September 2015 he co-founded New Cannabis Ventures (with Joel Theard), a Houston-based financial-media and information platform that curates news on the most promising cannabis companies and profiles influential investors and operators in the sector. Brochstein serves as its founding/managing partner and lead author. He is a frequent conference speaker and a regular media source, having been quoted by outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business, and Forbes (where he has been a contributor).

• Invests and advises exclusively in the cannabis industry, which he has covered full-time since 2013 — "one of the first investment professionals to focus exclusively on the cannabis industry."
• Core focus is publicly-traded cannabis equities: U.S. MSOs, Canadian licensed producers, ancillary/technology names, and cannabis-focused REITs.
• Runs two model portfolios launched at the end of 2022: "Beat the Global Cannabis Stock Index" (a diversified core portfolio) and "Beat the American Cannabis Operator Index" (focused on U.S. MSOs).
• Emphasizes rigorous, fundamentals-driven due diligence — balance-sheet quality, cash flow, dilution risk, and management credibility — over hype; he has repeatedly cautioned that it is "not necessarily time to buy cannabis stocks," signaling a valuation- and quality-conscious, contrarian stance.
• Has expressed relative preference for Canadian LPs and cannabis REITs over U.S. MSOs at various points, based on financial and regulatory dynamics.
• Historically explored connecting accredited investors with private cannabis companies via a "420 Funders" concept, positioning him as a facilitator/angel network for early-stage cannabis ventures rather than a check-writing institutional fund.