The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday, Feb. 25, edition that betting against cannabis stocks became a money-making proposition for the first time this year on Monday amid a broad market sell-off. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post reports that short sellers in the 20 most-shorted pot stocks made $237-million as of midday, pushing them into the black for the first time in 2020 with $107-million in total mark-to-market profits, according to data from financial analytics firm S3 Partners (all figures U.S.). Total short interest in the top 20 cannabis stocks is sitting at $3.5 billion. The ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF, which tracks the sector, fell as much as 5.6 per cent to a record low as the spreading coronavirus prompted investors to flee risky assets. Three Canadian cannabis producers were also downgraded at Cowen & Co. Investors betting that cannabis stocks would fall lost $102-million in January as shares rebounded from a steep decline in 2019, S3 said. This compared with just over $1-billion in profits last year. Shorting pot stocks is an extremely expensive proposition, with an average borrow fee of 31 per cent due to a limited public floats at many of the companies.