Marijuana stocks have gone on a wild ride over the last month, but is now the time to put some skin in the game?

According to James Thorne, senior portfolio manager and chief capital market strategist with Caldwell Investment Management, it’s impossible to decide which companies will thrive in the emerging cannabis industry right now.

“Is it a very interesting industry? Yes. Does it have rapid growth? Yes. Can you pick the winners and losers now? It’s a crap shoot,” Thorne said on BNN’s Market Call on Wednesday.

Investors have feverishly surveyed pot stocks looking for the next big thing in recent months, with Canadian marijuana producers like Canopy Growth (CGC.TO), Aurora Cannabis (ACB.V) and Aphria (APH.V) experiencing wild swings amid anticipation for the Liberal government’s legalization of recreational marijuana.

Some analysts have even predicted the pot industry could be worth nearly $20 billion within five years.

“We did sort of a back-of-the-envelope calculation and if regulation occurs under the timelines that everyone’s expecting, then it is possible that there’s going to be significant growth once that comes online,” Canaccord Genuity equity research associate Matt Bottomley said on BNN on Monday.

However, Thorne likened investors’ current marijuana fascination with another seemingly promising opportunity from a couple decades ago.

“Let’s go back to the 1990s, when we were looking at all the ‘dot-com’ stocks,” Thorne said. “You couldn’t distinguish between Amazon, StickK.com, Grocery.com: You couldn’t distinguish who the winners were going to be.

“It’s an interesting area, but we just don’t invest any money into it right now.”