Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines Heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

How’s it going out there? It’s August 13th. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Daniel Creech, what’s going on?

0:00:31 – Daniel Creech

Man. How’s everything, Everything’s great, Frank. Happy Florida Wednesday. As always, man Happy.

0:00:35 – Frank Curzio

Florida Wednesday. Hopefully you enjoyed your little vacation. By the way, I talk about that all the time, the vacation it’s coming up, Frank, I’m meeting a client who’s, uh, you know, a subscriber and a One member who has a practice over here and, uh, he comes pretty much a couple days every month or two. So he’s like I’d love to meet you. And then he started busting your chops, because I always bust Daniel’s chops when he’s on vacation. He’s like I’d ask Daniel to come but he’s probably not gonna be in the office, and Fridays, Mondays, they’re all tough for me, you know he’s like he’s probably not going to be in, he’s probably not going to hang out at 5pm, so it was funny.

So you know, just for the record, Daniel’s first one in here, last one out, it comes in everything, but I’m still going to bust his chops. You got it. I’m from New York. That’s what we do. If we’re busting your chops, we don’t like you, but uh, yeah, it was pretty funny. So you’re going on another vacation, though, which is incredible. Seriously, you get the best boss in the world. So that’s awesome. I do?

0:01:29 – Daniel Creech

Speaking of traveling, did I oversell? How was my home state Frank? Are the real roller coasters in Ohio?

0:01:34 – Frank Curzio

yeah, ohio was insane. I mean so at cedar point. Uh, I took my youngest daughter, my 14 year old, who loves roller coasters. It was. It was insane. I they have four big roller coasters. I mean the top three are Top Thrill, maverick, steel Vengeance. Top Thrill goes 120 miles an hour. It’s unbelievable. Steel Vengeance just whips you around. It feels like someone just beat the crap out of you. I mean Maverick is awesome as well.

And then we went on at night. So we went Friday and Saturday Friday all day, got the fast pass. And Saturday, friday all day got the fast pass. If you go there, pay the $200. I mean the lines were over two. I was walking past these people and feeling bad. I’m like how do you wait on a line for over two hours and it was like 90 degrees out. So we went on Friday all day from 10 to 10 at night, and then we went half the day on Saturday and before that we went jet skiing. We had an awesome time in Lake Erie and it was great driving around. And Lake Erie you know it’s huge, but they have an area where it’s like 16 miles or so where you could just it’s. You can go anywhere you want and you could anchor and go swimming because it’s like all four feet, five feet deep and there’s lots of spaces that you could do that.

And then we decided to get a little creative, my daughter and I, and went out the next day and said let’s go out. We were leaving on Sunday so I said let’s go out to one, we jump in the car at 1.30. We go our flight’s later. It’s a two hour drive from Columbus, all the way back to you know, from Columbus, from Cedar Point. So we wound up getting stuck and we got at the furthest point because we went by the breakers. So you had to go around this jetty and stuff and go actually into Lake Erie, like where it was rough and stuff like that it was. It wasn’t my fault, Daniel, I swear it wasn’t my fault.

So we went to an area where it’s beautiful, lots of boats around, it’s four feet deep, everyone’s hanging out and they have these floats and stuff like that. It’s really nice. And we weren’t that far from you know, maybe about 200, 300 yards away from you know, just the sand and everything, because it’s like a little beach area there by the, you know, on the island where Cedar Point is, and all the roller coasters and stuff. There’s a breaker’s hotel and you could stay there. This way you could walk to the park. We didn’t stay at that, it was booked. We stayed a couple miles away but we were in the water.

So I just hit the reverse for a second and it’s so powerful it sucked up the anchor and went around the engine Again. It wasn’t my fault. So we got stuck. Daughter, hit the reverse button. We got stuck for three hours, yeah, and it cost me about $1,200. I mean, it was four feet of water and stuff and everyone’s hanging out. It wasn’t like we were in the middle of the Lake Erie and like holy shit, but it was just. You know, she walked off to the shore and stuff like that and waited there and I was just sitting there with the jet ski for three hours but we had to get towed. Someone picked us up and yeah, so I’m there. You know, changing my flights had to change my hotel, changed to rent a car, had to pay about, it only cost about an extra $200. I mean, everything was okay with the jet ski, which I knew, but it was like shit. But we rented it for two and a half hours that day. We got an extra half an hour and he’s like dying. We got stuck.

It’s so funny, I was upstate the weekend before we got a car that I thought was four-wheel drive and it wasn’t, and we were trying to drive to a lake. I don’t know if he told you this but we got stuck.

No, netski’s stuck. So. But I told my daughter, who was kind of like I can’t believe it. I was like you know what? This is an experience. I said 20 years from now you’re going to. She’s like 20 years from now she’s 14. She’s like 20 years from now. I was like we’re going to talk about this right when I’m older, really, really old, and remember we got stuck It’ll.

Yeah, I was like come on I want to go jet-scan, I want to drive this thing and she was flying on it. I was holding on to it. It was cool, I was in the back and everything. We had a blast. It was really, really nice. And man, we went on a lot of roller coasters and holy shit, Daniel, I mean you were right that is, unless you’re going during a week decided we went. We were waiting 20 or 30 minutes online with the fast pass. That’s how many people were there. It was insane. I couldn’t believe. What’s that compared to on Friday? What were you waiting Friday? About 10, 15 minutes, oh, tops.

so yeah, that’s good and I was on a Friday, which is still a little crowded, I’m sure. If you go Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and got that, you just go. And we were able to go on all the roller coasters twice. That’s awesome and I was okay. I was like I was loving it, man. The coasters were really smooth, really good, it was a lot of fun and, yeah, I enjoyed myself. It was a really good time at my door, so it was nice. But, yeah, now I’m back in the saddle. That’s it. A lot has happened. We have the inflation data that came out, which on a Tuesday, is it me?

0:06:09 – Daniel Creech

Is this supposed to come out on Wednesday, Daniel? I don’t know. Maybe it’s me. Yeah, I’m not sure the rhyme or reason behind that either, but I always thought it was Wednesdays, Thursdays, but every once in a while they threw in a Tuesday, Frank.

0:06:14 – Frank Curzio

It was a Tuesday and it came out and Coming in hot. It was basically showed that it was softer than estimates. Right, increased 0.2% in July, right, because they come out to lag. It’s a month. Right, they’re going over last month’s numbers. So 2.7% on a 12-month basis. Well under 3%, again softer than estimates.

And you had a lot of people come out and say, listen, the Fed needs to cut by half a point. And you know, Daniel and I have been all over this saying the Fed needs to cut. I mean the bond market’s telling you you need to cut. We got your inflation numbers. They’re definitely trending down.

Blackrock’s Rick Reeder came out. He’s a chief investment officer for BlackRock’s global fixed income portfolio. Just know that this guy manages $3 trillion. And he said, listen, the Fed needs to cut by 50 basis points. We saw the odds of an increase of a 25, 50 basis point in September. Go up, Scott. Of a 25-50 basis point in September. Go up, Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary. Yes, 100% pro-Trump policies and everything like that. So there’s a good chance of a 50 basis point Fed cut in September. Now, and he said the Fed funds rate should be 150 to 175 basis points lower overall.

I’ll go first on this. I’m not seeing it. You know how I feel about that. They should be coming down, they should be cutting and we haven’t really seen inflation from tariffs. But when I looked under the hood, this wasn’t as good a report as a lot of people were suggesting that the Fed should cut immediately and again, that’s different from what I was saying. When the data changes, you want to change Because, listen core rate excluse food and energy was up 0.3% last month.

It puts a 12-month core rate over 3% at 3.1%. It’s the highest rate since February and I just didn’t see when looking under the hood that there was enough evidence. I thought it was worse than expected in terms of having the Fed look at this and say now we can cut. I think it provided more ammo for the Fed to say we’re not going to cut in September and the market didn’t see that. I mean we saw used cars, services, household furnishings, footwear, jewelry, video, audio products, shelter, food. I mean all these categories still seeing rising prices. And I’m not talking about small gains because we always see like small rising prices, even if it’s 2% or 1.8.

Specifically, big components here Service index was up. It’s a four percent year over year. Shelter is up 3.7 year over year. Food index up three percent year over year. They make up a huge part of the cpi and if energy was not stable because it’s down 1.6 percent year over year, we’re seeing it. Even at gas prices you’re paying lower. If energy went up last month, people would be like, holy shit, the Fed’s not cutting at all. I mean, that was the one component that really brought it down. It wasn’t everything, but there’s key components that I saw. I didn’t see what everyone else saw, saying hey, okay, here it is, the Fed could definitely cut right now. I just thought this was more favorable for a Fed that doesn’t want to cut compared to a Fed that has to cut after these numbers. But again, maybe I’m viewing this differently, maybe you saw it differently.

0:09:11 – Daniel Creech

Not completely slightly, though, because I think A this is a great kind of teaching moment or educational side on the component of hey, it really doesn’t matter as much of what the number is versus the expectations, and we’ve been talking about this and you know we’ve been right not to try to grandstand too much. But when policy is enacted, you know it’s an oil spill and it takes a lot longer than maybe what us humans in this instant gratification world are willing to think about how it’s going to work through the system. And we’ve talked about this. We have this constant yeah, but wait till next report. Yeah, well, okay, the tariffs aren’t here, they’re not mind blowing, or they’re not.

You know, an outlier that’s so high. Well, wait till next report. And now you’re getting to this point where it’s like, hey, why aren’t tariffs showing up now? Partially is because Trump whether it’s luck or negotiating or whatever Frank, why do you think we haven’t felt the full tariff? Whatever the full tariff pain is, and there’s going to be some pain and, as I’ve given Fed Chair Powell credit, for he’s talked about how it can be absorbed through the different processes. But why do you think we haven’t had the full whatever that is, pain of tariffs yet?

0:10:14 – Frank Curzio

I mean, look at some of the results. I mean we’ve seen earnings results where, yeah, I’ll point out specifically, like a Cava or Chipotle Mexican Grill, you know some restaurants, some other companies that where higher prices, even though the tariffs are going to cause higher prices for these companies, it doesn’t mean that customers are going to pay these higher prices. And we’re going to talk about the restaurant industry tomorrow on our premium podcast and really go over the winners and losers there, because we said avoid a lot of these, especially Chipotle, which is one of the worst performers. It’s down, I want to say like 20%, plus this year, with the S&P 500 up 10%. We told you to avoid that as much as you can. We’ve been saying that for a long time, over a year.

There’s just a lot of companies that aren’t getting done and you’re not seeing those higher prices. People pay higher prices. They’re shopping at different areas and some people are able to control that inflation better, where you have a Walmart or Amazon that can negotiate with their partners and say, hey, it doesn’t matter, we can’t see these prices being raised that much. Remember, the inflation comes when people pay for those goods and you’re going to have to pay for electricity, you’re going to have to pay for the things that you need and I get it and tuition and shit like that. But when you’re looking at some of these things and products and services, even myself I’m changing my habits. Personally, I’m not going to certain places because I’m like you’re out of your mind, I’m not paying these prices, I’m not. I mean, even you go to breakfast. There’s a difference between paying $16, $17 for breakfast compared to $6, $7. And I’m not even kidding you. So you know it’s crazy, the discrepancy in prices. But maybe that’s why we’re not seeing it. Maybe companies are better prepared for it too, because we saw it coming where it was a real big surprise, at the beginning of February, march. But you know we’re not really seeing it.

But this report I felt like we saw you know more inflation than people leading on to it wasn’t a positive report where I was like holy shit, this is great. I told you that. I would love to say, all right, I’m right, I’m always right. Your Fed’s got to lower now For me. I just saw this report and seeing these economists come on now what I thought they should have came on six months ago saying we really need to cut. We should be cutting right now because inflation was clearly trading lower. We’re seeing it like year over year. You know we’re back to the 3% mark Again. This was the worst reading of the highest reading we saw since February. I didn’t see what everyone else saw. I just thought this provided more ammo in the Fed, in that court where, hey, we don’t need to touch rates. I was just surprised that the odds for a 25 and 50 basis point cut went up tremendously, went up a lot. After this report. I thought they would go the opposite way.

0:12:38 – Daniel Creech

Well, I saw that they were at what 90, 80 plus percent for a 25 basis point. That was on Polymarket. But you know this continues to be clear as mud. Because if you look at the June I’m just pulling up the CPI data on the BLS Apparel is one of the lowest hanging items that you would think of is really going to have tariff inflation impacts and in June it rose four tenths of a percent 0.4. It went up. In July the data that came out yesterday it only went up 0.1%. That kind of shocked me a little bit. But back to this.

Real quick on, the full effect of pain is tariffs. The real full tariffs keep getting delayed. Now, whether that’s negotiating tactics or the taco trade or whatever, the point is is that you can always look to say it’s going to be worse in the future and we’ll see who absorbs that. But right now the consumer is not bearing the brunt end of that across the board. Yes, certain items are going higher and lower and all that kind of stuff. It’ll continue to be choppy and muddy, but apparel is something to watch at.

And to your point, Frank, on the rate cut side, I honestly think that the market—so one last thing on the expectations. The core is at 3.1%. That should have got more attention, in my opinion. It’s just funny how it’s almost like a bull market looking for a thesis, Frank, because what are they hanging on to the 2.7? The 2.7 is the headline number and they’re like hey, that’s great and we always joke. Yeah, you use that as the headline because you don’t take into reality food and energy in the core, which is what we pay and what’s going to happen to energy when we lower rates?

0:14:07 – Frank Curzio

I mean, just think of the process of when we start lowering rates, and it takes a while to filter the system. Sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes a year and a half. When you’re lowering rates, what it’s going to result? It’s going to result in lower interest rates for loans, which is commercial loans, which is more real estate being built, which is infrastructure being built all over the place. Well, we have infrastructure, lots of bills in place in the US, but we’re talking about every place.

Lower rates is going to result in more building. It should result in more economic growth. And when you see economic growth, what do you see? You see that you’re going to use more energy. So when we’re lowering rates, energy right now has been the major component to say thank God that energy is coming down, because if it wasn’t, these numbers would be through the roof right now. And I can’t tell you that.

Hey, you know, a year from now, I’m betting that oil is going to be a lot higher, because everything that Trump is doing is pro-market, pro-growth get some money, get more manufacturing. All that stuff is going to require more energy, and we’re not just talking about electricity demand, we’re talking about oil demand, we’re talking about natural gas demand. So that stuff is down now it’s a big component of CPI, but when you lower rates, that’s going to go up. It’s eventually going to go up. It might not take three months, six months, it’s going to go up but you know, it may show inflationary signs because that component’s really down, which is really, you know, helping this index tremendously and leading everyone to say, hey, we really need to lower rates now.

0:15:19 – Daniel Creech

After this, you know, rest of this report, yeah, and so one last thing, and I want to ask you this because, again, the market’s definitely hanging on to the 2.7, not the 3.1. That’s fine, we’re just pointing it out. However, I also think the market is looking through Frank, I want your opinion the new jobs guy coming in. If he’s confirmed, he’s got to get confirmed. Ej.

And Tony from the Heritage Foundation major conservative you guys think I’m conservative, you go to the Heritage Foundation. Major conservative, you guys think I’m conservative, you go to the Heritage Foundation. Now, if he gets confirmed, Frank, this is how crazy I am. Why would you not kitchen sink the first couple of reports or at least talk about the process and explain how screwed up and silly this process is and it is. It’s not a that’s not a right or left issue. The way we in our technology driven world, the way the government operates, is silly. Everybody can agree with that, but you don’t have to keep going along with it. And my point here is, if you talk about the process and all that kind of stuff, Frank, I could be wrong, but I think the market is holding on to the 2.7% number and they are looking through to the jobs and they’re saying, hey, the revisions, the jobs are not near as strong as what we’ve been talked about. It’s going to put Trump in a tough spot. How do you brag about the greatest of everything and then point to weaknesses?

0:16:29 – Frank Curzio

And that’s the thing.

0:16:38 – Daniel Creech

But he’s going to it. You take bad news and you blame your predecessor or the other party, and when good news comes out, you latch onto it and you take credit for it. That’s the play.

0:16:43 – Frank Curzio

He needs weaker jobs to actually lower rates and add that confirmation.

0:16:46 – Daniel Creech

Yes, and you tell me was the market, not looking at the weaker, with the 2.7 and weaker jobs. I could be wrong, but you have a massive rally yesterday, you know, back to new all-time highs. That’s getting wild people.

0:16:58 – Frank Curzio

It is and it’s been affecting, I mean, small caps are on fire. Small caps are on fire right now, which is great. We’re doing very well in our portfolios and you know crypto as well is on fire, so we’re doing great in that portfolio. So, yes, you are seeing that risk on market. But, you know, moving on here did because we have a different opinion than what’s out there. Right Again, we don’t have anyone over our head saying no, no, you got to say this.

you got to say that. No after that, like we just call it how we see it, and I’m going against something that I said.

0:17:22 – Daniel Creech

I still think they’re going to be cutting.

0:17:24 – Frank Curzio

They’re going to be cutting. They’re going to be cutting by 25 basis points. I can did not give them evidence that they need to cut right now. I feel like this was more like Powell saying, hey, I told you so, but maybe I’m wrong. The market’s seeing that clearly wrong. Maybe I’m wrong about it, but I don’t know. Well, let’s see going forward and let’s see what that September cut, what it brings.

But I want to cover a couple of news stories. A lot of companies most of them have reported earnings 3500. But a couple of stories that caught my attention buybacks. So this is from the Wall Street Journal US companies have announced $983 billion worth of stock buybacks so far in 2025. You can guess it a lot of that is from the hyperscalers and mag seven best start of a year on record, and that was since they’ve been keeping statistics since 1982. It’s tracking to be more than $1.1 trillion overall in 2025. So they’re announcing $983 billion worth of buybacks so far, but $1.1 trillion worth overall in 2025. That would mark an all-time high over the $1 trillion mark.

Look, I’m going to tell you something where people bitch about buybacks Own these companies that are buying back their stocks they just outperformed. There’s data on it. Go to S&P Global and put buybacks data compared to S&P 500, compared to dividends stocks that pay dividends and most of these companies that buy back their stock pay dividends. But the companies that are buying back their stocks, what does it mean? It means that their earnings are through the roof. It means that massive cash flow that they’re seeing right, that they have so much money. It’s not just on M&A and everything else. Like, we want to buy back our stock and people say, well, Frank, stocks are all time high. Do you think this is a good idea? That freaking argument has been made for the last 10 years and stocks at all time highs. Okay, it just it’s not an argument for me. If companies are buying back their stock, it’s a good thing.

Yes, you’re going to cite lots of examples, gm. I provide lots of examples because I talk about buybacks a lot. We actually did some promotional stuff about this and bought companies that are buying back the most percentage, the highest percentage of their stocks, and we’ve done very, very well with those names. But companies that are buying back their stock, those are the ones you want to own. That means they’re in the best financial position. Right, and forget about looking at a P ratio, which isn’t justified. I think it’s an outdated model. You have to look at growth. That’s why so many people are missing this rally, because they’re saying Palantir is way too high at 2040, 80, 90, 100, it’s going to go to 200. People are still going to say that, right, same with Netflix, same with all these winners, because their total addressable markets are that bigger. They’re seeing massive efficiencies through AI right now, so their margins are starting to explode, especially for the MAC7 companies.

But this buyback thing is huge. If companies are buying back their stock, those are the ones that outperform. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t go into it and be like yeah, but, but, but Forget about the buts. If you go back for the last 20, 30 years, you’re going to see companies that buy back stock. They outperform the markets. And S&P Global actually has a buyback index. It’s hard to find a symbol for it. I think you have to have an account there to actually be able to invest in that. But they have a buyback index of companies that buy back the biggest amount of their stock and they have them in some kind of ETF format. Again, buybacks record highs right now. And don’t look at that and say well, you can go back to 1990s or the dot-com crash and how much they were buying back stocks. This is different. These companies are generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, tens of billions, if not 50, 75 billion free cash flow. I mean they have hundreds of billions of dollars on their balance sheet. They’re buying back their stock.

No-transcript. Stop diluting the shit out of your shareholders. Every single capital raise and then you’ll see your stock go a lot higher. Because you’re looking at it. Why is it five? Why is it still at five? Four Well, your market cap was like $200 million. It’s $600 million right now. Right, because you diluted the hell out of shareholders. So you’re saying why is the stock price at $6 million? It’s still $6 million. The companies because of the dilution. Their market cap is massive and that’s why a lot of these stocks in gold. You’re starting to see the Newmonts take off. The bigger names take off, but that dilution is a killer. When you look at the MAG7 and you look at the share count decreases every year because of buybacks. Those are the names you want to have exposure to in your big cap portfolio. They always outperform. Don’t overthink it and we’re going to see record buybacks this year Yep.

0:21:43 – Daniel Creech

Record. Don’t yeah, don’t use the bad examples to stay away from that. You want good examples? Look at AutoZone and O’Reilly. I’ve pounded the table on that.

0:21:50 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and I’ll give you examples where it hasn’t worked. But I’m telling you nine out of 10 do work, but it works. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Yeah, nothing’s gonna work 100% of the time. And again, I provide examples that where you know some of the worst buybacks ever, this is different. A lot of most of the companies that are buying back their stock. It means they have strong balance sheets, strong cash flow coming in, and you know they’re not just using that to buy like crazy. And those are the ones that are buying back their stock and you should own them.

Another story, I tell you we, we have google, right, still, yep, and I got shit on that a lot of times. You threw that in cra. Yeah, we’re doing well too. Yeah, we, uh, we got you know just like, are you sure? Is this it’s gonna break up and all this shit and back and forth. And now they have pretty much the best ai model. I mean they’ve done an unbelievable job in politics aside unbelievable job of transitioning, because their business was at risk the most from AI and search. Now they came out with perplexity trying to buy their Chrome browser for $35 billion and basically they’re going to use the browser and stuff like that and sign a deal with Google or whatever, but $35 billion. They’re assuming that Google is going to have to break itself up and we said, if they break itself up, the sum of parts is worth probably at least another 25% higher than where it is right now.

I was surprised by seeing this news because I studied when I went over Google and looked, and this is probably a couple months ago. When I talk about breaking up the company, I have access to all the sell side reports and these guys do a great job and they have the sum of parts analysis for all the divisions and pretty much every single one of them had their valuation much higher, which is normal when you break up a company and sell it individually. That’s why companies spin off divisions. They’re worth a lot more as a standalone than they are altogether. I don’t know one of those guys that had a model on the Chrome browser.

Like nobody said well, the Chrome browser’s worth 35 billion. I want you to think about that for a second, because imagine a company is so freaking big that one part of it is worth $35 billion. Analysts are not even accounting for it. $35 billion, $35 billion for Chrome browser, and that’s not even the sum of parts analysis for most of these guys. It just shows you how big a trillion-dollar company and this is what over $2 trillion. I know we have $3 trillion and even 4 trillion dollar companies now when it turns comes to market cap, but they have a 35 billion dollar valuation on something that nobody was really valuing.

How are they going to sell it? If they sell it, it’s an indication that google itself believes they’re gonna have to break up, uh, their company. I think if they choose to sell it, you might see a lot of more companies come in and it probably sells for more like 50 60 billion, uh Uh. But that was incredible to me. Uh it it just I don’t know. I saw that news. It was like 35 billion for Chrome. Like that’s just out there and and just from perplexity, I was very surprised.

0:24:26 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, Google’s one of those big ones. You just buy it, Um, but the thing that stuck out to me was they and I’m looking at CNBC. They had some backers. Perplexity when I say that, excuse me, but they were valued at about 18 billion. You’ve got to have some hell of a backers when your value is 18, you’re buying something for 35. Yeah, yeah, that was what stuck out to me. But hey, finance is amazing. You can. You can get a lot of stuff done for you.

0:24:48 – Frank Curzio

No, absolutely Absolutely. Listen, I want to get to stocks. Yeah, get to some stocks. C3 AI I mean we see AI just a lot of the companies that are involved in AI doing fantastic. We’re seeing the ones that aren’t that say they are are not. Like Adobe has been getting nailed.

C3 AI is one we told you to avoid for a while. It did go down, went back up. Now it’s really down to really low levels. It got crushed in misestimates by a mile. It missed sales by 33%. It was a big miss, and by 33%, it was a big miss. And actually, this is an AI company where sales are declining sharply year over year, which should be a red flag in itself. So if you’re seeing any AI company where their sales are declining year over year, it means that they’re not an AI, because every single hyperscaler increased CapEx and maybe that was due to new laws and you’re going to increase CapEx because you expense a lot of that in year one. Now, when it comes to depreciation which is a very, very big deal, guys, it’s a very big deal You’re going to see more investments instead of depreciating it over several years. Either way, it showed that not only is AI trying to attack, that it’s still increasing spending dramatically to $400 billion. $400 billion, which is double, almost double, the cancer market, and that’s just from the top four hyperscalers. And that’s for 2025 annually, which is insane and the fact that they’re increasing this. Where does that money go? It goes to so many different players.

We saw Smith Micro, which we bought early and the stock went up a lot for us and then it fell and they said during the quarter that Dell’s taking market share, basically and I also heard that from a couple of contacts and we decided to sell. We sold for like a 7% or 8% gain. We went up a lot more than that and the stock fell 17%, but that changed the thesis for me. I’m like wait a minute, these guys are going to lose business to Dell now. Right, it wasn’t just a bad quarter and orders are coming in later second half. We still managed to gain on that.

The point I’m bringing this up is with C3 AI. Be careful with the AI companies. You need to have AI companies that during the quarter that have seen sales growing. I mean CoreWeave’s down, but still they said demand is massively exceeding the supply right. So I think it’s an incredible buy core weave here. It has come down. We’ll talk about that tomorrow as well in detail. But C3 AI yeah, that stock fell very, very sharply and now it’s down tremendously.

It’s a name I told you to avoid, because they changed their name, Daniel, I think, three or four different times. It was like something cloud. You see that a lot in the mining industry because there’s so many byproducts of gold or whatever. And you’ll see, oh, we’re uranium, and now we’re cobalt company and it’s like cobalt one and it’s like uranium plus and they just changed their name to go with the sector and for me, I didn’t like that. And now what are you seeing in this company where, if you look up and Daniel I mean Daniel brought this to my attention, but talk about the insider sales, Daniel- oh man, they’re ridiculous.

0:27:25 – Daniel Creech

And to your point, excuse me, in 2009, they were C3 Energy and they were going to monetize, measure and mitigate carbon. You know how I feel about that. In 2012, they switched to C3 Energy and got into the Internet of Things. Itron was a big winner for us. Longer time listeners will like that pick iTron. Remember that one, Frank? Yeah, Great. And then in 2019, they put AI into the name.

But to Frank’s point, if you go to Finviz.com, it’s a free site we always talk about. If you throw in the ticker AI and scroll down through the news feed and all that kind of stuff, it shows you recent buyer buys and sells from the insiders and it is Florida loaded lopsided. Frank the teeter-totter is on the sell side, not the buy side. Now, as Frank’s showing that, or, if he pulls that up, the CEO I forget the gentleman’s name in front of me, but the CEO was on CNBC yesterday and I have to say Frank. Thomas Siebel was on CNBC yesterday and I have to say Thomas Siebel, I appreciated his straightforwardness. It was kind of an odd interview if I want to look at it from that perspective.

0:28:21 – Frank Curzio

Really quick before I go any further. If you’re watching this on YouTube, red is sell green is buy. There’s not a green on this freaking page going from May 25, february, december. There’s no greens going to August 24. I mean, there’s massive, massive selling, all massive selling, all massive selling into this, all through the price being from $40 to $30 to $20. Now it’s under $20. Just massive, huge, huge, huge selling. So there’s no green on here, no one’s buying it. Yeah, sorry. So I just want to highlight that.

0:28:52 – Daniel Creech

And the CEO said, yeah, he was talking to somebody on CNBC and he said, yeah, the stock’s getting hit and honestly I think it should be down more. We really dropped the ball and I appreciated that. But the reasoning in the turnaround story the thesis that he was given on side of these insider sales and you could sell for a lot of reasons he did say. The CEO talked about how he had a lot of health issues and he rattled a few off and they were serious, so hopefully he’s doing well. He talked about how he didn’t realize that he was as big of an influence on the sales, to your point the dropping in sales and AI. These guys sell products and applications to help integrate AI across businesses. The other side to it he said but we made some key hires during the quarter kind of post-quarter, so they’re not into the numbers yet. They made some key hires. They’re actually looking for a CEO.

The gentleman that you just talked about, Frank, is going to transition to chairman. Still be hands on, man. This could be a decent trade or a pop. I know it’s up a little bit today, but if you pull up a yearly chart on this, this thing has been a dog and just be wary of these. Not all things that glitter is gold, Frank, even in the old AI situation.

0:29:49 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I mean, it has kind of been a dog and yeah, especially, you know, over the past year, as you can see right here. Another company I want to talk about is Micron. So not a company we mention often. So Micron is, you know, has ups and downs. You know, you’re looking at the chart, it looks pretty good and now it’s broken out. I mean, if you look pretty much at the chart here, Daniel, it’s for the past year you know kind of like 100, 108, and you know to what like 120. 108 and you know to what like 120. Now it’s at 124. It’s actually breaking out of that range.

And I wanted to bring this up because when I see a note like this, I think it’s worth mentioning and because, again, this is a sell side report that I have. You know, we have access to a lot of this stuff and a lot of it. Just, you know, you see, you know, to be fair, some of these guys are very smart, but some you just got to change a number or two and you could meet your numbers, you can get to your targets, you can get to everything. Remember, these models are huge, right, you just have to change a little bit, margins a little bit and everything changes right. But this is different. So this is an analyst at JP Morgan become the stock for a while and he raises target on it. The stock’s at 120. He raises target to 185. It’s over 50% upside from here With a stock at it’s really two-week high.

All-time high was like 140 a couple of years ago. This is something you don’t see from analysts covering large cap stocks. You see 20%, maybe 30%. You don’t see 50%. With mature companies like this, you don’t really see that. They usually go by 20% and then if it goes up, they’ll increase their target. These guys are increasing their target. This is something again, I follow this for 30 years. You don’t see some stock trading at its all-time high a large cap stock, the stock’s been around for a while and they have 50% upside.

And again from an analyst who’s been covering this for a while and he just has a super optimistic forecast and he breaks it down. He says Mike Grimes possibly pre-announced his August quarter results with upside in revenue, gross margins earning per share Great. That’s why it’s near its all-time or fifth to be caught. But he says the team is benefiting from an improved pricing environment, especially in DRAM, across multiple markets, including AI, data centers, smartphone and PC. Smartphone and PC is key.

He doesn’t think the positive forecast that they’re talking about is being driven by tariff-driven pull forward, which we see where a lot of demand. What do we see in 2020, 2021, covid right. So many stocks killed it when you were forced to stay home and then, when business reopened, a lot of that stuff just filtered out to other companies. Same thing when people worry about tariffs. They’re like let’s just order as much as we can right now because there’s so much uncertainty. He’s saying that it’s not because of that. Their optimistic forecast and also demand for non-AI portfolio is doing well and picking up Again. That’s something that was a headache for AMD we talked about, where PCs and mobile were two shitty divisions secular decline in markets and now that AI is becoming a bigger piece for AMD, now they’re finally able to compete a little bit with NVIDIA and you’ve seen them get some of those orders. Amd has taken off and declined like whatever 5%, 6%. After earnings, after going up tremendously, fell that day. The next day it went right back up 4%. So AMD is well positioned when you get out of the garbage divisions and you’re seeing that, okay, these divisions are starting to pick up. It seems like everything’s all cylinders, right. It’s firing all cylinders now.

And you know, when I look at Micron and this report, I just thought it was worth mentioning. For Micron, if you own it, I’d probably be buying it here. It’s breaking out. It looks good technicals, but these guys are talking about fundamentals and analysts. That covers a lot 50% target price increase right, that’s huge that they think it’s going to be. Normally you don’t see that. You’re not going to MAG7 stocks where we think it’s going to go up more than 50%. Here You’ll have an analyst or two on Tesla. That’s a little different. But most of these analysts they’re usually conservative, because if you have a 20% increase and you’re wrong, okay, but 50%, you better be positive. You better know your numbers.

0:33:34 – Daniel Creech

This guy’s pretty confident. Someone’s been covering.

0:33:37 – Frank Curzio

No, no, I like. I just like bringing out notes that no one’s really talking about. No one really talked about that note. So Starbucks in the portfolio, right, Daniel? Yes, dollar Stock Club Okay, so Starbucks, and again got a little shit on that too. People are like Starbucks, really. You think it’s got.

0:33:48 – Daniel Creech

That’s a bet, the jockey, not the horse for us.

0:33:51 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I was for a very, very long time.

But when things change, change there’s no ego, right? I know it’s hard for people to change. It’s so hard because it’s almost like you’re admitting like okay, well, maybe I was wrong, it wasn’t your wrong. Just be open to change. This is your money. If something’s different, it’s different. Don’t be so closed-minded like you believe in something and that’s it. It’s got to be. Still believe that, because you’re going to sound like an idiot. You’re going to lose money.

You know Starbucks upgraded by Bayer it’s a good investment firm says they love strategy being taken by new leadership, which we highlighted, which I saw personally, which I heard personally from people who have been emailing in. They now believe these benefits are going to start to show in the next two quarters again, which is what we also said. When you go to Starbucks, things are definitely better. The experience is much better. You’re not waiting as long. They have people outside now, kind of like Chick-fil-A model which they drive through. You’ll see 100 cars and it’s still five minutes. It’s a better customer experience and that’s what people want. They want their coffee, they want it right away. They want exactly what you’re telling them. You know, I just love this upgrade. It’s exactly what we said. It’s in a portfolio and I love being a heavy analyst here and I think you’re going to see a lot more upgrades on Starbucks.

0:35:04 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, nothing out there. That guy’s a rock star, so yeah, I don’t even go to Starbucks. I believe you, but I I like what I read and listen to him.

0:35:11 – Frank Curzio

So other stocks, Daniel, let me see. What did you want to talk about? I mean Hins and Hers. You’ve been on that right. That fell like 5%. I think it was yesterday. The CEO disclosed after the closed sale of 660,000 shares at 5051. Good for him. Stock’s lower than that. That was a $33 million sale, so the stock went down. What were your thoughts?

0:35:32 – Daniel Creech

Well, I’m happy about this stock because our subscribers made money on it in the dollar stock club. However, we left a lot on the table. I have to admit that I thought this trend would have ended a while ago. The big thing that fear, the thing that I’m afraid to cat about here, Frank, with this, and the reason I haven’t even talked to you or re recommended as a trade, is because I don’t like the fear over a headline about there’s no shortage of these GOP one drugs, these weight loss drugs, anymore, and that was kind of their niche in my opinion, the way I understood things. Now that’s all gone and I just feel like they’re walking a fine line of there’s.

You know we’ve had, you’ve seen some partnerships start and then stop with big pharmaceutical players. I think. Didn’t they have a big deal with Nova? I think that’s one of the big ones. Don’t quote me on that. My point is you’re a headline away from saying, hey, this isn’t approved, they got to pull this drug. It’s just the risk reward isn’t worth it for me. But I’m glad we were in and out of this early, Frank.

0:36:27 – Frank Curzio

I don’t think that. Look, we followed the stock. We made money on it. Again, you left money on the table. These guys have done a fantastic job. The management team, they really have. You left money on the table. These guys have done a fantastic job. The management team, they really have. They’re putting up the numbers. It’s not just this meme stock, they’re putting up numbers right.

But I will tell you this the CEO, the sale of 660,000 shares is $33 million. It’s not a reason to sell this company and I’ll tell you why. The CEO owns 17.8 million shares. It’s almost massive amount for any company that’s this big. Usually they’re doing offerings. They’re selling more of it. Sometimes you see even mining. You’ll see 3% 4% ownership. If you see 20% ownership from an insider.

A lot of times I don’t see those stocks doing that well, especially in small cap land, for some reason. It’s just you want to get more investors in. You want to get more liquidity in as well, so you’re going to have to sell some of those shares. He has 17.8 million. So if you’re looking at that close to 18 million shares, they’re still worth close to a billion dollars. This guy has every center in the world to continue to grow this company. It’s a billion and he could turn it into 10 billion if he grows it the right way. So you know, yes, it looks like $33 million is a massive sale, but the guy still has a billion dollars worth of stock. You know again, good for you. Pat yourself on the back. You deserve to sell some of this stock.

After you kicked ass so much where everyone was just all over you saying, no way, this is a meme stock, it’s garbage, it’s terrible. If you’re going to sell it, sell it for the reasons that Daniel just said. Maybe you don’t think the GLP-1 thing works out. I know that they said they have to kind of stop selling it. I don’t know if it was this podcast, so I think we talked about that in our premium podcast.

But massive, massive insider buy is taking place in that company. But you know, people buy insiders buy for one reason they think stocks sheep things going up. They sell for millions of reasons. This guy still owns a billion dollars worth of stocks. So don’t look at a $33 million sales. Oh my God, let me run this guy’s dumping it. This isn’t AI. This isn’t, you know, C3 AI, where the guy’s been selling the crap out of as much as he can right and going crazy. This is a little different. He still has a lot of shares. He has really his whole life. His incentive is really to grow this company continually. I just wouldn’t say that’s the reason to sell the stock. And it has done pretty well.

0:38:34 – Daniel Creech

It’s done very well for those guys oh yeah, I mean, hey, we were in this stock for a couple of months in Dollar Stock Club, made over 50% and we sold at 23 and change and the stock, even after craziness, is at 47. So, to your point, management’s done well and we left a lot. That’s on me, but hey, that’s good.

0:38:50 – Frank Curzio

Never get pissed about a game. That’s good Grow. Yes, it fell like 17% in one day. We were up a lot on it. We still had a gain of 8%. You know, I wish it went up higher, but the thesis clearly changed.

0:39:00 – Daniel Creech

Oh yeah, I just meant to your point. The management team has done an excellent job in a not easy environment.

0:39:04 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I want to get to JetBlue news. Jetblue, you know, mostly spirit. It’s like spirit news. But JetBlue is going to buy, basically merge with spirit. It was like a $4 billion deal. This was a year ago, in May, and the Justice Department under Biden at the time said absolutely no way. In fact, they said back then and I’m quoting here Justice Department today’s decision by JetBlue is yet another victory for the Justice Department’s work on behalf of the American consumers, because it would cost tens of billions of travelers to face much higher prices.

So in November, spirit filed for bankruptcy. And it’s kind of like every airline I Spirit filed for bankruptcy. And when it’s kind of like every airline I think filed for bankruptcy one time or another. And when you file for bankruptcy you’re going to screw your bondholders. Doesn’t mean you go out of business, right? Yeah, certain bank won’t get to the laws of bankruptcies Chapter seven, chapter 11, things like that, oh yeah. So they said OK, let’s score bondholders and regroup. Five months ago they emerged from bankruptcy. Now they said that they’re likely going out of business. They didn’t say that, but since they stayed in this call to report, they may not have enough cash to survive. That’s exactly what they said, which means that they’re probably going to go under now and my question is, Dan, I mean, is this really great for consumers? I mean, how many domestic airlines are there Like you have Delta, United, American, JetBlue, Southwest Frontier? I get it Allegiant.

I thought the goal of the Justice Department was to ensure that there’s fair competition within industries and you deliberately put an airline out of business that would have made a great partner to JetBlue, who, after whatever 20, 30 plus years, finally realizes that having a discounted airline model is the shittiest never, ever works in history, right? I mean, if you’re looking at the airlines, it’s a business with the highest barriers to entry. There’s never, ever going to be another major airline coming to the space to compete with the big guys ever, because not only is it going to cost probably $40 billion, $50 billion plus to do it in airplanes in the capital, it’s going to cost a fortune to buy space at the airports, which most of the major cities already have full capacity. We saw Newark and a lot of these. I mean, you see the delays all over the place. It’s crazy. You don’t have capacity. Based on this alone, it means every airline has incredible, incredible, incredible pricing power, which they figured out, probably about 10, 12 years ago. So you know what People have to fly. Let’s just raise prices, incredibly, and that’s what they’ve been doing. Delta realized it. Look what the stock is. United realized it, Americans finally realizing it, which sucks for consumers because we all need to fly.

But having a discounted airline is a joke, especially since you’re really not providing discounts. Since you’re going to charge for carry-ons, you’re going to charge for seat selection. You shake their hand and they charge. I got a little bathroom 10 bucks. It’s crazy what they charge you for. Obviously I’m exaggerating there, but they just charge you for everything. At the end of the day, you’re telling your customers it’s a discount airline but you’re actually pissing them off because after fees they’re almost paying the and then like, why am I going to fly in these shitty airlines with shitty airplanes when I can go to Delta, united and it’s not that much of a premium? So by saying discount, you’re losing the ability to raise prices, which you have almost unlimited pricing power with airlines, because it’s a necessity and people have to fly.

Anyway, I’m not sure if anyone in the Justice Department pays for their own flights. I’m sure they don’t, because it’s a fortune to freaking fly right now. I know I was out the last three freaking weekends flying and hanging out with my kids and stuff like that and visiting my family upstate. But I can tell you this Cool stat In 2021, the average airline ticket to a major city on average and this is based on the US Department of Transportation, so beat them up, not me it was $300. $306 to be exact. Right now it’s over $400. A 33% increase within 40. So 8% average annual increases and they’re going to continue to increase.

They say they’re down 2%, 3%. They’re full of crap. It is a ton of money to travel. It’s a ton of money to get on airplanes now. I mean, you better be booking well in advance. I don’t. Sometimes I have to go on trips right away and man, I’m not paying less than $300, $350 for any flights anymore, ever. Everything. I’m talking about flights that are one way to New York, not even that far. I go to Miami for a flight. They want to charge me $350, $400 if it’s like three or four days before I wind up driving.

But I don’t know about the Justice Department. I know it’s not like that now they’re going to allow, not stuff like that, but you put an airline out of business when they could emerge with Delta and competed better, and I don’t know if that would result in higher prices. I don’t know if you could stop that or whatever, but what you did is you took a major airline not that it’s major, it’s Spirit but now they’re probably going to be out of business. It’s not going to be a bankruptcy this time, and that’s what you did. What you’re congratulating is you just lost a lot of people jobs. You made the bigger even stronger and you’re gonna allow them to raise prices even further because there’s less competition in the space, which is the exact opposite of what the justice department is supposed to effing do. That’s what I don’t get and it really pissed me off. I thought it was worth saying and they just came out with that yesterday.

They just came out with that yesterday with spirit and stuff like that. So I don’t know what’s gonna happen with that airline. I just I think it’s a joke that they said that they couldn’t merge. Where there’s a whole bunch of names in the space, it’s a joke Again. The last administration. You can just say, hey, I’m thinking about merging. They’re like no, they don’t care what it is, what industry, they don’t care. It was no right off the bat every single time. Now it’s different. I mean you can’t have AT&T and Verizon merging. You know there has to be laws in place, but you know Microsoft and Activision really, with how big the gaming space is like you really gave Microsoft that much shit for that one and said no and they had to fight really for a very long time to get that deal done. You can’t say no to all the deals. It helps the markets and sometimes it does help the consumers Sometimes when you have these mergers and acquisitions Sometimes. But I just thought that was worth mentioning too.

0:44:25 – Daniel Creech

Well, that’s good. You want to get something positive like Bitcoin.

0:44:28 – Frank Curzio

Oh my God, have you seen the move? I’m so happy for crypto subscribers, because it was a little tough there for a while. I said listen, the top 100 are going to move a lot higher. This Bitcoin is going to go a lot higher. We saw Bitcoin go from 80 to 90 to 100, 120,000, and we still didn’t see that follow through. Now we’re seeing a freaking follow through. I mean, have you seen where Ethereum was? I mean, past seven days? It’s on fire.

Most of these names are in our portfolio and our crypto portfolio. Ethereum is at 4,600. 4,600. And where do we recommend this, Daniel One, I don’t have it in front of me. 38. I have it in front of us. That’s a 32x gain.

Why am I saying that? For this is why you need to own crypto in your portfolio. I’m not telling you to take 20, 30% of your portfolio and throw it in it. Take 2% in it, because the gains that you could see in here this happens often. Okay, you could say, well, Frank, I had NVIDIA, I had Palantir Wasn’t as big as these gains. But those are two and it very rarely happens, because companies IPO at so much higher prices and evaluations are insane when they come out. Ipos are usually liquidity events for insiders to sell some of their stock and you don’t really see the massive, massive gains you could have those 32X right. It turns $5,000 into $160,000. That moves the needle for almost anyone okay, anyone that’s putting $5,000 into a position or putting like $3,000 to $5,000 in several of these positions. It’s why you need to be in crypto Again. I know it might be a little hard. We have another company we’ll talk about tomorrow which is what is called Bullish something bullish whatever. It’s their own Coindesk. Oh they.

0:46:04 – Daniel Creech

IPO today.

0:46:05 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, it’s pricing now it’s much higher, doing great, but that’s what you’re going to see. A lot of these stocks are coming out and now the laws are favorable. You have more transparency, a favorable SEC In that portfolio. Not only are you going to see just cryptos, you’re going to see a lot more stocks Because those are the names that are really going to do good, because now you have regulation around it. You have money you can pour in, institutions can responsibilities to make sure everything’s cool, and they couldn’t invest in these names when the previous administration did not provide any framework, any laws or anything. Now it’s open season for the best companies and there’s a lot of good companies. Still shitty companies, shitty cryptos. A lot more gains ahead. I mean in that portfolio that we have Daniel. We have Bitcoin at 6,500. It’s over 120, that’s 17 X gains. Chainlink was one of the most recent ones at $6. It’s up tremendous, up over 300%, up 40% this week. This is why you have to have exposure to this.

It was tough February. Through last month or the month before, we saw a lot of these names continued to get hit and a lot of the names of portfolio were down. Now you’re seeing a lot of these names up 100%, 200%, 300%. I’ve been through these cycles before and when you’re in it and this much money is pouring into it, these names could go through the app, through the roof. That’s why you need exposure to it seriously. You need exposure, some of it. If you need help with these investments, if you just want to buy them and get rid of, well, I don’t want to research these things. That’s what our crypto portfolio is for. If you’re interested, give me a shout. Frank@curzioresearch.com, I can buy a special price for you. You, but I mean, it’s incredible to see some of these gains and what’s going on, especially in Ethereum. Ethereum is through the roof.

I made a lot of money in Ethereum. I bought it at like 170 and sold it at 1200. It was a very big position. It allowed me to help buy my house. I wish I still owned it, even though my house has appreciated value, but I have no problem with it.

But, holy cow, I mean you know that it moves a needle for a lot of people and this is one of the sectors, Daniel, we talk about all the time where Wall Street got beat here. They got beat, they got their ass kicked and Wall Street never loses. I’ve been around Wall Street forever. They never lose. They’re going to win, with all the shit coming out with all these offerings and stuff like that. For you know, whatever it is through crypto and these treasury companies and stuff like that, in the flavor of the week, they win during spax. They kick their ass. Even though they’re down 90, everyone’s up hundreds of thousands percent because they own this stuff at a dollar sold to you, 30, uh, and 20 and 10. And now these things 90 of them are down more than 95% each. These SPACs from 20 and 21,. They always win.

This is one case with crypto where they didn’t win. They were against it. They said no, it’s not going to work. They had the banks come out, lobby against it. All this shit over the past three, four, five, six years. And you’re looking at, young investors own Bitcoin, owned Ethereum, owned a lot of this stuff and have absolutely killed it. And I just got one thing to say good for you. You fucking deserve it.

0:48:52 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I mean you talk about the momentum and stuff and we’ve talked about the stocks and you know, just fueling the momentum, it’s hard not to be bullish. I don’t want to get crazy bullish, as Frank said. You know you don’t need to go all in on a certain item. However, you know you look at the constant buying from ETFs and now these crypto treasury companies, everything from the world financial token, from the Trump family to Ethereum, bitmine, immersion Technologies what a? They need to change that name. B-m-n-r is the Tom Lee.

0:49:22 – Frank Curzio

Where is that right now? Where is?

0:49:23 – Daniel Creech

1. Is it Tom Lee? Why am?

0:49:24 – Frank Curzio

I saying that, tom Lee, that’s Tom Lee.

0:49:27 – Daniel Creech

It’s up another 8% today. It it’s up another 8% today. It’s back to 68. Oh wow, is it 68? It’s 40s, actually 30s. No, it was in the 30s, yeah, no. Well, you know it spiked to 160, I think, and then tanked, but yeah, then it went down and loaded sideways. But you know that’s how these things are going to trade. But there is just tremendous appetite, buying opportunity here.

Ethereum is different, obviously without the fixed supply. We’ve talked about that. But don’t fight the momentum. If you’re in these, enjoy it, ride these, understand what you own and why. But, man, there’s just between the legislation, the momentum and the access to capital and, like everything, not everything lasts forever.

But what will be interesting is to see I don’t know if micro strategies or strategies up today. Let me check that real quick. But you want to see when the capital markets start to at least slow down. You know when are you going to see something? Not be oversubscribed by. Pick whatever number sounds great 500 million, a billion Strategies actually down 1% today. That’s not terrible. The point is, is that you’ll see separation, or look for the separation between some of your typical old school companies. Not that the paradigm shift is happening, but there’s such an appetite for all this. Amongst other stocks. We’ve talked about CEP. That will be 21 capital. Yeah, it’s just it’s hard to. It’s hard to be short this market, Frank. There’s still a lot of naysayers out there, but that’s okay. When you never admit on a timeline, you’re going to be wrong. That’s an easy argument. It’s a lazy one, but it’s an easy one.

0:50:54 – Frank Curzio

You know I’m looking at even like the small cap market and everything what’s going on right now with small caps. A lot of small caps are doing good because that filters into crypto as well. Speculation During, like the past two days, the market. S&p 500 is up 1.2%. You know what the Russell’s up.

0:51:10 – Daniel Creech

Well I know, yesterday the Russell went up 3% 4.3%.

0:51:14 – Frank Curzio

You know that’s a major, major, major move. And I know small caps. If you look and I have it up on my screen here let’s go for the year you look at S&P still outperforming by almost double, at 21% it’s up, and this is for one year compared to 12. If you go year to date, it’s up 10, the Russell’s up only four percent. You could go any chart here. I’ll go five years. The rust that’s, s&p is up 91, the Russell’s up 47. Every single chart, every single time frame you could figure out and I was like wow, this is going to change because and we’ve been pounding a thesis on this last six months saying small caps they’re in position, they’re not going to get as tariffs as much because most of their operations are domestically already. They’ve had two shitty years to lower costs tremendously, focus on the divisions, redesign their companies, focus on what has the highest margins, the biggest growth markets. And I’ve seen this with small caps and I saw CEOs buying the crap out of small caps. People are wondering well, the market’s at all-time highs.

It’s mostly being led by the MAG-7 here. The rest of the companies I think I saw a stat in earnings growth. If you’re looking at the double-digit earnings growth, I think 90% is coming from the MAC-7 companies or the hyperscalers. So if you take the other 490 companies, I think you’re seeing negative earnings growth from them, which is crazy. Small caps I mean they’re well-positioned for this. Small caps I mean they’re well positioned for this. I mean they’ve underperformed tremendously.

You’re seeing insider buying them and people wonder like, where am I going to find ideas? We’ll find a shitload of ideas on my newsletter. I see like a lot of great prospects. Uh, we’re researching a lot of good ideas. We’re seeing some nice gains and stuff and again, it is risky. You’ll see some of them get hit here and there.

But, man, overall, the portfolio is where you know, when it comes to crypto, when it comes to small caps, even when it comes to ai portfolios where, when it comes to crypto, when it comes to small caps, even when it comes to our AI portfolios, and where we are, our portfolios are doing very, very well. Even though we’ll get hit on a stock here or there, most of these names are doing very, very well and we’ve had some very big winners and I think small caps are going to continue to do very, very well. It’s a great environment for them going forward, especially if I’m wrong and we’re going to see a 50 basis point cut and then aggressive rates, rate cuts by the fed going forward. Uh, small caps are definitely going to outperform large caps and there’s a lot of names that have just been left for dead. I think provide great opportunities for investors yeah, absolutely.

0:53:17 – Daniel Creech

I mean if you, if I’m half right about the path we are going down, where data is going to be constantly questioned because of who’s in office and he’s a polarizing figure. That’s going to lead to a lot of volatility, but that volatility is going to be higher in asset prices like this, because if you get to that point, then every thesis behind crypto is going to be gaslighted because of the hedge against the dollar, the purchasing power of the dollar, general inflation and the inflationary environment that we in the world operate in. And I think you’ll really know that when you see a day where Bitcoin goes up 5% and gold goes up 5%. So watch the day where Bitcoin and gold both break out. That’s when you’ll know we’re at data doubters, Frank, everybody’s gonna be a data doubter and real quick.

0:54:06 – Frank Curzio

we’re gonna end with. This is this I have quite market cap up right now. If you could, could see it on our YouTube channel. It’s a pretty good site. It gives a lot of good free information. It’s not great. It’s really good for a free site and it has seven-day gains, 24-hour gains, one-hour gains it’s funny. One-hour gains, right.

Crypto Markets open all the time. The seven-day gains of Bitcoin is like conservative it’s 6% in the past seven days. These are 7% gains. Ethereum is up 30%. Xrp is up 10%. You have BNB, which is huge, right. The fifth largest Bitcoin up 10%. That’s Binance. Solana is up 18%. We have in the portfolio. Tron is up 7%. Cardano 18%. Chainlink 42%. This is the past seven days.

Lots of these names we have in our portfolio. Sui is up 14% 15%. I mean just, you know there’s only a few that are down in the past seven days, but look at the Uniswap 26%. Polkadot up 15%. OKB is the 25th ranked. It’s up 125% in the last seven days.

Right, it’s just when you see some of these names and how big they can go up and some of them that you know. Ethereum Classics up 20%. Aptos is probably a name that you heard of Arbitrum a lot of people heard of in crypto, algorand up 14%, right. These are names VeChain, you know, cosmos, these are stocks, cryptos that you might have heard of, you know these are in that have seen massive gains, and what I’m saying is they’re seeing massive gains on something that’s not just a one-off. They’re seeing massive gains because a ton of new capital is pouring into this industry and people want more than Ethereum and Bitcoin, and you’re seeing it with Solana, you’re seeing it with Cardano, you’re seeing it go down to XRP and you’re going to continue to see it go down, because there’s a lot of these names in the top 100 that are great, great technologies that I studied for freaking seven, eight years.

It’s just the previous administration said F you, they’re securities, which they are. I agree with that. They are securities. People buy these things to make money on them, but they’re great technologies and you weren’t allowed to buy them. Institutional money was not allowed to pour into here. Now it is. That’s why you’re seeing these brokerage firms. You’re going to see Galaxy probably double or triple from here, from here Boy.

0:56:05 – Daniel Creech

Let’s hope so, Frank.

0:56:07 – Frank Curzio

Daniel’s been on that. Yeah, I hope not because you’re probably going to leave. No, but I would have the option no.

0:56:11 – Daniel Creech

I’m kidding.

0:56:11 – Frank Curzio

You’ve been talking about that style low single digits and just being like I own it, it’s my biggest position. I own it, my biggest position and you came on so many times where it’s gotten. It’s not starting. It started already, but we’re probably in the second inning when it comes to the growth of crypto, how big we’re seeing. A lot of these things could be tokenized.

Now, when Citadel comes out and makes a comment about it and says no, these stocks should not be tokenized and be in the blockchain, no way, because they can’t control it. They can’t have control, they can’t front run it through their algorithms and things like that. They can’t do spread price and make billions of dollars every year. So for them to actually come out and come out saying, hey, you know what, this shouldn’t happen. It probably means it is going to happen and they are worried and if it does, it’s going to open up a different market. Everything’s going to be in a blockchain. That’s where crypto is going.

This is hundreds of trillions of dollars in assets that could be tokenized, that could come onto these markets. That’s money flowing in. It’s a massive growth market, just like AI, and money’s pouring in. So this isn’t just like a one-off. Oh, it’s up for a week or whatever. It can go down next week, it can go down a week after. Just know, over the next five years, money’s going to continue to pour into this industry now that you have the framework in there, you have the right laws in place, and that and that’s going to open up so many opportunities for investors. I’m glad we’re seeing it for a lot of our clients and subscribers right now, which is freaking awesome.

0:57:31 – Daniel Creech

Well said, that’s right, that’s a wrap.

0:57:34 – Frank Curzio

That is a wrap. But, that said, tomorrow on our Wall Street Premium podcast, we’re going to talk about Circle. We’re going to talk about CoreWeave. I will break that down tomorrow. So CoreWeave is down a little bit. It’s a great buying opportunity. Kava got nailed. I’m going to talk about the restaurant sector because, again, chipotle was terrible but Eats was doing good. McDonald’s showed good results. I love industries where you see separation, where you don’t see everything going up or everything going down. There’s some companies getting it done, some aren’t. That presents opportunities for people that know how to analyze stocks, what to look for. We’re going to break that down for you tomorrow and show you which are the winners’ll let you know that tomorrow, but I can tell you, with Chipotle, it’s down 30% year-to-date. I said 20%. It’s down 30% year-to-date, while S&P is up 10%. Again, another name we told you to avoid. Is it a buy down here? I wouldn’t tell you to sell it down here, but we’ll break that down. We’ll break down cover. We’ll break down McDonald.

On Wall Street Blood Premium If you want to subscribe to that, it’s $10 a month only. You get a free portfolio which we have a trading position in that almost every single week and you can find. To subscribe to that product, you just go to our website at CurzioResearch.com. Huh, covered a lot, as usual. Lots of stocks, lots of stuff going on, Daniel. People have questions or comments? What’s your email, Daniel@CurzioResearch.com. Questions, comments feel free to email me at Frank@CurzioResearch.com. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you premium subscribers tomorrow. Take care.

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