Frank Curzio 00:00

It’s going on up there. It’s Thursday, July 16. 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. Mr. Daniel Creech, how’s it going, buddy?

Daniel Creech 00:16

Going well, sir.

Frank Curzio 00:16

Did you see the game yesterday? Holy cow, what a game. Argentina-England?

Daniel Creech 00:20

I did not.

Frank Curzio 00:21

Holy cow. Biggest game ever in history of sports. That was pretty cool. It was awesome, man. I mean, England— England scored a great goal, they were winning, but Argentina, I felt like, from like the 15th minute on, was in the England zone like the rest of the game. And they just were not shooting the ball. And then all of a sudden, the last pretty much 7 or 8 minutes, you could say England got very tired. I mean, they just were not in the shape that Argentina was in, and those players— and man, holy cow, was that really exciting. I mean, those goals were absolutely excellent. Messi with those passes, holy cow. I mean, just seeing the— you don’t see that in sports in the U.S. You know, you don’t see it where you have the taking their kids and they’re crying when a goal scores from the other— like you— like the passion. I’m telling you, going to a World Cup game, and I’ve done that. I’ve been— I went to Brazil, and I’ve been to one in the U.S. last time, not this year, when they hosted it, and it’s unbelievable to see the passion.

Frank Curzio 01:20

And it’s just a different— a different vibe. Like, something that you’ve never seen. And it’s really incredible. So it should be a great final. I know Spain’s favorite. It should be a good match. Spain looked absolutely exceptional. England is a great team. But what Spain did to France— and France is the best team, ranked the best team— I mean, they looked like they were playing with children. Like, France had no idea what to do. So it should be a great final. And I think— when is that, Joe? Sunday? 3? At 3. That should be really exciting. Yeah, that was awesome. So yeah, I’m glad I watched it. Left a little early to watch it. And man, it was— it was incredible. Just an incredible game. So it was really, really cool. Daniel, you got to get into that. You got to get into it.

Daniel Creech 01:55

Nope.

Frank Curzio 01:55

You get to the open? What’s going on? I haven’t seen open statistics. So I— who’s leading? Anyone?

Daniel Creech 01:59

I don’t know. It’s a changing leaderboard. Last time I looked, the leaders were 4 under in the clubhouse. So the time change makes it fun. They tee off at like—

Frank Curzio 02:07

What time did it start?

Daniel Creech 02:08

Oh, our time. They tee off at 1, 2 in the morning.

Frank Curzio 02:11

1 and 2 in the morning. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. So yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Daniel Creech 02:13

Yeah, they got a— they got a good head start on us, so.

Frank Curzio 02:15

No, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So yeah, I got to take a look at that. But listen, this podcast, right, we used to have a Thursday podcast that used to go out to paid members, but we consolidated all of our products, providing one service, Curzio Alpha, for everyone. If you want more information on that, you can go to our website, curzioresearch.com. It’s incredible value. You know, instead of just getting, you know, one product here, one product there, it’s AI, small caps, large caps. We combine all the products. We have one product, which is awesome. And this way, you get the best of everything. Because right now, you’re looking at AI names. No matter what AI does— we’ll cover that in a second— I mean, Nvidia could say, you know, we’re going to do 100 billion in sales and say, hey, we did 200 billion in sales and the stock’s going to go down. Everything is going down with an AI, no matter what they report or what they do. If it’s not as— if it’s not a big beat, if it’s just in line, you see IBM, 25% decline.

Frank Curzio 03:02

If you see a, you know, really good beat, you see the stock’s down 10%. If you see a really, really great beat, they’re only down 3%. So it doesn’t matter what they report, they’re all down. Getting to the point where a lot of these names are cheap. But this podcast now is going to be free to everyone. So we’re going to report to you guys. We want to make it a Q&A. And, you know, we’re going to be marking that a lot more, where you guys get to ask any question you want. And we really love that format. It allows us to go anywhere. Of course, if you’re asking about some of the positions that we have in a portfolio, we’re going to be very careful with that because we protect our paid members. We have a huge portfolio. We have great companies in it that we report and all the time on. But anything, right, this is a Q&A. And if you have any questions, I want you to go to askcurzio.com. I mean, New York wants to go AX, but it’s askcurzio.com. Put your name there, ask a question, and we’ll come on and answer it for you.

Frank Curzio 03:54

And we love this format. We do it during the live formats, and we get so much good feedback and so many people listen and watch. And people just love that, right? It’s more engaging, and it’s really cool to hear your name. And I think it’s kind of funny. We do this podcast all the time, and people are like, I can’t believe you mentioned my name. We’re not going to mention your last name or anything. So just— but it’s really cool. And listen, some of your questions are really good. It opens up the door to new ideas for us sometimes. And I used to have a podcast called Frankly Speaking that I did that. And then, you know, we kept that for members, and not too many people were asking questions, or we had the same people asking the same questions all the time. And I was like, eh, you know, we’re doing that for free. But, you know, this is different. You know, our audience has increased probably tenfold since then. And we do get in a lot of good questions. And, you know, we want to be able to help you guys out and answer them. So that’s why we’re doing the Thursday podcast. So this is pretty cool for you guys, which is awesome. And on another note, I don’t know what it’s been, Daniel, but over the past couple months, people have been sending us food.

Frank Curzio 04:45

And I know you noticed, and Joe, I know you noticed. So which is kind of funny because sometimes they don’t even tell us. Maybe it comes through customer service sometimes, and then all of a sudden I’m like, what is this? I think it was a couple days ago we opened up and it was wrapped up and it was a little leaky, which is okay. And it was honey. And this is from Duane, which is Arizona. And he’s from Arizona. And it’s Arizona Bee Keepers. We had yesterday as well, we had someone buy us pizza and wings, which is cool. Keep it coming. I love to eat, man. Seriously, I love it. So that’s the best form of thank yous and appreciation, which is awesome. We’ve also had hot sauces. Who’s the person that sent us the hot sauces?

Daniel Creech 05:25

Our Texas fella, J.

Frank Curzio 05:27

1. Yeah. And how many? Like six or seven of them, right? All of them. And South Bay. If you guys do it, you know, again, don’t try to poison us. And hopefully no rap investors are going to send us any food because it’s gone up a lot from its bottom. But still, you know, please. You know, I don’t want any food from you guys. I can only imagine what it’s going to be. But we’re going to make it official where whenever you guys send us food, we’re going to try it online. And we’re going to start today with this honey. And this honey, I have no idea. I haven’t tasted it. Daniel, you had some of this stuff, right?

Daniel Creech 05:51

Yep. I tried two of them. They’re excellent.

Frank Curzio 05:53

And how many did you send us? Like four?

Daniel Creech 05:56

Yes.

Frank Curzio 05:56

Oh, sweet this is. I’m not a honey guy, but. Wow, this is really good. This is the one you tried right here, this one?

Daniel Creech 06:05

Yeah, I tried both those. And then we have a coffee and an avocado. I haven’t tried those yet.

Frank Curzio 06:09

Joe, did you try this yet?

Daniel Creech 06:10

Mañana.

Frank Curzio 06:10

Do you like honey? Come here. I got a spoon. You got to try this. This is absolutely excellent. Guys, keep the food coming. This is awesome. Food and stocks. It doesn’t get better than this. I tried that. And it’s a coffee honey. A coffee. Wow, I’m going to be selling this product. I better get like 25% from you, Duane, if I sell this product. This is pretty cool. It’s really good, right? I’m not a honey person, but I was like, holy cow. That’s coffee. Honey’s good too. Wow, keep the food coming. I mean, I’m going to gain a lot of weight, but I don’t care since you guys are sending me food for free, which is awesome. But we’re going to do taste tests on every single thing that you guys sent us. And the hot sauces were really, really good too. We’ll bring them on our next Thursday podcast. But food, feel free to send us. You guys can look up our address online. And I love the fact that everybody sends us food without letting us know. So I open these boxes and I’m like, oh, shit. I was like, what was the last couple of recommendations that we made?

Frank Curzio 07:04

I was like, what’s going to be in this box? And, you know, it’s funny. And, you know, 99% of the time, probably 100% of the time, it’s pretty cool. Because I don’t think anyone hates us going to waste money on shipping, sending us something. But the food thing is awesome, right? Isn’t it cool? It’s like, oh, shit, this guy sent us. And people send us books and stuff that a lot of times. And, you know, some really cool stuff. And I don’t ask you to send us anything, right? We’re just doing our job. And you guys pay me for newsletters and, you know, Wall Street Unplugged podcasts and stuff like that, which we make advertising dollars on. So, but we really appreciate it. And wow, this honey is absolutely excellent, Duane. So I really, really appreciate it. I think he sent it and it leaked or something. And they sent it back and he resent it. But it went through customer service. I had no idea. And I just saw it. I’m like, what the heck is this? And I think it’s like four jars that he sent. But man, this is awesome. Especially if you guys have like even the hot sauces, right?

Frank Curzio 07:51

It’s like he made them. I mean, it’s not like they’re buying them at Publix or whatever supermarket and sending them to us, right? Yeah, it’s just, it’s really good. That’s the word I was looking for, Joe. Homemade. Anything that’s homemade. I like it. I’ll sample anything. I like lots of food. So keep it coming. Again, we want to make Thursday’s podcast really, really fun, entertaining, and also about stocks and helping you guys make money, right? And what are we seeing right now is, you know, we’re in the middle of earning season. It’s pretty crazy. The market has been coming down. And it’s been a, I mean, it’s been a really, really ugly market, considering, Daniel, that we’re seeing, what, 23% earnings growth year over year. And yes, a lot of these stocks have run up into that and it’s priced in. But still, some of these companies are actually beating those estimates and we’re still seeing them come down. One of the things that are interesting right now is you’re looking at oil stocks.

Frank Curzio 08:38

And this is an industry that you cover and all over. And you’re looking at some big winners. I mean, you look at One Oak, Chineer, which is LNG. I mean, these names over the past couple weeks have been going up as we see escalation. But not just escalation. I think people are saying this is going to be around. This war is going to be around. And this conflict, you should say, is going to be around for a while. It’s not going to get resolved anytime soon. And the back and forth. And it’s just so easy for someone in Iran to just throw a freaking mine in the water, blow up a ship. Insurance rates go up. And then this whole escalation thing back and forth. And, you know, next thing you know, we’re blowing up cities and buildings and stuff. And it’s crazy. It really is crazy. But there’s no easy solution to this. And I think this is going to be long term. And if it’s going to be long term and you’re going to see oil prices above 80 because we have gas prices, you see them? They’re $4 again, basically.

Frank Curzio 09:27

So nationally, what are your thoughts? Is it an industry you cover? Because, you know, right now you’ve seen a lot of these stocks really pop off their lows. And it looks like this is going to stay. It’s not going to be like, oh, it’s temporary. We went to 100 and whatever, 15 to whatever. We went to an oil prices. And then we’re like, oh, it’s back and forth. It’s going to be temporary. I think everyone’s noticing that this isn’t going to be temporary. If it’s not temporary and oil prices stay above 75, these oil companies are significantly undervalued if we’re going to stay above 75 for the rest of the year. And now it looks like that. And you’re seeing a lot of money pour. One of the sectors you’re seeing money pour into is oil right now.

Daniel Creech 10:01

Absolutely. And, you know, I think that July, and again, I’m going to throw this thesis out there that I’ve come up with a little while ago. And I’m giving Trump, or excuse me, I think Trump looks at the end of July as kind of do whatever you want to. That’ll leave three months, August, September, August, September, and October leading up to the midterms. And that is why I think that you’re going to see this escalation between the U.S. and Iran. I could be completely wrong on that. Looking at the oil markets, I think it was, you know, I don’t think it’s going out on a limb saying that oil sold off and was oversold when it dipped below 70 there for briefly a moment on, you know, thinking this peace trade would last or the ceasefire and all that. We’ll see how far it escalates. Iran is talking about infrastructure for infrastructure. That’s interesting. Definitely a premium in the oil markets there.

Daniel Creech 10:54

So if I think oil got oversold recently, like I said, I believe I said yesterday, I just think the new normal is somewhere between 70 and 90-ish, give or take. So as you bounce around there, I would manage positions. I missed, we talked about them, but we didn’t recommend them. But the refineries, I think MPC, Marathon Petroleum, as well as VLO are both at, if I could be corrected, but I believe they’re both all-time highs today. I know they’re 52-week highs, but they’re probably all-time highs. And listen, refineries are really, when oil really sold off hard, that’s their biggest cost. Their biggest input is to buy oil and then refine it. So they were definitely getting a huge influx from lower oil prices. They’re still lower given, you know, where they spiked, obviously, during the escalation, the first time go-around with the U.S. and Iran. However, the demand for jet fuel, diesel, gasoline, etc. is not going to slow down anytime soon, in my opinion, unless we have a real recession, which we just have, you know, too much of a printing press to allow that to happen in the short term, in my opinion.

Daniel Creech 11:57

So yeah, you definitely want to be picky in this space, in my opinion. But just got to figure out where this new normal is. But oil’s not going back to pre-Iran levels, in my opinion, for any amount of time. It’s not going back to levels during the first Trump administration. And, you know, that’s good for investors as long as we’re long. We just got to get our right entry points.

Frank Curzio 12:16

Put up XLE too. That’s one of the large ETFs, Joe. It’s so funny because how big is that TV, Joe, that we have? 55. I think we need an 85. I’m going to change it. So I know, you know, again, I’m just new, not new, probably like two and a half, three years now wearing glasses and stuff like that. So now, you know, once you wear glasses, you’re going to wear them for the rest of your life. They progressively get, your eyes get worse. So these are reading glasses. So then my reading glasses, I can’t see them, right? And then when I take them off, it’s like my eyes can’t even adjust it. I can’t even. So I got to put this stuff. Glasses are like the biggest scam ever, right? Like, they’re like, please wear glasses. Just start and we get constant revenue. That’s the best revenue model I think I’ve ever seen of any sector. I mean, you’re guaranteed to pay for glasses for the rest of your life and your eyes get worse. It’s so great. It’s so awesome. I know so many people in the industry, they’re probably pissed I just said that.

Frank Curzio 13:03

But man, that’s a great industry to be in. Anyway, you look at XLE, which has Exxon, Chevron, Conoco, large components in it. And, you know, you look at the rebound, right? And that rebound’s going to go past those highs. If we stay above 70, 75, we’re at 80 right now. Probably if we stay above 70. And, you know, you can look at this in a couple of ways. Like Daniel was saying, well, you know, refiners are great. They’re doing great. One Oak, Chineer are doing great. Gasoline prices are going higher. You have, you know, a lot of the big names are going higher and still off their highs. Maybe some of them 10%, 12%, 15% off their highs and have come back. But the way you want to look at investing is, you know, how do I make money through these trends? And now you’re looking at airlines and pull up any airline. You can put up Delta or American Airlines. American Airlines, I think you can put up, right? You know, they recently had news. So American Airlines is kind of flat. It’s not too bad.

Frank Curzio 13:51

But American Airlines and Delta, they’re going to have to raise prices. And it’s a shitload of money, man, to fly right now. Holy cow. Holy cow. Joe, you just booked a flight and again it’s short. How much was it? One way. And again, this is like, you know, this is something that, you know, which was short term, right? So you booked it like right away. But even booking out, I mean, the amount that it costs for these airlines. And I love the discount airlines because, you know, you book them and then you get on the seat. Then you got to click the seat and the seat’s like 100 bucks just for the seat. And it’s like a middle seat. It’s like, I love what they, what’s the point of calling it discount airlines when, you know, you go to the bathroom and you have to pay and those freaking things. I don’t get it. But you look at airlines, super expensive to fly now. And, you know, they’re probably going to get hit on higher fuel prices. And you see that, right? Because if you see the end of that chart right there in American Airlines and you put up an oil chart, it’s opposite.

Frank Curzio 14:41

Oil companies are going higher. But yet, if you look at the end of that chart, just put up a short-term chart here, maybe three months, Joe, right there. You know, look at, it’s definitely different, right? You’ve seen these airlines come down, especially over the past couple of weeks. Now this has escalated. So, and how oil companies are going higher. So who are the benefits and who are not the benefits of this is important. You need to look at that because there’s front page of CNBC today, they’re talking about food companies with Cisco, Performance Foods, RACE. You know, these companies don’t hedge and airlines don’t hedge, right? So when you look at companies that don’t hedge, you’re going to see a lot of these names get hit or go higher depending on the underlying commodity, which happens to be oil. So these food companies, again, it’s a front-page story on grocery unit sales fell 1.8% in June. And when you’re looking at Cisco, Performance Foods, RACE, you know, they don’t hedge. And instead, what do they do?

Frank Curzio 15:32

They pass on these higher costs to customers. Okay, that’s okay if you’re doing that because people like I’m going to pay it. But now you’re seeing grocery unit sales have fallen 1.8% in June. Customers are like giving you the middle finger and saying, okay, I’m done. All right, we’re up 33% at a basket of food prices since 2019. How much can you keep? You can only, you can keep raising until people pay them. And then they stop paying them. And that’s why you, that reflects in the CPI and the PPI, right? Now you’re seeing those that like inflation come down. You’re like, wow, inflation is coming down. That’s a direct indication of consumers saying, F you, man. I’m done with this. I can’t afford this stuff. I can’t pay for it. And like I said, insurance prices have come down and they said they’d come down. I don’t know who they come down for, but obviously, if you look at United Health’s numbers, they haven’t come down. I’ll come back in a minute. But you’re looking at what companies benefit.

Frank Curzio 16:19

And then you have Walmart, Kroger, Pepsi come out. They said, hey, you know what? We’re going to have to lean for more promotions and price cuts. And Walmart does have Sam’s Club, but, you know, people are switching to cheaper brands and bulk buying, which is BJ Wholesale, Costco, and again, Sam’s Club, which Walmart has, you know, a portion of that unit going there. But when you look at this, you know, you have to look at what’s going on, how the trends affect it, because there’s positives and there’s negatives for each sector. And, you know, when I look at the food sector, Daniel, it’s not just being cost-conscious. It’s the effects of GLP-1s are real. I mean, have you seen some of these stocks? Have you seen Hershey lately?

Daniel Creech 16:58

No.

Frank Curzio 16:58

Hershey, you pull up any one of these stocks. You can throw them up here if you want. So Hershey, 275 in 2023, it’s 171. Okay, if you put up Hershey there. I mean, I could run through a lot of these. I don’t know if you get to get them up in time, but you can look at McDonald’s trading at 2022 levels. Conagra, I mean, look at that chart since 2023. You have this, you know, put up Conagra there if you can, Joe, if you get a second. I mean, the stock was 40, it’s 14, right? I mean, just since 2023, when these things really kicked in, the General Mills was close to 90 in 2023, it’s 40.

Daniel Creech 17:34

CAG.

Frank Curzio 17:36

Or F Tines has been an absolute disaster. You know, you’re looking at beer cells. Beer cells with Molson Coors was 70 in 2023 and it’s 40. Constellation brands, 270 in 2023, it’s 135 now. So where is this money going to? Okay, GLP-1s, where’s it going to? Well, you know, now throw up and put in like a five-year chart of that Conagra really quick. Look at that. Look at, I mean, that’s a secular decline. That’s what that is. That’s a steady, how often do you see companies miss estimates and they get crushed? These guys like steady, like just steady long-term decline. And now put up Eli Lilly. Eli, it should come right up. There you go. That’s Eli. So, you know, if you push up Eli Lilly, now put up a five-year chart of that. I mean, and look at where this company’s gone, which was what, 350 in 2023 and it’s 1200. So this is a company that where’s the money flowing to? They added 600 billion in market cap.

Frank Curzio 18:36

You’ll look at some of the market caps of these disappearing, right? So you have to look, money doesn’t come out of the market. It has to stay in the market because you have, and we’ll cover BlackRock. What was it, Daniel? How much they have on the assets in the management? What was it? 15 trillion?

Daniel Creech 18:49

15 trillion.

Frank Curzio 18:50

15 trillion. They just reported blowout numbers again. It’s something else we’ll get to in a second. But when you’re, in order for them to generate fees, they have to be in something, right? And that’s why you say there’s always something working. We’re seeing AI get annihilated right now. And anything AI is getting annihilated, we’ll cover that in a second. But where’s that money going to? Because now you look at, look at the money pouring into oil stocks. Look at the money pouring into pharmaceutical stocks as well. But, you know, when you see that money shift, it’s going to go somewhere. That’s how you’re a good investor. When you don’t say, oh, oil prices are up, let me buy oil stocks. Yeah, that’s the easy trade. But what’s going to benefit? What’s not going to benefit? And you’re looking at AI stocks and even, you know, some of these infrastructure stocks. I’m not sure what’s going to move these names higher, Daniel. And I know you look at Taiwan Semi. Have you seen those numbers?

Daniel Creech 19:32

Mm-hmm.

Frank Curzio 19:33

Okay, punch up Taiwan Semi.

Daniel Creech 19:35

Yeah, they reported another good number or good quarter.

Frank Curzio 19:39

Okay, and this stock’s down 3%. Now put up, yeah, I mean, look at that. But yes, the company is up and yes, you could say, okay.

Daniel Creech 19:47

That’s not an ugly chart.

Frank Curzio 19:48

Yeah, you know, it’s going up. No, no, I’m not saying ugly charts. I’m really pointing out, you know, put for you, put in like a three-month chart. Okay, when you see three months, especially the last month, right? Now, these numbers were fascinating. And yes, a lot of this has been built in the expectations. But 77% year-over-year earnings growth for Taiwan Semi was not priced in, right? And that’s what this company just reported where you couldn’t have asked for better than that. GE Aerospace just reported earnings, putting GE Aerospace up there. They brought the numbers today at over $2 in earnings per share, 202. They were expected, what was it? $1.90, I believe, or something. So they blew out the estimates. Then you have, you know, 12.6 billion of revenue they reported and you have, and that was better than 11.8 billion of revenue. And this stock is down 6% with a big beat. And again, look at that run-up, which is incredible. And I get it. You know, the expectations are high. But even with the expectations high, it’s almost making it certain that any company that is going to report, and this is even the hyperscalers, if anyone has a decent chart going in and you’re in the AI industry, no matter what the hell they report, you’re going to see a decline.

Frank Curzio 21:00

And if they report really good numbers like Taiwan and GE Aerospace, you’re going to get a 5% decline or 6% decline. But if you report numbers where, holy shit, you got hit, then you get IBM, you’re down 25%. And ASML, same thing. Great numbers, stock down. NVIDIA and Micron, look at those numbers. And these aren’t expensive stocks. I mean, NVIDIA hasn’t really been doing that much. Micron as well has gone up tremendously. Put up MU really quick for Micron if you can. And put it in like a month chart. I mean, look at that downturn. And these numbers have been exceptionally well. And scroll down. What’s Micron trading at, Joe? What’s the earnings? What’s the PE on that? If I could see it. What does it say to forward PE? Six is the forward PE. Blowout numbers, right? A good runway of the next three years at least, even four years and possibly five years. What memory, everyone buying memory saying it’s going to go up through the roof, which they’re right. And NVIDIA and even these stocks are falling off a cliff.

Frank Curzio 21:56

So you’ve seen the big shifts here. Even today, SanDisk is down 11%. Corning is down 10%. Westin Digital is down 10%. Seagate, I mean, down 9%. Marvell, 8, 9%. I mean, these names are getting hit on very, very good numbers. Daniel, I’m going to ask you, what’s the thesis behind these things if they’re reporting these great numbers? And you could say, yes, they’ve run up, but they’re beating the expectations of analysts and they’re still getting nailed. Even if you have a very strong beat, you’ll probably be flat. If it’s not that, if it’s a good beat like you saw with GE Aerospace in Taiwan, you’re going to get a 5, 6% hit. But if it happens to not be good or your report in line or report, you know, guidance is not good, you’re going to get an IBM. I don’t know, based on risk-reward, if you can go in ahead of these quarters and buy these AI chips, which, you know, a lot more are going to report in the coming weeks.

Daniel Creech 22:46

I would definitely be cautious just because of the volatility, but not to act like I know or, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball. Well, I do. Listen, the market just feels exhausted and we don’t, you’re always talking about catalyst and what’s the next upcoming thing? Yeah, earning season, but I don’t know how a lot of this isn’t priced in. I mean, when good news is just kind of meandering, the numbers these companies are putting up is absolutely incredible. The growth is still there. You can make an easy argument on saying, hey, everything is still intact from CapEx spending. We’ll hear from the hyperscalers very shortly. But ASML had a solid quarter just showing that demand continues to be robust. Obviously, the top dog on the manufacturing side, Taiwan Semi, does the same thing. And it’s just the market gets complacent and dog days of summer and all that. It is painful. Everything is getting a pullback. I’m not ready and I’m not throwing this at you, Frank, on throwing in the towel or anything.

Daniel Creech 23:41

It does suck. It’s painful, but, you know, this is one of those things where I would be selective and look to be a buyer because when the thesis doesn’t change and the earnings results, if the situation or story gets better and you have more data to build towards whatever your thesis was and that continues to go in the right direction and the stock price goes in the wrong direction, emotionally, that trumps everything. I understand that. I’m guilty of that. However, looking through that, which is what you got to do to be better than the average, that’s a good thing. And so just, you know, I’m kind of looking at my shopping list and looking at some names that we’ve visited in the past, good or bad, traded successfully or not, and also some new ones. And again, you almost want the market to come down a little bit when news is getting better and such. And like I said, I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s just, you know, it’s normal for markets to go sideways or pull back and all that kind of thing.

Daniel Creech 24:37

And, you know, that’s when you get your charts out and start drinking, Frank, you know?

Frank Curzio 24:42

I guess. I mean, it’s crazy. And I mean, you know, another example, and I think this is going to go into the whole conversation what we’re talking about here is when I’m looking at BlackRock’s earnings. And when you punch up BlackRock, Joe, BLK, how is the stock down? Okay, put up in your chart.

Daniel Creech 25:05

Down 0.3%, Frank.

Frank Curzio 25:06

Put up in your chart. Okay, so this is a stock. And now I want you to compare it to the S&P 500 if you guys could see this. Put up a year chart. Okay, so you’re looking at what, 21% for the S&P 500 is up 21% and BlackRock is up just 4% on the year. The quarter that this company just reported is absolutely insane. Okay, you’re looking at almost $14 in earnings and they were expected $12.69. You’re looking at, you know, 6.7 billion of revenue. It’s over 7 billion of revenue. Over 15 trillion in assets. And this company is, you know, should be outperforming everything. But more importantly, the AI systems that are going into trading, I want you guys to pay attention because nobody’s talking about this, okay? And hopefully this goes viral. I know it won’t, but I want it to go viral not for my sake. I want it to go viral because people are going to understand they’re going to sit, they’re going to make a shitload of money or save a lot of money. The AI systems that are being created by these bigger companies right now, and JP Morgan talked about it, a lot of the banks talked about it, Bank of America talked about it.

Frank Curzio 26:04

And if you look at BlackRock, you know, the system RockAI. So these are internal platforms allowing BlackRock employees to build and deploy their own AI agents in minutes without writing code. If you look at one of the trends of the market that’s back, that disappeared for a long time, that forced some of the greatest names in the world to leave their businesses to say, I’m not doing this shit anymore. It’s short selling, right? Short selling. Chaos gone. You have, what’s the other guy that actually got fined? Who was a big short seller who just got nailed by the SEC?

Daniel Creech 26:36

Oh, Citron.

Frank Curzio 26:37

Citron. And the short selling is now in. And that is because of AI. Now, what was the biggest threat? We had this longstanding secular bull market where, you know, you’re allowing even the Reddit crowds and stuff like that to pick off and see, you know, huge short selling in the positions. And what you want to do is force them to buy back, right? And force them to cover those shorts because now as the stock goes higher, they’re forced to cover and they’re getting crushed and then the stock goes higher and higher and higher. We’ve seen so many different stocks over the years, GameStop, Porsche, we’ve seen so many names that destroys people’s lives, right? You have unlimited downside, right? So when you invest in a stock and I invest a thousand dollars in whatever stock and it goes to zero, you lose a thousand dollars. When you’re shorting, your risk is unlimited, right? Because it can go up forever. And now short selling is back in. And they’re doing this because AI is able to have more speed, accuracy.

Frank Curzio 27:27

You’re able to hedge a lot quickly, which is one of the biggest risks. How do I get out of this position? How do I unwind it? How am I, you know, covering myself when I’m shorting? But if you look at hedge funds, institutional investors, the short positions and the bearish bets across US markets, they climbed to the highest level according to Goldman Sachs. The short exposure has climbed to its highest levels in a decade. Short selling is back. And they’re doing this because they’re able to create these AI systems that help them hedge a lot better, hedge quickly. And if you’re looking at this market and what these guys are doing, you control 15 trillion in assets. Or you’re looking at JP Morgan controlling, what was their assets? Up to over 7 trillion in that trillion, trillion, trillion in assets, right? We’re talking about those, that’s bigger than the GDP of every nation other than the United States and China. That’s how much assets these guys have. How do they build up those assets?

Frank Curzio 28:17

How are they making money off of those assets? That’s their job. And now with these AI systems, how many agents, if you have every employee of BlackRock, which is some of the smartest analysts in the world and people in the world creating their own agents without using code, there’s going to be like a million agents by what? In six months from now? A year from now? All doing this work, all creating all these systems around it. This is where it gets a little scary and crazy. But you’re seeing these moves in these stocks where I understand what Buffett was saying, where it seems like it’s more like you’re gambling. But man, this back and forth is crazy. And that leads us to SpaceX. Anything going on with that?

Daniel Creech 28:51

No.

Frank Curzio 28:52

All right, so SpaceX opened at, when it opened for its IPO a little over a month ago, 160, if you want to bring that chart up. It went to 200 a couple of days later. And I had friends who were very, very smart saying, “Hey, I want to put in 25 grand or 100 grand into SpaceX here. And I want to hold it and give it to my kids. What do you think?” I say, “You’re nuts.” I said, “Put it in the S&P 500. Don’t put it in one stock. You never know what’s going to happen.” I understand that you’re betting on Elon Musk and he’s been a huge winner for a long time. But when you could invest in Tesla very early, but you couldn’t invest in SpaceX, you invest in SpaceX at a 2 trillion valuation. Okay, it’s a lot different. I mean, to go from 2 trillion to 4 trillion, where’s it going to go? I mean, that’s a lot of money to put in one stock that already has a lot of that growth and future growth already priced in. So now if you look at where the stock is now, where is it? 131, right? So it came out at 135.

Frank Curzio 29:43

Nobody could buy at 135 and open at 160, I think. So anyone that has bought this stock after the IPO is down. They’ve lost money and some of them are down considerably because, you know, people bought at 180, 190, 200. Now when you look at this company, 30% of the float right now is short. 30% of this float, and they don’t have a big float, but just to put in perspective of how big this company is, that’s 185 million shares that are now sold short for this company right now at this fricking price. Not at 160% right now. The short was just 6% three weeks ago. It’s now at 30%, which is insane. And that goes to tell you that the systems and what they’re using within AI, more companies are shorting. You’re seeing a decade ahead where they’re able to hedge themselves and get out of these positions if shit goes south for them. And next quarter, by the way, if you own SpaceX, 11% of the total shares outstanding are going to be unlocked. They’re going to be eligible for sale. Another 11% of shares.

Frank Curzio 30:40

Now, what does that mean? It means that those people, and think about put yourself in this position because those people were in, and this is what, what’s the valuation on this, Joe? Scroll down. What’s the market cap on it? 1.7? 1.7 trillion, right? That’s the valuation, 1.7 trillion. The 11% of these shares are going to be unlocked. I could almost guarantee you that they were in SpaceX when it was private at a 70% discount to where the price is today. If you own this stock at a 70% discount to where it is and say you own it at $20, $30 a share, right? Based on whatever, you couldn’t buy that because they IPO like regular retail investors. What are you going to do when those shares unlock? Are you going to be like, “Ah, I’m just going to hold them?” No, you’re going to sell some of them because you don’t know if there’s going to be down 30, 40. You’re up so much money. You’re going to be liquid. You can put that money into anything else you want. What do you think they’re going to do?

Frank Curzio 31:29

And that’s probably why you’re seeing this short position. 30%. If you see a 7% short position, guys, that’s a lot. That’s like, “Oh, okay, you know, it’s noticeable.” If you see 10%, you’re like, “Okay, something wrong. What’s going on here?” 30% is insane. And this is no longer like crazy. This is very smart money. There’s a people that are very smart at what they do to short this stock at 30%. And to see this thing down to in the low 130s right now in a market where it’s not a bear market, especially within this industry, a lot of these names are getting killed. What do you do in that position if you’re in that lot? I mean, would you continue to hold it, Daniel? I mean, what would you do? I mean, if you’re in this stock at $30 and now you finally, for the first time in many, many years, maybe four, five years, maybe 10 years that you’re able to sell this stock, what are you going to do? You’re going to sell some of those shares, right? I mean, how can’t you? Which is more shares, 11% of the shares outstanding are going to be unlocked.

Frank Curzio 32:19

That’s a huge, huge amount, a huge amount. So, you know, crazy stuff going on. And one more point I want to make when I see BlackRock and, you know, publish the results that they had for the quarter and that stock flat on the day. And you’re looking at a stock where a lot of the other names we said, “Oh, they’ve run up a lot.” All right, I get it. This isn’t a stock that’s run up a lot. This is a stock that’s up 4% of the year that reported their best earnings they’ve ever seen, more assets in the management than ever in their history. And what are they going to do with this money? And if you look what these companies are going to do, because they’re not seeing their stock price go up, and this is something you should factor in as well. Is it going to buy back their stock? They’re going to buy back a shitload of their stock. And you’re seeing that because right now in 2026, you have any idea how much is planned to be bought back right now based on the announcements?

Daniel Creech 33:03

I do. I read the transcript. 500 million a quarter.

Frank Curzio 33:09

That’s for BlackRock alone. I didn’t even know that. I’m talking about.

Daniel Creech 33:11

Something like that.

Frank Curzio 33:11

Is it?

Daniel Creech 33:12

Now I’m second guessing, Frank.

Frank Curzio 33:13

So 1.3 trillion total in buybacks in 2026. Okay, it just exceeded 1 trillion the year before that. All right, so this is obviously a record. But that’s what these companies are doing. If you look at which companies are right for the biggest buybacks, and you could say, “Well, it might be like these infrastructure companies.” No, they’re spending on a CapEx. They’re like, “Hey, we want to grow, we’re spending on CapEx,” but you know who’s not. And if you look at this, which is very interesting, and we covered this yesterday, is look at the banks. The banks reported great earnings. If you’re looking at Bank of America, 8 billion return to shareholders in Q2 2026, they’re going to raise that. You look at return 10 billion, that is Wells Fargo, over 10 billion in capital. And they’re going to increase that considerably. They’re going to also increase their dividend. You look at Citigroup, a capital return remains a priority. This is what they said would plan 12% increase in the quarterly common dividend, be given next quarter, and an active 30 billion share repurchase program.

Frank Curzio 34:15

So, you know, if you’re going to focus on these companies, that’s going to be a boost to earnings. And we said that yesterday where these companies, they buy back their shares, meaning if they reported net income, say if it’s, whatever net income is, say if it’s a billion dollars, right? And if you report the same net income the same the next year, but your share count is down, your earnings are going to go higher. So they’re automatically going to see this artificial earnings growth because they’re buying back their shares, which makes banks, again, we said it yesterday, one of the best environments that I’ve ever seen in the history of banks where the net interest income is, what is it? 103 billion? JP Morgan’s expected. So a lot of things are happening within this market. It’s how do you play them? How do you make money? Not just looking at oil and where oil’s going to go and, okay, oil stocks are going to do. It impacts other industries. Your job and our job is to find out where that money’s going to go to within these markets.

Frank Curzio 35:06

And this isn’t a plug or anything, but I’m just saying that’s why we created Curzio Alpha. It allows us to go where the money is. Instead of having an AI product that was up tremendously over the past two, three years and now down over the past month, right? Now where do we want to go? Now we have a newsletter in place that we can go anywhere we want. Okay, the banks are working out. The oil company’s working out. Instead of being, you know, so isolated into one sector, whether that’s crypto, whether, you know, it’s not doing that good for many years, mining stocks dead for how many years, now you, you know, you want to be able to be flexible, all of you, and be able to go wherever you want, wherever the money’s going to, because that money’s going to go someplace. And that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing big shifts in capital and it’s happening right away. And we saw that even dealing with AI, which we covered yesterday as well, where, hey, maybe not as much going to infrastructure and data centers. Yes, they are building them, but they took a lot of that CapEx.

Frank Curzio 35:55

Hundreds of billions of dollars went to what? It’s going to cybersecurity and it’s going to storage and memory, which is why Micron is up how much? 10X still over the past year or the past nine months. So that’s where you want to see where the money’s going. That’s how you can benefit the most. And I know you did a great job covering BlackRock in what a quarter, huh? That was a great quarter. Unbelievable.

Daniel Creech 36:15

It was a good quarter. I’ll spare you the boring numbers. They just put up beaten rates. It was amazing. On the share repurchases, it did stick out to me. They repurchased 450 million worth of shares in the second quarter. That’s what they just reported, Q2. Going forward, they anticipate repurchasing at least 550 million per quarter going forward. It didn’t say that it was going to stop at the end of the next two quarters for the year. So that was very interesting to me. A couple of comments on Fink. The transcript wasn’t bad, but really what I thought was interesting was Larry Fink of BlackRock went on CNBC and they were talking about power, AI, and really Larry Fink was basically jumping up and down on the desk at CNBC and talking about the grid, the power, the need for power, and the need for building out grid and data centers. And I was impressed with that. Obviously, we’ve been on that train for a good while. And he said a couple of things that shocked me here or surprised me.

Daniel Creech 37:19

He’s not worried about an AI bubble at all. I don’t mean to act like I’m quoting here. I’m paraphrasing, but you can find the clip. He’s not worried about an AI bubble. He’s worried about investing and building as fast as possible. And he even threw out the New York moratorium on data centers and how he obviously doesn’t think that’s a good idea. President Trump has tweeted about that and how that talent and investment dollars will go to other states and stuff. And I found that very interesting. He also talked about leverage in the system. And he said, “We have nowhere near the leverage that we had in the 2008 financial crisis.” He mentioned Bitcoin and crypto about how that was over-leveraged and we’ve had a washout. And he said, “That’s why we have more stability at these levels.” And then on the data center and the power structure again, he was talking about how not only data centers, but the grid. And he said that it takes about 50 to 60 billion dollars to build out one gigawatt. Now, a gigawatt is impressive because that’s basically the city of Denver, if you want to throw an easy one that AI makes a comparison to.

Daniel Creech 38:23

One gigawatt could power that. Now, 50 to 60 billion, you got to kind of dive into that because that’s not saying if you build the infrastructure or the shell, as some people call it, or the facility, that that alone cost you 50 to 60 billion dollars. The all-in, I believe, is what he was talking about where you’re putting the GPUs in, you’re putting all the infrastructure in. It’s not just building the big, you know, Walmart super centers, these things look like. And when you think about the amount of money going into it, so here you have the guy that has the largest assets under management or a money management company telling you that he’s not concerned about a bubble. That just, and listen, all these guys drink from the same Kool-Aid. That doesn’t shock me too much, but that aligns with Zuckerberg of Meta and that weasel Altman over at OpenAI and talking about how, “Hey, it doesn’t matter if this is a bubble or if this doesn’t pan out. The race is to build it out and use the compute.” And I just, I thought that was a big takeaway.

Daniel Creech 39:21

I want to kind of explain why I think that’s so good with comments from Kevin Warsh, but I’ll let you chime in here. Anything that Fink said on CNBC gets your attention there, Frank?

Frank Curzio 39:32

I mean, I didn’t see the whole interview. It’s just, it’s no surprise that we are talking about electricity. And we sound alarming this 18 months ago. I said there’s going to be blackouts. It’s even worse now. It’s worse now because a lot of data centers, you know, 60% of them are getting delayed, but AI is not stopping. I mean, we talk about all these companies, they’re just starting to launch their own agents, right? So you’re going to see literally billions of agents. It’s almost like the, you know, digital people performing all these functions that use more data, more power. And then we’re not even talking about robotics next, right? So just the inference part and all the models still focus on large language models, which, all right, you type in something and it tells you, you know, okay, use for writing. It’s like light years ago. With the AI agents that are going on and people being able to create their own workloads, going to Claude and their second brain and putting so much more data in there, constantly updating.

Frank Curzio 40:21

This isn’t large language models that are taking everything, all the data off of the internet from the past, you know, whatever, you know, 1990s, and everyone’s like, “Oh, there’s all,” now all the data that’s new every single day, that’s what it’s scraping now. All the brand new data and predicting what’s going to happen in the future. That requires a huge amount of more power. And when you look at the gigawatts that are going to be needed, it’s not 100, it’s over 200, 250. Where are we going to get this? And then what are we doing? You know, we have asshole politicians. That’s what they are. They’re all assholes that we’re seeing. And I’m probably going to get my podcast shut down for saying that, but it doesn’t matter. What are we seeing? This isn’t like a move to, “Oh, let’s see what’s going on with the environment,” right? If you look at New York, Daniel, it’s 155 facilities, right? And they’re like, “Oh, we want to see the environmental impact. We want to see what’s going on.” Well, why don’t you take Virginia?

Frank Curzio 41:06

665 facilities, they’re doing okay. You look at Texas, 413 facilities, they’re okay. You know, Arizona has close to 200, right? So you have Illinois, 250. You know, you could get a good, you know, perspective of what’s going on with these companies, the energy you need, the environmental concerns, and all this stuff, and you could see it, right? But yet you’re going to have these states because it’s a big political topic of people, the younger generations worried about AI. They don’t want it to be built. That’s a huge part of the population in terms of votes. We see the left really focusing on that. And that’s a big topic. So any state that wants to get votes is going to say, “Hey, you know, we’re against AI right now,” and that’s it. I mean, to really announce this with the threat of China being ahead of us, right? If people don’t understand, if China wins the AI race, our like.

Daniel Creech 41:54

Oh boy, Frank.

Frank Curzio 41:55

I mean, think about what could happen in terms of military. Think about, I mean, if you’re looking at, you know, defense and what they are capable of doing and being ahead of us before we’re able to launch things, before we’re able to see things, think about what would happen. Okay, that’s what we’re looking at. We need to be ahead of this. We have the money. We can’t have our politicians because they want votes and want to get reelected and be like, “Oh, okay, let’s just stop that.” We tried that with oil and oil went to 100 and something. Oh, let’s stop drilling. Let’s not drill the environment. And, oh yeah, you know what? It’s the global environment, right? So even if we cut back and we see India, which, you know, coal uses is exploding and China, coal uses is exploding, you know, we see everyone else using cheaper forms. It’s still hurting the environment, right? So even no matter how much we cut back, we have to be smart about this. But this is politically driven and it’s going to hurt us, but it’s going to result in blackouts.

Frank Curzio 42:44

We need electricity because AI is not slowing down. The money’s there. It’s getting, we need more power. And it’s just incredible to see, but, you know, it’s nice for Larry to jump on our side after, you know, two, three years and be like, “Holy cow, there’s a power crisis.” Of course. And they got plenty of money to get into this and, you know, do what they need to do to make as much money as possible. And they’ve been doing that over the past 18 months especially. But, you know, no surprise for him to really be pounding the table on that, Daniel.

Daniel Creech 43:08

Yeah, their global infrastructure acquisition. They’ve made several acquisitions. I mean, that’s kind of their, that’s kind of their stick anyway. He made comments on tokenization and stablecoin reserves. I thought were pretty interesting. And about this CapEx. And the way I want to translate that over to Kevin Warsh’s comments real quick here. He testified in front of the Senate yesterday. We talked about the House testimony earlier and Wall Street unplugged yesterday. And he got a lot of questions on AI and, you know, one of our representatives was worried about the existential threat. So obviously that’s the terminator angle. That’s ridiculous. Don’t waste any of your time thinking about that. What I do want to say is that Kevin Warsh was echoing Fink. They’re singing out of the same, singing along with the same song here. Fink’s talking about building this out. Zuckerberg’s talking about building it out. Everybody’s throwing all this money in here. We’re basically outspending China 10 to 1.

Daniel Creech 43:58

They have a government that they can influence and use. So that’s different. We’re using private capital for the most part. Kevin Warsh’s comments were very positive on the building out of AI. He’s been in this boat about AI productivity and he thinks that’s going to be a long-term structural increase or positive increase, excuse me, for the economy and such. I think that’s fine and that’s an easy lazy argument because you can always just extend your timeline. So there’s really no value there. But he’s got to just talk around circles because of his testimony. However, he did continue to say, he said more than once in front of the Senate that capital expenditures going into AI data centers. At one point, he was talking to a senator and said, “Listen, if AI doesn’t turn out to be what we believe it will be, then what do you have? You have some failed projects. You have investors that lose money, but you’re still going to have power. You’re still going to have the infrastructure built that can be used for something else.” Again, not great in the moment because that’s all forward-looking and a little bit hypothetical depending on how this plays out.

Daniel Creech 45:00

But to the bigger point, he said more than once, capital expenditures is better than just having the financialization of share buybacks and increasing dividends. And it made me laugh because what a great line. You know, nobody’s ever happy. You know, there’s no such thing as the, was it too hot, too cold, just right? What am I thinking? Three bears? What am I trying to say there?

Frank Curzio 45:24

Three little bears.

Daniel Creech 45:24

Three little bears, whatever it is.

Frank Curzio 45:26

Goldilocks, yeah.

Daniel Creech 45:28

Because how often do we hear politicians yell about buyback on both sides, Democrats and Republicans? Trump is the latest politician to yell about buybacks. Look at the defense industry. He’s trying to wave his magic wand and say, “If you don’t do this, you can’t buy your stock back.” Well, you can’t complain about both. You can’t complain. Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t complain about share buybacks and dividends. And now they’re spending too much on CapEx. That’s just ridiculous. Ignore that noise. And I just thought it was very good to hear Warsh talk about, “Hey, even if AI doesn’t be the saving grace that some people are promising, and it won’t, it’s somewhere in the middle between terminator and, you know, universal basic income, then that’s not that big of a deal. And it’ll play out over time.” But the fact that that money is rotating from just staying on balance sheets and/or going to shareholders to the real economy to expand out into the economy, that is a net positive.

Daniel Creech 46:22

And I’ll argue that to my grave. Blow it at AI on becoming the savior of anything. That infrastructure is going to be good for the overall economy. And it’s going to be good in the present through building out in materials. And it’s going to be in the long term for whatever they use that infrastructure for if AI doesn’t point out or pan out. And the last thing here is I’ll tie this in with Buffett. So you got Larry Fink, Kevin Warsh, and Warren Buffett. Buffett did an interview with CNBC. He was talking about his change in Google and how he likes the fact that Google went from a asset light balance sheet technology to an asset heavy, building out data centers and all this kind of stuff for AI. And he said that, and I’m paraphrasing, but hey, I like Google because they’ve proven they can compete. And I think that in the environment that they’re competing in now, this build-out infrastructure taking on assets, which Buffett likes, obviously the guy owns a Florida railroad, not much more CapEx heavier than that.

Daniel Creech 47:16

And I just think that’s a great perspective. And that is the new kind of game they’re playing. It’s going to be volatile, but I, you know, it’s good to see CapEx go into the economy, even if it has some drilldown in stocks and some volatility along the way, in my opinion.

Frank Curzio 47:31

Yes. And one last thing I wanted to get to is, you know, Chamath was on CNBC and I’m a fan of his. I like, you know, you know, you know what, Spax and stuff like that.

Daniel Creech 47:41

No, you’re not. You ran on him all the time by the way.

Frank Curzio 47:43

I like Spax, his Spax. I’m a big fan of him. I like his podcast all in. I think he had a very big moment of weakness and weakness means $300 million into his pocket with Spax. And he kind of addressed this, which was, you know, again, which I think he said he regrets. He said a lot of things, right? He said a lot of things and it was a good interview, but he said he regrets coming on TV and talking about Spax. That’s what he said. So I guess you regret pocketing $300 million on Virgin Galactic when you said, when, you know, getting the Spax, right? When it first was launched that it’s a value stock. And he said that projections, this is true. He projected that Virgin Galactic would make $590 million by 2023, right? That was a revenue. Generate $590 million revenue by 2023, right? And he said, and a lot of people bought the stock because of that. I want it tremendously. I want it tremendously in the 30s. He sold it for $300 million. And so did Branson and Elise Branson got to go, you know, flying on one of his rockets for free.

Frank Curzio 48:46

$590 million by 2023. Just to put in that perspective, you know how much revenue Virgin this 2026, in case you guys have been doing the psychedelics of the company that Eli Lilly just bought. The revenue, you know what the revenue is for Virgin Galactic right now?

Daniel Creech 49:00

I don’t, but I’ll take under that number.

Frank Curzio 49:02

$1.3 million. A little, just a little off from the $590 million, but he regrets coming on TV and talking about Spax. So I’m always going to give him shit about that, especially since you cash in. If you feel that regretful, why don’t you give everyone their money back? That would be a nice thing to do. Other than that, he did have other things to say that I know you wanted to talk about. And again, it was a lot of substance in those interviews in terms of politicians and money that, you know, given away. And, you know, if you’re going to increase taxes, let us know what we’re doing because we’re seeing more fraud than we’ve ever seen now that’s being tracked. But it really was a good interview and it was on for a long time, which is why I like that part. I like SwakBox because they have great people on for a long time and instead of, you know, one minute in some of these, you know, other programs.

Daniel Creech 49:42

Yeah, I’ll take the other side of that. I didn’t think it was that, listen, I, the first time I saw this, I saw a very edited clip of him saying he regretted talking about Spax and such. And I thought, man, this is it. Like, that’s why people love forgiveness and, you know, you show some humility. You say you’re wrong. You say, I’m sorry. And it sucks. And nobody likes to say, I’m sorry or I’m wrong more than the guy talking right now. It Florida sucks. I hate it. I’ve had to do it. I’ll do it in the future. It’s horrible. However, once I started watching the interview, that is not what old Chamath did. Okay. He said he regretted talking about it. And then he totally dodged all these questions and he flipped the script. And I just thought it was beyond pathetic to tell you the truth. Hey, how do you feel about everybody losing their money? Oh, nobody lost. Oh, speculators lost their money. That’s how he defined retail investing. Oh, speculators lost money. Hedge funds didn’t lose it. And then he spun it this way.

Frank Curzio 50:32

Hedge funds were in at $2. They didn’t have to disclose back with Spax really quick. They didn’t have to cut you off. They didn’t have to disclose the warrants or anything. That’s why all these hedge funds said, holy shit, we don’t have to disclose all this stuff. We could buy all this stock and do pipe investments at a dollar, $1.50, come out at 10, not tell anyone, and dump this shit. As soon as it comes out at 10, 11, 12 and launch these crazy campaigns. Go ahead. Sorry.

Daniel Creech 50:50

No, you’re good. He, he spun that. I feel like he was unfair in saying, ah, it’s retail, they’re speculators and all that. He’s kind of dumping on them. And then I lost my train of thought there. What else was he saying? Give me a second.

Frank Curzio 51:04

I don’t know if he talked about tokenization. He talked about.

Daniel Creech 51:07

No, I don’t know.

Frank Curzio 51:09

I mean, politicians, you know.

Daniel Creech 51:11

Anytime a guy like him talks about taxes, ignore him. Because these guys that say, oh, I would pay more taxes if, that is such BS. Nobody is stopping them from writing a check to the treasury. All right? And nobody’s going to give them control on how to dictate their money. That’s just something you would say to diverge the conversation. The other thing, let’s see, what did Chamath say? So he talked about investor. Oh, the way he spun it, I’m sorry for taking so long. The way he spun it was saying, listen, who benefited? Well, the company’s benefited because they raised all this money. The employees benefited because they’re getting paid longer. And I just thought, I just think that’s trash. The guy’s rich, the guy’s brilliant. If you’re in the camp of thinking you can be trash and that’s how you get rich and that’s what makes you brilliant, have at it. I’m not in that camp.

Frank Curzio 51:56

Oh, well, well said. Look at you going after Chamath.

Daniel Creech 51:59

I’m not going after him. I’m just telling you what he said. I didn’t make any of that up.

Frank Curzio 52:03

Daniel, not messing around today.

Daniel Creech 52:04

I like his podcast too. Shows you how.

Frank Curzio 52:06

Yeah, that’ll be a podcast.

Daniel Creech 52:08

Not many people are better than me. And I know this is going to sound arrogant, but hey, not many people are better than me that can split Republican and Democrat. Okay. Because I disagree with a lot of people that I read and listen to all the time. Hell, I’m investing in Galaxy. He’s a liberal limousine, limousine liberal. I mean, that is the freaking biggest divergence for me. And I’m not Republican, everybody. Don’t even worry about that. I’m much worse. So email me at daniel@earthgearresearch.com.

Frank Curzio 52:32

Much worse. Much worse.

Daniel Creech 52:33

Well, and most people’s eyes. People don’t know what. People don’t even realize Republicans and Democrats are the same thing. I mean, you know, we really have two parties. You have the fringe on the right and the fringe on the left. And that’s kind of crazy right now, but such is history and we enjoy it. So.

Frank Curzio 52:46

Wow. I’m telling you, I like this Thursday podcast.

Daniel Creech 52:48

Well, it’s pretty shooting from the hip. So hopefully everybody else does.

Frank Curzio 52:52

This is like, this honey, like I can’t believe. This honey is like really great. And you know what I like? It doesn’t have like statistics on the back or anything because it’s homemade. So, which you shouldn’t do. But I mean, this thing, I mean, I’ve been talking, my brain’s been working like, like I’ve been on fire this podcast. I’m like everything. The energy, this stuff’s been an adderall. You know, I’m going to freaking, who is it? Dwayne? I don’t know. We might be able to get up a nice business strategy for you. Holy cow. Man, I think it gives you a lot of energy. I’m almost going over an hour here. All right. So we talked about a lot of stocks, a lot of things, but the most important thing is this podcast is going to be surrounded around you, right? So if you want to ask questions, you can go to askkersio.com. I know a lot of you have lots of questions on the markets. Daniel, I don’t hold back as we just did. There’s no one above us that says, oh, you can’t say that about somebody. No, no, we don’t care. We’re going to tell you the truth.

Frank Curzio 53:37

All right. It’s right. I do. I like Chamath. I think he provides a lot of value. I like his podcast. I think, you know, 90% I like the guy. Just I was really pissed off that, you know, the Spax thing, just own it. Don’t say, you know, and he doesn’t own it, which pisses me off. If you’re wrong, own it. That’s it. I mean, you know, that’s how you build credibility, right? Just say you’re wrong and say, hey, this is what I’m going to do about it. And I messed up. I mean, we all mess up. We all, all of us, right? We all have flaws and stuff like that. Just admit it and go with it. Don’t, don’t, oh, to speculators. What did he say last time? Like, oh, this is a tax write-off or something. It’s like, it’s so nice to tax write-off, but it’s crazy. But just own it.

Daniel Creech 54:11

Carry forward losses or something.

Frank Curzio 54:12

Yeah. So, you know, stocks, everything, you know, anything is open. You could really ask us anything. I wouldn’t ask me anything about marriage or anything like that, but, you know, I’m not the best at that part. But anyway, you.

Daniel Creech 54:23

Fix everything but a broken heart is the saying goes.

Frank Curzio 54:25

Yeah. Everything. Anything. It’s open. Askkersio.com and this is about you. And one day I want to feature this and make this even better where, you know, you’re actually calling in, right? And you’re calling in. I would like to do something that’s live, which would be really, really cool because I’m, I’m sure we’ll get some crazy questions in, but that’s what we see like on the sports shows and stuff like that in New York all the time where people just call in and everything’s really, really funny. So, you know, have them call in, not just write in, but askkersio.com. We have it up there, you know, put your name in there, your email, you throw in a question and we’re going to answer it for you, which is really cool. So feel free to use that. And I don’t know how much time we got left. What else do you want to talk about? I mean, it’s earning season. It’s getting crazy.

Daniel Creech 55:04

We ought to wrap up.

Frank Curzio 55:05

Worried about, you know, let’s get the hell out of here. Worry about, you know, just I’m really interested, like what I’m looking at right now next week is other AI companies are going to report. It seems like no matter what the report, they go down depending on how good it is. If it’s really good, they still go down. They go down a little bit. If not good, you get IBM. Pay close attention to that if you’re long some of these stocks going into earnings. However, I think the biggest thing I want to look at right now, I’m pretty sure it’s Netflix, right? Netflix is reporting after the bell. I want to see how, remember, we want to focus on where the money’s flowing, right? So I want to see what Netflix reports. This is a stock, what, was in the 130s and 73 now. It’s gotten annihilated. Put a year chart on that. I mean, this is Netflix, right? Just annihilation, total annihilation with the stock. I want to see because if they report, are we going to see the opposite effect that we’re seeing with AI, where even if they don’t come in with those good numbers, they should come in with really strong numbers.

Frank Curzio 55:52

I mean, expectations are low and they just starting to get into advertising and advertising is going to be a boom to their business. You know, their content is still great. Lots of great stuff on sleep for Netflix. Still the number one streaming service in the world. I’m curious to see the reaction after earnings. My initial thought is going to be if they report something in line, the stock’s going to go up. If they report a good number and happen to have good guidance, this is a stock that could easily go up 15% very easily here. I mean, it’s down tremendously. But if this stock actually reports okay numbers and goes down, to me, it tells me that this market is very, very dangerous right now. It’s very, very dangerous. And it’s almost, don’t go into earnings buying stocks because it’s almost like a no-win situation. Because if Netflix is down this much and reports in line of good earnings, again, they expect to report earnings at a total dog shit when you look at that chart. And if they report earnings in line, the stock should go up.

Frank Curzio 56:41

And if they report earnings that are great, it should go up a lot. If that doesn’t happen, I don’t know what’s going to, we just saw BlackRock report unbelievable results, right? We’re seeing, you know, UNH report great results and that went up, you know, a little bit. That’s been down a lot. But I’m curious to see with these AI companies and a lot of other companies, even the banks reported great results across the board, record results across the board. No stocks barely move. So I’m interested to see how the rest of this earning season plays out. But the next three weeks going to be critical because it just feels like this is going to turn into an ugly market. If companies are reporting 20% plus earnings growth and not able to go up at all, even the companies that have charts like Netflix, watch the F out. So to me, I think today is a big earnings report for Netflix. I’m going to pay attention and report back to you guys. So that’s going to be for this week and then also next week, lots of earnings on slate. And we’re going to be covering a lot during the Wednesday and Thursday podcast and a lot of our companies and our Kershaw Alpha portfolio are going to be reporting and we’re going to be reporting to you about those results of what we want to do, buy more, add, sell, and update you with that.

Frank Curzio 57:36

So other than that, that’s it for us. Enjoy the weekend. Daniel, who do you have for British Open? And don’t look at the top names that are on the list right now, but.

Daniel Creech 57:45

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Frank Curzio 57:46

Is your boy doing okay at least? I know you focus on him a lot.

Daniel Creech 57:48

I don’t know. I don’t know if Kefka’s doing any good.

Frank Curzio 57:50

I haven’t looked at it at all. I totally forget. It’s just a time change. I was like, holy cow, I got to look at it right after this. But yeah, I’m going to enjoy the British Open. It’s always a great event. It’s the only event I know in golf where the winner could come in like three hours earlier, four hours earlier, and just sit there and wait. And everybody’s just like, and that guy could actually win the event. It’s not always in the last pairing. So that’s why I love the Open. And the course should be pretty cool. Minus form surprises that high, but it should be cool. And next week, let’s prepare for earnings season. We have a lot of good podcasts for you, but either way, we’ll put back to you next weekend. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you then. Take care.

Announcer 58:17

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money, and your responsibility.