Frank Curzio 00:01

Hey, what’s going on, everyone. It’s Thursday, September 10, and I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down your headlines and— Tell you what’s really moving these markets. Dale Creech, what’s going on, man? How’s everything?

Daniel Creech 00:15

Another beautiful day in paradise.

Frank Curzio 00:17

All right, guys, this podcast, as you know, is the Q&A. We’re going to go over some PPI news today and the markets, because we’ve seen the markets pull back again. We told you the PPI is going to come in hot. CPI is coming in tomorrow, it’s probably going to come in hot. We’re going to see a 10-year go-high. We’ll cover that in a second. But first, Daniel, you said you really weren’t interested in the game. I think you had it right last night. Man, that Seahawk game and the Patriots may have been the worst opening game that I’ve seen in the NFL in probably 10 to 15 years. You see, you’re excited. You had Sam Donald get hurt on, like, the second, third play, and he’s out. And then they bring up the backup, who, you know, again, it’s a backup quarterback. AJ Brown got hurt in the second half. You’re looking at 10-0 in the halftime, they’re into the third quarter, and then you saw the Patriots lose that lead, and man, that quarterback really shit the bed. But I don’t know if you’re paying attention or not, but interesting.

Frank Curzio 01:09

I just thought it would be a better game. Should have a better game tonight. San Francisco and the Rams in Australia. I love the fact that Aaron Donald came back and he’s like, “You know what, I’m not going to go to Australia. I don’t feel like it.” He’s like, “Okay, I’ll wait until you guys get back to start.” It’s so nice when you’re in demand like that. So he can come back when you have a good team and then say, “Yeah, I don’t feel like playing when you have a bad team.” So kind of like what Gronk did as well, even with Tampa Bay and the Patriots. But I don’t know if you caught any of that game, but man, it turned out to be a dud. I mean, I shut it off. I didn’t even watch it after halftime, even though they came back. If you’re a Seahawks fan, you’re happy. If you’re a JSN fan, you’re happy. 26 fantasy points. Joe, let me know, because he did not pick JSN. He took Saquon Barkley instead and he’s flipping out a little bit over there with fantasy. That fantasy game, you understand, it drives anger beyond belief when you pick the wrong guys.

Frank Curzio 01:55

But let’s see what Saquon does first before you go crazy. But I don’t know if you saw any of that game, but at least San Francisco Rams is coming tonight. That should be a much better game, I think.

Daniel Creech 02:03

Yeah, that one’s in Australia, right?

Frank Curzio 02:05

Yeah, in Australia. I think it’s being broadcast today. I don’t know. Again, I’m not too sure of the time. I know it’s probably 11:12. I don’t even know. But I think it’s going to be at 8:30 tonight our time or something. So that’s not going to matter. But it should be pretty cool. Let’s see what happens. See what happens. NFL has started expecting a much better game. And man, you know, last year’s Super Bowl was a lot more exciting than this game. And not too much exciting, if actually, if you’re a Patriot fan. But man, holy cow, that was a very, very boring game. So let’s move on to, I want to say, interesting. I don’t know if the PPI is so interesting, but it came in just a tiny bit higher, Daniel. 0.1% higher than estimates. So no big deal, right? Did you see the increase? Did you see that it went up 5.4% year over year? Just to remind you guys, the Fed’s target is 2%, and it’s at 5.4%. Imagine a company in 2024 saying that their annual revenue target is $1 billion, and they only generate $600 million.

Frank Curzio 03:04

And then they reiterate the same guidance in 2025, and then they generate not more than $600 million. They generate less. It’s $500 million. Then in 2026, they say, “Nope, this is the year. This is where revenue is going to go to $1 billion,” and revenue is only $400 million. Well, what happened to that stock? 40%, 50%, 60% decline, right? So the Fed’s credibility right now is an effing joke. To say 2% just is hilarious. At 5.4% and going higher and higher and higher, a lot of people blaming oil, and it’s going to be temporary. However, you know, what were your thoughts on this? Because obviously, we called it yesterday. We said, “This is the way it’s going to be.” We’re going to see the PPI, CPI coming hot, unemployment coming hot. We’re seeing a reversal of the last two months of all those figures coming in, showing inflation moderating. Now they’re going higher. Odds have increased dramatically, over 70% now, for the Fed to cut rates next week. To raise rates next week by 25 basis points.

Frank Curzio 03:58

And what are we seeing with the 10-year? 4.9 on its way to 5%, and stock’s getting hit. Something we talked about all day yesterday. All day in our live event over a week ago. You should be prepared for this. We’re going to tell you and highlight a lot more stocks and places to be and avoid. But what are your initial thoughts on the PPI? Any surprises?

Daniel Creech 04:16

No, not really. I mean, I thought it basically came in in line. I mean, I know it was a tenth higher than that. I didn’t think anything was crazy shocking when it comes in pretty close to expectations. Like you say, expectations are all that matters. The elephant in the room, diesel price is up 24.1% in August alone, and obviously, that continues to go higher with oil going up, with gasoline, and with diesel. That’s the real kicker there. Yeah, I mean, that’s going to be a pull-through. I think markets are digesting this. Again, I said this yesterday. I’m impressed that markets weren’t down more yesterday. I continue to be in that same boat today. I mean, we’re looking at a half a percent. I’m not saying that that’s nothing. But, you know, if we’re expecting this and rate hike odds, last time I saw, were about 70%, which, man, if they stay there tomorrow, I don’t know how the Fed doesn’t go. And I think the markets are going to price that in as they are now, if they’re not already in. But again, I’ll continue to be kind of puzzled, to be honest with you, that markets aren’t taking this a little bit more aggressive to the downside.

Frank Curzio 05:16

I mean, look, PPI, they’re saying, excluding food and energy, a little bit lower than expected. But, you know, when we’re looking at WTI, hit $100 a barrel. $100 a barrel. Nobody had this a month ago. Nobody had this a month ago. They said, “Okay, even if things escalate, we’ll go to 85.” And he said, “We’re down to 70s.” But, you know, this is ridiculous. They had $100, stays 99 right now as we look at this. Diesel went over $6. You talked about how that’s a direct link to inflation. Trucks, everything, freight. Any item you see in any store, right? Walmart, Costco, Nike, McDonald’s, supermarkets, you know, fruits, vegetables, food, is delivered by trucks. And diesel prices are up 80% year over year, close to, like you said, 24%. Just, and this is the PPI, the PPI rating, right? In the past month, right? In the past month. So what’s happening, those prices are getting passed on to consumers. If they’re not getting passed on today, they’re going to be passed on in the future, in the weeks, months ahead by next quarter.

Frank Curzio 06:11

So how do we control inflation? Because we’re probably going to see inflation higher. Because we’re not talking about oil prices, diesel prices going up a little bit. They’re up 25% plus in a month. In a month, right? So no surprise. Nobody cares if, “Oh, it’s kind of in line.” Nobody cares, right? The 10-year, we said yesterday, we said over a week ago, and we’ve been saying actually for the last month, we got to worry about this. We had a special event just telling you what was going to happen with the 10-years. Now at 4.9%, we’re not looking at surpassing 5%. We’re there, right? We’re going to go through 5%. But as I said yesterday, we’d be maybe eyeing 5.5% if the Fed does not raise by 50 basis points next week, or at least raises by 25 basis points. And they, you know, Washington is super, super hawkish to where the markets believe the Fed’s about to do everything in its power to slow inflation, slow our economy. You might be thinking, saying, it sounds a little counterintuitive that the Fed raising short-term rates to bring down long-term rates, but that’s where we are, right?

Frank Curzio 07:05

So the Treasury is buying more long-dated bonds, three times the amount they originally planned for, and we didn’t even blink. So we say, “Okay, that’s not going to bring down the 10-year no matter what,” because we just don’t have massive buying. Again, I talked about that yesterday. The 10-year drives our economy. It’s tied to mortgage rates, corporate lending, student loans, credit cards, auto loans. So as this rate goes higher, the cost for everyone, every business goes higher in terms of interest payments on that debt. Taking out new debt to grow your business, everything, or to build data centers. I’m not sure if you saw the note today from Nestlé. We’re going to see a lot of notes like this. They said, “The CEO said higher energy prices from the Middle East war is impacting our business, forcing us to reformulate products, cutting items consumers are unwilling to pay higher prices for, because prices for freight raw materials have surged.” And he said, and I want to quote this, and this is interesting.

Frank Curzio 07:54

He did not hide it at all. He goes, “Each and every supplier of ours will be increasing costs.” And the quote is, “Making sure consumers come along if we have to increase prices.” They actually said it. They’re not hiding it. They have no choice. I mean, when you see Apple, the biggest company in the world, and massive profit margins, unbelievable profit margins, especially with the service division saying, “Look, higher memory costs, we’re raising prices across the board.” I mean, a foldable phone for $2,000, and everyone’s talking about this could be 15, 20% of revenue going forward. That’s for the black and white TV model, guys. That’s for very, very little memory. And they’re going to have AI intelligence eventually, hopefully, this product. And when they do, you’re talking about, you know, videos, you’re talking about using agents. Meta having their own agents and going through that, you know, you’re going to be going through your phone as well. And all this stuff is going to require more power, more energy.

Frank Curzio 08:43

You’re going to need to upgrade that phone where it’s going to be more like $2,500 for the mid version, for the version that you actually use, which is not going to be, you know, everything’s going to be freaking done in three to six months where you’re going to have to upgrade that phone. But let’s see what happens. I mean, I don’t know. The foldable phone, I mean, it didn’t get enough people from Apple to go over to Samsung, but they’ve done their math. They probably used AI to figure out, you know, how many people are going to buy this thing. I don’t see it. I’m not going to have one. But again, you doubt Apple. A lot of people doubt Apple for a very, very long time. And look where they are one of the biggest companies on the planet in terms of market cap. But you’re seeing companies now pass on these costs, and that’s what energy is doing. This is a 25% rise in a month in an industry, in the most important commodity in the world that affects every business and every single consumer. And they have no choice. Unless you get, there’s two things that are going to happen.

Frank Curzio 09:30

Either companies do not pass these costs on to consumers, and they’re going to significantly lower their earnings estimates going forward because they all reported positive guidance and said, “This is great. We have 30% earnings growth on average in S&P. It’s great.” Either they’re going to have to come down and lower those estimates because these costs are directly tied to the business, or hopefully pass them off to consumers and pray that consumers pay for them. Because if they don’t, you’re going to see sales come down. This is a negative any way you look at it, these higher energy prices, because diesel prices are surging, and that’s a direct cost for every business, every consumer. And you’re going to see prices go higher and higher. So the Fed is stuck here where they’re going to have to rate. There’s no way they don’t raise rates at this next meeting. And they’re not going to do 50 basis points because they haven’t hinted at that. They hinted that they might not do 25. They’re definitely doing 25 now. I think we see 50 to 75 basis point hikes by the end of the year, which means we’re going to raise in October before the election and December.

Frank Curzio 10:22

Let’s see if the Fed’s going to do that or not. But obviously, if they don’t, the 10-year is going to continue to go higher, which means stocks are going to continue to go lower and be prepared.

Daniel Creech 10:30

So Nestlé finally has an enemy to blame instead of GLP-1s then. That’s good for them. Way to pile on that, number one. Number two, yeah, diesel prices are surging. And listen, this is a Trump, this is just like the tariff tantrum or Liberation Day and the pullback and the self-inflicted calls and stocks. I’m not making excuses here. This is all on him. I don’t know why President Trump is out there saying that oil prices and gas prices are going to come down right after the election. That’s kind of funny. Tongue-in-cheek funny, not ha-ha funny. But just as fast as they surge, oil can come down 25% if something else or some silly announcements made. It’s not going to go down that quickly at the pump, which is really why I think they miscalculated. I’ve been on that song for a long time with you need to give enough time before elections for prices to run through or downriver to the consumer. That’s not going to happen. So that is going to be an issue. But, you know, the Fed coming out hiking is not going to lower oil prices.

Daniel Creech 11:28

It’s not going to tame. It’s a sentiment. And this is really the most frustrating thing for me. This is all just signaling. And if there’s one piece of value I can get through to everybody to think about, is that we are just pawns on a chessboard, or as Darius Dale jokes, we are just frogs in boiling water on a debasement trade. So have diversification across gold and Bitcoin. Probably going to take a hit as interest rates spike in the short term. But, you know, they’re not going to do anything to fix prices. They can’t. They can just kick the can down the road and come up with some other lever, lever, excuse me, or button to push. And, you know, we’ll try to navigate that.

Frank Curzio 12:01

So let me ask you a question, serious question here, because this is a big question everyone should be asking. You see Nestlé, you’re going to see companies start raising because this is a 25% hike, right, in diesel prices. This is a direct cost to them, right? So they’re obviously going to pass on these costs to consumers. You’re right. Oil could come down 25%, especially by the end of the year if Trump says, “Hey, we really have a deal in place this time and everything’s great.” But if they do that, do you see these companies reversing and lowering their prices? Do you see airlines lowering their prices after they raise them? Do you see these food companies lowering prices? Do you see Apple lowering their prices? Do you see Nestlé lowering their prices if we see, you know, a reversal in diesel and it goes back to, you know, 5.30, 5.20 where it was, you know, again, wherever it was six months ago? I mean, do you think that happens? Because that’s my biggest fear where I agree with you.

Frank Curzio 12:48

This oil move is more, you know, temporary, and I don’t see this happening. It’s long-term. It could be three, six months, but eventually, you’re going to see some kind of deal come in, you know, other routes, right? We’re seeing that as well. And maybe we see oil prices come down. But all these companies are being forced right now to raise prices because if they don’t raise prices and pass them on to consumers, they’re going to have to lower their estimates because their costs are up tremendously, right? And you could say, well, it’s temporary, and maybe the market dismisses it if oil prices come down. But, you know, once they raise, do you think they pull it back? I don’t know. And it’s going to be interesting if consumers are at their limits saying, “I’m done with these price hikes since 2000, 30, 40% already.” And now, you know, you’re going to raise them on top of that and continue to raise these prices. That’s the question we have to ask. But, Dan, what do you think? I mean, I don’t see companies reversing their decision to raise prices if oil prices do come down, which is going to hurt the consumer, right?

Frank Curzio 13:38

I mean, it might be good for companies or if they can pass on these costs. But that’s a question you have to ask yourself for each individual company. If they have pricing power, like does McDonald’s have pricing power? Does Chipotle have pricing power? Does Walmart have pricing power? Does it looks like, you know, really quick here, consumer discretionary names. I don’t know if you’ve seen this sector. I mean, you’re looking at the whole entire sector down 20% in the past 30 days. Dick’s is down 40%, Casey down 30%. They have 3,000 Caffeine stores. You have Tapestry, who owns Kate Spade and Coach, down 30%. Yeti down 23%. Lulu, which has just been a disaster, down 24%, but it seems like it’s down every single month for the past four years. But you know what surprised me? TJX and Burlington. TJX is down 20%, Burlington down 33%. These are supposed to be great plays on rising inflation since they sell brand name clothes and products at a steep discount. But when I see these names getting hit, it’s kind of like a bigger signal going, “Watch out, man.

Frank Curzio 14:31

Where’s the protection here within this industry?” But that’s really what has me worried. And that’s a question. I think every company is different, but you have to look if they have pricing power. Because the companies that don’t have pricing power on raising prices means their sales are going to crash. They’re going to lower estimates where at very high levels, where expensive levels still just a little bit off of our highs. Here’s some of them a little bit more like I just explained. But if you see these companies worn and they’re coming in like little hot where their stock price is held up, watch out, because we’re not anticipating. Everyone’s saying strong earnings growth this year. It’s going to continue. No one’s anticipating for any of these companies to lower the estimates going into the next quarter, which could really crush some of these names if they can’t pass on these prices to consumers.

Daniel Creech 15:10

Yeah, and I don’t think they’re going to, a lot of companies that are raising prices because of this instantly or whenever they have to, they’re not going to lower prices right away. I get that. I do think it will slow the pace of further hikes if we see some significant lower prices in energy. But that’s a big if because we don’t know about a deal. On the other side, what we’re really talking about is demand destruction. And you’re already seeing that with some of the stocks you just seen. And you were ranting about Dick’s and stuff like that earlier. At some point, people aren’t going to pay $220 for a pair of tennis shoes. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I’m not in that crowd like the NFL. I’m not their market. So I’m not speaking for that. However, you’re going to see the companies that can do price hikes and get away with it. They’re always going to push that through. I mean, that’s their job. They need to maximize returns and such. But I don’t think, again, demand destruction, in our world, we want to see everything instantaneous.

Daniel Creech 16:03

We live, you know, in a, we want to see everything tomorrow and such. And that’s not how, and I’m not trying to sound like a know-it-all, you just study history. Demand destruction does not happen right away. Now, if oil goes to 160 and stays there for two weeks, you’ll see some serious change in behavior and demand destruction. The issue or the thing that I’m thinking through is this takes a lot longer time to play out. That’s not necessarily good for the economy and such. And the earnings are going to stay strong and the handful of, you know, hyperscalers and all that kind of stuff. It’s everybody else, which will be a stock picker’s market, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Frank Curzio 16:32

Yeah. So where do you look for places to go during this market? I mean, I’m predicting it to come down even further as rates go higher. Let’s see, we go into a Fed meeting. I think we’re pricing in easily at least a 25 basis point hike. We have the election to contend with as well where Trump came out and said, “Hey, you know what? If you vote Republican, I’m going to give everybody $5,000 Obamacare checks.”

Daniel Creech 16:53

Well, that’s two separate things. I’m going to ask that.

Frank Curzio 16:55

I’m going to say, no, but with the market.

Daniel Creech 16:57

That’s two totally different things.

Frank Curzio 16:58

Not when it comes to the markets, it’s not. You know.

Daniel Creech 17:00

The media finally found a rebate they don’t like. It’s because they’re blaming it on Obamacare prices.

Frank Curzio 17:04

No, I think, I think, I think, no, no, no. I’m not talking about Obamacare. I’m just talking about Trump doing everything he can, this administration doing everything it can to prop the markets because the markets are really going to come down a lot more into this. You know, that could help the markets. So I think it’s definitely relative. And that’s why you got Bessent out there saying, “Hey, we’re not going to do just 2 billion. We’re going to do 4 billion. Oh, wait, we’re going to buy 6 billion of long-term debt bonds.” Just before the submission.

Daniel Creech 17:24

Supposedly, the whisper number, supposedly, and this is, you know, going back to your story about whisper when everybody got the earnings per share numbers correct or early, let’s say. Evidently, the street was expecting Bessent to come out with a $10 billion buyback number. And since that came in under only at 6, everybody was disappointed. And again, does one day make a trend? Absolutely not. It’s a country song. However, bonds definitely didn’t go in the direction they wanted to yesterday after the announcement, in my opinion.

Frank Curzio 17:51

Yeah. I mean, look, if we look at a place to go, you know, copper has been on fire. It’s down a little bit today because, you know, rumors of how copper is going to be phased out of data centers, which has been a story for a while and using different technologies. You know, I don’t see that happening anytime soon from the people I talk about, talk to. But still, copper has been very, very strong. You’re looking at companies like Freeport and this is what I like. Like, I hate companies that are a play on Bitcoin like Mara. And, you know, Bitcoin goes, you know, skyrockets is like, you know, 5,000% and Mara’s down 90%, right? I hate companies like that means you’re a horribly run company where you look at Freeport, you look at Southern Copper are up tremendously where copper price is up 45% for the past 12 months and you have Southern Copper up, you know, nearly double over the same timeframe. You have Freeport doing very, very well and you’ve seen some of these names getting hit today because copper is pulling back.

Frank Curzio 18:40

But I still love copper. Like Copernico, they just got the permits. Again, this is a company that we work with, with Ivan Bibick with marketing and, you know, just, and we recommend them before we started working with them. We just love this company. I love Ivan. We’ve made money with them in the past. And again, a lot of these companies all hire marketers and consultants and stuff like that. And, you know, they know what we’re capable of because they see our 30-year track record, what we’re capable of doing when we get behind stocks and we only, you know, when it comes to our marketing division, consulting division, we only work with great companies and I believe we’re going to go high. I take personal positions in them. You know, this is how we work within this industry. There’s a lot of bullshit in this industry, right? People just pay to try to get their stock up and buy traffic. That’s not us. But Copernico is just, you know, finally nine years in the making. These guys finally got the permit like a month ago and, you know, you’ve seen really good news and they’re going to drill one of the biggest undeveloped copper mines in Peru and everything’s going right for them right now.

Frank Curzio 19:33

But I just, I like the copper area on this pullback. Gold stocks, I think, are very, very good too and Bitcoin because you’re going to see the treasury, like you said, the whisper number is 10, which means they’re probably going to go higher. Who knows? I mean, there’s people within that in the circle, but it’s not six. Someone’s got to buy these 10-year treasuries, right? So they’re going to go higher, I believe, than 6 billion. But, you know, if that happens, that’s a sign that gold, Bitcoin are doing well. You know, I like healthcare here too. Large caps, even specialized biotech companies that are using AI significantly lowering their costs while bringing more potential drugs to market. AI, I said all along, this is the market that’s going to impact the most in terms of humanity, in terms of stock prices as well. You know, we have a 10, 12-year, right? That’s how long it takes to bring a drug from clinical to FDA approval. And it’s a billion and a half just to go to phase three. I mean, getting into phase three, it’s better to just fail at phase two.

Frank Curzio 20:22

Yes, your stock’s going to get hit, but if you fail in phase three, if Nevada did it, a lot of these other companies, even the big companies, you get annihilated because you basically wasted all this money. You have to look at the news. Maybe they want them to come back to the market, but some of them realize, all right, this is just a shit show. We have to just scrap this project and you’re wasted a billion and a half, $2 billion. That’s how long, a $2 billion, over $2 billion in 10 to 12 years. That’s historically. Now it’s less than five, six years you’re seeing these companies using AI and the costs are down dramatically where you don’t need these massive labs where we recommend a company called Telescope. We took big gains on that a while ago and it’s a name I like. It’s come down again. A small company, but I saw these robotic labs upfront where you don’t need teams of 20 working, you know, 8, 10 hours, whatever. This is 24 hours constantly, you know, using AI, constantly, you know, just putting this through the whole entire system and all these drugs and it’s just unbelievable what you’re seeing within AI.

Frank Curzio 21:16

And also I would say, Daniel, is start shopping now. I mean, look for companies that reported blowout earnings last quarter and you’re seeing their stocks move lower just alongside the shitty companies in the sector that aren’t doing well. And you see that a lot, right? You see a total disconnect within a whole sector, but not every name in that sector sucks. This is what we did with Nvidia. I mean, we bought shares at 170. Everybody hated it, right? And we reported great earnings, two, three straight quarters in a row, and now the stock’s up 30% for us. And it took a while and not that long, a couple of quarters, but we bought a company that had strong earnings, had said great things, that just got caught up and everyone’s like, everyone else is moving higher except Nvidia. You know, that’s a chance for us to buy. There’s a lot of companies within that, you know? But make a shopping list of stocks that you would buy 20% lower from here because many of them, I believe, are going to get there.

Frank Curzio 22:03

Because this 10-year, it’s not pushing, you know, I said 5%. Once it pushes through 5%, you’re going to see people talking about 5.2, 5.5, are we going to go higher? That’s disaster territory for our economy and equities. If we’re going to that number and we can’t control, it goes higher and higher. It tells the Fed, listen, get off your ass. You have to raise rates much, much, much higher than you’re doing into the election year. And again, I don’t know if they’re going to do it or not. There’s a lot of politics involved, but what I do know is we’re not stopping that 10-year from going higher almost on a daily basis. And that is a direct link to stocks going lower. And that’s why we’re going lower here. And that’s going to continue, especially once we push past 5%. 5.2 is going to create a great buying opportunity, but right now, be careful. We’ve been warning about this for over a month now when stocks are at all-time highs. I don’t get bearish often. I really don’t. I got bearish. I’m still bearish because I just think the risks totally outweigh the rewards when it comes to investing right now.

Frank Curzio 22:57

We need to see valuations pull back a little bit and let’s see if oil prices subside. It’s not just oil prices. I don’t care about oil at 100 WTI. What I care about is diesel over six. That’s a direct cost of 25% that all these companies either have to pass on to consumers and hope consumers pay that higher cost, or they’re going to come out and lower earnings going into next quarter. And a lot of these names are going to get hit pretty hard when they do that because they’re going to, if they do that, they’re going to offer conservative guidance because you just can’t price in, you know, where oil is going to be. And hopefully, you know, another side of this, you can look at companies who actually, you know, hedge some of that oil production, who have the biggest fleets in the world. Some of these companies do, but those that have hedged have a significant advantage and that’s a good assignment for you. Find out, is it the Walmarts? Is it the Targets, the biggest truck company? Who is hedging in there? Because if they hedge, they probably hedge at $75 oil prices and now everyone else has to pass this on to consumers.

Frank Curzio 23:47

That’s a way for companies to take business and take market share away from everyone else. That’s the next project. You figure that out. You’re probably going to see some like hidden winners within the consumer retail sector. Those that hedge, a lot of companies do. I’m going to start looking at that for an edge, you know, going forward in the next couple of weeks.

Daniel Creech 24:03

Well, two things. I’m glad to hear that AI is going to save and impact healthcare more instead of destroy us all because it is beyond embarrassing what the media and everybody is doing with the AI stuff. Thank goodness OpenAI put out a statement today saying they are expanding access and cyber defense. So, you know, I guess the end of the world got put off by a few. Quickly on the 10-year and something actually serious and valuable. Deutsche Bank put out a solid note that got my attention and they were going back to the ’60s and they said that the 10-year essentially trades about 70 basis points under the GDP of the United States. And now they’re taking averages and over long-term. So again, one day doesn’t make a trend. However, if you apply that right now and they were explaining that, listen, GDP in Q2 is running about 6.6%. That means that the 10-year needs to read or run, excuse me, about 5.9%. So we are approaching this five. That’s a good round number. We’re obviously going to hit that, probably go a little past it.

Daniel Creech 25:06

My point is you need two things to happen. Either one, growth rolls over GDP and typically those estimates do come down. So 6.6, first rating, second rating, all that kind of stuff probably will trend a little bit lower. That doesn’t mean that the 10-year can’t continue to move higher. If you see anywhere near, you know, 5.3, 5.4 on the way, but 5.9, just keep that in your head. Obviously, you can round up that six. Markets like round numbers. I don’t think we get to six right away. However, there’s no way I would buy a 10-year bond if you’re a bond guy out there before a six handle on it.

Frank Curzio 25:38

Yeah, no, it is pretty crazy. But just listen, it’s out in front of us. It’s good. Everybody’s talking about it. I don’t think anyone’s talking about 5.25 on a 10-year, but, you know, we have to be careful. I mean, the market, the housing market is already frozen, right? And, you know, we look at oil prices and impacting inflation. I mean, inflation was still high when we had WTI at 75, 80, right? And we’re much higher. And it didn’t do too much to the economy. So I said, it’s not WTI. It’s more about those diesel prices and how they’re going to pass on to consumers. But these are questions you have to ask yourself because if this continues until next month and another month after that and we’re at above 90, it is going to impact that earnings growth story, which is 100% the top driver of stocks over the past quarter, over the past couple of quarters. You know, everyone points, okay, what about what’s going on with, you know, debt and could the AI trend, could they fund all this and is it going to pull back?

Frank Curzio 26:29

And everybody points to the one thing. Listen, you got earnings growth. If you got earnings growth, Trump’s everything. You got earnings growth, Trump’s, you know, this could impact earnings growth significantly if we see these companies raising prices or trying to pass them on to consumers and consumers say, hey, you know what? We’re not paying for them. If they don’t pass them on to consumers, they’re going to have to lower the estimates going in. And again, that’s going to lead to a lot of companies getting annihilated if they come in hot and stocks have not, a particular stock has not pulled back. Even say like a Dell. We love Dell. Dell’s at near its all-time high. But if Dell comes in and lowers their estimates, you’re going to see a 20% pullback immediately, right, on a company like that. So be careful. Know your company when you’re going into next earnings. It’s still a couple months away. We just finished last quarter’s earnings. But no, if you’re running hot into that, hedge yourself. Sell half, you know, buy an inverse ETF within the sector, but hedge yourself. If that stock is really, really hot going in, be careful because if they beat, you’re going to see the stock maybe go up.

Frank Curzio 27:18

If they really beat, then you go up like, you know, maybe 5%. If they miss or if they warn, it’s a 20% decline. That risk-reward is not favorable. Again, maybe you have Dell and you’re going to hold it for the next 10 years and you don’t have to worry about it and go to sleep and find. But I’m just saying, if you’re looking quarter to quarter to trade, every stock in your portfolio is at risk for a 20% decline in a day based on what’s going on right now. That’s how crazy the markets are. That’s very, very dangerous. And it’s hard for investors, especially retail investors, to stay the course and say, I don’t care if I see a 20% decline. I know it’s going to come back. No. I mean, you see three or four of these stocks in your portfolio, like, holy shit, all right, let me take some off the table. That’s sentiment. And sentiment is right now, it’s going to turn very, very negative, especially if we hit 5%. So be careful. Now, with that said, let’s get some questions, Daniel. Some good ones.

Frank Curzio 28:04

Keep them coming, guys. Just ask Curzio, right? Just go to askcurzio.com and ask your questions. That’s what this is for. Ask anything, anything you want. Anything. Any sector, personal, whatever. We’re here for you. It’s always unbiased, but we still got lots of good questions, even from our live event. But keep them coming. Askcurzio.com. Put in your email address. This way you know you’re for real and you never know your question might be asked on this podcast. So, Daniel, where do you want to start?

Daniel Creech 28:31

We’ll start with Anthony. Anthony, we talked about a lot of stocks on the live event and he says, Frank, any more depth on Oracle, take two, and Meta? So he got three questions in there.

Frank Curzio 28:41

I’ll take Oracle, take two. I think you could take Meta if you want. Oracle reports tonight. I can’t see how the quarter is not really good. They’re tied to CDS spreads, which is insurance against a company defaulting on debt. And that has gone higher with Oracle. And also you saw that with SpaceX. And those companies got annihilated. But SpaceX, we told you to buy when near its lows and said, listen, a lot of this is factored in now. I wouldn’t be buying at these levels with SpaceX. It’s come back tremendously. But Oracle, look, the CDS spreads have come down. That’s why that stock’s off. It’s lows of 115, 117 to over 150. Remember, this is a $340 stock. So expectations are pretty low. And, you know, the increase in interest rates going higher, a lot of that, it’s very priced into this stock, this AI stock more than anyone. They have huge obligations for business going forward. Again, they have to build out this stuff. That’s why I got hurt in saying, okay, yeah, you have a hundreds of billions dollars in business, but you have to build this out.

Frank Curzio 29:38

And that costs tens of billions of dollars. And these guys have done a great job raising money and being able to build this out. So just a decent report today in line or a little bit better and a positive outlook should push this name higher, but we’ll see. If not, maybe it goes a little bit lower. I would be looking to buy if it does. 19 times forward earnings is very cheap for this stock with the obligations that remaining performance obligations like a backlog, right? That’s what they say, remaining performance obligations. But I mean, this company has so much business that’s booked over the next two to four years. Again, it costs money to build all this stuff out. And that’s why the stock went to 340. They didn’t anticipate that. And CDS spreads, you know, started, your CDS started going higher. Now it’s, you know, come off its lows. And that stock, you could see it’s a direct line to that stock, that CDS spread. Not difficult to find. You could find it on, you know, Yahoo Finance or CNBC or just do, you know, an AI search in Gemini on Google and you’ll see it.

Frank Curzio 30:33

But that CDS spreads, take a look at them. As long as they’re coming down, you’re going to see that this company could easily go to $200 very, very easily on a good report. If it does pull back, I would look to buy it. But I can’t see them not having a great report in business. And, you know, especially with Dell coming out and Palantir coming out. I mean, these guys should be a direct beneficiary. And they need to talk about the debt that there’s no concern. Everything’s locked in. They already said they don’t have to raise any more money for a while. Let’s see if that comes to fruition. But I’d be surprised if this company reports a big. It should be a good quarter. And I would be surprised if that stock pulls back. And if it does, I may look to buy it because they just have so much business that’s booked over the next couple of years and it is dirt cheap at 19 times forward earnings. Take two. I like take two here. I mean, GTA 6 is going to be released on November 19th. They’re expecting 4 to 5 billion in sales on week one.

Frank Curzio 31:22

Week one alone. And this does not include the online version, which has made money for them for the past 13, 14 years. And that’s why they haven’t come out with a new one because they make a massive amount of money. My daughters play it. I play it. I love this game. It’s awesome when I play with them. And, you know, I saw the graphs. Netflix has a special, you know, highlighting it. And because there was a lot of negative reports that came out about it, about the graphics, the graphs are unbelievable. Again, this does not include the online version. This just includes like the first player version and the story version and you go through it and everything. As you’re doing it, they’re building up the online version, which is going to be absolutely insane because of AI. They’re going to be able to have, you know, a lot of these things, including the metaverse. It was so tough because how many people are actually going to be in there? Now, AI, you can create people, you can create cars, you can create whatever you want that are automated and doing their different things. And you could have like 100 million people in these worlds and you could do anything you want in this world.

Frank Curzio 32:11

You can go into any store, you could shoot anyone, you could run over everyone, you could do whatever you want. It’s like totally open, different experience every single time. That’s what the, you know, GTA 5, GTA 6 is going to be huge. I think it’s going to be something that we’ve never seen before. And 5 billion in sales on week one alone. And they should, I think that’s the high end. I think it’s 3 billion is kind of the low end. But if they go over 5 billion, this stock is going to go much, much higher from here. And again, it doesn’t include the online version, which you’ll see massive amount of sales coming in with all the add-ons and upgrades to cars and different things that you could do. The whole store that people have been buying stuff in those things for over a decade, all that stuff is going to transfer onto GTA 6. And once that does, you’re going to see, I think sales are just going to explode for this. So I think you’re getting at a good discount here. I think you could buy it.

Frank Curzio 32:58

I don’t think a lot of this is factored into the stock. And what was it? 260? It’s 216 now. But I think this thing goes through the $300 level over the next six months, let’s say from right. And Meta for you, Daniel.

Daniel Creech 33:08

Meta, you’re going to have to make a decision on Meta with, I like it. If you have a gun to my head, hey, do you like it as an AI play, advertising play? It’s got 4 billion people or whatever. Like damn near everybody on earth has an account with this company. We talked about stocks going nowhere and Frank was talking about Nvidia earlier. This is the same thing. You buy Meta here. You’re essentially buying it at the same price it was in early 2025. Seems like a lifetime ago. My big thing here is the decision comes down to, A, do you believe in management? Do you trust Zuckerberg to kind of navigate, do deals, add acquisitions, and benefit from AI? Or do you think AI is going to disrupt and ruin the advertising business and the eyeballs it demands and its material? I’m on the benefit side that AI, the companies will figure out AI. AI will not replace everything, but I could be dead wrong on that. And if you think AI is going to take over and make everything obsolete and programmers and everything like that, like we’re being, I mean, to me, AI is the biggest joke right now on End of the World because it’s being shoved down your throats by everybody.

Frank Curzio 34:17

It’s going to end the world, but you got to use it.

Daniel Creech 34:18

Yeah. Or, yeah. It’s so pathetic. Like, here’s the easiest question. If Anthropic is building a product that is going to kill everybody in 10 years, why is the IPO still on track? Don’t you think we would pause the IPO and say, hey, you know, we’re about to set off a nuclear bomb? Maybe this isn’t a good idea. That shows you that the majority is just complete BS and it’s horrible. I’m getting off track here. I’m sorry. Back to Meta. Do you believe in the management team? That’s a good question. That’d be the one I identify most if I were in your shoes. And then number two, can you look past this spending on AI and do you think the returns are going to be there? The other thing that aggravates the crap out of me is to look at free cash flow from these incredible companies, Amazon, Google, Meta, and all these. And then you assume going forward because they’re doing CapEx right now and they’re spending a ton of money. They’re taking out a ton of debt and spending a lot of cash. I’m not arguing that.

Daniel Creech 35:10

The point that I’m arguing is everybody looks out into the future and acts like the free cash flow is evaporated. They look like the CapEx is just going to keep going up forever. That’s simply not true. And I don’t care to bug you about arguing with that right now. If you do believe that, then don’t buy Meta. That being said, it’s not a trade in my opinion. It popped yesterday on its Muse release for AI agents. So maybe that’s its plan to take over the world. And so listen, if it’s a race to the end of the world, pick your best stock and like it. I personally think management is, you know, Zuckerberg’s an interesting fellow to me. In this environment of AI and acquisitions and stuff, I think he’s proven that he’s doing well. Big fan of Dana White, who joined his board, not sure how much influence he has there. However, I don’t know where this stock is going in a month or so. So if you’re going to trade this, best of luck to you. If you think this is going to be a winner in AI, I don’t think this is a bad price to add to or start a position.

Frank Curzio 36:02

You know what? I think Muse is a game changer. I really do. Because you’re looking at whatever, three point whatever billion, right? Across that platform, right? I don’t know, you know, who’s dual accounts, triple accounts, whatever. But you’re looking at the world on all their platforms. And that’s a retail investor. And with these guys coming out in Muse and listen, you know, I was wrong on this. I’ve been right on Meta for a while. It’s come down a lot. I said Meta, I think a couple weeks ago, wouldn’t be the one. Worry about Meta and Google because, you know, their business of digital advertising is being threatened by AI. And there’s a lot of ways you can generate traffic now. And that’s their bread and butter. But this is a game changer for them. I mean, if you look at this Muse AI assistant, everyone says, okay, you could use Gemini. You could use Anthropic and Claude. And you could use whatever, right? OpenAI, ChatGPT. But now this is a personal AI agent where it integrates with emails, calendars, payments, health, smart home systems.

Frank Curzio 36:55

And people could use it. So this is like their agentic AI model. And this is just the beginning. So, you know, now you could talk to it. You could have everything done. It’s going to work even when you close the app. It’s going to, you know, continue to work on your long-term tasks. But it’s going to be able to book everything for you where, you know, if it’s planning trips, you know, sending emails, you know, making payments, they could do all this stuff for you. But now it’s right in your face. Well, here, here’s the model. Here you could download it. Here it is on your system. It works, obviously, for iOS, which is why I think getting the foldable phone, you know, the 2000 model is not going to work, right? Because it’s just, you know, again, it’s just, you’re not going to have gigabytes. But when you’re looking at what Meta is doing here with this AI assistant, where now it’s going to show you how to actually use it. And once people start using it, they’re going to use other tools within Meta when they create even more AI bots.

Frank Curzio 37:46

And this is like agentic AI being able to bring in directly to the consumer where, yes, you can use all these different models and back and forth. And a lot of people don’t know what they’re doing yet. Some people are experts and they’re running their businesses through Claude right now. And, you know, even ours is amazing. But bringing this to consumers and actually putting it in their face and saying, hey, this is going to do all that shit that you hate doing and bucking on calendars, doing everything you want and planning trips for you. And it’s just going to get better and better and better where you’re not seeing that really rolled out in a lot of other places where everybody has that Facebook account. They have the Instagram account. They’re on WhatsApp. And now you’re going to be able to integrate this with all those platforms. This is a game changer. That’s why the stock, I mean, and the stock told you that yesterday, right? And it’s a really shitty market. This thing was up, whatever it was, 6, 7%. This is good. This is what you want to see out of companies when you’re like, okay, digital advertising, digital advertiser, right?

Frank Curzio 38:34

That’s impacted, right? You’ve seen a lot of companies being able to generate traffic and you don’t have to pay a fortune on these platforms anymore. They know every single thing about you because they stole every part of your information and your life from you and they don’t get in trouble for it. But, you know, for Meta, to me, it’s a big move. It’s well-deserved. Let’s see how this works out. Now you’re looking at next quarter, how many people are downloading this. And the more people now, Meta gets to track people even more, every single thing that they’re going to do. Again, Meta owns all the data on all their platforms. So if you die, you don’t get that information. No one could hack into it unless they have your password or whatever. They have all that information. If they want to take that offline, they can. Even Google can. With YouTube, which we saw happen during 2000, if you had the wrong, you know, if you supported the wrong party, remember, they own all this stuff. But this is a huge benefit. Not only are people going to be paying for Muse, but now it’s a way from to track people even more, which is going to support a little bit more of the digital advertising business, which I said is threatened.

Frank Curzio 39:27

But this is a game changer. This is a really, really good step for them. They got this out and everybody’s going to be using this because they have this massive, massive base who’s probably going to pay up to this thing. So good for them. It’s reflected in the stock. Let’s see what happens. But this is going to be a hot topic going into next quarter. How many people sign up to Muse? How many people are using it? How much money is being generated? And if you see those numbers go higher and higher and higher, that’s when you’re going to see Meta’s stock move higher and higher because this is now their new growth, right? This is part of a new growth division that they have. Let’s see if they could have this taken off and, you know, good job by Zuck. This is a stock I didn’t like and I was right. It came down a lot. But man, that’s a nice move higher. And this is a game changer. Let’s see if it works. We’ll know next quarter as they talk about it. But this is going to be one of the primary reasons that people are going to buy the stock going forward. It’s not just Muse. It’s every other agentic AI product they’re going to launch on top of this afterwards and charge people for it.

Frank Curzio 40:16

And again, when you have 3 billion people on the platform, and I don’t know if it’s exactly 3 billion people, but they have over 3, 3.5 billion accounts. Anything they launch that they could charge for that people love is going to move the stock. It’s going to move that revenue number tremendously. And we’re going to see if that holds true next quarter and going forward.

Daniel Creech 40:33

All right. Next question. We got Marson says, “Hey, what do you think about Nike? Do you see any chance of a rebound? Do you think it’s worth buying?”

Frank Curzio 40:42

I’m starting to like Nike. I wouldn’t buy it now. This is a company I hated for a very, very, very long time. They used to manipulate their earnings. I mean, when I say manipulate, they used to do it legally to beat their numbers. That’s because China was such a huge growth market. They used to buy back a shitload of their stock. If I had to guess, if you want to, actually I shouldn’t say this. I shouldn’t say you want to fund an experiment of how much stock Nike bought back. And again, their 52-week high is 76 and it’s 37. Here’s 52-week low. I would never buy a stock at its 52-week low. I like to see momentum. I like to see a good quarter. I don’t care if it goes to 45 and I miss that. But you don’t want to try to catch a falling knife. The only time I would buy it near its low, if I had the CEO buy more shares than he’s ever bought because the CEO knows what’s going on with the company. He knows what’s coming out. I would love to see that. We haven’t seen that. So just the buybacks were massive.

Frank Curzio 41:33

If you put up a five-year on Nike, you’re looking at stock well over 100, 125, 150. I can’t tell you the amount of buybacks and how they made their quarter all the time through those buybacks. Now China has slowed tremendously. So you’re looking at a company where tell me something that I don’t know that that’s horrible for Nike. Okay. Their brand really sucks right now. They haven’t come out with good sneakers, right? All right. Fine. It’s the whole woke shit, right? Fine. I get it. It’s a company that’s getting there as shit by competitors. I get it, right? So a lot of these risks are priced in when you’re seeing a company. Where’s Nike’s market cap right now, Joe? What is it? 55 billion. What was it? You know, easily over what? 200 billion at one time. I’m pretty sure. Maybe even 250. But you’re looking at a company that they see their risks, right? This isn’t anything new. They know that China has slowed. They know that they got to come out with something. They have to come out with a good line of sneakers.

Frank Curzio 42:28

They just need to. I just went to look for sneakers. I bought sneakers in Dick’s Sporting Goods yesterday. I looked at Nikes and I didn’t really see anything. Yeah, you have the Jordans and everyone’s going to always buy Jordans. But what else? I see everyone else sneaker in your face. Even New Balance is creating new balances. Launching a comeback. New Balance, right? You got to see their sneakers. Some for 125 and they look really good. They’re light. I picked up one of the Nike sneakers. I’m buying whites. I’m a diva when it comes to sneakers. It’s the only clothing item I diva with. I don’t care otherwise how I dress. But, you know, I pick up, it was very, very heavy. I don’t like heavy sneakers. You have material that can make them lighter. And I was just, and I didn’t buy it. And, you know, for me, when I’m looking at their model right now, the P is 21. It’s been over 30 for such a long time and really over 25 for very long. It’s 21 now. They need to forget about the woke shit, right? Nobody likes it. You’ve seen Disney. All these brands that focus on that have got annihilated.

Frank Curzio 43:15

Get back to being the greatest market on the planet. You have the greatest commercials. Awesome. Focus on that. And bring in great talent. You have a chance to bring in amazing talent that will come to your company immediately because if they turn it around, they’re going to make an absolute fucking fortune because your stock is so cheap. So that’s what happened with Ford and Lally when the stock was at two or three. The guy, whatever he made, I wouldn’t be surprised if he made hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Through, you know, stock performance bonuses. And he came in and he restructured the company, fired a whole bunch of people and turned Ford around, which looked like it was dead in the water, right? And this is during the credit crisis. You have a company that, you know, look where it is. It’s like Starbucks. Like enough’s enough. Let’s get the best guy in the world that knows what he’s doing to come here and take a year or two. Let’s do that. That’s positive. Then have that guy buy a shitload of stock. But you can get unbelievable talent because it’s not just paying them a couple million dollars.

Frank Curzio 44:01

These guys will make a hundred million dollars if they turn the stock from 37 to 100, which you could do with the right line. So when I look at Nike, I love looking at stocks that everyone hates. I go on Twitter, Daniel, all the time and everyone destroying them. Look what happened with the woke things you did. This is why the company’s dead and you got kicked out of the S&P 500. Again, all this shit’s priced in. It’s gotten annihilated, right? So what could push Nike to under 30? I don’t know. Is there anything else that could push it under 30? I mean, it’s so bad right now. I mean, I don’t know. So I see a bottom here. I’d like to see a decent quarter, but, you know, maybe get in new someone with incredible talent within this industry that’s going to sign a great contract because if their bonus and their wealth is tied to this stock going higher and they change, this stock could easily go to 100 in two years from now, three years from now. And you’re talking about a guy getting a $50 million payout, not, you know, 3 million a year, 2 million a year, whatever you’re going to pay him.

Frank Curzio 44:53

That’s what CEOs do, right? They all come in for money. They all have the parachutes, right? But if you have a stock like this, one of the greatest brands is down. By the way, you know what Nike’s dividend is right now? I haven’t looked to see if they can cover it, if they’ll pay it, if they’ll cut it. You know what the percentage is on? 4.4% dividend. Do not buy Nike for the dividend because that 4.4%, the stock can go down 4.4% tomorrow. Do not buy. I’m just saying, if this company gets it right, that’s a nice dividend, 4% that you’re getting for this rebound. But I need to see a good quarter first. I’m not as negative because I’m looking at the price. I’m not looking at just the company. People look at it and they owned in the past and they’ll hate it forever. That’s what you want to see. This total capitulation where the stock has gotten annihilated. You just need this stock to go from less bad to bad. And you’re going to see this thing pop to $50 very, very quickly and you’re going to be at a good level.

Frank Curzio 45:42

But I haven’t seen anything that suggests that’s going to happen anytime soon. But I have my eye on it, if that makes sense.

Daniel Creech 45:49

All right. Next question. Steven says, “What is the biggest lesson or most important lesson you can give when it comes to buying or selling stocks?”

Frank Curzio 45:59

It’s a good question. And I’d like for you to, I’d like for your thoughts on it too. The biggest by far, the biggest lesson that you need to learn is limit your losses because you’re going to be wrong. I don’t care who you are, how great you are. Again, I have a big ego. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And whenever I get super, super positive, I worry because that’s when I’m like, okay, I need to talk to people negative about this to basically talk me off the ledge of going all in. And you’re going to be wrong. And a lot of times you’re going to be wrong on your highest conviction ideas. And when you are, you want to limit your losses because you could always come back to the market. And if you don’t limit your losses, you’re holding a stock on forever, forever, forever, forever, forever, forever, forever, which crushes you. So, you know, you want to put your stop losses on stocks. You can go 25%. I think it’s pretty good. Don’t do trailing stops because if the stock goes up and then pulls back, especially in a market like now, you get whipsawed in and out.

Frank Curzio 46:52

But if a stock goes down, you just sell it and that’s it, right? There’s no thinking about, okay, I’m moving on. Now you have the whole entire market to look at, all the stocks, everything to look at. If you don’t have a stop, this thing goes lower, you’re buying more. Then I’m going to buy a little bit more here. And people say, well, if you have this 10-year outlook, you should buy when it’s cheaper. No, don’t fucking do that. You’re going to get annihilated. You’re going to get annihilated. You’re going to be buying a stock that goes lower. You’re going to be buying Nike. You probably, you bought it at 150, 125, 100, you know, 75 and it’s 37, right? And you’re going, and that’s the only stock you’re looking at now, right? Psychology. You’re like, holy shit, this thing’s getting annihilated right now. What am I doing? And you’re missing the whole entire market, all these other opportunities. And I’m talking to you because this is where I was when I first started the first five years of investing. I’m like, geez, what am I missing here? Oh my God, I can’t believe it. And it just takes up all of your brain power where you don’t need any brain power if you have a stop loss and you just get out of it.

Frank Curzio 47:40

You can always get back into it a year later if things change, different CEO, inside of buying, whatever. But you want to limit your losses. Once you lose your money, you’re done. You’re fucking done. That’s it. You can’t come back. But if you lose 25% and you have other stocks that are doing well, you don’t, you always want to be in the game, right? For me, it’s almost like a card player. Then not if you look at Phil Helmuth going against someone that’s inexperienced and he has pocket kings and the guy goes all in before the flop, he’s not going to go all in. He’s going to fold his hand. You know why? Because there’s a shot that guy has a pair of aces underneath and if he loses, he’s done. What Phil Helmuth knows is if the more I play this guy, the more he has no shot because he’s not going to beat me over the long haul because I’m just a much better player for him. I’m not going to let him get lucky. Or maybe he has ace-10 and he pulls an ace. He’s going to fold those kings. So because he wants to, he knows he’s going to make a mistake eventually.

Frank Curzio 48:32

For me, when it comes to the stock market, the more I’m engaged, the more I’m going to have a lot more winners and losers. I’m going to have some losers, of course, and we always highlight our losers. But that’s a really big deal where I don’t want to put everything into one name, get annihilated, and just keep, you know, holding that name forever. You have to limit your losses. With that said, with that said, if you have an idea and I’ve made this mistake many, many times in the past, and I think people don’t talk about this mistake, if you do have an idea and you love it and you’re like over-leveraging and you’re putting a lot of money to it and forget about like if it goes down, say if it doesn’t go down, say if it works out and it works out within a year’s time, two years’ time, three years’ time. If that’s the case and you have a good idea, make sure you freaking benefit like hell if that thing works out for you. Because I’ve had so many great calls in my life and I did not benefit when I should have benefited tremendously and made 30, 40X instead of 3, 4X because I’m like held back a little bit.

Frank Curzio 49:29

I’m like, shit, I called this. Had only make, you know, 100% on this when I knew it was going to happen. I should have leveraged it a little bit more and bid it a little more. And again, you want to highlight where if it doesn’t work out, you know, you’re limiting your losses. But when you have that great idea that you really, really love, make sure if it goes right, you’re going to benefit. And that’s what every single billionaire and successful investor would tell you. You can watch Billions and learn about that as well. But when you have a great idea that you’re really ahead of the curve and you feel like, wow, this is good. You’ve done all your research on it. You know, make sure that you’re going to benefit if it goes right. It’s not just going to be a typical winner for you or 2X or a 3X, but it could be a 10X and 12X where it changes your life because, you know, you don’t really have those change your life ideas all the time. And when you have them, you want to make sure you benefit. But Daniel, I want to, you know, get that question for you and see what you have to say, most important lessons.

Daniel Creech 50:19

I would, obviously, I have a short track record and stuff and haven’t been doing this near as long as Frank. So take this with a grain of salt. But what I’m learning more and more is about management. And I have not looked at that. I’ve looked at that a lot more recently and that’s how I’ve come up with some decent picks. However, I just think management matters a lot more than any of the media and even we kind of pound the table. We talk about it quite a bit, but I would just look through management, look at their communication, look at what they do and how they act. And I know that sounds super simple. There are exceptions to everything. However, when you look and if I were to ask you your biggest winners or look at the biggest best performing stocks, I would argue that the majority of those are going to have solid managers. We just had one retire in Tim Cook at Apple, absolutely phenomenon. And that is also one reason I am having fun and very sarcastic when it comes to AI, because when you look at the management team at Anthropic and OpenAI, I think it is beyond laughable.

Daniel Creech 51:11

We’ll see how that plays out. But Zuckerberg in his environment and maybe those guys in their AI environment are the best. I just think Zuckerberg, I like Karp and Palantir. Obviously, Dell is a recent pick from us in April of this year. And that’s because Michael Dell. And if you spend any time investigating that guy and you can put emotions aside, you’re not going to agree with them on everything. And I’m not saying you have to, but you want to seek out key management and management will separate themselves. Jamie Dimon is another one that comes to mind. And again, I’m picking low-hanging fruit here, but there is a pattern there. And so if you have a great, you can have a great stock, you can have a great product, you can have a great story. And as Frank says and I give him a lot of credit for this, everybody has a great story. If all you have is a great story, you can go sideways or down for years. I’ve had losers that just drag out for a long time. Everybody has to Frank’s point about emotions.

Daniel Creech 52:00

But if you don’t have a good management team, your idea and your story is going to not go anywhere other than being a story. And that is the most frustrating Florida thing in investing.

Frank Curzio 52:08

That is true. You’re always going to have a good story, but you have to execute on the story. You have to have some kind of execution. That’s what we say with companies that we work with. You know, what’s the newsflow coming out? What is, you know, over the next year if we’re going to work with you? Is there positive newsflow? Are there things that you’re doing that you haven’t done before? You know, or it’s just like, oh, wow, we just, you know, we feel like we want to get our stock up. No, no. It’s, you know, why should your stock be higher? Why should investors be buying? What’s coming out in the future? What do you guys see that’s going to be a game changer for you that changed the landscape of your company? You got to get in more investors. You got to get institutions in. And that’s based on management. So it’s not just a story. And I’ve got caught with a lot of that as well. And some of these stories are fantastic. And those are the story stocks are the ones you’re going to buy the most of because they’re exciting. Nobody wants to buy, I would say, out of all the stocks we recommended in the past 12 to 18 months, I bet you nobody had Google.

Frank Curzio 52:54

I bet you very few had Dell. And those are up 100, you know, plus percent on big names that, you know, when you look at risk-reward, you can’t get a better return than that. I mean, it’s incredible. Even your 30, 35% returns in Nvidia, right? That’s great returns on the biggest stock in the world. So sometimes it’s just sitting there for you for the taking, but everybody wants the dollar stock, the $2 stock. And those are the story stocks. That’s okay if you want to buy them. The story could push it up, but eventually the story’s only going to take it so far. And if you do not execute, look out because a lot of these companies have stories and management teams, they just don’t follow up. They can’t get that newsflow. You’re not seeing the things they need to do, the revenue. Where’s the revenue coming in? Not so much profits, right? You want to see the top-line growth, putting all that money that you’re generating back into the company, into something that’s growing tremendously. That’s how you grow.

Frank Curzio 53:42

That’s how you get people invested in your stock. That’s how you get people excited. It’s not just a story. It’s coming out with, hey, it’s not just a story. We’re not just transferring over to AI like DGXX or, you know, DGXX. If you look at, you know, Digipower, if you look at Vivo, I mean, these guys are signing deals. They’re building their sites. DGXX is one of the few companies that right now they’re generating revenue off of AI as a Bitcoin miner. All these Bitcoin miners are telling you, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to see this. DGXX is doing it now, right? That pictures of them building all facilities, right? Going from tier three to tier one. It’s one thing to say, hey, we have all this power as a Bitcoin miner like Mara, and then we’re going to transfer into all this shit. But you don’t have the credibility when all you did is dilute the shit out of shareholders and they annihilated people, right? So, you know, you got to follow up. You can’t just have the story. You got to follow up. The story would drive the stock higher.

Frank Curzio 54:28

I would definitely take profits on the story, but if you see these companies follow through and things get better, they’re going to go a lot higher. You got to, I mean, management has to have credibility. That’s a really good one, Daniel. So with that said, guys, Thursday’s podcast, this is for you. Q&A, askcurzio.com. Go there, you can ask us anything you want about stocks. We just really detailed a lot of stuff here to the point where, you know, how are you getting this in-depth analysis on some of this stuff that you’re seeing every place? And this is for free, right? And that’s why we’re seeing the podcast grow tremendously. We’re seeing our X account @Frank Curzio. If you guys definitely follow, we’re getting up to 50,000 now. I think we were 10,000 18 months ago, maybe a little bit longer, less than 10,000. We’re getting up to 50,000. I mean, it’s getting fun because we have duplicate accounts that not even hide, Joe, right? They don’t even hide what they’re saying. But what they do is they actually claim our track record, which I’m like, whoa, you know, that’s a little crap.

Frank Curzio 55:21

I don’t care if you copy. I’ve had that, you know, for the last 20 years, people taking what they listen on the podcast and putting out to their clients and stuff. And, you know, again, what do we got to do, whatever, you know? But when you’re copying our track record, it’s pretty crazy. But we have so many of these accounts, these dummy accounts, which shows that we made it because our engagement, just to show the engagement, and it’s not about the followers. These people have millions of followers, 100,000 followers, and we’re going to, you know, crack 50 soon. Our engagement is really at the top, I would say, half percent on the whole of X right now, to the point where we went from a couple hundred thousand views a month to over 5 million. And this month alone, Joe, what are we up to? I think this month, right? September, with the 10th, I think we’re going to crack 4 million just this month right now, which could be a 10 million month, which is massive, which is huge. That’s how many people listen to us, how many people respect us, how many people are just, you know, all these comments that we’re getting.

Frank Curzio 56:15

Again, if you want to follow us @Frank Curzio, we put a lot of stuff there that you don’t hear on the podcast and different things and strong opinions and stuff, but it’s really, really cool. I just want to appreciate everyone following. So @FrankCurzio is one way to follow us. You can go to Curzio Research, Alpha product, doing very well with it. Just recommended a new stock today that’s probably up a lot. Don’t put it up there, Joe. People pay for that stuff. But yeah, it’s a good small cap that I love that very few people know about. That’s a Trump pick that the government is funding within the mining industry. And they’re providing so much money that they’re basically going to build this mine, which is going to happen in the next three to four years for free. For free. I don’t know any mining company that could say that. And it’s right in the right industry. I think it’s going to be recession-proof. Getting government money, not just from the US, but another place as well, another major country and commodity producer.

Frank Curzio 57:04

And again, done a lot of research on this, talking to management for a long, long time. It is a Trump play. And I think people can do very, very well. I went over the numbers and don’t try to find it because they’re merging and it’s going to be under a different name in a couple of months. But it’s really, really exciting times. And that’s what Alpha, if you want more information on that stock or our Alpha product, you can go to curzioresearch.com. With that said, Daniel, plotting thoughts? And how much you’re going to love watching a football game today in Australia?

Daniel Creech 57:31

That is wild. It’s in Australia. Yeah.

Frank Curzio 57:32

No, I know. I think it’s the first in Australia.

Daniel Creech 57:34

I’ll check the line. No, I won’t watch that.

Frank Curzio 57:36

Oh, I got to be back.

Daniel Creech 57:37

College football. Big game in college football this weekend.

Frank Curzio 57:39

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s going to be a big, big game. Where are they playing? It’s Ohio State, Texas, right? Where are they playing?

Daniel Creech 57:45

At Texas.

Frank Curzio 57:46

Wow.

Daniel Creech 57:46

The guys are one and a half point underdogs.

Frank Curzio 57:48

One and a half point underdogs. Wow. I think it would take the Ohio State University. Did you see that interview really quick last thing? They had an interview of, I don’t know, some guy who’s like a, you know, I mean, I’m not probably not going to build this up enough, but he’s just brilliant, right? Like he’s a teacher and he has all this incubators through Ohio State and everything. And they had him on CNBC and he just brilliant, brilliant guy and everything saying how, you know, people could invest in some of these companies early on now. It’s all through Ohio State. And they said, all right, thanks for coming on Ohio State. You know what he says? He goes, the Ohio State. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Daniel Creech 58:20

But guys are the most crooked. I mean that as a compliment. They’ve partnered with JP Morgan. No bigger gangster than that.

Frank Curzio 58:26

Yeah, no. That was really cool. All right, guys, that’s it for us. Enjoy football tonight. Enjoy football this weekend. Open weekend, which is going to be a lot of fun. And that’s it for us. Have a great week and we’ll see you on the other side. Take care.

Announcer 58:37

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.