Frank Curzio 00:00

How’s it going out there? It’s Thursday, September 24. 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. It’s Q&A day. You can go to askcurzio.com, and it’s every Thursday. Daniel and I are going to answer all your questions: stocks, the economy, Fed, any sector you want to talk about, industry, sports, marriage, whatever. We’re here for you. And we’re starting to get in lots and lots of questions, right? So go to askcurzio.com, put in your question, we’ll answer it here. And before we answer, we’re going to send you an email letting you know, hey, we’re answering your questions today. So we’re starting to get a lot of questions, starting to pick up. Pain is to get people to the site, but now people are going to the site and asking questions, which is good. Use it to your advantage. A lot going on, especially interest rates are going higher like we predicted. Ten-year is absolutely surging. Oil prices remain very, very high, and it’s hurting stocks, right?

Frank Curzio 00:54

This is our thesis for the past 2 months, basically. But the market’s been holding up a little bit better than expected, mostly from the biggest stocks in the world. But we have lots and lots of questions. Talk about all the stuff and everything. And Daniel Creech, let’s begin. I think you’re going to be narrating this sector, but I’m going to bring you in to answer some of these questions because I’m going to need help. But, uh, yeah, let’s— let’s fire away, man.

Daniel Creech 01:14

All righty, sir. Question number 1. Samuel says, or asks, are we buying oil stocks now or waiting for a pullback?

Frank Curzio 01:21

I would be buying them now. And, uh, I’m buying anything, almost anything offshore-related. So upstream article from yesterday came out, and an executive from Somberjet said, “The deep water oil and gas industry is primed for an investment supercycle over the next 5 years.” And the investments coming in is something we haven’t seen, I believe he said, in 15 to 20 years. That should sound familiar to everyone who listens to podcasts, everyone who follows us and has Alpha membership. We have TechNip that’s up almost 300%, I believe. We have another company called Blue Energies, which just happened to stake their claim right in the middle of one of the biggest areas where Petrobras just now bought right to the right of them. Total bought all everything to the left of them. And they’re both making massive investments. To the tune of thinking Petrobras is a half-a-billion-dollar investment, that is a lot, a lot of money. I know you used to hear billions and multi-billion contracts and even trillion dollars getting thrown around in AI.

Frank Curzio 02:19

And I continue to say this: this is the biggest trend in the world, offshore drilling right now, behind AI. And it gets buried by AI because AI is just, you know, a multi-trillion-dollar trend. So when you’re looking at offshore and you’re looking at Somberjet, if you’re not familiar, Somberjet is like Taiwan Semi, okay? They’re the largest oil services company in the world. And their clients include Exxon, Chevron, Total, Conoco, Pemex, San Ramico, Petrobras, basically every major oil company in the world. Just like if you’re looking at Taiwan Semi, they have contracts with almost all the biggest companies in the world because they make the chips, right? So they are always the leading indicator, Taiwan Semi. And when they’re raising and constantly raising and saying that growth is huge, that’s everyone placing orders for them to build chips. This key executive of Somberjet is saying that we’re seeing massive, massive orders. It’s huge. It’s here. And it’s not 1 year or 2 years. It’s a 5-year cycle.

Frank Curzio 03:11

So it doesn’t have anything to do with IRET. It doesn’t matter if oil prices come down. The cost to drill offshore is so cheap now. It’s cheaper than drilling in the Permian. I never thought I would say that. I had to look that set up, but I heard that from 3 executives in the oil industry. And this is because of technology. Also, a lot of less red tape because they’re drilling in, you know, offshore Africa, offshore Brazil. And he’s talking about different areas, but, you know, when it looks at offshore Africa, I think there’s a, you know, just huge, huge opportunity. So, you know, you’re looking at Somberjet, TechNip, Halliburton, Baker Hughes are the best ways to play this. And Blue Energies from the small cap. I have to look at RIG again because offshore drilling, you would think they get a, you know, a ton of work. But you have to look at the contracts for the ships. Yes, day rates could go up, but a lot of these things could be contracted. So if you have, whatever, 20, 30 ships in that contract for the next 10 years, which some of these companies, you know, Conoco, Exxon, or Chevron will do, and those are contracted for a while, then, you know, you see that revenue stream coming in.

Frank Curzio 04:08

It’s predictable, but it’s not taking advantage of the massive growth that we’re seeing. So you want to be able to buy drillers where, you know, a lot of those contracts are going to come up because once they renew, they’re going to be probably 2, 3 times the day rates. So you have to look at those individually. We recommended RIG in the past. It went up tremendously, and then we wrote it down, which was my fault. But this was a couple of years ago. But we really made it up the difference with TechNip. And again, that’s a 300% winner in Curtio Alpha. And, you know, we have— we did with our company, and, you know, Daniel testifies to this, is we had a lot of different newsletters. And we consolidated all of them to make sure our focus is on one newsletter. We can go anywhere we want with it. And now we’re able to provide weekly updates, be more in tune with our subscribers to Curtio Alpha. You know, if you’re interested in subscribing to that product, it’s probably the best newsletter you’ll find in the whole entire industry because we’re not selling you 25 freaking newsletters and making you, you know, charging you $1,000 here, $1,000 here, $1,500 here.

Frank Curzio 04:57

This is everything that we do, right? And, you know, under one umbrella, which is much cheaper than, you know, buying 20 newsletters. But we’re really focused on making that product great. And we have a lot of winners in there. And, look, we took a lot off the table over the past 2 months because of what’s happened in the market. But oil is one of the areas where, if you’re going to buy offshore, it’s huge. I still feel nobody’s talking about it. I’m glad that the biggest oil service provider in the world, the executives, actually is out there now saying, “Hey, this is massive. This is huge. We knew this years ago, and we were positioned.” But it’s going to get even bigger and bigger as the story gets told because I just feel like everyone’s underinvested. Yes, they like oil. Yes, the plan I ran, oil prices are higher back and forth. They see Devon going through a fight too. And I agree with that. Devon’s been a piece of garbage in the oil industry. It’s just a terribly run oil company that should be much higher in price.

Frank Curzio 05:43

So some activists are getting involved. You can go that part. But that’s going to be, you know, swinging back and forth based on Iran. And, you know, I’m leaning more towards that at price of 91 to 100. You know, around that level, 90 to 100. I would bet that they would go to 80 before they go to 120. So if that’s the case, you’re going to see a lot of these regular oil producers come down. But offshore, this is the long-term secular trend. So that’s just 5 years. It’s going further and further. This is a place that’s unexplored. And now they’re starting to explore it. And they’re getting billion-barrel fines. Billion-barrel fines. And they’re going all in. Total spending $200 million per block. And that’s just to the left of Blue Energies. And then you have— and they signed a deal. Blue Energies take a 65% stake in their project, and Blue Energies owns 35%. You’re going to see lots of news, I think, coming out in the next 6 months on that, which I think are absolutely going to blow your mind.

Frank Curzio 06:36

But that’s the area you want to be in oil. And, you know, you don’t want to go back and forth and trade in the swings and stuff like that based on, you know, what Trump is tweeting these days. That’s the best bet. That’s the long-term secular trend. You’ll make money. And there’s a lot of companies that I think are going to see huge, huge upside potential over the next couple of years.

Daniel Creech 06:53

Trading Trump’s tweets. That’s pretty good.

Frank Curzio 06:55

Yeah. I mean, it’s— where were we signing another deal with Iran like 2 days ago? What happened? Oil prices going higher now? Nobody believes it?

Daniel Creech 07:03

Oh, I didn’t hear that, but he possibly.

Frank Curzio 07:05

He said, “Yeah, you know, they’re either going to get annihilated or they’re going to—” and he’s saying that in front of the UN, in front of everybody. I’m like, I don’t know if they’re definitely going to get the deal done. I get, you know, being the bully, and I understand that. And you could back it up. But, you know, I don’t know if it’s going to incentivize Iran to get to the table soon, which is very, very big for the Republican Party because they need them to come to the table very, very soon because oil’s back up to 95. WTI is back up to 95, right? And again, that was yesterday when Trump basically announced, and we had some tweets going out that, “Hey, you know, Iran’s not going to do a deal, and we’re going to open up the straits.” So I guess nobody really believes it. Again, this is like the 7th, 8th time we heard this. And it’s going to keep going on for the next couple of months, which will probably keep oil prices elevated and going forward. But offshore industry, guys, that’s where you want to go.

Daniel Creech 07:49

All right. Next question is from Michael. He says, “Is accumulating a position in SQQQ with available cash a method for preparing the 20% drop you are anticipating?”

Frank Curzio 08:00

No. No. This is a 2x inverse ETF that’s going to move in the opposite direction of the NASDAQ 100. And I don’t like this because of basically what happened in the past couple of weeks, right? So you’re looking at a lot of names. NASDAQ 100, a lot of these companies have fallen off tremendously. But if you look specifically at the names outside the hyperscalers, so there’s 25 names, and Citizens Bank, I usually don’t say Citizens because, you know, in terms of research, they came out with an unbelievable report. Like all the states, how much it costs, electricity prices, everything for all AI companies. And it just has this basket of 25 companies. Not the hyperscalers, but the ones like co-locations and stuff like that, and Bitcoin miners that have transitioned to AI, the core weaves and stuff like that, showing that they’re down 25% each. But yet the NASDAQ didn’t show those because— and this is, you know, a reverse inverse ETF on the whole NASDAQ 100. But it’s dominated by 6 companies that have record earnings, have seen record margins, right?

Frank Curzio 08:59

Their profit margins are the highest they’ve ever been. And they continue to make a ton of money on their investments, even though they’re spending a ton on capex. So to see some of those names really come down when they drive the market, that’s what you’re going to need for this. And that’s why you see in the NASDAQ where a lot of names, there’s more names hitting 52-week lows and 52-week highs, which is very— it’s rare to see when you have the NASDAQ hit new highs 2 days ago. But now you’re looking at interest rates as it’s coming down. So my point is, I’m not a huge fan of inverse ETFs. I tried to do that a couple of times on newsletters, and it doesn’t work because, again, you could have any kind of tweet, you have a government, and the government’s incentivized, right? The market has this bias of always going higher. And if you can go to the 50s and you pull up a chart on S&P 500, you’re going to see it go from 1 and all the way to the top, right? And you’ll see a little blips here of crashes and, you know, credit crisis and COVID and stuff.

Frank Curzio 09:50

But overall, we have an election coming up. We have a government that’s fixed on not believing that we should ever be in a recession again. So they continue to spend a lot of money, which is, you know, great for stocks as long as you don’t have inflation. But we have inflation now. So going short is very, very dangerous because in an instant, when you cover, it could blow you out. And you could see a 2.5% gain in NASDAQ and then, you know, that’s going to be a 5% loss to you right away. So, you know, shorting is a big boy’s game. It’s difficult. A lot of people, let’s say, that are shorting that you look at, whether it’s Michael Burry or Chainos, they’re using leverage in other areas to cover themselves that you don’t know about. And it’s not like they just see a stock come down or, you know, just in case F it goes higher and you have these moves. It’s so hard with the volatility where you see, you know, look at the past, Daniel, right? What we saw, look at COVID and look at the credit crisis.

Frank Curzio 10:37

So two markets that were pretty much the two biggest downfalls over the past, you know, whatever, X amount of years, 20 years. But they were very short-lived. You’re talking about a month where, you know, that for COVID and 35% decline, and then the market came back. So if you’re short, you know, you have to cover within a month. And then you’re looking at even the credit crisis was like 9 months, right? You could have got back in after 9 months, and then you saw this secular, you know, upturn in the market for, you know, many, many years over a decade. So it’s not easy to short. Instead, like I said, I would take money out of the market and put it into a money market fund earning 4% risk-free. That’s an amazing, amazing return. I said yesterday, what was it, Daniel? The Bank of America note, they’re expecting 33% growth in earnings, but basically a 1% gain in the S&P 500. That’s insane. That means a lot of this, all the earnings, they’re saying that are massive, massive earnings growth.

Frank Curzio 11:29

We grow 8.5% annually. We’re growing 33% now year over year. But that’s only going to result in 1% in stock market gains, according to them. So, you know, the risk is definitely that stocks can come down. But if you were going to short, which I don’t really recommend for anyone on the retail investment side, if you’re going to short, I would look at consumer discretionary ETFs, those inverse ETFs, or the housing. Housing’s dead. Housing is so dead. Housing is dead. I mean, you’re looking at the numbers coming out. It’s insane. Nobody could afford 6.5. It’s well over 7 now, 7.5. We’re going to mortgage rates. You know, that market is totally frozen. Nobody’s really—if you’re a cash buyer, this is the greatest market you’re going to see in the long term. I’m sure if you’re looking to buy a house for a million dollars, you could take 20% off and somebody’s going to need to take it. You’re going to have a lot to choose from. A lot of people looking to sell their houses. They’ve been in the market for a very, very long time, even in Florida, which is one of the top markets, even in Texas.

Frank Curzio 12:18

But, you know, the housing market with these kinds of interest rates, nobody could afford them. Nobody could afford them at all. Especially, it’s not just the interest rates and the mortgage. Now you’re paying—look at the energy prices you have to pay. You’re counting inflation and food and everything else. I mean, your bill’s going to go up tremendously, and your mortgage is probably close to doubling compared to a 3 point whatever, 4% interest. I went over the numbers. But that’s what I would do on the short side. I wouldn’t short SQQQ because basically, you’re betting against the 6 companies that have record earnings that control the whole entire world, trillion-dollar companies that have great government ties and they have record margins and using AI to lower their costs tremendously. So those margins are going to continue to go higher and higher. And I don’t know if all of them are going to fall. Maybe some of them could pull back, but I don’t know if every single one of them are going to fall. And that’s what we’re seeing. We saw Microsoft fall, and that came back.

Frank Curzio 13:04

We saw Meta fall, now Meta. Look what Meta is up 30% in the past month. Amazon didn’t do anything for a year and a half, and now boom, that pushed higher. So, you know, when you’re buying that SQQQ for that inverse, you’re buying all those companies which really control that index. And I don’t think you’re going to see—well, they could pull back, but I think you see pullbacks in other areas of the market like we’re seeing right now where there are more lows than highs in the market, which you rarely see with the NASDAQ just coming off its all-time high.

Daniel Creech 13:29

And most of those inverse ETFs like the SQQQ, those are daily instruments, just tracked. Their goal, and it’s important to understand the environment, their goal is to track the daily inverse of a sector or ETF or whatever, not over time. And I’m not a day trader like that, but just know what you’re getting into. So if you’re thinking, “Hey, I’ll buy this for a week or a month or whatever,” that’s not—you’re using a product that is not aiming to do what you’re doing, if that’s the case. So just be cautious on that. Next question is from Joey. He says, “Frank, with the AI slowdown, is it time to buy more DGXX and Vivo on the dip?”

Frank Curzio 14:10

Yeah. I don’t know if AI is slowing down. I don’t see any signs of it slowing down. I see them trying to slow down the data center part. I love both of these names. And the recent news on Oracle today is a reason. Was it Force Majeure they’re declaring on—was it in New Mexico where they’re going to delay the project and they don’t know if it’s going to come through? And, you know, they said, “Hey, we’re not going to pay for costs and stuff like that if that’s the case.” And Oracle’s getting hit today off of it. I’m not too sure. I mean, they could go any place they want with that. I know, you know, it’s not easy to pick up and move and stuff like that. It doesn’t mean that they can’t pay for it. It’s like, why even bother, you know, if you’re going to have those losses? I put this like in the Amazon thing. When Amazon came to Long Island City, which is a place I lived, and they were going to open up a big plant, and AOC was like, “Nope, we don’t want you here. We’re not giving you incentives,” even though they’re basically going to—I think 25,000 new jobs are going to get created for 6 figures. And they took that out of there, which, you know, it’s such a nice area.

Frank Curzio 14:57

So many people, like the melting pot of America, I feel like. You just go to stores. Everyone’s from like a different country. Nice working their ass off. They love America. And basically, you thought that, you know, Amazon was trying to get over to Amazon and said, “Hey, you know what? Okay, we’ll go to Seattle instead of go someplace else and open up their plants.” I think it might have been Seattle. So, you know, same thing. I mean, they can go anywhere they want. This isn’t a reflection of Oracle and the numbers or the debt or anything. So I’m not sure why, you know, Oracle’s getting hit. I understand why BE Energy might be getting hit, but, you know, who’s powering this as well, but still these probably temporary hits. But I don’t really see a slowdown. With that said, DGXX, I like the momentum. I’m going to—I’m trying to plan a trip with Michelle. Michelle is—Michelle Moore’s going to be speaking at our conference, our Kersey One conference. So if you guys didn’t sign up, if you’re one member, sign up.

Frank Curzio 15:43

We’re going to have Vivo there as well. Andrew Hartz is going to be there. Ivan Bibek is going to be there. I mean, we have an all-star lineup, really, all-star lineup. It’s going to be fantastic. It is 17, 18 CEOs, actionable investable ideas, right? So it’s, you know, it’s really cool. Pier 66 Hotel. And, yeah, it’s in a couple of weeks. Less than a month away, actually. So that should be a lot of fun. But the reason why I brought that up is because Michelle said that he’s opening up—he’s got videos. If you go on his X account for Digipower, he’s showing all the videos of them building this facility. And it’s massive in Alabama. And that’s really exciting. So he said that he wants to invite me down on the 18th, I think, or the 17th, to go see it in Alabama. I’m probably going to go. My conference, I think, is a week after that. So it’s kind of tight. But I want to go there and report from it. But look at some of the videos of what they’re doing and how they’re building this. They are generating revenue from AI now.

Frank Curzio 16:39

A lot of these co-location, which are basically crypto miners switching from mining Bitcoin to, you know, getting these massive contracts and going tier one. So it goes from tier three to tier one as data centers. He’s showing everything there and how big this facility is. And it’s freaking insane. I mean, these guys are really—and you’re seeing it in the stock price. It was like 350 and it’s pushing past 4 and kind of like a relative weak market for these names. And Vivo as well. Just they own the shell. They have the electricity and the Nordics. It’s massive. They just signed a contract. We’re going to get more details on that. But these are two names. You look at Iron, you look at some of the Riots and stuff like that. When you have the delay that we’re seeing in these data centers, the AI slowdown, it’s not slowing down. They need to keep going. They need to keep spending. They need to keep billing. And they need electricity. These guys have their own electricity. And you’re having some of these hyperscalers actually come out and say, “Hey, we’re going to be focused on smaller projects just to lock in electricity of, you know, 20 megawatts of power to 60 megawatts of power,” which used to be a massive amount of power.

Frank Curzio 17:30

Now we’re talking about gigawatts and open up big gigawatt facilities. But these are two names that are in prime position here that are great, that pulled off their high. We’re in early in our alpha newsletter. I think we’re up over 100% on both of these. They were higher and they pulled back. I think they’re going to go back to those highs and sign more contracts. But I’ll give you guys a report for DGXX. Of course, alpha members are going to get, you know, much more details and get everything first. Those are our paying subscribers for our newsletter. Same with Vivo. But these are two CEOs that I’m going to see at the conference, which is cool. And then a week before, I’m going to go to Alabama and report live from there. And you guys can see this facility. I’m looking forward to seeing everything in there, part makers, everything that they’re doing. And Michelle’s really excited. He’s been sending me videos like crazy that we’ve been posting on our X account @FrankKerseyo. So be sure to follow us because we’re getting unbelievable traction. Unbelievable.

Frank Curzio 18:16

Did we hit 8,000 followers, Joe? How long ago? 18? Like a little over 12 months ago. We have over 50,000 now. I think we’re up past 12, 13 million maybe, even 14 million impressions this month. So it’s really cool. It gives us an opportunity to talk about every single thing and, you know, just, you know, I’ve been paying on a lot of stuff with the markets and stuff, and it’s just starting to take off, which is really cool. I appreciate everyone following and, you know, following our brand stuff. But @FrankKerseyo, if you want to go, you know, you’re going to see a lot of great news, just stocks we’re looking at and stuff like that. But again, alpha members always get the cream of the crop because they’re paying subscribers. But get to your question, Joey. DGXX, Vivo, yes, I’d be buying more on these dips.

Daniel Creech 18:53

Alabama.

Frank Curzio 18:54

Good old Alabama. That should be a nice trip, though. I’ve been to Alabama a couple of times. I’ve been to Alabama and I met people there. And you know what people in Alabama say? They say, “We’re the shithole of the United States.” That’s what they say. “We’re the shithole of the shit state of the United States.” I’m like, I kind of like it there. It was pretty cool. Like Robert Trent Jones trails there. It’s, you know, got great college football, but apparently, I don’t know if that’s all they have. But I like Alabama. I’m saying just, there’s no pride in Alabama. There’s pride in Texas. There’s pride in Georgia. Alabama, people just like, “No, this place sucks.” I’m like, “All right, just state. Stick up for it a little bit.” Anyway, let’s move on before I get in trouble.

Daniel Creech 19:26

Yeah, there you go. Next question is from Stefan. He says, “What will be the signals to sell?” Talking about stocks and then get back in.

Frank Curzio 19:35

I mean, the signals I went over. If you listen to the podcast, alpha members know this. I pulled a lot of stocks off the table over the past two months. So I loaded that portfolio. And these are names we might get into again later on. But, yeah, I’m just worried about the markets. I told you, the sell signals, high diesel prices, which they went up tremendously. They’re 40% in the past, whatever, 40 days or so. That’s a cost that you can’t hide. A lot of these companies have the biggest fleets. Anything you see in any store is driven by—it’s got there by, you know, they have to use diesel. So all these companies have these massive costs. And then you throw in the 10-year, which we said it’s going to continue to rise. Forget about 5%. It’s going to go 5.25, might go higher. And nobody was pricing that in. Now it looks like we’re going to be pricing it at 5.15 now. I mean, we’re surging on the 10-year. That’s massive. We’re going to see mortgage rates 7.5% if they’re not there already. This is the borrowing rate.

Frank Curzio 20:27

This is what directly impacts consumers, you know, credit cards. And if you look at the amount of debt, we’ve never had more debt in the history of our nation. So it’s okay if interest rates are low, but interest rates go higher, our interest payments go higher for everyone. And when our interest rates go higher, we have less money to spend, less money to invest. And what do we do? We stop pulling stuff, right? We stop pulling back on our spending. And that’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. We can’t support a lot of people, most Americans, at, you know, 5.15 and going higher and these mortgage rates are crazy. It’s hitting a lot of sectors. You’re not really seeing it because the biggest stocks in the world are doing very, very well. But overall, and that’s where position, I think, you’re going to financials should do very well in a high interest rate environment. But I don’t see this slowing down. When I saw Besant say, “Hey, we’re going to increase, you know, the long, the long, the buying, you know, long bonds,” and the market just basically gave him the finger and said, “Hey, it doesn’t matter.” And you look at the Fed saying, “Hey, okay, well, inflation is getting a little stronger and, you know, so we’re going to raise rates.” And they raised rates once.

Frank Curzio 21:26

Now, in October, that was off the table for most people because it’s a Republican election, right? They’re like, “They’re not going to raise.” It’s now a 70% chance they’re going to raise. I mean, you saw the numbers from yesterday, which people aren’t really paying attention when it comes to economic data, unless it’s CPI, PPI, and unemployment. But we had a PMI, manufacturing services, that absolutely surged. Best numbers in many, many years. And then we had retail sales that went through the roof, which tells you that we’re probably going to see higher inflation, right? We’re not seeing a slowdown in the economy, which, you know, raising short-term rates isn’t going to happen. But projecting that you’re going to raise even more could help this rate come down. But right now, the long-term rate is saying, “Hey, you know what? Inflation is going to go a lot higher.” That’s what this market is telling us. When we look at the 10-year Treasury, it’s basically saying that we’re going to have much higher inflation than anyone thinks, at least over the next few months.

Frank Curzio 22:16

And I don’t see that slowing down. I don’t know how we stop it unless we get a slowdown in the economy. And we’re not seeing that, especially from the latest round of data, which supports more rate hikes are coming from the Fed probably in October and December. And it could be four or five rate hikes through 2027 or early 2027. And that was off the table about two months ago, even a month ago. But we could see three to five now. And I believe we can get up to five rate hikes because we need to slow down this economy because it’s unsustainable with long-term rates and a 10-year going this high. It’s unsustainable. I mean, the housing market’s completely frozen. You’re going to see people pulling back on investments. And then you’re throwing higher oil prices. I can’t see how these companies who have 33% earnings growth could come out and raise guidance after the next quarter with all these risks ahead. You got to be absolutely nuts as a CEO. You never want to overpromise and under-deliver, right?

Frank Curzio 23:05

You want to underpromise and over-deliver. That’s, you know, so, and I think that’s going to result in a lot of these companies coming out next quarter. And they may have a good quarter, but they’re going to say, “Hey, you know what? We’re going to lower estimates a little bit to fuel.” We’ve seen that. Two companies already came out and got annihilated because of that. And we’re going to see more of that, I think, going forward. So it’s a dangerous market. A lot of risk in this marketplace. However, it’s going to open a door to great, great opportunities. And some of them we’re starting to see. And stocks are down 30, 40% right now. So that’s the signals to sell and get back in, to get back in. You know, I don’t know yet, but I’m looking at individual names. Believe it or not, I’m looking at Nike, Oracle, restaurant names. I’ve been destroying Nike lately, and I get it. But, you know, I’ve been in this market long enough. When you look at a company that’s a global brand that’s been around forever and you look at it and go, “This is the shittiest thing I’ve ever seen,” whatever.

Frank Curzio 23:53

I said that about Microsoft when they had 12 years of that stock doing nothing. Amazon had, you know, a shitty, pretty much a year and a half while every other hyperscaler went through the roof. You had IBM, who’s left for dead, who came back. You had Apple had huge problems, right? Marvel, looking at Starbucks in 2008, Delta, you can go on and on with all these brands. And every single time through my 30-year career, I look at these brands and go, “It’s so bad. It looks so terrible.” It’s just, and it turns out that all of that risk and everything and all that emotions is already factored in when you’re seeing Nike lose 80% of its market value. I’m not saying to buy Nike here, but, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nike’s double next year, the stock pricing. You’re like, “How did that happen?” Because everyone in the world hates it. There’s nothing positive. When there’s nothing positive, there’s nothing really left to drive the stock down. And when you have these big brands that have cash on their balance sheets that, you know, could bring in more people and have people coming in where Nike or even Disney, and Disney’s been a disaster, but, you know, you’ve got these guys where they could earn a massive pay package.

Frank Curzio 24:51

Massive. I mean, who’s the guy who left Chipotle to go to Starbucks, right? If you’re able to turn around that brand in stock options, forget about a couple million dollars. You’re talking about tens, hundreds of millions of dollars that you could generate because it’s so out of favor and it could be so loaded on incentives if the stock price goes higher. That allows you to track really good, good talent. And, you know, Nike, Oracle is well off its highs as well in some of these names. But, you know, I’m looking at some of these that are down a lot and seeing if we could pick away at some of them. I like to see some inside a buy or just some kind of positive and have a good, one good quarter behind their belt. I don’t want to try to catch a falling knife, but that’s, it’s going to open up to names that are down 20, 30, 40%. And that’s going to be the opportunity, Stefan.

Daniel Creech 25:28

Yeah, so look for that.

Frank Curzio 25:30

Look for that.

Daniel Creech 25:31

All right, Ricky asks or says, “Hey, Frank. Curious why you had a big write-up on uranium, but don’t have a recommendation in Kerseyo, Alpha. I have been in UEC, Uranium Energy Corp, a long time from hearing about them on your platforms. I have made a lot of money over time, but now living through a downturn that should end soon if your thesis is correct.”

Frank Curzio 25:51

Yeah, you know, UEC is a great name. I feel like it’s just cyclical, right? And I mean, you don’t see any separation in uranium names. It’s not like, okay, like a couple do great and a couple do bad. I feel like they all move in tandem. UEC is an unbelievable company. Amir’s right, though. Uranium is meaningless unless we have processing. And we don’t have that in the US. I think we have one processor and it’s impossible. So we’re still so reliant on importing. I know that the government’s very favorable to uranium. They’re putting together stockpiles, right? And, you know, investing. But UEC is a name that you want to buy when it’s at this level. I mean, it’s at $9 right now. I mean, it’s 52-week low. When we know that, you know, this is a company that could easily get acquired, I think, by hyperscaler if they want to. Not that they want to be in the uranium business, but these guys could power a lot of this stuff that’s going on. So the fact that, you know, we saw this at 20 and I had Amir at my conference last year and I think it was like 17, 18 and things were great.

Frank Curzio 26:52

There’s nothing fundamentally that really changed with these uranium companies. It’s just sometimes they fall out of favor. And, you know, I do like uranium, but uranium isn’t, I feel like uranium and these stocks are rentals, not long-term. You can’t own them long-term. You can’t just buy and put them away. And this is someone saying, you know, uranium energy you guys know I recommended, I think it was like a dollar, a dollar 50, and people generate so much money off it. I’m so happy for them. But I haven’t had them on the recommendation for a while, but it’s coming close at this level. I mean, at $9, it’s a joke. It was just a 20. Again, a lot of momentum. You’re going to see AI that’s going to build out the uranium part. They need this kind of energy. They just need, we don’t have enough electricity. I covered those numbers yesterday. I covered them hundreds of times over the past two years where we just, we don’t have the energy to support AI. So I am, you know, I’ll write up about uranium.

Frank Curzio 27:39

I think there’s other ways to play uranium as well. We have a uranium play in our newsletter now that actually, you know, fell a little bit. We added to it. It’s doing a little bit better now. And there’s a recent recommendation that’s tied to the uranium industry. But you’re looking at uranium energy, UEC, it’s coming close to where it makes sense here. It’s just, these are stocks that you want to buy when they’re down 30, 40% off their highs. And when they get to those highs, unfortunately, everybody holds these things long-term. And I’ve been covering uranium for 20 years now. And I know Amir for like 12, 13 years, 14 years. And I just see this over and over and over again with his company, with the uranium industry. These stocks go all the way up and then they come all the way down. They go all the way up, they come all the way down. It’s not like they go up and, you know, 100% and decline 20% and then go up. It’s just weird. They have these big like 50% retracements. And that’s when you want to buy them. They’re more like trading stocks that you could hold maybe for a couple of years, but not buy and hold forever.

Frank Curzio 28:27

And I think a lot of people in this industry are such diehards. They buy these and hold them forever. And you’re watching uranium energy where, let me bring up, let me see this chart really quick. You have it up there, Joe? I mean, so you’re looking at, you know, this year chart and let me compare it. So to, you know, the NASDAQ. And I’m going to bring it back here. Give me a second here to, I’ve just messed it around on my thing here. So I’m just looking, Joe doesn’t have this up there. So you have a 50% retracement from February in UEC. And you’re looking at the NASDAQ up 12%. That’s, it doesn’t get bigger than that. I mean, unless companies go out of business, right? It doesn’t really get bigger than that where, so the opportunity loss, and that’s what I’m saying, when it comes to uranium stocks and some of these sectors sometimes, you know, you want to buy, but you want to be able to sell them. You can’t get attached to them. And people, for some reason, when it comes to uranium, are so attached to it like they’re their family.

Frank Curzio 29:19

The stock doesn’t give a shit about you. It’s a piece of paper, right? You want to make money off of it. And if you look throughout history of 20 years, you don’t, it’s like gold. You don’t want to buy gold and hold gold forever. There’s times to own gold and there’s times gold sucks because you’re holding gold while the rest of the market is absolutely going gang buses for 10, 12 years. And people, you know, will take this one data point, you know, the gold bugs from, oh, from 2000 to now in 25 years, it’s outperformed the S&P 500. Yeah, maybe two years out of that it outperformed the S&P 500. It’s been a shitty investment compared to stocks for a very, very long time. So that’s the opportunity cost that you’re losing when you own some of these stocks for a long time because now you’re sitting there with a 50% retracement and that’s all you’re thinking about is UEC while a lot of other stocks and, you know, and you’re not participating offshore, you’re not participating in data center growth and AI.

Frank Curzio 30:07

So, you know, just UEC is coming to the point where it’s a buy, but always be ready to sell these uranium stocks when they go a lot higher. You make 20, 30%. They’re just not stocks that you buy and hold forever. They’re just not. It’s, you know, and I hate to say that because, you know, one of my best friends is in the industry and I watched him build this company from scratch. But it’s the truth with uranium. Just people do not get emotional about your stocks. It’s hard not to, but stop falling in love with these things. There’s times to buy them, times to sell them. Don’t buy gold and say gold’s great no matter what. I don’t care. It’s great in recession. It’s great during inflation, deflation. No, it’s not. It’s great when you have central banks buying the shit out of it and we’re spending a shitload of money where, you know, the government continues to increase spending. Yes, it makes sense, right? Gold does make sense, especially, you know, after the war with Ukraine where we took Russia off the swift system, which was not on the table.

Frank Curzio 30:55

And every country’s like, holy shit, if you shut down all of our banking, all our transfers, everything will fuck. So we need an alternative. So that’s why Bitcoin goes higher. And that’s why you’re looking at gold going higher. But there’s certain times to buy these things and certain times to stay away. We’re getting to the point where it’s a buy here, but be ready because when uranium does come back and you see this thing go back up to 20 or 17, which it will, be ready to sell. Don’t, it’s hard to sell when things are going higher because you feel like, you know, you’re invincible. But that’s the case with uranium. We’ve been pretty good able to forecast this industry and be in at the right times and not be in the right times. Right now is one of the times that you kind of want to be in, man. It’s at $9 is insane. It was just $18, I feel like, when I was interviewing Amir at our conference last year. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that too, Daniel, with uranium.

Daniel Creech 31:36

Nope, nope.

Frank Curzio 31:36

We’ll cover it. But any other questions?

Daniel Creech 31:40

No, sir.

Frank Curzio 31:40

Okay, bye. See you later. So, guys, listen, Thursday, askcurzio.com, ask any question you want. Take advantage of this. It’s a really cool, you know, podcast that this used to be behind the paywall. It’s not behind the paywall anymore. So it’s for everyone. And, you know, Daniel and I just speak off the cuff. So we like to get all of your questions, let you know what we like, what we don’t like. But definitely use this as a tool because it’s free. And I know a lot of you, especially now in this market, you have a lot of questions because you’re probably looking and saying, people saying the NASDAQ is out of high, but my portfolio’s down 20%. You’re not alone. There’s a lot of portfolios that are down right now. They’re not positioned right because, you know, high interest rates are impacting so many industries. It’s just when you have six, seven of the largest companies in the world, trillion-dollar companies that are doing much better than everybody else, it brings these indices higher and it pays to own the S&P 500, right?

Frank Curzio 32:29

It pays to own the NASDAQ altogether. But individual names, you’re seeing a lot of names get smoked, really, really get smoked. And I think that’s going to continue through earnings season, which is, what, like a month away, right? I feel like earnings season just ended, but it’s like a month away. So, and I just, I can’t see going forward. I don’t know if you have thoughts on this too, Daniel. I just can’t see, as, you know, someone who runs a company, again, on a much smaller scale than some of these S&P 500 companies, I can’t see a CEO saying, “Hey, we had great results. That’s great for the last three months.” I can’t see him issuing very strong guidance over the next quarter and over the next year with this many uncertainties where all your input costs are up through the roof, higher interest rates, cost of debt is much more expensive. You’re going to, you know, you have to expect that consumers and businesses are going to pull back a little bit because their costs are much, much higher. I just can’t see these companies coming out on 33% earnings growth year over year and say, “Hey, we’re going to grow even faster over the next month, over the next three months or the next year.” I just can’t see that because, you know, you’re overpromising.

Frank Curzio 33:25

And if you want to deliver, you have a 30% whack in one day like we saw with DIX pointing goods, right? And that’s what you have. All the optimism there, hey, these guys said this last quarter a couple months ago and all of a sudden they were like, “Oh, business sucks.” Out of nowhere, out of nowhere. They’re like, “Holy shit, it’s horrible.” They lowered the estimates tremendously. And the analysts, I think when you see five, six downgrades, Daniel, right, in one day, you know that the analysts are really pissed off because they didn’t anticipate this and they will listen. They all talk, they have a direct line to the CEO, to the company. They all do their numbers. They do their cash flow models. They’re always in touch with them and the CFO to get their numbers right. And when it’s that wrong and you’re seeing four, five downgrades, that means the analysts are pissed and they’re not coming back for a while. And you need that, that institutional support as well. So I think we’re heading into a little bit of a storm going into next quarter and let’s see.

Frank Curzio 34:11

But have cash on the sidelines. You can get 4% interest in a lot of different places. I told you, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, so many different places that you can buy, you know, with no risk getting 4%. Be in the sidelines. You’re going to get an opportunity to buy some names at very, very cheap prices. So.

Daniel Creech 34:27

Buckle up.

Frank Curzio 34:28

With that said, that’s it for us. Again, questions, comments, askcurzio.com and we’ll see you next week. Take care.

Announcer 34:33

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.