Wall Street Unplugged
Episode: 753December 23, 2020

Your list of winners and losers for 2021

As we wrap up 2020 and get ready to head into the new year, many folks are left wondering whether this bull market can continue in 2021.

John Petrides, portfolio manager at Tocqueville Asset Management, says he’s still incredibly bullish on the markets going into the year. Today, he shares what he believes could push stocks higher from here… discusses the recent IPOs of Airbnb and Doordash… and shares some of his favorite ideas for 2021. [8:53]

As we all know, 2020 has been a wild ride—and we’ve seen it reflected in several of our advisories. But we’re still finding a lot of great ideas, even as markets hit new all-time highs. [51:26]

Thank you for all of your incredible support. Wishing you and your loved ones a very happy holiday.

Transcript

Wall Street Unplugged | 753

Your list of winners and losers for 2021

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

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s December 23rd. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Today is the eve of Christmas Eve. Many of you scrambling for last second gifts, may not have time to listen to this podcast until after Christmas, but definitely give a listen. Lot of picks coming on.

Frank Curzio: Also, there’s a lot going on. The end of the year, right? It’s supposed to be slow, people going on vacation right away, just taking off. But you have this stimulus bill that finally passed, which was kind of a joke, right? There’s a 25%, maybe 25%, I think less than that, that’s going to go to small businesses and families. It’s amazing how both sides, you had Trump come out, and then you had people who really don’t like Trump, like AOC, Pelosi, on both sides, saying, “Listen, this is a joke. Let’s increase this.”

Frank Curzio: And you need to increase it. I mean, we’re not handing out free checks here to people who were irresponsible. We’re handing out checks to people who we forced to close their businesses and restaurants. Let’s do the right thing here. What’s all this international poor garbage? I mean, come on. We knew it was going to happen, but really. Was it a 5,000 page report that nobody could read? I mean, come on. Give me a break. Enough of the politics here. There’s people that are really struggling out there.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, we passed a dialed down version. I don’t know if it’s going to be changed, but it’s going to be around $600 in checks to individuals I think under, whatever, $95,000, and as it goes up it decreases a certain percentage, or whatever it is. Then, $600 per child. At least, that should pass. I don’t see the president vetoing this, as of now, to try to get something changed.

Frank Curzio: We had banks catching a bid. Holy cow. Everyone hated the banks, everyone hated the banks, which is why I recommended a boring large capital investment bank. I’ll give it away, since we’re up above the buy-up-to price, which is Goldman Sachs. The earnings are going to explode for many, many years. That’s not the traditional JP Morgans and Wells Fargo. This is an investment bank that, investment banks like Morgan Stanley, they do incredibly well when you’re seeing massive liquidity, volatility, and that’s going to continue through next year, easily. But now this thing is up nice for us, and it’s kind of funny. Why are they surging now? Everybody now loves them. The Fed gave them the green light to return money back to their shareholders, maybe buybacks or dividends.

Frank Curzio: It’s kind of interesting when you think about it, right? Seeing the Fed say, “We still have COVID problems, we’re still weak, we need to keep it straight for forever, but the banks, hey. You know what? Now you can take that money off your balance sheet and give it to shareholders.” Yeah, it’s good for the stock price, but you’re weakening your balance sheets. What is it? You’re saying you should be cautious, you’re still nervous, but if you’re nervous you’re giving the okay to banks. It’s just crazy. It just shows you our environment where the Fed’s going to continue to spend money, the economy is on much, much better footing, but yet they’re going to keep interest rates low for a considerable amount of time, which is going to continue to inflate these markets, which is insane. Trading at, what, 23 times earnings now? It’s incredible, incredible.

Frank Curzio: But you’re looking at those banks, yes. Green light. Return that money to shareholders. You’re seeing JP Morgan come out, announce a buyback. That stock was up, popped 5%. $30 billion, like it’s nothing. A lot of these banks have so much capital on the books, it’s crazy. Now that’s good for banks. Suddenly, everybody loves them after hating them. Mike Mayo gets on and says he loves them. That’s kind of like, you know, he’s a great analyst, but now everything’s bank. Just like everything’s bitcoin, once it breaks the new highs. It’s funny. All the traders, “Banks are terrible, terrible.” They go up 10, 15, 20%. “Banks are good, banks are good.”

Frank Curzio: Whatever’s working, that’s what they’re going to talk about and recommend these days. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s nice to be ahead of the curve there. You have stocks that pulled back three straight days before today. Today, I’m doing this mid-day, the market is up a little bit. We’re still trading close to all-time highs, despite consumer confidence crashing, despite personal income and personal spending, that data released today, both of them were down. You say, “Well, they’re down, whatever, 0.1%, whatever it is,” but when you look under the hood, especially at personal income, and you really have to look under the hood, because it separates into different categories and you can really see what’s doing good, what’s doing bad.

Frank Curzio: Almost all the economic data, it’s not just one number. One number could show rental properties are skyrocketing and it covers so many other statistics in there that are terrible, right? But, yet, if you own a home and you’re renting, you’re doing well. You really have to look in between the lines, which a lot of people don’t do. They just throw out the number. When you look under the hood, personal income down 0.4%, but proprietor’s income, which is sole proprietorship, businesses run by one person, was down 8.5%. You have government, social benefits, down 3.3%. It’s funny, because those who have a job, which is called compensation to employees, so those who are doing okay or are allowed to stay open, that compensation to employees was up 0.4% due to increase in wages and salaries.

Frank Curzio: So you see the clear winners and losers. There’s lots of people that are struggling tremendously. That’s a monster number, 8.5%. Yeah, sole proprietorship, businesses run by one person. That’s a lot of people out there. But, man, when you’re forcing so many of the things closed, and I know two people just like this. One of them owns a gym and has two part time employees, closed. Getting crushed. Come on, man. We’re looking at the stimulus bill. Let’s get this thing passed, which we did, but come one. It’s $600 and all this garbage? 75% goes to, millions of other things, in a 5,000 plus page report? Give me a break.

Frank Curzio: But you’re seeing the divide, winners and losers. Businesses that are up and running are doing good. You see record revenue, and those that are struggling are basically closed and locked down again. They’re going to get a $600 check. Good for them. Holy cow.

Frank Curzio: Another crazy thing, if you’re a growth company you should IPO as quick as possible, because, man, the moves in Snowflake, Airbnb, DoorDash. Forget about post IPO, which you saw that 100% move, but look at the valuations. They’re up 2X to 4X about where they were valued six months ago into the pre-IPO, then the IPO, and then these things double and some of them have tripled, some names you’re looking at 2X to 4X. That’s how much these valuations increased over a six month period? Your business? Think about that. Your business is worth $10 million and then six months later your revenue’s kind of a little bit higher. It’s same, up 25% year over year, whatever it is, and your valuation increases by 3X, 4X? Holy cow. Go public, if you can.

Frank Curzio: Lots to talk about. I’m going to bring on one my favorite, and your favorite, guests, who is John Petrides. John’s portfolio manager, Tocqueville Asset Management. I’ve known John for over five years now. An incredible analyst, great on TV. I love watching him, knows how to explain things to every day investors, where’s not talking about EBITA and all these crazy terms which sometimes you get, depending on who you’re listening to, but he’s very conscious of helping the little investors and the mom and pop investors.

Frank Curzio: I know he’s one of your favorites, because not only does he provide you with great analysis, but he also gives away a lot of free picks. Often those picks are usually in his portfolio, so he’s talking his book, which you know he owns and his firm owns. Many of these names, since we didn’t do a Dollar Stock Club, which is taking a pick from our guests, many of his picks are up a ton. He was very bullish in March, April, May, came out with lots of great picks for us. Enough of the buildup here, and let’s bring in John right now. Hey, buddy. How’s it going?

John Petrides: Good, Frank. How are you?

Frank Curzio: Good, good. The first question, the most important thing I want to discuss with you, this is by far the most important topic before we get into everything, because there’s so much going on, is did you make the playoffs in your fantasy football leagues? Are you in the playoffs right now or no?

John Petrides: I’m in the Superbowl. My youngest son and I are in the Superbowl of one league, but I didn’t make the playoffs of the other three. So, 25% batting average. It is what it is. It’s a strange year in fantasy, oh, my God. It was just-

Frank Curzio: I mean, you had an opportunity to pick-

John Petrides: It was a really strange year.

Frank Curzio: -up a lot of great guys during the year, which teams are so different. You have, you look at-

John Petrides: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: So many running backs out. The top two picks are out and you got just a lot of injuries, but Justin Jefferson came out of nowhere.

John Petrides: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: You’re looking at so many players that are incredible that you could pick up, but, yeah, teams are definitely different.

John Petrides: Yeah, I got, in my big league, after my draft results, I got an A+ rating from their artificial intelligence and I missed the playoffs. I had guys like Ezekiel Elliott, who underperformed, and Le’Veon Bell underperformed, and Lamar Jackson was my keeper from last year. He underperformed where he was supposed to be, so it was a mess. It was a mess.

Frank Curzio: It’s amazing, too, because you see the algorithms, but it’s amazing where this is the first year I’ve seen probably in the last 15 where you’re looking at high frequency training algorithms, a lot of them are down. I guess being prepared for a Black Swan event isn’t part of the computer system. You can see how-

John Petrides: Right, right, right.

Frank Curzio: Right? It’s kind of crazy to see the performance. I’m not ragging on them, because these guys have been right all the other time, and I think a lot of that has to do with front running and getting in early and just trades and not even knowing anything about the companies, but again that’s my personal opinion, but still it’s kind of amazing to see over the past couple of quarters of how a lot of these guys have underperformed. It’s just surprising.

John Petrides: Yeah, it’s been a strange year on a lot of levels.

Frank Curzio: Let’s talk about a lot of the things going on. One of the topics you say is analysts’ spirits appear to be back. You’re talking about those major IPOs, the Snowflakes, DoorDashes, Airbnbs. I mentioned this, John, that we look at the IPO when they come out and how much they’ve gone up since the IPO, but I think people don’t realize, you look back six months and the valuation of these companies is 2X to 3X in six months.

John Petrides: Yeah, it’s crazy.

Frank Curzio: The valuation pre-IPO, I think even you look at Snowflake where Buffett came in at 120. I think it was probably valued at 75 or something six months ago. And now it’s 350, went to 400. What’s going on here? Can this continue? Is this all about hype? You don’t want to move in front of a moving train here. It seems like these things you could buy after the news and still make money, which is a very scary scenario to me. It doesn’t last, it usually doesn’t last long, right?

John Petrides: I think, Frank, what you’re seeing in the world is that there is an excess supply of cash and you need a place to park it. This COVID, the COVID economic shutdown was very different, clearly, from 2008/2009, the great financial crisis. After we got out of the crisis and the Fed printed all this money and the government provided all this stimulus, you still had to deliver the economy. The economy still had a lot of debt that it had to work out. The banks had to go into all this financial regulatory situation that prevented them from issuing more capital and making more loans.

John Petrides: Now you’re in an environment where literally we shut the light switch off. The government and the Federal Reserve have provided all of this money to the market, whether it’s through quantitative easing or the CARES Act and now a second stimulus package is on deck here. You had a massive amount of capital that’s really been pushed into the economy and now that we have the vaccine starting to roll out and hopefully we get a wide acceptance by humanity, in theory, six to eight months from now we turn the switch back on and you have a stronger economy.

John Petrides: Economists are projecting a 5% GDP growth rate year over year, which would be the fastest growth rate since 1984. You have interest rates at zero, so the cost to borrow money is nothing. You have, by and large, the U.S. housing market is really strong and you have the most amount of money sitting in money market mutual funds in history. And you have $18 trillion of global bonds that have a negative yield. The U.S. 10 year Treasury is yielding less than one percent. You’re not earning any money on your cash. What are you going to do with all of this money once we get through the COVID here? What are you going to do with all this cash?

John Petrides: Corporate earnings have proven to be very strong, beating expectations. You have this massive amount of capital. Risk appetite is back and it’s looking for a place to park and it’s going into private equity. It’s going into the stock market. It’s going into IPOs.

Frank Curzio: SPACs.

John Petrides: You’ve seen this new SPACs, special purpose acquisition companies, you’ve seen that come through. People are looking to get a greater return on their investment than zero, so they’re just pushing capital into whatever’s going to work or whatever, wherever they feel that there’s a greater propensity of return. They’re willing to take on more risk than where they were six to nine months ago. Even on the corporate side, look at, companies are flush with cash. There’s a reason why Johnson and Johnson took on 30 year debt, paying 2.75%, or Amazon and Google taking on 25, 30 year paper for less than 3% to borrow for the coupon stamp. I mean, they’re earning that 3% in their sleep. That’s free money.

John Petrides: When you’re a $2 trillion company, it’s hard to grow organically. So what do you do? You’re going to go out and buy your revenue. You’re seeing a massive amount of push into the mergers and acquisitions. You’re seeing deal flow in every sector. It doesn’t matter, you’re seeing it in banks recently. You saw two regional banks merge a couple weeks ago. Last week, I should say. You’re seeing in the energy space, tech, healthcare, and we just think that’s going to be a place that’s going to continue in 2021 and beyond.

John Petrides: Definitely a more bullish stance for risk assets going into the new year based on two things. There are two things that derail that. One is if the Democrats win in the Georgia runoff, then that gives Biden a clear path to increase corporate taxes, which is bad for stocks in the short run. Then, obviously, humanity’s acceptance of the vaccine. If we get spooked and there are side effects that come up and it prevents people and people wait, then this whole socially distanced economy just continues.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it’s interesting. I guess my question to you is, how much is that factored in? This is a market where we have Interactive Corp on the books. I’m familiar with the platform which they’re spinning out and I’ve used all the platforms and I’ve built my whole company around this platform that we’re using right now. My thesis, what I recommended in August, was that they were going to spin this out. They announced that, “Hey, we’re officially spinning out,” and the stock takes off 15%.

Frank Curzio: We’re seeing this a lot now where it used to be buy the rumor, sell the news. It’s buy the rumors and buy after the news, and you’re still making money. I guess my question is, how long can this continue and how much is this baked in? Considering we all know, right? What we do know is that interest rates are going to stay low for a long time. There’s no place else to really put your money to earn. You’re better off even putting it in banks now. They just announced they could increase buy backs and dividends now. You’ve seen that sector take off and those stocks are relatively cheap to book value.

Frank Curzio: How long can this continue? Where, I feel like we’ve been talking about this for three, four months, we’ve seen the market surge to all-time highs. We’re trading at, what, 22 times fold earnings? Around there? Maybe 23 times fold earnings?

John Petrides: Yep.

Frank Curzio: So I’m with you. I see money continuing to pour into it, but is a lot of that factored in already? Or you see 2021 as, “Hey, it’s got to continue. There’s no place else for the money to go.”?

John Petrides: I think you have to unpack a couple things. One is the stock market and then the bond market. I think the returns on stocks and bonds are all a function of how the number of COVID cases come down, how the economy reopens because more people have become vaccinated, and how those people that have been wanting to spend money have sat on the sidelines just because they’re in some sort of quarantine situation. They’re not living the life that they were back in January and February. It all depends on that.

John Petrides: If we are able to get to a bit more of a normalized lifestyle by the summer time, I think stocks can totally run higher. If it takes longer and it’s a year from now, Frank, and we’re still rolling back the economy or the car is stalling here where we’re trying to get back to normalcy, then stocks are going to sell off because the market is clearly looking through the pandemic. The market is definitely looking through the virus. If you believe the in bull case here which I’m putting forth, COVID has been known as the great accelerator. E-commerce was a trend that was growing. Now, because we’re on lockdown, it has taken that to a whole different level.

John Petrides: Companies, we are all doing more with less. Every single company, every single person, every household, is having to adjust in some fashion. On the corporate side, it’s making profit margins, it’s holding up profit margins well. If you can grow the top line, if you can grow your revenue and your company overall is leaner, your profit margins are going to grow and that’s going to push stock prices higher. Then bake in 2021 and 2022, where companies will start buying back more of their stock, something they haven’t been doing, or at least cut back on, because they’ve been husbanding cash to deal with and have greater liquidity in this Black Swan event.

John Petrides: I do think that the stock market can go higher. I do think it’s set up for really good positioning. Conversely, I think longer dated bonds and the bond market is the big risk, because although the Federal Reserve, to your point, has said they’re going to keep interest rates at zero through 2023 or 2024, that doesn’t mean interest rates can’t go up. Interest rates move on inflation expectations. If the situation is what I’m putting forth to you, the strong housing market, potential 5% GDP growth rate, strong stock market, we end COVID or reduce the impact of COVID, guess what? The economy is going to rip. It has the potential to rip. The Fed is going to do what it did back in 2013, when then Chairman Bernanke said, “Well, we’re going to cut back on our asset purchase.”

John Petrides: You’re going to have a potential taper tantrum 2.0, where the Fed went into COVID with going interest rates zero, then they said we’re going to buy unibonds and we’re going to buy treasuries and we’re going to buy agencies and we’re going to buy corporate bonds. Now, if the economy rips and you start to see inflation come back, they’ll just walk backward. They’ll stop buying treasuries, they’ll stop buying unis, they’ll stop buying agencies, they’ll stop buying treasuries or they’ll just lower the pace, which is an act of quantitative tightening without having to increase interest rates.

John Petrides: Right now, the U.S. 30 year Treasury has a 1.8% yield, which means if you bought the U.S. 30-year Treasury right now, you’re locking in 1.8% return on an after tax, after inflation, at a pre-tax, pre-inflation basis for the next 30 years. If you include taxes and inflation, you’re basically locking in a negative rate of return. Again, then you get back in this, if you remember back in 2017-18, you get back into a TINA market, there is no alternative other than stocks or fill in the blank risky assets, private equity, SPAC, whatever it is. I do think this has room to run.

Frank Curzio: You always send me notes and we talk offline sometimes just about different subjects we’re going to talk about. We know the Fed wants to inflate the markets, right?

John Petrides: Yep.

Frank Curzio: Regardless of how much you’re paying in your electricity bill or in tuition and almost every one of your bills and food is up tremendously, it doesn’t matter, because what they look at is consumer price index. That’s below 2%, maintained below 2%. But is inflation a risk for you or quick? Like it happens really quick? Again, it was a great segue, because you mentioned that, but what worries me is you mentioned the numbers before globally, trillions and trillions and trillions. You said it was 8.5, 9 trillion, whatever it is, flooding the markets. This money’s going directly, these are checks, they’re bypassing the economy. They’re not going through the economy. They go right to the consumer, right to businesses.

Frank Curzio: This isn’t 2008, where you sent all this money to the banks to stabilize the system and then they invested in the banks, and we all know what happened there, and the Fed made an incredible amount of money, backstopping everything. But this is different, where we haven’t seen inflation in a long time. I feel like still nobody’s really talking about it. You see a couple hedge fund managers worried. Could we get inflation a lot quicker than expected? Is there a point where the Fed, maybe mid-year, because we surge, I think most of us are bullish and I agree with everything that you said… What happens if we see this massive inflation where the Fed actually changes its tune and says, “Okay, now that we have inflation, it goes to 2.5, 3%?” Which may seem a lot right now, but it’s really not historically, and they start backtracking, saying, “We might raise rates.” Is that something of a risk?

John Petrides: I mean, that is the ultimate risk in the bond market. The bond portion, you’re going to have your viewers and your readers are most likely not all in stocks. They most likely have some allocation to bonds, whether it’s in their 401K, their retirement account, something along those lines. Longer dated bond funds, as Warren Buffet once said, right now is return free risk. You’re not getting anything for the inflation risk that you’re taking on in your portfolio. You really have to look at that portion of the portfolio, which I think there’s a tremendous amount of risk.

John Petrides: Now, inflation is good for stocks if it is somewhat controlled. If you go back, if we get into a hyperinflation, a massive rise in inflation like you saw in the 1970s, hyperinflation that we saw in the 1920s in Germany, that’s going to be a problem. I don’t think anyone’s expecting that. I do think the crater in the economy left by COVID is still severe. I still think there are a lot of businesses and a lot of people that are suffering. I do think a lot of the stimulus checks that go out to people are going to go to help pay down some bills and pay their rent and are going to go from a needs standpoint.

John Petrides: When COVID hit the economy, Frank, remember, we were at a 3.5% unemployment rate. By and large, the economy was healthy. People could absorb and companies could absorb a punch to the gut. We’re nine months later. We haven’t had a stimulus package or a bailout package from the government since May or June. There are a lot of businesses and a lot of people who have run out of their liquidity. Maybe the businesses have shut down. Maybe people are starting to file for, the government’s probably prevented filing for bankruptcy, but you’re considering that. I think this stimulus check, when it ever gets approved and sent, and hopefully it’s sooner rather than later, will be helpful to provide some liquidity, some relief.

John Petrides: Once we get through COVID, we turn the switch back on, and I do see we should have a massive rise in employment again where people get hired, much like we saw in the summertime. Remember, the unemployment rate went from, where are we, 18, 19%? Something like that in April and March? And it came all the way down to, where are we now, 7%? A little bit under 8%? Something like that? And that’s stalled. I would assume the economic data that comes out in January is going to be terrible. With the amount of how the economies are starting to roll back, with the amount of hospitalizations, people are getting more nervous, governments are getting more nervous, that sort of thing, I would assume that the data that comes out, the economy will underperform what happens in January. Again, we just hope that enough people get vaccinated in the next three or four months and we can start turning the corner.

Frank Curzio: I mean, I couldn’t agree more, too, in terms of COVID, in terms of the markets. I guess my question to you is, you’re bullish going into next year. What sectors do you think are going tattoo benefit the most? You mentioned companies said there’s no place to really find yield. I won’t say absolutely no place, but you mentioned 10-year Treasury below 1%. Yet we have a lot. I think it’s 1.7, 1.8 is the yield on the S&P 500, but you’re going to find lots of companies yielding more than 2% right now, 2.5%, 3%, and good companies with good growth profile. Once we start seeing the effects of COVID and the vaccine and more things opening up, but does that go to small cap cyclicals as well? Which have made a nice comeback, but still underperform in the market.

Frank Curzio: Casinos, hotels, airlines, travel related stocks, that have gotten hurt, where you saw revenues come down. I think people have to realize that these companies are going to be stronger than ever. They’re lean as ever and then when you’re seeing that bounce back and people travel, that revenue, they’re not just going to go back to their highs, they’re going to surge past those things. But is that an area of looking in? What’s some of the sectors that benefit the most?

John Petrides: I’m going to answer the question a little bit differently, not in terms of sectors, but I think asset classes. There are two asset classes that have carried the entire year: growthy tech, right? And basically any spectrum across the tech. We talked ad nauseum about large cap, mega cap tech, but also small- and mid-cap. Tech has really driven the horse here on the equity side. Then high quality, longer dated bonds. Literally, up until the first week in November, it was those two asset classes that drove the whole market.

John Petrides: What happened that Monday, what was it, November 9th or whatever it was, post-election, we had Biden declared victory, but more importantly you had a split Congress, again, which would prevent a Biden tax increase. The split Congress was the key, which the market viewed very favorably. That Monday, Pfizer came out and said they had a 95% efficacy on their vaccine. Then you had Moderna come out soon after saying 94% efficacy, then you had AstraZeneca come out and say they had a 90% efficacy.

John Petrides: What happened? Everything in between those two poles, everything in between growthy tech and high quality bonds, which had a negative yield for the most part, had a negative return for the year, rallied. Small cap rallied, value rallied, international rallied, dividends rallied, preferred rallied, high yield bonds rallied. Everything in that middle. I think in the new year the two places that look the most interesting are yield-oriented securities, non-bond yield-oriented securities.

John Petrides: I think the investors are going to wake up and if you’re in retirement, you’re going to realize that your portfolio is not throwing off the cash flow that it once did. You don’t want to take on the volatility that the stock market brings, so you’re going to embrace dividends once again. Frank, behind value, dividends are the second worst performance factor this year. Growth, momentum, they’re the best, but-

Frank Curzio: Great stat.

John Petrides: -the worst performing factors are value and dividend. They’re down like 25% as a factor, which, to me, doesn’t make… Why is that? Financials, energy, utilities, those are your traditional dividend producing sectors that make up that factor, and they’re performing poorly, but I do think investors are going to embrace dividends again as they look for more yield.

John Petrides: Then international, listen, repairing from COVID doesn’t happen for free. We’re printing a lot of money. We’re taking on a lot of debt. It still boggles my mind that the dollar has been as strong as it has been. This whole wave of COVID started in the East, right? It started in China, Korea, and then made its way through Western Europe and then into the U.S. Particularly, China and Korea, they’re recovering from COVID and then, of course, we’re hitting an air pocket here in Europe, but if you follow that same sort of strand, international companies and countries outside the U.S. appear to be able to recover a bit quicker. I don’t think the dollar will be as strong as it has been and I think you’ll have a faster recovery outside the U.S.

John Petrides: Listen, international has underperformed U.S. domestic for the last decade or so. I think international stocks are quite attractive here. Those two asset classes to me, higher dividend paying stocks and international, are attractive in ’21.

Frank Curzio: Okay, now the fun part, which is why you’re one of the most popular guests, is you always offer ideas. How is it that you play this? I know a lot of these companies are in our portfolio at Tocqueville, but what are some of the ways that investors can play this? Because there are a lot of options right now for dividend paying stocks. We actually started a newsletter based on what we heard from our clients, because we said, “Okay.” We listened to our customers, and they were like, “We need income, we’re dying for income.”

Frank Curzio: We started a great income product. It’s not traditional where, hey, it’s the highest yield. We look at the underlying company. It better be growing, otherwise that yield’s going to be pretty worthless if it’s a 5%, 6% yield and the stock’s down 20%. But I think there’s a lot of names to choose from here. What are some of the ones that you like?

John Petrides: We have an enhanced income strategy as well, and it’s tax managed. Thirty-five to 45 individual positions. Similarly, one of the factors that we look into to buy a position in this portfolio: it’s got to have above 3% dividend yield; it has to have a management team that’s grown its dividend annually over the past one, three, five year period; it has to have a below average payout ratio; and it has to have a strong balance sheet that it can absorb the Black Swan event so it doesn’t have to cut the dividend in times like we just went through. In fact, the projected growth of the income in the portfolio from the stocks is going to be about 4% from this year to last year, from ’20 to ’21.

John Petrides: One of the names that we own, we like, and I own it personally, it’s a REIT, publicly traded real estate investment trust, called Stag Industrial. Ticker is S-T-A-G. Stag is a mid-cap industrial REIT. What do they do? They own and operate warehouses that benefit from e-commerce. If you want to play the Amazon, e-commerce, where we’ve all had that step function higher to ordering more stuff online delivered to our house and now more people in the world are more comfortable with that, more industries are embracing that way to get direct-to-consumer environment, these guys just hold the stuff in their warehouses. Trucks come and pick it up.

John Petrides: They have a 4.75% dividend yield. They’ve grown their dividend about 2% annually, so pretty much with the rate of inflation over the last five years. They’ve been growing through acquisition. Quite timely, in January of his year they did an equity offering. They issued stock and they got liquidity back, so they did it at a higher price, and then COVID hit. Instead of using that capital from the equity offering to go out and do a ton of acquisitions, that actually allowed them to have some liquidity in a time when the capital market shut down briefly.

John Petrides: Then, as the market thawed, they were able to use that equity and actually went out and bought more square footage, more industrial. They do roll up over time. They have about 470 properties in and around the United States. This is a way to play, and it’s trading at about 16 times funds from operations. In the REIT world, think of funds from operations, it’s kind of like earnings per share. To put that into context, Frank, you’re probably familiar with Prologis. Maybe some of your viewers are familiar with Prologis. I do not own Prologis. Our strategy does not own Prologis, but Prologis is the elephant in the room in the industrial REIT space. Prologis trades at 30 times funds.

John Petrides: Stag trades at about a 40% discount to Prologis on a valuation standpoint. Now, it’s a fraction of the size. Prologis is a large cap company. Stag is only a $6, $7 billion company, but why can’t Stag have a higher multiple, a multiple closer to Prologis? They recently issued a press release for 2020. Their net operating income is going to come in higher than previously forecasted. The final trim here is, if you think post-COVID that we’re going to have more onshoring of U.S. manufacturing, where we’re not going to deal with exporting and further contact that caused supply chain issues and companies are going to want to reduce the supply chain logistics for delivering their products, well, guess what? You’re going to need more warehouses and industrial space in the U.S., which suits Stag and the industrial REIT space quite well.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I love the single tenant part with industrial, because there’s some REITs that are different. Really into commercial real estate. In major cities, that might not come back as quick, but even when I look at the chart, what I like here is that it’s not even at pre-COVID highs yet. You might say, “Well, it’s not at highs,” and, again, this is something that has underperformed if you look from the year compared to everything else, but when you look at some of these technology, NASDAQ is up 20 whatever percent now, right?

John Petrides: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: So companies like this-

John Petrides: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. No, go ahead.

John Petrides: This comes into play. If you look at the VNQ, Victor Nancy queen, that’s the Vanguard REIT ETF. When you say it’s underperformed, well, you have to look at it within the sector. The entire REIT space has been terrible, but this goes back to my point that, what has the market favored this year? It has been growth and tech, and more recently cyclicals. If you paid a dividend and you were a REIT, you underperformed. This stock is still slightly negative on a total return basis for the year, and that’s a little bit better than the DNQ, but again nothing to write home about when you’re down in low single digits.

John Petrides: My point is, I think that this yield play reflates and investors get more comfortable back into those companies that are paying out above average dividend yield, because with COVID hopefully, eventually, sooner rather than later, in the rear view mirror and we’re able to turn the corner, investors will be less worried about people’s liquidity and will start embracing it and wake up to say, “Well, I’m not earning anything on my cash. I’m earning nothing on my bonds. Maybe I should start looking to stocks with above average dividend yields.”

John Petrides: I think Stag has a very good long term trend in its back in terms of being an operator of e-commerce. Amazon, by the way, is its largest customer, but it’s only 2% of Stag’s total revenue. Just goes to show you how diversified the business is and, yes, they’re a player with Amazon, but whereas Prologis, Amazon is a much bigger player for their internal revenue.

Frank Curzio: One thing that you did say is when it comes to your dividend fund, one of the things I think you say is you look for companies that raise a dividend past three to four years. I’m thinking, there are a lot of companies that really played it safe, right? They had to lay off employees. Some of them were able to furlough and then they went to layoffs, whatever, but they cut costs dramatically so they’re much more lean businesses. That resulted in some of them cutting their dividends and now, in the last quarter, they not only reinstated them, but they reinstated them I think two quarters ago, and now they raised dividends because is booming.

Frank Curzio: Have you ever looked at those? Because it seems like there’s a lot of hidden gems there that you might be able to find, compared to just looking at a lot of dividend aristocrats and things like that which, hey, if you bought Exxon, good for you at the bottom. You should be doing well on a safe company with a nice dividend, right?

John Petrides: Right, right. Yeah, definitely. We don’t screen those companies out. The question is, by cutting the dividend, what did they do with their liquidity to repair the balance sheet, to make sure that if and when the Black Swan event happens again, they don’t have to cut the dividend ever again, right?

John Petrides: There’s a lot of those plays in the retail space, retail apparel space. We don’t own this, but Kohl’s is one of those that cut their dividend and the stock went all the way down and then it’s rebounded quite strongly. We want to look at the underlying company fundamentals. I would say, yes, they’re on the radar. They’re not screened out, but to me if there’s an attractive company that did not cut its dividend during all this time and the valuation is attractive and it has underperformed relative to market, to me, that’s icing on the cake.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to ask you a question, little off topic here, because something that we normally don’t talk about much, but everything you said earlier in terms of why the market’s going to scream higher in 2021–that’s my word, scream–but go higher. You’re bullish, I’m bullish on markets. But all the factors that you said when it comes to low interest rates, more spending with the Fed, that’s probably anticipated, not just from the U.S. but central governments all around the world, are you looking at gold or even a bitcoin in terms of your portfolio? Where, look, everybody’s talking about bitcoin right now, but you did have Square invested in it a while ago, then you had PayPal, now you have some of the biggest investment legends who didn’t understand it suddenly in it. Now you’re seeing companies with that cash balance, which I actually think is actually crazy. I mean, their cash balance are in bitcoin now and companies are going up tremendously because of that.

Frank Curzio: But are you looking at these alternatives? Because, really quick, when you look at a large cap gold stocks, like the Newmonts, and when you screen for those, and the Barrick Golds, if you just take those names out and you look at their growth, they look like software companies.

John Petrides: Yeah, right.

Frank Curzio: The margins are incredible. They’re producing for less than 1,000 an ounce. We’re at 1,900 almost. Massive amount of cash flow, raising their dividend, and they’re growing those earnings tremendously, much, much faster than the overall market, and trading at market multiples or cheaper than overall market. But does that come across at all? Or is it no, not really?

John Petrides: A couple things. We typically run balanced portfolios. That enhanced income strategy that I mentioned is a portion of our client portfolios. We also invest in fixed income and core equity and those things. Within a core equity strategy, we usually have a 2% to 3% allocation to gold. The idea behind gold is been doing this a long time. Trying to value gold is really hard. Gold doesn’t produce anything, it doesn’t kick off any cash flow. It’s not a company, per se, that you would invest in. However, I’ve been through enough Black Swan events in my career to know, I’m smart enough to know I don’t know what the future holds. Because of that, having an allocation to gold in a portfolio does offer some diversification for client portfolios.

John Petrides: Where does gold get crushed? It’s in the scenario you put, the question you asked me earlier, the rate of change on interest rates. If inflation spikes to 8% and the Fed puts the brakes on the economy and they’re now increasing, I’m not forecasting this, but they’re increasing interest rates from 0% today to 5% of the Fed funds rate by the end of 2024. Guess what? Gold’s going down. We saw that. Look what gold did in 2016, ’17, and ’18, as the Fed was increasing interest rates 25 basis points. It took a long time. It basically too the Fed to cut rates again and COVID for gold to get back to where it was post the financial crisis, and really all the way back to the European debt crisis in 2011.

John Petrides: The long winded way to say, our team specifically within Tocqueville does not make a call on gold, but we do have it as a portion of our overall asset allocation to help diversify client portfolios.

Frank Curzio: John, I’m familiar with your company, Tocqueville, but I bet you a lot of people might not be. Talk a little bit about it. I always like to give you time. This is a company that I know you’ve moved to recently that you’re extremely happy with. Talk about that, Tocqueville, and if people want to learn more, how can they do that?

John Petrides: Yeah, thanks, Frank. Tocqueville has been around. We’re celebrating our 35th year. We’ve been around since 1985. We manage about $7.5 billion in assets for clients. The team that I’m on, we manage about $1.5 billion for clients. We manage for individuals, families, institutions, family offices, and our approach is very plain vanilla. What I mean by that is, we sit down with each client, each institution, we figure out what their financial goals and objectives are, what are they trying to achieve, and then we build out a portfolio across our strategies, which are core equity, taxable fixed income, tax exempt fixed income, and, of course, the enhanced income strategy, which I mentioned. We typically diversify across client’s portfolios.

John Petrides: We manage for tax efficiency, so we buy individual stocks, we harvest losses at year end. If there’s an income producing security that is bad to hold in a taxable account, we’ll hold them in a tax sheltered account. We want to be all of our clients’ go-to person as a financial adviser and wealth manager to preserve their savings, to preserve the money they’ve earned, and to grow it for future generations, because, Frank, at the end of the day, whether the stock market goes up next Tuesday or if gold goes down three weeks from now, at the end of the day the biggest risk that you and I and everyone else faces is outliving our money. The last place you want to be is, we’re all living longer, and the last place you want to be is 85 and you’re running out of capital. That is the worst possible situation to be in.

John Petrides: We try to build client portfolios to make sure that that never happens.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, great stuff in Tocqueville. My biggest question here is, man, you look pretty good there, pal. That’s a nice picture of you.

John Petrides: Oh, yeah. Listen. That’s all pre-COVID. That’s all pre-COVID, so that’s probably 15 pounds lighter. That’s a lot of gray and white hair less than I am now, but I appreciate that. If any of the viewers want to catch me, I’m on @jpetrides2. That’s my handle on Twitter, that’s my handle on Instagram. Hit me up on LinkedIn. All my contact info’s on the website if anyone needs anything. I’m going to be on CNBC on December 29th, on the Closing Bell. At least I’m scheduled for that now. That’s that. That’s that.

Frank Curzio: I was going to ask you if you have the TV appearances coming up or anything, because I know I love watching you on TV. I just love how you dial down-

John Petrides: I appreciate that.

Frank Curzio: -for people. You’re very, very sharp very good, and honored to have you on the podcast. You’ve been a good friend.

John Petrides: Same here.

Frank Curzio: Talk a lot about that during the podcast, but got one last question, because we’re actually going a little bit longer than expected, but great, great information.

John Petrides: Yep.

Frank Curzio: Thanks for the picks and everything. Analysis: who’s going to win the Superbowl? Seemed like an easy question maybe a month or two ago, but I guess now it’s a little different. Kansas City actually doesn’t look that good. They almost lost the past couple games. I think they’re beatable. Obviously they’re the favorite, but who do you think?

John Petrides: That is, I mean, the odds makers have to say Kansas City. If there’s two minutes left in the game, you don’t want the ball in anyone’s hands with Mahomes and having all those weapons. That is really tough to beat. Pittsburgh has really tipped their hand, which opens the way for Kansas City. You know what? You know who could be the ultimate sleeper in all of this is Tennessee? I mean, they have a pounding running game. They have a good defense. They have been destroying teams. A.J. Brown is an absolute monster and Tannehill has proven basically two seasons now that he can be mistake free. He can be a good game manager and make plays when he has to. I think Tennessee is really attractive.

John Petrides: Maybe Green Bay. I would like to see Rogers get one more crack at a Superbowl. I think he deserves it.

Frank Curzio: It’s weird how no one’s really sold on Green Bay. I mean, even though they’re putting up the numbers, they have the best record, and I think New Orleans is starting to trail off a little bit. It’s not a sleeper anymore, but, man, Buffalo has been playing lights out. When you have a good defense, you’re in every game, and, man, that quarterback is just confident as ever and looks fantastic. So I’d throw Buffalo in the mix there, too. It does look like Kansas City, but I’d love to see Buffalo.

John Petrides: All right, Frank, if this isn’t a financial talking head hedge my comment on this question, I’m going to say this. I think someone from the AFC’s going to win the Superbowl.

Frank Curzio: You know what? It seems like that, right? That’s what we’re talking about, all AFC teams, right? And then we got Green Bay, but yeah. It’s weird how it plays out, because if everything plays out the way the season is, where Kansas City looked unbeatable, then they got crushed by Vegas and then last four or five games haven’t recovered. It’s been close. Let Miami come back, too, and New Orleans.

Frank Curzio: Then you have Green Bay out there, not too sold on again, but if everything plays out as-is, Buffalo will probably lose their next game. I don’t think they’re playing anybody good this week, but they’re probably going to get blown out. Just like Pittsburgh got blown out when you thought they were great. It’s just these teams. The Saints lost to the Eagles. It’s just weird this season. You can’t get a read on it.

John Petrides: It’s true.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know.

John Petrides: The one team where the football gods need to shine some light on is New Orleans. I mean, they’ve lost the last two years on just, or whatever it was, the last three years on terrible pass interference call, the guy misses the tackle on the last play to Stefon Diggs, it’s Drew Brees’s last year.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

John Petrides: If there’s one team that you want the fantasy gods to let the ball bounce their way, it would be New Orleans, right? Anyway.

Frank Curzio: Makes a lot of sense. Listen, John, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for the long interview. Thanks for the picks. Thanks for everything, and you and your family-

John Petrides: Absolutely.

Frank Curzio: -have a wonderful holiday season, and stay safe.

John Petrides: Thanks, Frank. You, too.

Frank Curzio: Really, enjoy it. All right, man, I’ll talk to you soon.

John Petrides: All right, be well. Thanks a lot. See you.

Frank Curzio: Thank you. Great stuff from John, someone who’s become a good friend. Incredibly smart. He’s introduced me to so many people. “Frank, you should have this guy on your podcast.” Different fund managers. One of the really good guys in this business who happens to be incredibly smart, but he also has an excellent track record. So it’s not just, “Hey, I got to get a nice guy on this podcast that’s cool. He’s going to give you picks that go down a ton.” No, no, no. He’s very good at what he does. He’s been a very good friend of mine and, yeah, I think he’s a fantastic, amazing portfolio manager.

Frank Curzio: I’m just honored to have guys like this on my podcast that I can bring in front of you. You see a lot of these guys on TV, but with this format they can go on for 20, 25, 30 minutes, and you can see it’s more relaxed. They get to explain their thesis. I’m not interjecting my opinion every two seconds and talking more than my guests, right? We want to hear from them. You get a chance to hear from me at the beginning and the end of the podcast, but just discussing those topics, right? It’s awesome.

Frank Curzio: Lots of great guys on the podcast, but, again, this podcast is about you, not about me. Let me know what you thought of that interview at frank@curzioresearch.com. That’s frank@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio: We move on here. It’s almost the end of the year, heading into 2021. I’m excited as ever. Those of you who are Curzio Venture Opportunities subscribers just got our latest pick, small cap pick, which is a $35 million market cap. Its name, well, I’m not going to give away, but it’s similar to a SPAC where it just did a reverse merger. You’re looking at companies where SPACs usually take over an entity or dormant company on the NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange, whatever it is, and then they look for a private company and then merge them together and then, boom, there you go. A lot of the fees, a lot of the money’s made at the beginning. To get into SPACs, you really need to be an accredited investor. With this one, you don’t, because nobody really knows about this name. Just did a reverse merger. It’s incredible, but this company has an FDA approved drug that’s going to generate $13 million this year and over $20 million next year. It also has $20 million in cash on its balance sheet. Again, market cap of $35 million.

Frank Curzio: I’ve never saw a biotech or healthcare company with an FDA approved drug generating tens of millions of dollars trading at $35 million market cap in my life. We’re looking at, I won’t say low risk, it is biotech, but with that cash on its balance sheet, the return and the two drugs that it’s focusing on is absolutely enormous. Enormous for this company. It has amazing people behind it. I found out because of my contacts, but really, really excited with that pick.

Frank Curzio: Overall, finishing off a great year where we really nailed COVID. We got out of the market when it crashed, got back in around late April, May, missing I’d say about 20, 25% of the rally, which was fine. I didn’t anticipate that we would see $6.5 trillion in spending. Holy cow, $6.5 trillion. I thought it’d be less than a trillion dollars, but if you throw that much money into the system, hey, you got to get bullish. You got to buy stocks.

Frank Curzio: But I’m proud of the work we did on COVID in terms of giving people really great advice. I feel like we really nailed that the whole time. Talking about the statistics and the data and showing websites and doing this from January and interviewed people on lockdown in Italy and China. Really good. It’s something that I’m proud of. If you look back at statistics, were we right on everything? No. Nobody’s right on everything, but we were right on a lot. When I compare our track record to a lot of other people out there when it comes to COVID, I haven’t seen one that’s better. You know me, I talk about my losers more than my winners, but it’s something that I’m very proud of.

Frank Curzio: I also had COVID, which I’m over now and perfectly fine, me and my family, and at 100%. Really cool. We had mild symptoms, like most people our age do, and my daughter had almost no symptoms. Again, she’s on Humira and it lowers her immune system. A little bit worried, but she had almost no symptoms other than taste and things tasted differently and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio: When I get back to finishing off a great year in terms of the market, in July/August, pounding the table on small caps. Notably, cyclical names, value oriented cyclical names that have significantly underperformed. I think that was a pretty bold call. I mean, value has underperformed growth almost every year since 2008/2009, and before that? These names got crushed and a lot of them are up huge. Insiders, large hedge funds, are buying 50% higher than where we bought them. The thesis was dead on. Usually what you see in economic recovery, small caps outperform large caps, and they significantly underperform, especially those cyclical names where we saw large cap technology, tech, biotech hit all-time highs again pretty early on, July, August, but you’re looking at a lot of these companies were 50% off of their highs. These cyclical names in the travel industry, casinos. They filtered throughout our whole portfolio, which is awesome.

Frank Curzio: I’ve been a huge supporter of bitcoin in theory. I’m close to four years now. We’re up huge in these positions in Crypto Intelligence. Welcome, new subscribers, who watched our summit. You’re going to be very happy with the ideas that you’re going to get in that newsletter. But the performance is, we’re up on so many names, taking gains as high as 530% in just a few months. If you’re a Curzio Research Advisory subscriber, Curzio Venture Opportunity subscriber, both of those performance, I feel it’s very, very good. We could always do better. Crypto Intelligence blows them out of the water. We just position ourselves in the right names, smart, not taking on as much risk in the bigger names, and you’re seeing.

Frank Curzio: We even sold Ripple, which is now being investigated, and we said, we actually said that this is a joke. This has to change. That’s why we recommended it. They have to find a utility for the freaking thing. You don’t get equity stake or anything, but yet they’re dumping coins, raising money. It’s definitely a security, and then after three, four months that they grew up a little bit, I said, “You know what? Let’s get out of this.” Now it’s getting crushed. SEC is going after them.

Frank Curzio: I also recommended Goldman Sachs a few months ago. I think people laughed at that pick. Banks are so out of favor. I got so many emails telling me, “You know, this is kind of boring.” What? We’re up really nice on the stock now. Banks are certainly a great investment again. Everyone loves them.

Frank Curzio: Look, I don’t care much for the media. My job is to stay ahead of the curve, to recognize names, sectors before the media starts talking about them and stroking their egos on all the financial networks. “Yeah, we’re in banks now and this is great.” I think we’ve done that for the better part of at least three years, getting ahead or being ahead of mainstream media, being up a lot on these stocks when everybody starts talking to them, which is awesome. This is what I love to do, research.

Frank Curzio: 2020, while it’s been a horrible year for so many, it’s been really good–excuse me, throat’s still a little bit, tiny bit swollen from COVID, but everything’s cool. You’ll see me drink some water and stuff like that during this broadcast–but it’s been a really good 2020 in terms of generating money for you and your families. I think 2021 is going to be a banner year. With Curzio Research, our brand is growing. We’re getting more and more people following us through social media than ever before, becoming subscribers.

Frank Curzio: Going to finish the year with record revenue, record subscribers, and our network is expanding where I’m seeing so many amazing ideas that are not just being shared by my hedge fund friends and people in the industry, or even some of the people here on my podcast that I interview, but from you. From you. Looking at my podcast, so many of you own your own companies, been working in your profession for over a decade. You’re a doctor, you’re a lawyer, you’re an engineer, construction worker, professors, even students who always know the cool technologies before they go mainstream. So many emails now, frank@curzioresearch.com, but this network has allowed me to put great ideas in front of you.

Frank Curzio: Of course, not every one of them is going to work out, but many of them have. Many of them have, especially 2020. But having this network where Wall Street Unplugged has been downloaded over 10 million times now, that’s unbelievable, guys. Thank you so much. That’s incredible, 10 million times. That value, to me, is incredible. The value to Curzio Research. Getting so many people emailing me their ideas, doctors, lawyers, it’s unbelievable. It’s incredible. It’s a real time network.

Frank Curzio: Really looking forward to 2021. Still have one more podcast to go before kissing 2020 goodbye, but I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you. I appreciate all the support. I appreciate all of your opinions, even when they’re different from mine. What’s important is we all have the same goal in common, and it’s to increase our generational wealth, which can then be passed down to our kids to make sure they have a better life than their parents, right? Than us. That’s the goal. As long as we keep that goal, yes, politics and things like that.

Frank Curzio: We want to be focused on the markets. We’ve done very, very well so far. We could do better again. We could always do better, but having the network, having amazing contacts, getting into so many of these ideas. I’m really looking forward to 2021. I think it’s going to be fantastic for you guys, fantastic, and I’m really, really excited. Thank you so much for all the support.

Frank Curzio: I want to finish by saying Merry Christmas to all of you and your families, happy holidays to you and your families. If you’ve done pretty okay in this market due to our recommendations, then I want you to do me a favor and spoil your kids a little bit. I know, it’s terrible to spoil your kids. I don’t know if you call them pundits or psychologists or whatever, “Don’t spoil your kids, don’t spoil your kids.” You’re right, you shouldn’t spoil your kid, but I can tell you from personal experience, when you see your children open up that one big gift they asked for that they don’t think they’re going to get and just looking at their face and seeing that expression, it’s priceless. It’s an incredible moment. It’s something that you remember. It’s something that we’re taping on our videos, on our phones.

Frank Curzio: I understand people are right saying, “You know what? You should never spoil your kids,” and I get it, but just sometimes it’s actually worth it just to get that moment, because life’s about moments, right? It’s those few things that you do remember for the rest of your life. That’s something I do remember when I spoil my kids. Sometimes they don’t deserve it, but it is really cool. Life is short. I want them to be happy. I don’t spoil them too much, but I am going to spoil them this Christmas, make them very happy. They’re going to be very surprised by a few of their gifts and hopefully you guys do the same. If you’ve done well with our newsletters, any of them, take a little bit out and don’t just spoil the kids, spoil your spouse.

Frank Curzio: Plan that vacation for four or five months from now. I think it’s going to be fine. You’re seeing the vaccine being rolled out tremendously. Herd immunity is expected six, seven months from now, which includes the amount of people that got it and, also, the amount of people that are getting vaccinated. When you put both of those groups in the pool, we’re going to be close to herd immunity probably six, seven months from now, which is amazing, because there’s even more therapies coming out. There’s even more vaccines coming out. J&J, AstraZeneca. There’s a lot more in the pipeline, not just Moderna and Pfizer. It should be really, really cool.

Frank Curzio: Hopefully, all of you enjoy the holidays and, again, I just want to say thank you so much for all your support. I love you guys and I’ll see you in seven days. Take care.

Announcer: The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility. Wall Street Unplugged, produced by the Choose Yourself Podcast Network, the leader in podcasts produced to help you choose yourself.

Inside this episode:
  • Guest: John Petrides of Tocqueville Asset Management [8:53]
  • Educational: A wild ride for our advisories [51:26]
Frank Curzio
Frank Curzio, founder and CEO of Curzio Research, is one of America’s most respected stock experts. His research is regularly featured on media outlets like CNBC’s Kudlow Report, The Call, CNN Radio, ABC News, and Fox Business News. His Wall Street Unplugged podcast—ranked the No. 1 “most listened-to” financial podcast on iTunes—has been downloaded over 12 million times.

Editor’s note:

There’s a financial revolution taking place under the radar right now… One that will change the stock market as we know it over the next few years.

In fact, Frank believes so much in this prediction that he’s literally put this entire company on the line.

This breakthrough hasn’t become mainstream knowledge… yet. In other words, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start creating generational wealth TODAY.

Get the full story here.

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Netflix's (NFLX) blowout results—and why the company remains the undisputed king of streaming… What to expect from Tesla's (TSLA) latest quarter—and how to trade the stock… And why you MUST prepare for a major pullback.

Apple is flashing major warning signs

What to expect from the "Magnificent 7" in 2024… The biggest risks to the market... Why you need to be extremely wary of Apple (AAPL)… And the left-for-dead sector poised to soar this year.

How crypto changed my life

The paradigm shift taking place across the crypto space right now… These major catalysts will send Bitcoin shooting higher… And why stocks can't compete with crypto's upside. Plus, this stock is a screaming buy following FedEx's ugly earnings report.

More Wall Street Unplugged

Why is Tesla surging—despite terrible earnings?

Tesla’s earnings were a disaster—so why is it soaring? … Why gold bugs are dead wrong… Why you should take profits in gold stocks… And the best speculative investment opportunity right now. Plus, join the next Crypto 2024 LIVE.

Bitcoin crashing

Why is crypto crashing?

Don't be alarmed by the crypto pullback… Rep. Maxine Waters is dead-wrong about big banks… Why Trump should be allowed to campaign… And this company's earnings paint a scary picture of the economy. Plus, join our next Crypto 2024 LIVE.

The Fed is in ‘hope-and-pray’ mode

The latest inflation data paints an alarming picture… The Fed's impossible position… Sectors to get exposure to NOW… And the latest breaking artificial intelligence headlines—from Apple to Google to Elon Musk. Plus, ask Frank anything…

Disney

Disney just broke the law

The latest data shows a strong economy—so why are stocks pulling back? … The Fed's in a tough spot… Disney’s illegal tactics against Nelson Peltz… Why Apple (AAPL) will dominate AI… And how AI will transform every industry.