Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio 00:11

What’s going on out there? It’s Wednesday, May 20th. I’m Frank Curzio, you’re watching the Wall Street Unplugged podcast.

Frank Curzio 00:16

We’re going to break down the headlines and, uh, tell you what’s really moving these markets. Mr. Daniel Creech, what’s going on, buddy? How’s everything?

Daniel Creech 00:27

Everything is good, sir. Happy late birthday.

Frank Curzio 00:30

Late birthday.

Daniel Creech 00:30

For all of you listening out there, I’ve worked for Frank for almost 10 years. I swear I would have bet a bar bet that his birthday was today, and it’s not. It was Monday. It was Monday. It was Monday. Thanks, man. Yeah. Ah, yeah. That’s fun, Frank. What’d you do? Did you do anything fun for your birthday?

Frank Curzio 00:44

It was cool. I spent a lot of time with my daughters. I took, uh, went to a rage room. You ever go to one of those? We just.

Daniel Creech 00:50

No, but I’ve, I’ve heard of them.

Frank Curzio 00:52

Oh, you just destroy everything you use.

Daniel Creech 00:53

I love a rage room, Frank.

Frank Curzio 00:54

Yeah, I know. That’s the thing. So I got out a lot of rage, and it was really cool. And, uh, I mean, it was we got out for 30 minutes. After like 20, I’m like, okay, we’re done. We’re like exhausted and sweaty and stuff. Uh, and then this was for my birthday. It was actually for my daughter’s birthday in February, but I took her skydiving. So it went Saturday morning, and then Saturday afternoon we went to the rage room and everything.

Frank Curzio 01:15

But, uh, that’s a sick time when skydiving is kind of.

Speaker 3 01:17

Tomatoes, buddy.

Speaker 4 01:18

Where’s the stuff?

Speaker 3 01:20

Me. Look at this ruined game.

Frank Curzio 01:24

I didn’t want to tell anyone about that. Just all my investors went to school. We used to slam dunk.

Speaker 3 01:28

There’s iPad members that come for us.

Frank Curzio 01:32

There’s almost all destroyed there. So we jumped on the beach.

Speaker 3 01:36

Yeah, and this is brutal.

Frank Curzio 01:37

You’re all smashing. My face is flattening at 12500.

Speaker 3 01:41

Is that painful?

Frank Curzio 01:43

No, it’s not painful. But you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re going, you’re fast. And you jump from 13,000 feet to what? Uh, and, uh, you know, that’s very, very high. 20,000. A lot of it’s just 10,000, 11,000, 13,000. You’re free falling. I want to say fall like 50 seconds or so. Uh, that’s, uh, a million islands of good water.

Frank Curzio 02:03

So I guess how did that matter so much, right? Yeah, whatever you. After 1,000 feet, it doesn’t really have to like, you know, pretty much 100 feet. But, you know, if you’re going to dive, maybe, maybe go into the water and everything, and, uh, you’ll be pretty cool. But it was cool. It was tandem. And the next time I go, I might do it without tandem and learn how to do it. We’ll see. I think my daughter wants to learn, but she loved it.

Frank Curzio 02:22

It was crazy. First time she did. You got to be 18 to do it. Uh, so, um, it was awesome. Uh, I’m getting too old for that. And I just remind my daughter, make sure when you’re in your 50s, that you’re doing that with your kids and taking them roller coaster parks like I did last year with my, uh, with my youngest with, uh, my 15-year-old, which is pretty crazy.

Frank Curzio 02:41

So, uh, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Had a good time. My birthday was great. Thanks, man. I really, really appreciate it. So, and, uh, another good birthday party. The Knicks, man, I had them actually. I was going back and forth. Joe, Joe’s a huge Knicks fan. I’m, uh, I’m not too much of a New York fan in most sports because I hate New York fans. I’m a Mets fan,

Frank Curzio 03:00

and I am a Rangers fan, but they’re the worst fans ever, right? I mean, you know, again, I was saying, like, they boo Derek Jeter if he has like a, you know, they, they, they hate, uh, Judge because they’re like, oh, you’re terrible. You can’t do that good in the playoffs. And now even with the Knicks, if you look, you know, back where, uh, you know, what was this four weeks ago, Joe?

Frank Curzio 03:19

They’re like, you got to find the coach at Sutto in Atlanta. You should be killing him. And last year, Brent, they love Brunson sucks. He just shoots the ball every time. Whenever you have Brunson sucks. This is the reason why you want that game down 22 points. Less than eight minutes to go. Push it overtime. Once it went to overtime, it was basically over. But, um, this has the making. I thought, I thought the Knicks would lose this game and win the series,

Frank Curzio 03:38

but this has the making for after losing a game like that for Cleveland, it would have been better to lose by 30 than to lose the way they did because they, they, you have to figure, you know, a little tired coming in. Knicks had, I think, a 10, 11-day rest, and you could tell. I mean, they weren’t hitting shots. They looked bad. No, they weren’t really passing the ball. No continuity there. But amazing comeback.

Frank Curzio 03:57

The fans, the electricity there was amazing. Good for them. You know, I liked seeing the Knicks win and everything, but hopefully, you know, their fans will be happy until they lose. And they’re going to tell them they got to find the coach and get rid of the whole team if they happen to lose this series or even the next one. The next series is also great. I mean, Wemby is unbelievable. Pissed off. He didn’t get the MVP. They won an overtime against, uh, uh, Oklahoma City.

Frank Curzio 04:18

So that’s going to be a great, great, great series. And I look forward to seeing Oklahoma City to bounce back. We’ll see. But, um, yeah, I think the Knicks are going to be there. It’s going to be a hard series. Whoever they play, maybe you get them, you know, the other two teams beating the crap out of each other. That’s going to be a crazy series. I know they’re both going to be tired, I think, uh, which gives the Knicks a shot, but it’s going to be good.

Frank Curzio 04:39

I mean, NBA is really good this year. That was an amazing 22-point comeback with less than eight minutes to go. And holy cow, man, it was really, it was just electrifying. That was awesome. It was really good to see.

Daniel Creech 04:49

22 with under eight. Okay, Joe, that when you showed, when you were showing the 99.9% chance of winning, do you know what, how, how much time in the game was that? Did you see that stat, Frank?

Frank Curzio 05:00

Yeah, I mean, that’s, that was probably at that peak right there.

Daniel Creech 05:03

I mean, do you think that’s it? That can’t be with eight minutes to go, do you think?

Frank Curzio 05:07

Um, does it say on there? Yeah, that’s right. That’s in the third. Wow, that wasn’t even the fourth quarter, like the fourth quarter, but the third quarter. I think they were down by a lot. Then they might have scored a few points or whatever. But anyway, it was like 90.

Daniel Creech 05:19

That’s awesome. That’s hilarious.

Frank Curzio 05:20

Closer to 100% late. If you go even further than that, I mean, that’s a chart you’re using that you see up there. But even, you know, it comes down. And then I think they took a 22-point lead. I thought it was the largest lead of the game in the fourth quarter. Uh, and then, then you see it boom. Like, holy cow.

Daniel Creech 05:33

That’s good for the fans. Good for the ratings.

Frank Curzio 05:35

Good for the ratings. Good for the fans. Exciting. All the people who never watched basketball who are famous are there now saying, we’re Knicks fans again. Yeah, good for you. Anyway, I’m rooting for them. I like the team. I really like the team. It’s a really good team. It’s a humble team. They play the balls off. They’ve always done that. They’ve done it last year, year before, too. They were better this year than last year,

Frank Curzio 05:55

even though everyone hated on them, especially during the Atlanta series and a little bit before that. But they were a much better team this year than they were last year. And now you’re seeing it. Now they’re coming together. That’s how championship teams work. You don’t win right away. You got to go through it. You know, your ass kicked a few times. They’ve got the ass kicked a few times. And now, um, they’re the Kings of the East right now, man.

Frank Curzio 06:12

So I’m hoping that they come out of the East and then it should be a good series. I think whoever they play is going to be a little bit better than them. Not going to be favored in that series. But the fact that those two teams are really going to beat the crap out of each other, they definitely do have a shot if they play together and the bench continues to play like they’re playing. So good for the Knicks. Congratulations. And what a, what a game. I mean, entertaining as hell. It was really, really good last night. That’s really cool.

Daniel Creech 06:32

Yeah, game won.

Frank Curzio 06:33

Yeah. Now everybody goes back to work in New York. And what do you see? The markets are higher today because oil prices have come down below 100, but interest rates have surged. And you can’t deny they’re pulling back a little bit now, but 30 years hits highest levels, 19 years, 10 years on the rise, uh, on higher inflation reports, uncertainty in the Middle East where gasoline prices today are averaging,

Frank Curzio 06:53

I believe, like 440. And we’re like at the national average here in Florida. That’s around where we are. Uh, no end in sight. And also, you know, dealing with higher commodity prices, higher agriculture prices, food prices, uh, basically removing any chance at all for the Fed to cut rates this year.

Frank Curzio 07:14

And I actually, I think that’s now a high percentage that they’re going to raise rates in 2026 compared to lower them. Uh, so when you look at inflation, guys, and Daniel has talked about inflation is good for economies as long as it’s controlled. We’ve always had 2% inflation. Okay, we get up to 3, 3, 3%. Okay, look, when you get up to 6, 7, 8, 9%, then you see what happened in 2022 and you get destroyed.

Frank Curzio 07:34

Uh, and notably tech stocks, expensive stocks, you’re not getting financial projects. People are spending less. You know, you got to be, you can’t borrow as much, right? It just hurts the economy. Be careful here. I mean, the market has been on fire with near all-time highs. Uh, AI, we, we took some profits in many of our AI winners this week. Not full profits,

Frank Curzio 07:52

not just, you know, some of them, uh, warped tremendously in our crazy AI newsletter. But we said, hey, you know what? Just right now I see, you know, 20% upside for these stocks and maybe 15% upside. But you could see some of these names fall 20, 25% and still be up like 75, 100% for the year.

Frank Curzio 08:10

Uh, it’s going to be hard to sustain this momentum because if you look at the year and all the tailwinds that you had where, you know, okay, Trump, pro-business, lower interest rates are coming. He’s going to be spending more on the economy and building it and, and, you know, taking stakes in some companies and stuff, which, you know, people disagree with on a political level.

Frank Curzio 08:29

But, you know, it’s not bad for those companies and industries when you’re looking to make money on them. And a lot of favorable, uh, catalysts coming up, but a lot of it was built on lower interest rates. And you’re taking that scenario off the table and don’t dismiss that and how powerful that is. And I think right now we are. There’s a lot of risk to this market. I’m surprised we’re not down more. Uh,

Frank Curzio 08:48

it looks like we’re going up to new highs, but just be safe here. You know, you want to be prepared. If the market comes down, it’s a great thing if you’re prepared because you’re going to be able to get stocks on sale, right, Daniel? That’s what we talk about. And, and, you know, we just took a little profits. We still have a lot of exposure long in AI, good names. But, you know, some of those names were up, I mean, we’re up 1000%, I think, on two of them.

Frank Curzio 09:07

We’re up, uh, you know, several hundred percent. I mean, DGXX has been a monster winner for us. Vivo has been a monster winner for us. Uh, Telescope, I had that CEO on. I think that’s probably up over 200% now. Uh, I had that CEO on now. And that’s a company we’re working with. Again, we only work with our marketing and consultant division with good companies, good CEOs with catalysts and that,

Frank Curzio 09:25

that want to really, you know, um, have more eyeballs on their brand because they got a lot of positive things coming out. And, and, you know, that, that’s a great company as well that, that we interviewed again, not too long ago. DGXX interviewed Michelle, what, two months ago when the stock was two, was it 750? Uh, you know, so it’s been very, very great for us. Telescope as well. I forgot when that interview took place,

Frank Curzio 09:45

but, you know, that interview took place and you have to be up at least 125% or more on that stock over the past, what, six weeks or something. So, you know, just a few stocks that we took, uh, you know, profits in and that’s okay. Yeah, Polybiotic, look at that thing. I mean, it’s great. And on positive news. When we sell one system to Pfizer and then you sell two systems, that means Pfizer loves what you’re doing.

Frank Curzio 10:05

That means there’s a shot that you could scale this. It’s going to, you know, there’s self-driving labs and stuff here. This is a great company that I’ve done a lot of research on. Good people, scientists. They don’t know a lot about marketing. I said, hey, you guys got a lot of great catalysts coming up and we work with them. And, uh, you know, I’m glad. I love the management team. I love seeing this for shareholders. I love seeing this for that management team. They’re not looking to just, you know, this isn’t a quick thing.

Frank Curzio 10:25

They’re in it for the rest of their lives. Very exciting times. But be careful here. There’s a lot of, lot of risks to the market right now and they just keep getting greater and greater. And these risks don’t look too temporary, do they?

Daniel Creech 10:36

No, they’re not temporary. They may not be transitory easy either. We’ll see what that says. I have to correct you, Frank.

Daniel Creech 10:42

You said no solution in sight for the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump said very soon. So we got that going for us.

Frank Curzio 10:52

I know. But day one, when I get elected, the Ukraine war ends. It ends the day I get elected. I know.

Daniel Creech 10:59

And then he started another one. But oilprice.com, great website out there. Um, I, I believe this is behind the market, uh, moving even higher today. If you look at a daily chart, you can clearly see when, uh, the green, the bulls started taking in control. Evidently, three, Frank, one, two, three, very large crude carriers, VLCCs, about 2 million barrels per ship.

Daniel Creech 11:19

One South Korean flagged, one Chinese flagged, and one Hong Kong flagged all made it through the Strait of Hormuz. That is obviously positive. Um, and that, that would be a great thing. We’ll see how that plays with Trump’s ongoing comments about very soon or whatever, an excursion. But yeah, plenty of risk. Uh, you want to talk about yields? You’ve seen the, uh, 10-year yield out there, Frank?

Frank Curzio 11:39

Yeah, it’s, it’s definitely rising. What is it? 4.5?

Daniel Creech 11:42

Yeah, it’s close to 4.5. And the reason I point that out is we’ve, we’ve kind of warned that, hey, this market’s like round numbers. Investors like big numbers. So obviously the 5% level, the 5, uh, handle would be very troublesome. And I think that I, I agree with you, Frank. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with taking profits and building cash.

Daniel Creech 12:03

If the 10-year gets closer or at 5%, you’re going to have massive volatility and you’re not going to be, in my opinion, at all-time highs, which is fine. So yeah, we’ll see how this goes. I’m not in the rake hike camp yet. I think that Jerome Powell is doing a great job of getting his little cabal ready,

Daniel Creech 12:22

Frank, because you’re already seeing speakers throw out there that the voting member, Paulson, I believe, was out there saying that the Fed should at least consider rate hikes this year. Now, in politics, very few people say what they actually mean. I doubt if he actually means that, but you have to say it in order to set the narrative and the domino effect that’s,

Daniel Creech 12:43

that’s coming to take on Mr. Warsh. We’ll see how all that unplays out. Just know we keep things simple here. 5% on the 10-year, Frank, is bad.

Frank Curzio 12:50

Yeah, it is bad. And I know that now they’re talking about levels of when it would be really bad. I think Goldman put out a report and, uh, you know, 5.5% is that, that’s the level. I mean, this 5% is terrible. Uh, it’s going to be terrible. Uh, we need rates down. We’re not raising. They could say what they want. Do not raise rates, especially because a lot of this stuff could be reversed. Uh, it’s not going to be reversed anytime soon.

Frank Curzio 13:11

And when I say anytime soon, I’m like next, next six months, nine months. Uh, but, you know, and we’re not saying here, just to be clear, listen, higher rates, it doesn’t mean sell everything, right? There, there’s, you know, bull market in certain areas. You can see consumer staples do well. Some value names do well. Uh, you know, I wouldn’t invest in gold with higher rates. I mean, gold bugs are going to tell you gold, you invest in gold because it’s great inflationary.

Frank Curzio 13:30

It’s great reflationary. Uh, it’s great, uh, deflationary, right? So it’s, it’s, it’s great with higher interest rates. It’s great with lower rates. They say, you know, invest in gold. And now you have gold bulls saying that, oh, you know, it’s up. If you take the last 26-year chart, it’s up higher than the S&P 500. They take it like the absolute bottom of 2000, of course. And, you know, and I just like to tell them,

Frank Curzio 13:48

yeah, but, but 22 of those 26 years, 23 of those 26 years, you would have got annihilated by the market, right? So, and people don’t really hold things for 20 years when they’re doing shit. Uh, this time’s invest in gold and this time’s not to. And I’m not, you know, shitting on the gold people out there. I’m just saying, you know, higher rates are terrible for gold. Why hold on to something that’s going to generate no interest? And you get a very good interest rate. Uh, banks are usually good.

Frank Curzio 14:07

You have to be selective because the Clarity Act and, you know, just you still have a while. It could pass this year, but you still, you know, passed, uh, you know, a hurdle in the Senate and it’s, you still have to get a lot of Democrats. I think it’s six or seven to, to, to reverse. Uh, you could do that depending on how much you’re going to get bribed. I’m sorry, lobbied. Uh, but banks usually do well.

Frank Curzio 14:26

But that Clarity Act could take the biggest growth driver, right, is their deposits and deposits that are in their checking and savings account. And if you’re allowing, uh, you know, this is a threat to their business model. If you can allow stablecoins to pay interest, that’s a big deal. And it’s funny how the banks are lobbying so hard against this.

Frank Curzio 14:48

And actually, that’s not the funny part. It’s the obvious part. The hilarious part is how they frame it, how the banks are framing it. See how the banks frame it? Stablecoins are bad for consumers. They’re really bad for consumers. You know what’s bad for consumers? When you scumbags provide no interest on $6 trillion that sits in your savings and checking accounts, right? That you’re making a fortune at lending at much higher rates.

Frank Curzio 15:07

Okay. But please stop telling the world that stablecoins are bad for consumers and you’re trying to protect them. I mean, it’s, it’s, you’re basically, I mean, you’re robbing them and then making fun of them at the same time for robbing them. That’s what you’re doing. That’s how, how effed up. It’s almost like the PGA Tour. Have you, like I said, you have to pop, like, they make it LIV members,

Frank Curzio 15:26

apologize to PGA when none of this would have happened if PGA did their job and paid out the right percentage that all the other professional sports do. That’s why there’s no other league that could challenge a professional sports league other than that. And they did challenge for a little bit of a time because of the system you created, right? So, you know, don’t tell me that this is safer and this is why you believe this shouldn’t pass.

Frank Curzio 15:45

Please don’t say that, especially when you almost destroyed the whole financial, the financial system, the entire financial system during a credit crisis because you leveraged our money in our banks that we thought was safe and you almost destroyed it and lost all of our money for us. If the Fed wasn’t there to bail it out and everyone says the Fed shouldn’t have bailed us out, yeah, you’d be on the street with no shoes, no sneakers and getting raped by another country right now if that happened.

Frank Curzio 16:04

I love when people say that. They’re always like, oh, what the Fed, why’d they bail us out for? Because you would have lost all your money that you kept in the bank and you would have been poor and we had other countries that are living here, taking you over and you would have been a slave. So please don’t say that. Okay. Sometimes you need the Fed to inject and inject it because of the banks and the whole banking system. Now, who went to jail? None of you assholes went to jail,

Frank Curzio 16:23

but you did take our taxpayer money to get bailed out, which was supposed to be used to create the system that wasn’t too big to fail. But now what did you do? Now you’re more bigger than that than you’ve ever been. These big banks are three, four times larger than they were during a credit crisis. Now they’re really too big to fail. They’re really, really too big to fail. And you’re telling us, really, when it comes to stablecoins and paying interest that,

Frank Curzio 16:44

oh, they’re going to be dangerous for consumers. Like, you really, you haven’t given a shit about the retail investor ever. Please, please don’t. Just tell us, hey, this is a threat to our business model. We’re going to lobby. We’re going to bribe every politician we possibly can. $100, you know, million dollars. That’s how much you spent. Even more than that. And that’s fine. Just say. But please don’t tell us banks. Please, please, please don’t tell us that you’re doing it for us.

Frank Curzio 17:04

I fucking hate that. I hate when they say that. It’s just, it’s this ultimate big-handed slap across your face that not only is stealing money from you and giving you zero interest, even though you can get 3.5% interest in most brokerage accounts for just keeping your money there, that you’re worried about our safety. Anyway, stop lying. Just say you’re bribing politicians because stablecoins are a threat to your business model and it’ll make me more happy.

Frank Curzio 17:24

Anyway, banks should do well. Sorry about the mini rant there. Banks should do well, Daniel, in a higher interest rate environment, uh, because of lending and net interest income that they generate, which is massive. What is it? $100 billion, I think, uh, JP Morgan is going to generate because, again, they have deposits. They pay you nothing and they’re lending it out for much higher interest rates.

Frank Curzio 17:43

So, uh, there are interesting plays here. If interest rates do go higher, we’re not saying to say everything, sell everything. But if you made a lot of money in some of the stocks, we made a lot of money in small caps. We made a lot of money in AI names and even some large caps this year, especially over the past, like, 12 months.

Frank Curzio 17:58

You know, be smart because if the market pulls back, that’s a friendly thing if you’re prepared because you could buy a lot of great assets and usually everything comes down, even the good assets, and you could buy stuff that’s going to be on sale because you have a ton of cash on the sideline. That’s how you make a fortune. That’s how you create generational wealth, right? Not by keeping some of this stuff, uh, you know, especially when you’re up tremendously, much, much more than the market.

Frank Curzio 18:19

It’s going to give you an opportunity, really, to buy so many great names for cheaper if the market does come down. And it will if interest rates stay here or continue going higher. It will.

Daniel Creech 18:29

Yes, sir. I like that. Uh, I like your, uh, financial rant.

Frank Curzio 18:34

It’s so true. It’s crazy.

Daniel Creech 18:35

Hey.

Frank Curzio 18:36

I just hate. I hate. You know, it’s one thing. Look, I get it. It’s Wall Street. You got to fuck everybody. I get it. I get it. That’s your job. You got to fuck the retail investor. You want to dump all, all of your dog shit onto them and get them. I get it. I understand. But please don’t tell. Just what I hate is that you actually go out of your way to say, oh, this is good for the investor. This is good for the rate. Just don’t fucking lie to us. Just don’t fucking. That’s what I hate.

Daniel Creech 18:57

Floor, Frank. Floor.

Frank Curzio 18:58

I hate that. I hate that. I can’t even control myself. I mean, we all know you’re robbing us, but don’t pretend like you’re being nice to us. That’s what I hate. That’s where the art of punching someone in the face needs to come back, right? When you were a kid, you used to be a wise ass until someone punched you in the face and then you’re like, oh, I’m okay. Oh, I can’t be a wise ass. You can’t do that anymore, right?

Daniel Creech 19:15

Frank, you can’t punch Jamie, Jamie Dimon. You’re not allowed to.

Frank Curzio 19:18

Ugh. Anyway.

Daniel Creech 19:20

Best bank’s drawn Wall Street.

Frank Curzio 19:21

Yeah. Let me move on. I think we need to move on. Anyway, Nvidia’s earnings are coming out.

Daniel Creech 19:26

Okay.

Frank Curzio 19:26

After the close. Nvidia, last I looked, was a pretty big company, right? How big was it? Was it the market cap? What is it? Something like $5.3 trillion or whatever it is. Was it 5, sorry, $5.4 trillion? So they added a, what is it? What is it? So they added basically what? $200 billion market cap, like, in a day or two, right? Goes back and forth in a day or two.

Daniel Creech 19:46

Look at that.

Frank Curzio 19:47

Um, just to put this, like, the sheer size of this company in perspective, right? The option pricing, they’re pricing an 8% move in the stock when they report earnings.

Daniel Creech 19:56

Ooh.

Frank Curzio 19:57

And just for clarity, last three quarters, the stock fell after they beat and raised, right? So and the stock has run up. So chances are, no matter what they report, even if it’s really good, which has got to be a beat and raise, we all know it, chances are the stock could fall a little bit. And what did we say the last couple of quarters? Buy, buy, buy. And now we’re near all-time highs. It’s because it was trading as one of the cheapest technology stocks and growing faster than a lot of, uh, almost all their competitors.

Frank Curzio 20:19

Uh, so the 8% move they’re pricing in, just to put it in perspective, is a $400 billion move in either direction after they report. Okay. $400 billion. There’s only 25 stocks in the S&P 500 that have a market cap of about $400 billion. And this company’s market cap is expected to move there pretty much in five minutes after they report earnings.

Daniel Creech 20:39

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 20:39

Which is, it’s insane when you think about it, right? So, uh, look, this company’s still cheap. They’re cheap, trading at 25 times forward earnings. The industry trades at 38 times and they are growing much faster than the industry. So, uh, you know, what are your thoughts on the quarter? What are you expecting? And, uh, what are you expecting on the stock price?

Daniel Creech 20:59

Uh, I’ll agree with you on the, uh, I don’t think it, I was wrong last time. I thought it would actually break out and it went down again. So I’m not going to beat that horse. What was really cool was, if memory serves me correct, they reported $0.74, $0.75 a year ago and they’re projected to do $1.80 in change,

Daniel Creech 21:19

depending on whose estimates you’re looking at. We’ve said that these are the king, these guys are clearly the king of AI. Uh, Jensen will sell the idea and the TAM, total addressable market, I think very well. Yeah. I, I mean, I don’t know what the stock does afterwards. I’ll go with you. And Noel, now that I’m in the camp that it’s going to go down, you guys should buy it because it’s probably going to go up 10%. But,

Daniel Creech 21:38

um, yeah, I’m looking forward to see what Jensen says about the total addressable market. Um, I think, I think the, I think the market needs Jensen a little bit here just with all the nervousness outside of AI. Um, but, you know, the market always needs some major catalyst.

Daniel Creech 21:56

And Nvidia has been it and AI has been it for some time now. But I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t think anything crazy is going to happen here, Frank, but I do look forward to the commentary on how, um, what do you think Jensen will say? There’s going to be 50 trillion robots or you think it’s going to be like 100 trillion robots soon, Frank, running around and doing laundry and stuff?

Frank Curzio 22:15

It’s 100, whatever it is. I, I look at this chart and I can’t believe, like, we’re looking at two weeks ago, the stock was in the 180s where it’s up literally 15%. You’re buying the biggest stock at one of the cheapest prices you could buy. One of these hyperscalers are a big, big name for in the hyperscaler class, you know, that fuels the hyperscalers, uh, which you could have bought.

Frank Curzio 22:35

So, you know, look at the run-up. I’m going to talk about Target later. Target’s down 4%, 5% today. Uh, amazing quarter. The best quarter. I think it’s a screaming buy here. We’ve been on that stock for a while. It was near all-time, not all-time high, but 52-week high. Um, and, you know, the stock is down and it should be down because it’s up tremendously into the quarter. We’ll talk about that a little bit later, but it’s up, it’s down 4%.

Frank Curzio 22:54

But just if you look under the hood and what they, this is a different company now. They, they, it took many, many years, okay, but many, many years. And I know people are frustrated as hell, but if you look at that chart right there of, uh, you know, just six months and stuff, I mean, this stock is up like 40%. So it was, it was going into the quarter. So you’re expected to see that. And, and, you know, now that you moved up with Nvidia,

Frank Curzio 23:13

I wouldn’t be surprised they beat raise and you see a pullback. Depends how much it pulls back. I don’t know if you see a pullback below 215, 200, uh, to 210. If it does, I think it’s a screaming buy again. Uh, I will say this though. Kramer touched on this on CNBC today. I thought he was right. I always made fun of Jensen Huang for one thing,

Frank Curzio 23:31

is that when he goes on these quarters, he never, ever, ever, ever talks about the competition because there is no competition, right? He never wasted his time on the competition. Okay. And he was so far ahead in what he’s done and revolutionary. I mean, what, what a great CEO in a generation that we’ve ever seen. Um, and he hasn’t had to talk about the competition in what,

Frank Curzio 23:52

three, four years that became the king of AI with this company. Today, Amazon’s producing new chips. Apple’s producing new chips. Google’s producing new chips. Cerebros, right? You have Broadcom, AMD finding ways to better compete with Nvidia’s technology, who still holds an 85% market share in GPUs and 80% market share of the AI accelerator market, Agentic, and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio 24:13

So you have to look to see why these companies are creating their own chips. And they’re creating those chips because you have to go back to business 101. Nvidia captures 75% margins on AI chips. Now you have to look back at history to see why this is amazing because the chip market has always, it’s always been commoditized.

Frank Curzio 24:34

Whenever anyone came out with something, yet everyone else coming out, and yes, you had to worry about the patents a little bit, but you, you were able to kind of replicate it without interfering with patents. And then all of a sudden, chip prices dropped tremendously. It was always just coming. That’s why it was a cyclical business. For the first time in the, in the history of chips, it’s not a cyclical business. It’s a secular business, right? Which is, you know, they’re getting better and better and growing, growing, growing.

Frank Curzio 24:55

Look at, you know, if you look at the whole, you know, semiconductor sector over the past four or five years, it’s not like cyclical. It’s not doing great because the economy’s doing great. It’s actually driving the economy now, right? It’s not like, oh, this is a byproduct of the economy. Well, people are going to buy more phones. They’re going to buy more computers. No, right? This is the growth driver of the market. And you have to credit Jensen Huang to this,

Frank Curzio 25:13

who found a way to separate Nvidia from the pack by providing what? Software solutions around its proprietary hardware. So think about building a house when you’re building or building, you know, a skyscraper. You’re building a skyscraper. And then you start at the beginning. You’re building the foundation. You build the whole foundation. And then you go up to, you know, the floors and say if you have the 10, 20, 30, you’re going up to 100 floors.

Frank Curzio 25:33

When you have the 30, 40 floors of, and that’s the trend. That’s the inning, right? That’s where we are right now. You can’t, in order for you to use other chips, you have to basically knock down the entire freaking building, which nobody wants to do. So they’re like, okay, let’s do these side projects. Okay. Let’s start building chips. But if you look at what he’s done and partnering with every major company on the planet that uses chips,

Frank Curzio 25:53

which is unlike Apple, unlike big technology companies, who this is ours. We own it. It’s ours. That’s it. And they pound their chest. These guys are like, no, we’re going to help you build your systems using our chips because everybody’s system is going to be different. And so it’s like a CRM system. So that makes the moat bigger, deeper, stronger, whatever word you want to use, but much more difficult for AMD and Broadcom to penetrate it, right?

Frank Curzio 26:14

To compete or take away meaningful market share. But now you’re at the point where your largest company in the world, over $5 trillion market cap, bigger than the annual GDP of every country in the world outside of the US and China. Uh, on today’s call, Jensen needs to address this. He needs to talk about Vera Rubin chips. That’s a new technology. The future orders, the guidance.

Frank Curzio 26:34

I get it. To me, the biggest drive of this stock, um, since, you know, they’re wildly expected to beat and raise like always, the biggest drive is going to be like, are you worried about the competition? What are you going to do? Because when you have 75% margins and you have the balance sheets of the Amazons, of the Microsofts, you know,

Frank Curzio 26:53

of the Googles, they’re going to find ways to take part of that margin from you because they don’t want to continue to give you and give you, give you. And they’re like, okay, here, here’s $100 billion over the next five years, which is nothing to them. They generate that in free cash flow these days annually and go build a new chip. And if it works, it works and see what you could do. And now you’re seeing some of this stuff work. I mean, there’s massive demand for Amazon chips.

Frank Curzio 27:13

There’s massive demand for Broadcom chips. There’s massive demand for Google chips, right? So you’re seeing a shift for the first time. And it’s still early. They’re still the king. But what are they going to do? Because once you lose pricing power, you become a software company. And that’s why they’re getting annihilated. It’s not so much that they’re not doing business. They just can’t charge premium prices that an AI system like Claude could do for you right now.

Frank Curzio 27:34

And that curbs its growth and forces a rerating in stocks where you don’t have that. The average company in semiconductors trades 36 times forward earnings. Okay. Maybe that goes down to 25 times forward earnings as this gets more commoditized. He needs to start addressing this. These are very, very important questions. And hopefully he addressed that during the call. That could be the biggest drive of the stock to me, if you ask me.

Daniel Creech 27:55

I think that makes sense. I know you’re not saying this argument, but this is something I’ve thought about. If, because you’re exactly right. Okay. You post these massive margins and who’s not going to come after that? Bezos, you know, what was his famous line? Your margins are my opportunity or something. Just undercut everybody.

Daniel Creech 28:16

However, if the growth in compute and the need for power and more efficient chips and all that isn’t the world big enough for, I guess, everybody. And again, I know it’s not Nvidia loses some market share and the whole AI trade is down. And it’s not, okay, CBROS might be the new Nvidia.

Daniel Creech 28:37

Again, I know you’re not saying that, but I think that’s a good conversation because Nvidia can, you know, your margins are going to go down a little bit over time. But if your total addressable market continues to grow at any pace it is, and just last quarter, what he doubled, he doubled their one division from the quarter before. Am I remembering that right?

Frank Curzio 28:57

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 28:57

So if he comes out and has any sort of bad news, um, Frank, there’s your punch him in the mouth type deal. You ought to take a swing at him for lying.

Frank Curzio 29:06

No, it’s.

Daniel Creech 29:08

But you know what I mean? Like, that’ll be interesting to see what he says about the competition because CBROS, or I can’t say that. CBRS, I think, is amazing. And they’re the hottest thing in the world. But, and again, I’m not putting this on you, Frank, but just because they blow up to be the next unbelievable company doesn’t mean Nvidia is going to get hurt. That’s what’s wild to me on this growth in total addressable market.

Daniel Creech 29:28

That’s why, that’s why I’m actually looking forward to seeing, uh, because your point, as competition heats up, you got to talk about the market and competitors. So.

Frank Curzio 29:35

And he’s very smart to partner with all these companies because what happens when you do have, it’s not saying you have a monopoly. I mean, 85% could be arguably a monopoly in their chips. But who’s going to come out and complain about that? Maybe an AMD, maybe a Broadcom, but you’re never going to have a Google come out. You’re never going to have Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Cerebros. Why? Because they’re your partners.

Frank Curzio 29:54

And AMD, and you’re looking at Nvidia saying, you know, imagine one of these companies come out and start, you know, lobbying dollars of politicians saying, hey, they have a monopoly. They need to separate. They need to share some of this technology, whatever. They’re going to be like, okay, we’re pulling the plug on you. And now you can’t use our chips. And believe me, you see in a matter of three months of how these AI systems come out and how they change.

Frank Curzio 30:14

I mean, you’re looking at, at, you know, Google, Alphabet at a trillion dollars in market cap. Amazon’s on their way there too because they’re, you know, that much invested in Anthropic. So that’s a pretty big deal, right? And having all these people where you have whatever, 80%, 85% of, you know, the Fortune 500 companies, uh, you know, as business clients,

Frank Curzio 30:33

that’s also politically very, very smart where, you know, people aren’t complaining, wow, this business owns 85% market share. Imagine if you’re an airline. Imagine if you’re a healthcare company, you know, and you own 85% market share. People are gunning for you. You have probably hundreds of millions of lobbying dollars going to politicians saying, hey, you know what? We got to do something about this. You’re not seeing it from here. You’re not seeing people complain like they have a monopoly, which is rare, 85%.

Frank Curzio 30:54

However, I think this is something he needs to address along with the future. People do not understand Agentic AI and how massive it’s going to be and how much power it requires. And then robotics. He has to talk about the power equation because I still have no effing idea how we’re going to get the power. Joe, hit it.

Speaker 3 31:13

I need more power.

Frank Curzio 31:15

This has been our thesis for over two years. As you know, we’ve made a lot, a lot of money. If you listen to us, again, DGX, Texas, the Vivos, the Bloom Energy, I mean, at 20, we just sold our final half position in that. And, uh, you know, that went as high as 300. I think it was like 250, 260 when we sold it. Uh, you know, Celestica as well. You know, just, just the components, the infrastructure for power.

Frank Curzio 31:35

I have no idea how these companies are going to get the power for this to, to, to power the AI systems going forward. It’s just the math does not work any way you look at it. People are modeling for, you know, ChatGPT and large language models. We’re not even modeling for Agentic AI. And that’s like what, 10 times more, 20 times more.

Frank Curzio 31:55

And then you’re going to, I mean, billions of robots expected whatever it takes 10 years. I mean, I don’t know if you saw some of these China conferences, Daniel. Have you seen the robots and stuff like that? They fall, they get back up, they shake the hand, they’re doing it. I mean, you know, you want to talk about being ahead of us in terms of robotics. China’s definitely ahead of us in robotics. I mean, just guys, do the research. Look at some of the videos.

Frank Curzio 32:13

You’re going to be blown away. I think 60 Minutes actually did something on it. But it was just, it was unbelievable just to see, like the technology that you’re not really seeing here. Uh, and you’re going to start seeing some of these in your rich friend’s houses pretty soon. Trust me, it’s going to be crazy. And, and what do they do? It’s all Agentic. It’s all learning. They’re going to continue to learn, right? It’s not just you’re asking them to do something.

Frank Curzio 32:31

They do it. Now they’re learning. And AI models are learning from other AI models. And it’s all this new information constantly that you’re using more and more energy. We already didn’t have enough energy, you know, three years ago, four years ago, we’ve been talking about it. And two years now, it’s getting, you know, we need more power. We need more energy.

Speaker 3 32:50

I need more power.

Frank Curzio 32:53

And I’m telling you, there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of money to be made if you’re following this trend because, uh, it’s massive. And that’s one thing. All the spending leads to is more and more power. And hopefully Jensen addresses that as well. It’s a very important call. Definitely listen to it. Read the transcripts because I’m telling you, I don’t look at it as Nvidia and what Nvidia is doing and Broadcom, AMD.

Frank Curzio 33:12

It’s how to filter this down to 15, 20 other industries. And then you could actually find small caps that are going to benefit as well. And any tiny little itty bitty piece of the $1.7 trillion market in AI. And you could see triples, quadruples, 5x, 10x returns in some of these small caps.

Frank Curzio 33:32

And that’s what everyone’s gearing to. How do I get a piece of this pie? And that’s why people listen to this podcast and subscribe to our newsletters because we’ve done a great job of that so far. And we’re going to try to continue to do that for you going forward.

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Daniel Creech 35:49

You want to know what slows down the AI train, Frank?

Frank Curzio 35:52

What?

Daniel Creech 35:53

Politicians and the voter. You see how the disgust for AI and power and cost is catching wind. Frank, the Wall Street Journal reports. Eric Schmidt, the old Google guy, was he a co-founder or just CEO? Was he a part of them? Okay. Well, he gave a speech to the graduating class out in Arizona,

Daniel Creech 36:16

University of Arizona. So that’s Tucson, not the nice part where I was in Phoenix. However, Frank, he mentioned AI and about this technology revolution, all that. You know what happened?

Frank Curzio 36:25

Booze.

Speaker 4 36:26

Got booed.

Frank Curzio 36:26

Some of the other girls, I think it was.

Daniel Creech 36:28

You got booed.

Frank Curzio 36:28

Where was it? Florida, Central Florida or something. Uh, same thing. Got booed. And, and.

Daniel Creech 36:34

I’ll do you one better. 20-year-old Texas man who a, how do you say this? Multitolve cocktail?

Frank Curzio 36:40

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 36:40

That’s dangerous.

Daniel Creech 36:43

Councilmen in Missouri, they, uh, some small town in Missouri, love small towns. Not knocking it. Just can’t pronounce it. They approved, city council approved a $6 billion data center deal. Two weeks later, four members got voted out. And they’re getting nasty cards saying Florida to you, not the beautiful state we live in, Florida. No data centers ever.

Daniel Creech 37:06

They don’t really come up with, uh, great sayings on these sides.

Frank Curzio 37:10

And Wall Street Journal, right? Had a good, you know, history of talking about, you know, just when, when you’re bullish on something, please, if I could teach you something from my 30 years, you always want to listen to the other side. Always want to listen to the other side. Even if you think that person’s a complete a-hole or whatever, you just listen to the other side. It’s always better when it comes to your money,

Frank Curzio 37:30

it comes to ideas, to get the positive and the negative on everything, right? This way, you know how to invest accordingly. You don’t want to talk to 20 bulls if you own a stock and you go on these Twitter accounts and you’re all like, you know, trying to pump the shit out of this. This is great. Oh my God. And the CEO just, you know, went vegan. He’s going to live another five years. That’s great for the company. Whatever it is, anything that you could possibly freaking say about this garbage, right?

Frank Curzio 37:50

It’s just, you want to look at some of the negatives because you’re going to see some negatives pop up and you don’t have trends all the time that just go straight up, straight up, straight up, right? You always have pullbacks. So, you know, Wall Street Journal did a good job of it, right? Talking about just, you know, data centers and projects and a couple of delays and cancellations and stuff, right? And I know, uh, you, uh.

Daniel Creech 38:07

Yeah, I want to ask you about this because I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have, uh, thought this. But last year there was 48 projects blocked or delayed. We’re talking data center, data center related. 48 projects blocked or delayed for a total of $156 billion. In Q1 of 2026, 20 projects were canceled according to this.

Daniel Creech 38:28

Um, to your point, this is the pushback that, and now it’s not gaining massive steam. Obviously, the Wall Street Journal is running, you know, articles on it. I’m not saying it’s under the radar by any means, but it’s not significant just yet. However, we do have midterms coming up. You have higher inflation. You have higher electricity prices. That’s not just one plus one equals two, meaning,

Daniel Creech 38:47

oh, we got data centers going in all over the place for electricity. It’s not that easy, but it will be to the voter. And this will have to be addressed. Uh, but I thought those were some interesting stats. And this is just like anything else. This is the biggest risk. Your politics are always the biggest risk, just like to our freedom, Frank, for crying out loud.

Frank Curzio 39:05

I don’t think it’s a risk to these companies. I think it’s a risk to these states. I think it’s a risk. It’s kind of like AOC and what she did, what AOC did where, you know, I grew up in Sunnyside and Amazon was going to open up a big facility there and it’s going to employ tens of thousands of people and put so much money into the economy. She doesn’t know what, you know, economics is, right? She had no idea. Maybe she got a little more educated.

Frank Curzio 39:24

Now I’m not picking on her, but what she did, Sid, is, you know, she pushed out Amazon and said, well, there’s no way we’re going to do this because, oh, we got to give you billions upfront. Yeah, that’s the way it works. Okay. You give billions upfront and then they hire tons of employees, which are going to put money back into the economy. And we’re talking about tens of thousands, like 25,000 employees making salaries. And this place is like the melting area of the world.

Frank Curzio 39:44

It’s so great. Hard workers across so many different nationalities. And I love living there. I lived there for two years. Uh, and she pushed them out. And I think they went to wherever they went, to Seattle or something like that. She applauded it like, all right, that’s great. Kind of like when they applauded, you know, uh, that JetBlue couldn’t take over Sprint, right? Oh, that’s great.

Frank Curzio 40:02

You know, high five and stuff like that. And that’s great. So what happens is, you know, you crush a company, but you make the industry stronger. So there’s about 12,000, uh, data centers worldwide, uh, and they’re distributed to 150 countries. You do not need them here. It’s up to you. So if you’re going to fight this, you’re going to lose revenue. You’re going to lose jobs. You’re going to lose a whole bunch of shit. And then they’re just going to go to states that are friendly, right?

Frank Curzio 40:22

And they’re going to build up those economies. So you could lobby for it. You could be a politician. You can get elected on it or whatever. I don’t think it impacts the trend in any way. I don’t think it impacts. I mean, you’re looking at, you know, 48 projects with data centers delayed, uh, 20 projects canceled in 2026. And those cancellations, again, what we hear from people who are building these data centers, hardcore some of the biggest companies in the world,

Frank Curzio 40:42

uh, they can’t hire enough people. And AT&T just came out and said they’re creating a massive amount of jobs, uh, because this is the future. And, you know, AI, electricity, and, you know, they’re creating like classes and stuff like that. Great job. Uh, if you are getting, if you’re booing, I understand it.

Frank Curzio 41:02

You feel like a lot of those entry jobs that you usually get, it makes sense, right? You’re not getting because these people are like, hey, we don’t no longer have to have paralegal jobs or these jobs coming right out. Well, we have AI doing this stuff for us. I get it. Or you could find out how to make AI work for you where you’ll be able to start your business where you don’t need 15, 20 employees. Now you can do a lot of this stuff and everything can be automated. Maybe you have one, two employees.

Frank Curzio 41:23

Uh, you figure out ways to, you know, the amount of money they’re going to be paying these people, electricians and stuff like that, especially in the data center field. It’s almost like the oil field when oil’s at 100, 120. Uh, you know, they pay them 120,000. It doesn’t even a year. It doesn’t even matter your background. You could have just come out of jail for 40 years. They’re like, you want to do it?

Frank Curzio 41:41

You’re hired. Here’s 140 grand. I mean, they need workers, right? So there’s certain industries that are booming. You’re always going to need people who need to, you know, AI is not going to be this totally automated where you don’t have people that need to understand these systems, right? It’s important. Uh, but you have to find ways that it works out for you. So the booing I understand, you know, Wall Street Journal talking about the cancellation of data centers.

Frank Curzio 42:03

I get it. But, you know, if you’re looking at politics and politicians and shit like that, you know, Long Island City lost, you know, I felt bad. You had, you know, 25,000 employees are going to make probably $100,000 a year. And you took it out and you applauded and said, yes, we fought Amazon. We kicked them out of there. You kicked out people’s jobs. These big companies hire.

Frank Curzio 42:22

And yes, you know, whatever, you could charge more taxes on them later on or figure out whatever ways. But, you know, these are great jobs you were going to put right in the middle of this and in a perfect neighborhood that deserved it. Amazon’s going to do this someplace in the United States, right? And you kicked them out. So just be careful of the politics somehow. I know you want to get elected.

Frank Curzio 42:41

And these people don’t really, I would say 90% of politicians have no idea about economics. They don’t know anything about it. They’re all lawyers, right? They make the laws and stuff like that. They don’t know about economics. They don’t know about what drives it. They’ve never run a business in their life, many of them. Uh, so, you know, it’s why every government business is absolute garbage and dog shit, right? Every single one that’s run by the government is dog shit. You have no accountability.

Frank Curzio 43:00

You have the post office losing what, $5, 6, $7 billion a year. And you look at UPS and FedEx generating profits every year. They don’t know how to run a business. They don’t care because it’s not their money. They’re using taxpayers’ money. They don’t give a shit, right? So, you know, just be careful of that trend. I just think it’s not going to impact this trend as a whole because these data centers could be pushed out to other states, pushed out to other countries.

Frank Curzio 43:20

And you’re seeing them expand in other areas. It’s 150 countries right now that have data centers, 12,000 total. US is leading the way. United Kingdom is second with Germany and China. Uh, but they’re finding other places to build them if you say no. So be careful saying no because you’re going to lose a very, very big check and you’re going to give away lots and lots of jobs. So, just my opinion.

Daniel Creech 43:39

Careful saying no.

Frank Curzio 43:41

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 43:41

Hey, you know who, uh, one person that might be expecting a pullback, Frank? You ever heard of a guy named Greg Abel?

Frank Curzio 43:47

Yes, I do know that name.

Daniel Creech 43:48

Yeah. Well, he’s the new head guy at Berkshire Hathaway. Took over from the Warren Buffett and the 13Fs have come out recently, Frank, a few days ago. 13Fs, $100 million or more. Money managers need to disclose 45 days after the end of quarter. Excuse me, Frank, there’s a few things I want to talk to you about.

Daniel Creech 44:08

I want to ask you a couple of questions. Are you surprised that Mr. Abel took a new position in Delta Airlines, 40 million shares, give or take? I only say this because Buffett was correct and kind of badmouthed them. He, uh, in the past, built a massive stake and then sold out during the COVID selloff,

Daniel Creech 44:29

which is understandable there again. So what are your thoughts on the, uh, Delta there?

Frank Curzio 44:34

I like taking a fresh look at things because, yeah, even if you made mistakes in the past, and I think, you know, that’s one of the mistakes I made too. When you look at something, you miss it. You think it’s, you know, you have this emotional attachment to it. But if you’re looking at it just from fresh eyes and say, hey, okay, pretend you never invested in it before. Is it a good buy now? You know, so good for him. I have no problem with that.

Frank Curzio 44:53

I like managers that, that, you know, people crap on companies and then those companies will go down 60% in value. And then people continue to crap on them for the same reasons. And then when those companies, those companies know what the crap is, right? And they know good management teams say, okay, this is what shareholders are pissed at. This is what we need to change. And when you change and you come back and this is what Target’s doing,

Frank Curzio 45:13

you see a stock that’s going to go from 80 to 120, 130, right? Because everyone’s target sucks, target sucks, target sucks. You’re right. Target sucked for a long time. They knew they sucked and now they addressed it. Because if you look at that quarter, they really kicked ass. I get to that, like, you know, right after this. But that doesn’t bother me at all. I think, you know, there was massive change. Exited Amazon, right? Increased Google stake by three times, by three, uh, you know, 3x.

Frank Curzio 45:34

Uh, yeah, I just saw some of those changes. And we’re going to cover a lot of this tomorrow on 13F. We’re going to get more detail in the paid podcast where, you know, some things that really, my recent, um, Curzio AI newsletter that I had yesterday had to do with 13Fs, with a couple of these big fund managers adding to a stock that was really super depressed.

Frank Curzio 45:52

And I just did a lot of research on it and I could see why they did that. And, uh, I think this is a name that’s going to scream higher. It’s down tremendously. It went up because of these big hedge fund managers buying it and, uh, you know, and money managers. But, um, it’s still like 60, 70% off its lows. And, you know, there’s a lot of positives there. That was our AI recommendation, which I think is going to go a lot higher.

Frank Curzio 46:11

It’s a small cap. So, um, one thing that did interest me really quick, uh, that I saw, because again, we’re going to cover a lot of this tomorrow, is did you see Berkshire’s how much cash they have?

Daniel Creech 46:20

Yes.

Frank Curzio 46:22

So they have close to $400 billion in cash. Okay. The balance sheet. I told you how much $400 billion was because that’s the expected move, you know, positive or negative when Nvidia reports from the option market, $400 billion. So there’s only like 23, 24 companies that have a $400 billion market cap, meaning that they could purchase probably 350 companies, S&P 500, when you include that premium if they want.

Frank Curzio 46:45

Uh, so bears have been saying that Buffett was raising cash because he sees the market crashing. He wants to buy when there’s blood in the streets. Uh, however, when you increase your cash position to $400 billion and in 2023 it was $168 billion. So we’re looking even at 2023 going into 2024, um, and in 2024 it’s $325 billion.

Frank Curzio 47:06

So if you go back to 2023, people have been saying this. The market came down in 2022, then rebounded. People are like, look how much cash. Get ready. You know, he’s once upon a time. He’s been on the sidelines and he’s been raising cash now up to a tune of $400 billion pretty much for the past, um, 40 months. 40 months he’s missed the market.

Frank Curzio 47:25

I mean, even if you go back and you look at the last two and a half years, the S&P 500 is up 54%. Well, they’ve been pretty much negative on the market and sitting in massive cash when they didn’t invest in AI. They really didn’t invest in technology. And now they’re deciding to like, you know, uh, you know, buy Google and stuff like that. And, and, you know, when I look at, I, listen, I’m not, I think he’s the greatest investor I’ve ever lived.

Frank Curzio 47:46

I know he’s not there anymore, but, and retired, but they missed a big chunk of this huge market. And we know what happens. You see statistics, Daniel, when you miss, it doesn’t even matter if, you know, during a year or two years or three years, if you miss like, you know, those months of a bull market, it really hurts. I’m not saying you should be in gold for 27 years, though. I’m saying like for three,

Frank Curzio 48:05

four years, if you’re in a stock and you miss those bull markets in certain time periods, it crushes you. You know, they significantly underperform with so many places they could, but so many different companies and so many industries that have not really participated in this. And they just continue to build up that cash balance, that cash balance. Why don’t you give it back to shareholders? I just don’t get it because it,

Frank Curzio 48:25

you know, this is a name that I felt like it was a better stock to buy than buying the S&P 500. It was more of an index with everything that they were invested in, you know, technology, healthcare, banks, and stuff like that. I just don’t feel that. And the fact that you’re in that much cash and you’re not doing anything with it and you missed the biggest bull market. I mean, yeah, the market may come down, may come down now, may come down next year. But, you know,

Frank Curzio 48:43

you’re looking at over three years of really that underperformance because you could have really invested a lot of great things and you didn’t, right? So one thing to build up cash, another thing not to deploy it when, you know, just before you’ve seen this massive bull market. And it’s just not a bull market of 12 months. We’re in a bull market for like three and a half years that you completely miss with that big cash position. I think that needs to be said here. Even though I’m a huge fan of his,

Frank Curzio 49:03

but I’m just saying it’s a lot of cash out on the sidelines for three and a half, four years missing this bull market.

Daniel Creech 49:08

Yeah, I agree. They definitely missed some stuff there. I do think this was a, um, a very impressive and very, uh, first run with the 13F filing from the new CEO and such, uh, shrunk the positions from what, over 40 down to about 30. I think they had 42 to 29 positions total. Uh, very Buffett-like,

Daniel Creech 49:27

though, still just putting massive bets and very, um, not small companies, but small number of companies, like I said, uh, shortening that. Over the last year, I think the S&P’s up 25-ish percent. Berkshire’s down about seven. Uh, over the last five years, it’s a much, much worse when you look at the underperformance. I don’t think it’s the bottom.

Daniel Creech 49:48

But if you are a long-term, and back to your comment about, uh, an index, we did make good money when we had Berkshire Hathaway in the, uh, Curzio Research Advisory portfolio. That was our thesis. I think that this guy will turn that around.

Daniel Creech 50:00

Um, I, I would buy, I would start, you have to buy into a lot of long-term stuff, but I don’t think buying here with the idea of adding to it, uh, is a bad idea, to be honest. I, I think this is a, a telling, his first annual letter I thought was very telling. This is very telling. Uh, you know, and we’re not rooting for or against him in a,

Daniel Creech 50:19

in a negative way, but I just think the, uh, the new guy at the helm is a big deal here. And I like a lot of these moves. So I would, I would be a buyer here.

Frank Curzio 50:26

No, that’s great. And just two more positions. Akman taking a huge position, Microsoft, uh, 5.6 million shares. It might not sound like a lot. That’s 15% of his portfolio. By the way, last time he did something like this was Google and he was dead on. Good for him. Uh, Druckenmiller.

Daniel Creech 50:41

We’re not talking about that today.

Frank Curzio 50:42

Well, he just sold out Amazon and Google. Took a lot of stake in Berkshire really quick. Just, just those are the top headlines. But yeah, we’ll talk more about that. But, um, tomorrow and, and tell you, you know, and give you stock, stocks that we really like, like off of this and, and how you trade them, right? It doesn’t mean this is a little bit old. They, they closed the books two months ago. They could invest in this three months ago. They could be out of these positions right now. They just have to file these 13Fs to show what they’re increasing,

Frank Curzio 51:03

decreasing with the positions that they have and what they sold and bought. And, um, yeah, but you have to be careful. But the thing is, when I see a stock that we recommend CAI, when these guys bought it last quarter at a price that was literally 60% higher, and then this stock crashes and then they significantly added to that position, that’s something I like to see.

Frank Curzio 51:23

So there’s ways to play. You don’t want to just want to see 13F and be like, oh my God, let me just buy this stock because Akman, Druckenmiller, somebody has it. You know, just know that they own it. Know the analysts that are not, you know, algos and, and, and, you know, just, you know, buying computer trading, but they don’t really care what the stock does or whatever. They’re just trying to front run.

Frank Curzio 51:40

Uh, you know, you’re looking at, at managers that have a history of buying a position and then increasing that position over time. Uh, and there’s a way to play it. We’ve made a lot of money doing this, looking at 13Fs. But you have to look at it a certain way. And then, you know, we’ll teach you that. We’ve been teaching you that, but we’ll really go over some of the things that stood out and give you some ideas on that. And, uh, the last thing here, I just want to talk about Target.

Frank Curzio 51:59

I don’t know if you, you follow that story, Daniel, or not, but, um.

Daniel Creech 52:01

I can’t stand Target. Go ahead.

Frank Curzio 52:03

Yeah, Target.

Daniel Creech 52:03

I’m so glad we’re out of this thing.

Frank Curzio 52:04

Look, Target is basically, uh, you know, so if you look at Target, uh, we have stocks at 122, it was 133, which is at 52-week high. It fell into the 80s and it was a disaster. And then all of a sudden, if you look at, and you pull up like, uh, just a nice six-month chart, this thing is up over 40% going into this quarter over the past six months.

Frank Curzio 52:24

Why? Because you clearly see the trends changing. After like three years, they pull up a five-year chart. This has been a, you know, crap since 2022 and just kept falling. 2023, 24, 25 hasn’t done anything. They finally figured it out. And it sucks because Walmart kicked ass. You’re looking at Costco kicking ass. You’re looking at Amazon, that retail portion of the business kicked ass.

Frank Curzio 52:44

And Target couldn’t figure it out. They figured it out. They beat the quarter with 24 cents. They beat on revenue. Yes, it’s down 4% because it’s been up 40% going into the quarter. It’s normally. Probably going to see the same thing with Nvidia after the report today. Uh, they raised their 2027 guidance. Their comps were 5.6%. It wasn’t driven by higher prices. It’s driven by in-store growth and traffic and also the digital growth. Uh, you know, I get it.

Frank Curzio 53:06

Again, the profit taken, sell on news. It’s just what they’re doing right now is a complete rehaul. They’re expanding their beauty segment to more than 600 stores because it’s working. They’re revamping its entire inventory, resetting nearly half of its center store grocery assortments. Uh, again, they’re seeing stronger traffic. They’re improving their merchandise trends. Their margins are starting to surge now.

Frank Curzio 53:26

They’re getting it right. They’re figuring out the formula and saying, this is what we need to do to get this right. Bringing more people into the stores, getting more bargains. A lot of the woke stuff is behind them. You know, I think it’s a buy here when you’re looking at this stock where, you know, again, we’ve been all, we’ve been wrong early and then, you know, the stock has, has done well. I mean, that’s a $55 billion market cap. It’s very,

Frank Curzio 53:44

very small, uh, of a stock that’s trading at, you know, 14, 15 times forward earnings. And that deserves a 15 multiple when you’re not growing. They’re growing now. They’re growing. I mean, same store sales up, but they should be up because they’ve been so shitty, right? It’s year over year, the growth, right? So you’re horrible for so many years. But now you’re going to see this pop. And it’s not driven by,

Frank Curzio 54:03

oh, we’re charging higher prices, which you’re hearing at Coca-Cola, Pepsi, a lot of other places, and even retailers. They’re getting more in-store traffic. Their digital portion is starting to grow. That’s up 9%, right? So these are good things internally that they’re doing, that they’re seeing progression. Uh, and these numbers are great. And you don’t see a company like this raise their guidance often.

Frank Curzio 54:22

But I think it was down like 7, 8% earlier today. Now it’s 4%. Um, I might buy this. I mean, I know people look at Target like blah, but this is a stock I might buy personally right now because, uh, I could see this stock easily going to 150, 160 in a couple of months. So we’ll see. But I really like the quarter. I like what they did finally. Again, don’t, I understand if you hate it because it was shitty,

Frank Curzio 54:41

but just try to get that out of your head because a lot of that is priced in. They saw it was shitty. They’re changing it. And that’s how you have to look at stocks. You can’t hate Target for the same reasons you hated for the last four years, especially if they changed, because that’s going to last, especially if it’s factored into the stock price, because that’s going to allow you to really make a lot of money in these stocks. And, you know, that’s one of the biggest lessons I learned. Sometimes I hate a stock and I hate it forever. I just hate it. And I didn’t even pay attention.

Frank Curzio 55:00

That’s down 60% because of those reasons. Okay. Once they turn around those reasons, you’re going to see a lot of those gains come back. That’s what you saw to Target for the last six months. And I think you’re going to see that even going forward. Um, yeah. So, uh, good stuff. Really good quarter for Target. I’m really happy about that. Uh, Daniel, anything on your end that you want to finish with?

Daniel Creech 55:21

No, I don’t want to talk about Target, Frank.

Frank Curzio 55:23

We’ll talk.

Daniel Creech 55:23

I’m having fun with it.

Frank Curzio 55:24

We’ll talk tomorrow more about Home Depot, uh, who reported and Lowe’s reported and Toll’s report. Toll Brothers. Toll Brothers is up a little bit today. It’s up for 5%, but it’s still down. Like last week, I think it was 140 or something. And it’s still, you know, it’s up today. What? It’s up 8%. It’s 133. And if you put like just a five-day chart on that, Joe, um, you know, look where it was.

Frank Curzio 55:44

It’s probably where it was five days ago. So that’s where it was. It was actually like 141 like two weeks ago. So, uh, you know, expected, you know, negative going into the quarter, down a lot, down a lot. And then they reported decent numbers, much better numbers than I thought. But I could tell you all three of those names beat and had good numbers. And none of those stocks really moved. Toll Brothers is moving 8% today,

Frank Curzio 56:02

but it was down significantly going into the quarter, uh, just over the past five days, especially over the past two weeks. Again, it was well over 140, 145. And now it’s still 134 after this. But just notice how these companies are reporting decent numbers that are basically lowered by the analysts. They’re beating those lowered estimates. And you’re not seeing, you know, seeing this being reflected in the stock price too much.

Frank Curzio 56:22

I mean, Home Depot, again, it broke 300 first time in many, many years. And now it’s just over that at 307. And they beat. And they had a good quarter. So, uh, when you’re looking at interest rates are higher. When you’re looking at insurance costs are higher. They are higher than they were three months ago, right? All these costs, these are stuff that’s not going to change. Daniel and I talked about this earlier. I’ll end with this. These aren’t,

Frank Curzio 56:42

you know, short-term headwinds that are going to change in less than six months, right? Which means you have another two quarters of these companies dealing with the highest interest rates they dealt with in many years. Insurance costs through the roof. Gasoline price is up 25%. I mean, who’s buying houses right now? I mean, who’s buying high? If you have cash, that’s fine. You’re going to buy a house in cash. That’s a small part of the market.

Frank Curzio 57:01

How are you going to go from a 3, 4% interest rate to a 6.5, 6.4, uh, 6.7 interest rate right now? Significantly higher payment, right? You’re going to get less house. And all the costs associated around the house are much, much, much, much, much higher, including your food costs, right? So, uh, I don’t get it. I don’t see, you know, I just think we need interest rates to come down.

Frank Curzio 57:22

We need the Fed to cut. And without that, when that’s not going to come this year, watch out for the housing industry. A lot of these stocks, I think there’s, there’s, uh, you know, again, a lot of them reported better than the next, better than numbers. Some of them even raised guidance. You haven’t really seen these stocks move. I’m glad Toll Brothers is up 7, 8%. But again, a lot of that is on the back of, you know, the stock getting crushed going into the quarter and just recouping a little bit of it.

Frank Curzio 57:42

But, um, this stock normally should be up 15, 20% after those numbers. And it’s not. So, um, I’ll tell you to short this industry. I just don’t know how they’re going to report good earnings in the next two quarters. If I’m in that sector, I’d be taking profits here. We’ll end with that.

Daniel Creech 57:55

Well said. There you go.

Frank Curzio 57:56

Yeah. So we’ll get more into the 13Fs. Uh, Nvidia’s quarter tomorrow on Wall Street Unplugged Premium. Thanks so much for joining us. Uh, again, you can get in touch with me at frankcurzioresearch.com. Questions or comments, Daniel, what’s your email?

Daniel Creech 58:09

Daniel@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio 58:10

All right, guys. Thanks again for joining us. And we’ll see you tomorrow. Take care.

Announcer 58:13

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.