Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – 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 mainstream what’s going on out there? 

0:00:17 – Frank Curzio

It’s August 20th. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Daniel Creech, senior everything analyst, whatever good-looking guy, always bring him in on the Wednesday podcast. Now what’s going on? Creech? 

0:00:37 – Daniel Creech

Go on, Go on, Frank. Everything’s great sir. 

0:00:39 – Frank Curzio

I know you keep going on. Well, your boy, Scotty Scheffler, kicked ass down four strokes in the last round. What’s the guy’s name? Mcguire? He’s good too, but yeah, he just— yeah, yeah, he won. And now going in, there’s one more event for the FedEx, and I know they switched it up because they used to start where he was just giving strokes and it was a waste because you know you’re giving like four strokes to the number one guy every year, no matter who it is. So they said let’s not do that, Everyone start from scratch. He’s still so far ahead on points, but the odds of him winning this, I think, are the greatest odds that you’ve seen on a golfer in history, even more than Tiger. It’s what is it plus 160? The next one is plus 850, which is McElroy. Who do you got for the FedEx? Is it that hard? I? 

mean there’s 40% of the bets already went on him at those odds. Yeah. 

0:01:25 – Daniel Creech

This will be another case, I think, where whatever betting site, they just have to take him off. It’s like, hey, who’s going to get second? Mathematically I don’t know. I mean, if he gets dead last, maybe, I just don’t know how. 

0:01:39 – Frank Curzio

Hell, he’s 3,700 points ahead, Obviously, but this is like when Michael Jordan played in the NBA. 

0:01:43 – Daniel Creech

It doesn’t matter who they give the MVP to Michael Jordan was the MVP of the year. 

I get it In seriousness. He’s clearly the PGA Player of the Year. All that I hope he wins. Just to cap it off, the coolest thing to me. So he chips in on 17. That was insane. Let’s forget that the four-shot lead that he was behind was done by seven. I think he was up two on number eight. Yeah, so he’s down four to up two in eight holes, seven holes he chips in on 17,. Which is just absolutely unbelievable. But the coolest thing to me is he steps up to the 18th green, up two, doesn’t even think about it, grabs his driver and rips it down the middle. That, to me, just shows you that guy has ice water in his veins. 

0:02:21 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I know that’s pretty cool, so yeah, that is tomorrow, I think. 

Right it starts, so yeah it’s going to be interesting because if he gets hurt, he was really quick on this but he was bitching, like if he gets not that he was bitching, but he was. It’s supposed to be. The FedEx is about your season, not about one event year. But he also says I get it because it it’s pretty much the championship, last tournament and nobody’s watching it because it’s a blowout every year. So you know, let’s see how this goes and and hopefully they make a good spectacle out of it. We’ll see what happens. But yeah no interesting. 

That guy is absolutely unbelievably on fire. I mean he could compare to the Tiger in so many categories. Only two years, I get it. I’m not saying he’s better than Tiger. I’m just saying the streak that he has and the stuff that he’s doing is pretty freaking incredible. 

0:03:11 – Daniel Creech

I’ll tell you who I feel bad for is his little child. That little guy gets dragged out in the sun every Sunday, you know, has to hold a trophy. That’s got to be miserable. 

0:03:17 – Frank Curzio

That kid’s going to have nightmares and stuff like that. I love that meme. The family’s out there. 

0:03:22 – Daniel Creech

It’s a great picture and they’re like what we do this like every Sunday. Let’s get out of here Every Sunday. Everyone knows exactly. Can’t we do this in the nice weather? Wife looks like kid. 

0:03:29 – Frank Curzio

That’s why you win like eight, nine, 10 tournaments a year. But let’s get to the markets here, because you have. I kind of find NASDAQ lost 100%. It’s down today as well, and you’re seeing names like Palantir, which have been up tremendously now 20% down from its highs in the 150s. It was 170s high, 170s, 180. I think it might have hit and this is just the past few days. You’re seeing a lot of momentum names sell off, but all the NASDAQ 100 companies are selling off a little bit and I think the index is probably down 3% the past two days and right away it’s like everyone’s like oh my God, here it comes. This is the crash. I’m so glad we’re getting a breather because these things have really gone straight up. The technology index is still up 12.5%. 

What are your thoughts? I mean because now we’re really getting into the. Are we in a bubble area, especially when it comes to the AI bubble? And I would not listen. The spending is definitely there, as we said, but it’s shifting to other areas where you can make a lot of money in this. But Sam Altman said this in an interview where ironic, because he’s still looking to raise a trillion dollars. I don’t know why he’s saying AI is in a bubble when you’re looking to do that, even though his company now has a $500 billion valuation, which is insane. Elon Musk said the same thing. I see it with some companies that should not be trading evaluations. Where are they trading? What are your thoughts about AI being in a bubble? Is it the whole sector? Should we be pulling back here? Should we be taking some off the table, even crypto selling off as well? Just risk off right now. 

0:04:54 – Daniel Creech

No, I don’t think that it’s in a bubble. I think I hate that term. I think I don’t have hate in your heart. I think it’s ridiculous that the media is so quick to turn on oh okay, it’s a bubble. So this is over Now. Evidently over the last two days, Frank, we just now figured out Palantir’s trade net crazy valuations. 

I don’t know if nobody’s listened to this podcast for the last year and a half, but we’ve always pointed to that. Now everybody’s transitioning out of tech into whatever else. I’m not so sure that this happens that quickly. Ai on a bubble. You’re always going to have situations where you can point to something and say, hey, the fundamentals don’t make sense there, therefore it’s in a bubble. I think that’s a very lazy way to approach things. I think we’ve hit it pretty much nail on the head. At some point. The hyperscalers spending and such will slow down. But what if, just like the talking heads, want to talk about rotation right now from tech into industrials or whatever? What if CapEx spending on AI switch changes rotates, whatever you want to say, from hyperscalers to everybody else? Oracle isn’t in that hyperscaler argument. Half the time they’re up there. What about other smaller companies doing it? What about the? 

Alibaba, Tencent all those companies, yeah An expansion of not only technology and such yeah. So there’s always going to be stuff. To part two Maybe I’m late to the game. I’m not ready to call this back yet, because every time you see a situation and X is very good, I love X and you have these if there’s ever a headline about somebody’s thinking about pulling back on one data center deal, then it’s all over. And I just caution people. You know, do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a lot of gray room here and just follow spending. You know it’s projected to go up. Maybe they do get cut back, but watch the spending, because the spending is the key there, in my opinion. 

0:06:34 – Frank Curzio

It’s going up 51%, it was supposed to go up 30%. 

It’s now going up 51%, right, so that’s a spending increase, right, so it’s going higher and higher. No-transcript. But I want to say that we kind of mentioned this right a week ago, Daniel, because I saw a CPI number that I did not like at all, from the core at 3.1%, and everyone was like, okay, now the Fed could cut by 50 basis points. I’m like you know, I thought Powell had a much stronger argument, not much stronger argument, but I think Trump had a much stronger argument. He had a much stronger argument, like months ago, like the last three months before this, with CPI, ppi data, unemployment data that you should be cutting, and now, with this data that came out, I mean, now I feel like that pendulum has swung into the camp of Powell and Powell saying, hey, you know what, let’s see what happens with the tariffs. First, because the PPI was a disaster, unemployment was a disaster, right. So it’s like, okay, well, employment, if it gets to be a disaster, we should be cutting. But it’s all about inflation. We’re seeing inflation numbers go up now and maybe it’s a one-off or whatever. I just think now you’re gonna cut 25 basis points, which is a given. In september, people were hoping for a 50 basis point. What I’m saying is going forward until he leaves office, which is may, which is powell. Uh, I think the market was factoring in three, four rate cuts and we may only get one by the time he leaves in may. 

Right now, because if we see another high inflation, ppi, cpi report, it’s going to take all the cuts off the table. The market’s not pricing that in. We mentioned yesterday. We could see money coming out of risk assets. We could see money flowing into donations that have cut, which is just about every single nation outside of three. It’s like 50 of them developed and also just developed nations and emerging markets that have been cutting rates this year. 

We haven’t cut rates this year. Last time we cut was in December, so we haven’t been cutting. We’ve been late to the party. Now it makes it more harder to cut, I think, going forward and the market is pricing in lower rates. Even mortgage rates have come down a little bit. But you see this risk-off environment because if the inflation numbers are high next month when they report CPI and the ppi, I think we’re one cut and that’s all we’re going to get, probably for the next three, four months, at least five months and that’s not priced into the markets. Maybe that’s why you’re seeing risk off. It’s just two days. We’re up a ton on so many of these names as well, so the pullback is expected. However, you know I wouldn’t jump the gun, but I just really didn’t like those reports because the market was assuming a lot more rate cuts going into next year and I think it’s going to be a lot less than what everyone thinks, especially if we see inflation continue to go higher in CPI and PPI report. 

0:09:11 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, and we’ve talked about trueflation. We’ve talked about inflation is taking higher and I think that’s why President Trump wanted the rate cut to already happen. You know there’s going to be a bump in tariffs. It just depends on what percentage of the price hikes the consumers end up paying, versus producers, exporters, whatever. The other thing to that, Frank, is the narrative. You always have to pay attention to the narrative and you don’t want to listen so much as to what they’re saying, but about what they’re saying. And what I mean here is we’ve gone from no inflation to where maybe inflation’s taken up, maybe it’s transitory, maybe it’s a one-off, but now a couple of the frontrunners for the Fed chair, Frank, are talking about the balance sheet and now you’ve got to focus on unemployment and all this kind of stuff. Listen. The other thing talk about frontrunning. Frank. What happens Friday? Who gives a big speech? Who puts on his ugly suit and pointy shoes and gives a speech out in beautiful western Montana state? 

0:10:05 – Frank Curzio

Not. 

0:10:05 – Daniel Creech

Montana, Wyoming. Fed chair Powell. 

I am crazy enough to think that the market has to be front-running Powell a little bit, because and I want your opinion on this there is and I’m going to eat some crow on this there is no Florida way in my opinion. Powell comes out and has a good speech on Friday, and when I say good, I mean if he doesn’t hammer inflation and Donald Trump, I would be surprised. I hope that I’m wrong. Maybe the market rallies two and a half percent. I would take the other side of that, because I look through the eyes of lenses of politics and economics. You don’t have to. When I see people disdain or hate one another and you don’t think that affects their job, I just agree to disagree. There is no way I expect a dovish pal. And now to your point. Until I think it’s don’t hold me to this, I think it’s September 9th. In September is when the revised jobs come out. A big revision jobs come out. He’s got clear sailing. 

Until the September rate cut or, excuse me, until that report comes out and you have inflation actually ticking up. Even if you look at the outdated, silly Fed data, it’s going up. But trueflation, which we’ve talked about, which is more up to date, it’s clearly ticking higher and I think markets are always. We know that markets look ahead. I just don’t see how they’re not looking ahead to Friday. I’m not saying stocks can’t go down Friday. If he comes out with a hawkish tone, Frank, there’s a boxing match going on and Powell is throwing haymakers. In my opinion. What say you? Am I crazy on that? Or give me your thoughts on Friday’s speech. In your opinion. 

0:11:38 – Frank Curzio

I don’t know Friday’s speech Jackson Hole thing. All I know is I wonder if there’s an indication between the escort prices that they have there, because they always cover that now you’re talking about davos, davos and jackson hall, right? So it’s kind of like the same that the post always reports on that how much they’re actually making, and I want to. 

I want to know if that has a reflection of the economy, what the economy is going to do. But apparently they’re making very, very good money there with all the private jets and everything flying in and stuff like that. So which is cool, and I love talking about that because it’s so true Nobody wants to talk about it, except for the New York Post. I give them credit. But I don’t know what he’s going to say in his speech. I just think he has the ability to say I told you so right now. And that’s going to be interesting, because if he says I told you so, that’s hawkish and that means hey, we got one cut, but we’re not going to cut for a while. And I think that’s a speech we’re going to get. And I think that’s what the market is pricing in now, why we’re selling off on the risk, asset prices and stocks and stuff like that. I think he’s going to be much more hawkish. He doesn’t care, he’s gone in May, everybody knows that. But you could have made the case for three months ago, two months ago, one month ago, that you should have been cutting. And we made the case. You should be cutting Right now, based on the numbers from the CPI and the PPI, I’d be more cautious. You cannot even go close to a 50 basis point cut. It’s got to be a 25 basis point cut. That’s what’s factored in. 

Usually you don’t see these massive surprises when it comes to cuts from the Fed. They like to be transparent about what’s coming. This way they don’t shock the markets. But I think the shock in the market is going to be like, hey, we’re just going to wait because these tariffs could get worse. We finally saw it. We’re seeing it among companies, prices are going higher and let’s see what happens in the next month, because we could go higher next month. And I’m just telling you that the market is really pricing in lower rates. Huge deregulation, more manufacturing jobs coming to the US All this shit works with lower rates. You don’t have lower rates. None of it works. The housing market doesn’t take off. You don’t see massive consumer spending. You don’t see loans. You don’t see the business trend continue where IPOs and SPACs are getting funded like crazy. All that stuff is going to come to a grinding halt if we keep interest rates higher and it looks like they’re going to be higher longer, especially if that CPI, ppi come out. So just take a look at that, and that’s why you’re probably seeing this cautious tone. Not let me get the hell out of the market, and I’m not saying AI is in a bubble. 

Look infrastructure. You have chip companies. You can name them all NVIDIA, amd, broadcom, gvenova’s infrastructure just so many of these companies. The power companies as well. Uranium been all over these and a lot of these stocks have had massive moves. 

But now you have to look at the transition. There’s new technologies being introduced to data centers. You’re looking at solar. I never really looked at solar ever. Demand’s starting to surge. I don’t know if you look at statistics, because electricity prices are not just going incredibly higher, they’re expected to go and continue to go much higher as far as you could forecast. And when I say as far as you could forecast, I hate when people come out 10 years. I usually forecast two years, three years max, I mean. But even if you go out five years, electricity prices are going to continue to skyrocket. If that happens, you’re going to see more people turn to solar. You’re seeing a lot of stocks in the solar industry after they made those cuts and things like that are starting to do well, are starting to do well. 

So there’s areas in here new infrastructure, building these data centers, the liquid cool technology. They’re even using newer technology than that. New AI chips need to optimize cloud offerings, handle more GPUs. You have the power going into these substations where it’s easy when you first started building. Now they’re buying property around these areas. They’re trying to bring in their own electricity. They have underground power lines, companies that do SMRs, the hydrogen power. You have companies that own their own megawatts and convert them for Bitcoin, which is tier one, which the megawatt is worth a million dollars, where, if you go to tier three, which is AI, and have co-locations and stuff like that, that’s worth 10 to 15, it’s worth 10 to $15 million per megawatt. And that’s why you saw Google come out and you mentioned this partner with a small Bitcoin miner called TerraWolf. This week they took a 14% stake in the company. They own 360 megawatts of power. Good for them. 

But you’re seeing there is areas where you can make money in this. There’s ever-changing technology. There’s a lot of money $400 billion flowing around it’s going to be $800 billion in a couple of years of sides, of side industries that are going to benefit, and it’s not just going to be the NVIDIAs and AMDs which have benefited tremendously. The GV&O’s, you know, infrastructure companies there’s a lot of names that I’m looking at right now, even water. They need water, access to water, which they don’t really have when they’re building these new facilities. There’s a lot of, you know, just different plays and secondary plays you can make a lot of money on and we’ve done that within some of our newsletters just buying companies well ahead of you know everyone talking about them, which is Celeste. What is it? 

Celestica was another one in our portfolio which just I think we’re up how much we’re up on it? Maybe 300% or something like that. We’re up, huge on it and went from like 40 to whatever it is now, like you know I. And it went from like 40 to whatever it is now, like you know, I think it’s 190. And it just got an initiation with a buy rating right, which is awesome for us. We’re in it at 40. People are telling you to buy it now when it’s three times higher than it was. That’s what we’re looking to do in our newsletters and just find different pockets of where this money is flowing to, because it’s going to continue to flow to the newest technologies and that’s ever-changing and that’s why you’re seeing a lot of these deals being signed, especially with Google and TerraWolf, because they really need energy. So there’s still money to be made in this sector. 

0:16:46 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, the TerraWolf deal was interesting. So, and the reason I say that it’s interesting because, like I said, Frank and I have been on this you know power trip and TerraWolf about TerraWolf. So they operate this bugs the hell out of me. Environmentally sustainable industry scale Okay, clean power. We. Environmental, environmentally sustainable industry scale Okay, clean power. We got that. We all want clean air and clean water, high performance computing and Bitcoin mining, Frank. So these guys are hosts, do a lot of that the deal. 

Here’s what stuck out to me. I ran a screen on some of the highest shorted stocks. So high short interest stocks. Why? Because, around volatility, any kind of a headline short squeeze, people have to cover. Those that are short have to buy back their shares. Could see the stock price pull up. Frank, if you would, can you pull up a chart of WULF please? This came up on one of the high short interest screens that I was doing and then a couple days later, boom. This news on Google hits. The interesting thing here is they signed this 200-plus megawatt 10-year AI hosting agreement. They signed that agreement with Fluidstack okay, and Google is backstopping Terrawolf with $1.8 billion and they’re going to take an 8% equity stake, which, if memory doesn’t screw me over here, Frank. Now they’re increasing that from 8% to 14%. 

0:18:01 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, with the warrants and everything. 

0:18:02 – Daniel Creech

full dilution Yep absolutely, and the reason you want these big long-term contracts is because this is sticky, reliable, consistent cash flow, and this is $3.7 billion in contracted revenues, with potential to reach $8.7 billion. That’s if they do an option to increase it, which a lot of times they do. But the point here is I think this is amazing, and under the Trump presidency, you’re seeing a lot more hands-on with government-public partnerships, public-private partnerships. Frank, am I crazy to think that you’re gonna see a lot more deals like this, where you have other companies taking stakes in different things? Because, as you said, instead of an administration saying, hey, you can’t merge, you can’t buy, you can’t do acquisitions, this one’s going to be like hell everybody invest and make everybody rich. 

0:18:45 – Frank Curzio

I mean small modular reactors, and I say this all the time and I get some pushback from people in the industry, but I don’t care, it’s not scalable technology right now and you’re looking at companies trading at $8, $9 billion valuations, regardless. If you think it’s real, regardless, if you think it’s going to happen regardless, if you think it’s going to go through all the approvals and get it very easily, these portable nuclear basically you know carts or whatever you want to call them that you’re going to supply the power with, that’s going to get local, federal, state all these approvals, no problem, all safety measures in every single state, which we know how crazy it is with environmental laws in states like like New York and California. Aside from that, if you think it’s going to happen regardless, it doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re buying technology that’s not available yet, which shows the dire need of how bad they need to lock in electricity. So when you’re looking at that and your question is do you see more deals like this, a ton? I mean, what they’re looking at is they’re looking at a deal where they have 360 megawatts of power. They’re still going to have some of it allocated to Bitcoin mining, but the rest of it. It basically includes this 10-year co-location agreement, but anyone that has energy, which is a company that we have as well, which we talked about in the past I won’t mention it. It went down because the quarter wasn’t as good and there wasn’t enough transparency from the CEO, which pissed me off. But that’s going to change. 

But these guys are sitting on 200 megawatts, would able to increase to 500 to 400 total megawatts. This company has a market cap of 3.5 billion. The company I’m looking at with, right now, 100 megawatts of power, able to scale it up to 400 over time and 200 by the end of, I think, the next 12 months. This has a market cap of 3.5 billion. That company has a market cap of 100 million. So, for me, I’m looking at companies that own power, that always own power, especially the Bitcoin miners, because now you’re looking at their company, instead of providing a multiple, where it’s assuming those megawatts are being priced in at a million per megawatt, they’re really 10 to 15 million per megawatt if they’re going from tier one to tier three, which is AI, data center, co-locations, and as they’re signing these partners, I mean Google, amazon, meta. 

As they’re signing these partners, I mean google, amazon, meta they’re all dying for power any way they could possibly get it. Even the constellation deal with microsoft and signing 20 years into the future to open a three mile island, stuff like that. I mean that’s not going to happen. They’re not even open that for five years at a time. They have a 20 year, I think, agreement to buy all electricity from for the next 20 years, right, so just it’s like insane. It’s like my people don’t understand this. Like their companies are telling you they’re locking in shit that doesn’t exist yet and I just can’t believe that. That no one’s really talking about this more. How we don’t have the power. We don’t have the power right now. Uh, and it’s a man and you could see it by these deals at a sign that I look at these deals and the warrants and the structures and it’s like holy shit. I mean, this stuff’s not going to come to fruition for like five, six, seven, eight years. That’s how long they’re looking out to lock in electricity of. You know if you’re worried about the AI trend actually you know stalling out a little bit. You know they don’t think it is, otherwise it wouldn’t lock in electricity agreements for 20 years For electricity it’s not even going to be available for the next five years. So you know. 

Another deal, too, is Flex and Amazon. 

That I know you wanted to talk was purchasing a bunch of warrants at an excise price of $51. 

It was five-year warrants. Flex Infrastructure, a supply chain management company specializing in data center management, cloud security, power, a whole bunch of other stuff Very vague when it talks about what they actually do, but again, it’s another power company with a $17 billion market cap and Amazon did a deal with them and the stock also went a lot higher as well. So you’re looking at a lot of these partnerships going on too, which, again, if you’re owning Flex, if you’re owning, you know, terrowolf, you’ve done very well. If you own them pretty much a week or two before these deals came out. But that’s what you have when you have that power and asset, and you could help these big guys that have unlimited capital right now hundreds of billions when you find a better way for them to do business when it comes to data, sensitive and AI, they’re going to sign agreements with you. They’re going to sign long-term agreements with you and now you’re seeing it happen with these relatively smaller names, smaller stocks. 

0:22:26 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, fun fact and cheat sheet is, when you pull up any press release from a company, you should scroll down and they usually have an about section. 

0:22:33 – Frank Curzio

Do you have it there? 

0:22:35 – Daniel Creech

And. 

0:22:35 – Frank Curzio

Flex is just hilarious. 

0:22:36 – Daniel Creech

No, I didn’t, but we were laughing about it because I read it and I was like I have no idea what this company does. However, they are a EMS Electronics Manufacturing Services company. They make everything from automobile electronics to cloud servers. They’ve had a partnership with Amazon in the past, so the partnership is nothing new. 

What caught my eye about that when this came across the wire was that Frank was actually talking about how deals evolve and you can get creative in different types of partnerships or mergers or whatever. And this is interesting because Flex gave Amazon the right to buy 3 million in chain shares. I don’t have the number exactly, that’s not important, but what stuck out to me, Frank, is that these are five-year warrants and they’re cashless warrants and, as you’ve talked about in the past, that’s a big deal because even if you’re in the money so if you buy a stock at 10 or at nine and you’re able to exercise your warrants at 10 and the stock is at 20, you still have to come up with $10 per share of how many warrants you have and send that money into the. 

0:23:29 – Frank Curzio

So say, if I put $100,000 into a deal at a dollar and I’m getting warrants just for whatever say that the warrants excisable at $2, right, and the stock goes to three, in order for me to excise the warrants I have to buy the stock. I have to buy it. I have to spend $200,000 just to excise those warrants. So I have them at two and then I can sell them at three. It’s a lot of money Because not only did I put $100,000 up for the stock, now I’ve got to put another $200,000 up for the warrant. 

They’re saying you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do that. Yeah, you could just sell the warrants and you don’t have to put the cash up, and then that cash goes directly to the company. That’s what companies say to justify warrants and three years, five-year warrants. Oh, it’s great for us when they exercise it because we get all the money. Yeah, you also dilute the shit out of all the shareholders, right. They don’t understand that, especially in the mining industry. They don’t understand because I’ve never seen more dilution in the history of any industry in my life when it comes to dilution. But that’s how warrants go. So these cashless warrants and stuff like that it’s just an interesting trend. But you told me to post it up, but I got it up, like about Flex and one of the press releases how they describe that company. 

0:24:29 – Daniel Creech

Let’s have some fun with them. 

0:24:30 – Frank Curzio

This is it. This is how Flex describes that company. It says about Flex it’s the bottom. Improve the world, what, what? 

Through the collective strength of a global workforce across 30 countries and responsible, sustainable operation. Flex delivers technology, innovation, supply chain manufacturing solutions to diverse industries and markets. I mean, you don’t get more vague than that. But anyway, getting to the point is just a deal that they sign, which is really cool, and there’s a lot of money to be made in this sector, where we’re finding new ideas all the time. We’re finding just different areas of pockets that work, and this is working right now. So for us, we’re doing pretty good in this sector and a lot of these names when you’re in early on some of these, which were on a lot of these AI picks. So let’s see, I think it’s nice to get a breather. It feels good. It’s going to allow you to purchase. 

Remember, we saw this in 2022. We saw this in April. In 2022, it was a lot worse, but you saw some of the majors the hyperscalers go down 30%, 40%, right. I remember Nvidia right in 2022. How much lower. It was under 100. Meta was getting smoked. The private policy from Apple that went down. I think it was like 55% the stock or 60%. You got a chance to buy that, which is up 300% from that price level. 

So as long as these companies continue to put up numbers pullbacks. It’s welcome news. If you’re prepared, you should be prepared. You should be up a lot on these names. We’ve been all over this AI trend for a long time, so you should be up a lot on these names. We’ve been all over this AI trend for a long time, so you know pullbacks are good. Now you can buy some of the best names and a lot of the shitty names will continue to get hit and they should get hit. So you know bubble in some areas not all areas, but it is interesting to see NASDAQ pull back and everybody nervous right now. But again, keep your head, buy some. I still think it’s a $200 stock. It is amazing that as soon as Kramer went bullish at $175 and said it’s going to $200, it crashed. I’m not going to say anything about Jim. 

I’m not going to say anything. I was going to try to get him to speak at my conference. It’s going to be hard because he does shows every single day and I’m sure he might have came. He actually went to my wedding but I was going to try to get him. So I don’t want to, you know. But anyway, sometimes we get stuff wrong. But man, just when the timing’s right there and I hate that and it’s happened to me before with stocks I’m just saying, as soon as he came out and Citron, andrew Leff said the same thing. He’s like how could you be buying it up here? And Andrew Luft and I, like Andrew Luft, I met him before. I think he’s a good analyst I said I don’t know if you’re the guy that should be talking shit about Palantir, since you told everyone to short it at 20. 

And he did and I provided that article. I’m just saying when something beats the crap out of you, stay away from it, don’t make comments about it, and like you’ve been right and everyone else is crazy. When you’ve been right on this, you got to listen. He was dead wrong on that freaking stock and he’s talking shit about it. That’s yeah. I just had to point that out and be like hey time on his shoulder. Remember when you tell everyone short this at 20? Okay, relax, now it’s 170, and now? 

0:27:34 – Daniel Creech

you’re saying it’s going to go lower, but you know so far he’s pullback. I mean I hate to say that’s normal because it’s not. It’s very hard and it’s emotional. But just two quick catalysts you got. Do not overlook the PAL and email me at Danielcursierresearchcom. I hope I’m wrong. We’ll see how PAL and what he says on his speech on Friday and the next week is NVIDIA earnings, so that’ll put a lot of stuff to rest. 

0:27:56 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I want to go over Target real quick. I was in the portfolio and I was expecting Target seriously because I had Bank of America, I think downgrade the stock ahead of the earnings. They reported earnings and I was actually going to do a segment. I thought they reported tomorrow and saying, hey, I think Target’s a good buy. I was going to say Target’s a good buy because the expectations are so freaking low and everything. And yeah, I was right in terms of that thesis. I was wrong in the stock price because they beat their estimates, which are crazy low, which I looked at, and they beat all their estimates. Their guidance was good. Everything was better than expected. 

However, the stock is down today because they named a new CEO, which should have been a huge boom to the stock. But this stupid company right announced and I’m saying that, I’m saying it’s a stupid company because you got to there’s management teams that know how to play the game and other management teams that have no freaking clue and don’t give a shit about their shareholders and don’t understand what drives their stock. As a CEO, you need to understand what Elon Musk knows, what drives his stock. All his hyperscalers know what drives their stock. People know what drives their stock. You need to know, as a CEO, what drives your stock price in that, because if they did, they wouldn’t hire a CEO that was in-house, a guy that’s been there for 20 years sitting at the table helping make the decisions that led to this terrible performance, and that’s what really hurt them. I mean Target. They have to bring something new to the table. It’s a great brand. They have lots of customers, but you have inventory concerns that took you four quarters to clear when it took your competitors Costco and Walmart, to clear those in one month after COVID. Sales have been stagnant for four straight years. 

You have an image problem with all of the DEI stuff and now I think you moved past that. But you’re trying to solve this and you want to change your image. But you’re not changing your image by bringing in someone who’s basically been part of the problem since it’s the current chief investment officer and the former chief financial officer. He’s been at that board, he’s been on a board, he’s been at the table with all his decisions and nothing has changed. So why do you think this guy’s? I mean, he may be able to do it, but why wasn’t he speaking up at the table. Right, you have a seat at the table. Get someone different. Shake the whole shit up, because if they named a different ceo, that stock’s up 15 today. It’s not down eight percent because the numbers were not bad. They just they were low ball numbers and you could say sales decline year over year. But they beat the analyst estimates. That’s what they’re trading on and they easily beat the analyst estimates. Guidance was good, everything was okay, and now you know, and, and also you’re taking the ceo out and making the chairman. It’s what are you doing? It’s like there’s no change there. Why announce a CEO change if there really isn’t a change, right? So I know this guy has been brought up to ranks. I think he worked in a mailroom. That’s pretty cool. 

But if you want the immediate pop of the excitement and stuff that moves stocks, you got to go outside the company. You can’t go in-house, and they made a big mistake. And now people are just going to leave and they’re not going to buy the stock, which you’re seeing, and they’re going to say you know what, I’m going to wait six months and see what this guy does, or nine months, and then I’ll buy the stock Instead of your stock going higher, like what happened with Starbucks. Starbucks popped 20% as soon as they got Brian Nichols to come in. If they get another CEO, you don’t see that 20% pop. Maybe you see it up 10%, 12%, because he’s starting to make changes that you’re seeing in Starbucks, which I like right now. But that’s the pop you get when you bring in somebody else from the outside. That’s what they needed to do. 

They didn’t do it and there’s no excitement there and that actually that’s the reason why the stock is down, because you hired someone in-house as a CEO. It wasn’t the numbers, and I’m just like looking at that going. What are you guys doing? If you’re going to get a CEO, you got to go outside, go outside your circle, go outside, hire someone. I mean where your stock is at $100, I mean this is a $200 stock or whatever it was. I mean you can provide so many incentives, which they do with all these retail companies. 

If the stock goes high, you make an absolute fortune. It’s not their salary, but it’s a million here, their golden, shitty parachute that all these guys get, where they don’t give a shit about anything except their salary. But you could really tie that person coming in, like they did with Ford, right With Mulally, when he came in, when Ford almost went out of business $2, man, he took that stock, whatever 12, 13, 14. He made absolutely. He made billions. He made a fortune. That’s how you tie this to a new superstar coming in and you’re giving him stock. You had the ability to do that with your stock down here and you just completely, completely dropped the ball, which I think sets you back at least two quarters, because you know it makes you not want to touch the stock to see what this guy does. Is he going to do anything different? I don’t know. You didn’t really offer anything different when you sat at the table. Let’s see if you do now. It’s terrible management. It’s terrible, terrible management. And you still had that credibility problem. It hasn’t gone away. 

0:32:15 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, and I have to tell myself here because this actually shocked me. So Target’s market cap and it’s down 8% today it’s coming back a little bit is around $44 billion. We’re rounding here. I knew it was smaller than, obviously, the big dog Walmart of $800 billion plus. That’s not the impressive thing. 

TJX, you mentioned that maybe investors should look at Target and say hey, I’ll wait off on here and give it some time, or you could buy a well-run company, mtjx, and I know that’s different in retail. However, they beat and raised today stocks up a little bit. Frank, did you know that TJX’s market cap was about $155 billion compared to $44 billion in Target. 

0:32:50 – Frank Curzio

I didn’t know. 

I didn’t know how big that was and I know I’m mixing apples and oranges, but still that blew me away on that, yeah, I mean it makes sense because so many companies have inventory concerns and these guys are great managers of inventory, like Ross Stores, like Burlington. They take a lot of these high-priced items which, instead of getting rid of them, it makes out for Target, it makes out for a lot of these, just the OEMs, right, the people that are producing this stuff and then you’re selling it to these other guys where everybody makes out, but it just shows, like the business model, what works, what doesn’t work. And I didn’t know they were that much bigger than target. I didn’t know that I knew that. 

0:33:22 – Daniel Creech

Like I said, I’m mixing it, but it’s just, they both reported today and it was like you’re not really, though it’s. 

0:33:26 – Frank Curzio

it’s both in retail industry. Like you would, you would buy tj maxx instead of a target as a retailer. You’re not mixing. I don’t think it’s apples and oranges, I just listen. They should be lumped in together, a lot of those big retailers, and I think TJ Maxx deserves to be lumped in with theirs. So yeah, even Burlington, too is a good company doing well, but Target, just man. It’s a shame that they went this route. But now you basically took everything off the table and it’s a dead stock for six months. It’s a dead stock for six months. So let’s move on to Intel. 

A lot of talk about Intel, Daniel, where stock’s been all over the place. It’s down 6% today. At first, trump said the CEO should be fired. Then he met him and said wait a minute, I really like this guy after meeting him. And now the government is taking an equity stake in Intel and that’s driving people in the media batshit crazy. 

If you’re a Trump hater, you’re saying government has nationalized our companies. What are we doing? If you’re a Trump lover, you’re saying, saying hey, it’s not really a big deal, we want to make money off the money we give companies. I mean, what are your thoughts, because I think I have a little bit of a different opinion here and I get the concerns, but a lot of concerns that we’re hearing are mostly on the political front, depending on what side of the aisle you’re on. I want to try to make money on this and you know my opinion is a little bit different. It’s all over CNBC, it’s all over the news. They just said we’re going to take 15% of everything of NVIDIA and AMD that you sell to China. The government is getting involved specifically in companies, and is that a good trend? Is that a good idea or not? 

0:34:49 – Daniel Creech

No. Next question. 

0:34:50 – Frank Curzio

No, I’m kidding. 

0:34:51 – Daniel Creech

It is a very slippery slope and I don’t like this. I think the big lesson here and the value I think we’re providing one of the pieces of value we provide here is that you need to invest in the world as it is not the way you want it to be. And that’s the same with tariffs, because you cannot be a free trading country when nobody else is free trading. You’re just gonna get waxed, and that’s what’s happened In this scenario. I don’t like this idea because of the slippery slope we’re on and the abuse that will follow. And what do I mean by that? It’s picking winners and losers, and the absolute, dishonest, most pathetic, undervalued or invaluable thing the mainstream media does is that they act like we you, us consumers or individuals are too Florida stupid to understand what’s going on, and this is absolutely a just. This fires me up. The mainstream media is doing such a lack of disservice when they act like history starts today. Okay, because they’re acting like Trump is the first person to try to go pick winners and losers, and they act like private and public partnerships haven’t been a part, unfortunately, in my opinion, of the way of the world. So I don’t know when you want to start with history. You could look at Solyndra and the absolute patheticness and 500500-plus million throwaway. But don’t worry, because an Obama recent official said that was a small amount of money, because it’s only because Trump’s doing large amounts of money Do I like this deal? Absolutely not. Why? Well, because it opens the door. The pendulum is going to constantly swing. Right now, all the Republicans if you’re in Trump’s corner and you like him, that’s fine. Guess what Power changes? Democrats will be in power. And if you don’t think they’re going to pick winners and losers, because guess what they already have. Every administration does it. This administration can use the same excuse as everybody else national security. All you got to do, Frank. If you ever want to get anybody on your side, you say it’s for national security or you’re saving children, for whatever reason. Those are the two things that you just get away with murder. Now the thing here is I just get nervous about what potentially could come. I get the idea that you want to incentivize stuff. Listen, I don’t know. Again, when do you want to pick your start? Do you want to talk about how Tesla was propped up by the government? Through how many administrations forever? Is that okay? They’re picking winners and losers there. The point is, this is the way. This is the world we live in. That drives me insane. 

Having said that, if you had a gun to my head, I would absolutely buy Intel here and hold it, because I don’t know how this is going to go down. One last thing before I pass it back to Frank. The reason it’s a slippery slope is already today you’re seeing headlines that the equity stake could go beyond Intel to anybody that got money from the CHIPS Act. Okay, so NVIDIA and AMD are already on the take. We can call President Trump the godfather, I guess Frank, because he’s just going to shake down. That’s awesome. We need an AI image of the Don the godfather. But anyway, hey, this is the world we live in. Don’t get too upset. Leave that to us here. But it’s a slippery slope, Frank. What say you? 

0:37:39 – Frank Curzio

It’s a slippery slope, but I’m going to take a different angle at this and I understand the concerns Nationalism and all this stuff. And you’re taking over some of these companies. The government has an equity stake. We see what happens and they’re comparing it to China and all. It’s not China and everything where they actually run those companies the telecos and stuff like that. Even in Canada, the same thing, right. 

But if you go back to the podcast and I think it was last year or maybe a little bit earlier than that the Biden administration gave Intel almost $8 billion under the CHIPS Act to build fat facilities. If you go back and listen to that podcast, you’re going to hear me cursing like a maniac because I was so pissed off. I was like how could you give a dollar to Intel? Why isn’t this going to Nvidia? Why isn’t this going to AMD? Why are you giving it into the worst company, a broken company with terrible management? A team that used to be a top five company in the world based on market cap now has missed every major trend, from mobile phones to cloud to AI, everything. They watch AMD, which had a dollar stock at one point and going to go out of business where they Intel, I think tried to make sure they didn’t go out of business this way. They didn’t want a monopoly at the time. You know, looking 20 years ago now, amd’s eating their freaking lunch. 

But when we give taxpayer monies just those dollars away, like to the post office, to healthcare companies, to chip companies, to solar, to wind companies, even to colleges I like the fact, for the first time, someone’s thinking about the rate of return that we get for this investment, because that money is out the door, lost and it’s gone. That’s why I was pissed off about Intel. You’re giving it to Intel. Intel’s going to build facilities. What are they going to do? They’re going to promise you that they’re going to hire new people which they’re probably going to fire a year later after their numbers are not fucking good anymore. And then they get all that money for free and that’s my money. Like. Shouldn’t we have a choice of where this money goes? I mean, why should it go to the fucking post office? And I’m not killing anyone who works for the post office, I’m just saying the post office is what? Five, six billion dollars a year. Ups and fedex are run pretty well, going through a little bit of a downturn but still generating profits. Right, it’s when you don’t have accountability and you have, you don’t have anything you don’t have, you have no stake in the game. It’s no wonder why these politicians are doing what they’re doing. They don’t care. It’s not their money, I mean. 

A good example is this and how easy it is to spend other people’s money is DEI in colleges. So in colleges we’re receiving what? Tens of billions right from the Biden administration, dei? They hired tons of new people, new departments, they created new curriculums, talked about how important DEI was for the long term even BlackRock long term. This is so important for America. This is so important. You know what? What happened when Trump pulled the funding? You realize it wasn’t so fucking important anymore. What did the colleges do? They all cut their DEI departments. They truly believe in DEI, that it was a game changer. It’s good for the country. They would have kept them, they’d pay for them out of their own pockets, but they didn’t because they weren’t being handed checks. 

All right, and that’s our government. We hand money to anyone and there’s no accountability. And you wonder why? I mean, I know someone had told this story who went to call a dentist and said that they wanted to get a cleaning and it was like $125. They didn’t know this person had insurance. She went there’s $125. And she’s like, oh, I have insurance. I’m like, okay, no-transcript through insurance. Think about that for a minute. I mean that’s fraud on every single freaking level. But that’s what you do. I mean you wonder why. You know surgeries, I got one hip replacement like seven years ago and I got the other one like three years ago. The first one, I didn’t pay anything. I had to pay like five grand out of pocket for the second one. What the hell happened? It’s the same insurance, everything right. I mean, how much money do they need to make off of this? But we just keep handing money. There’s no competition, there’s prices that you know. Hey, this is what it is and you’re gonna have to pay whatever because the insurance takes care of it. 

I like the fact. This is accountability. I understand, understand, people will be like, yeah, Frank, but they’re taking percentages of companies. I like the fact that the taxpayer could earn a rate of return now, because now it’s not only are we giving you this money, you better do the right thing with it, make money, and we’re going to get a percentage of it. I kind of like that. 

I know I’m by myself and I get the concerns about nationalism and having the government involved. I’m just saying you’re hoping that the government isn’t that involved, where the government is probably going to give Intel more contracts now that they’re under. You know again, trump likes them and we talked about the Trump portfolio and that’s doing very well still even a little bit on this pullback. But when it comes to Intel, you see what the president is doing. Is he going to give more business? All I know is if Intel really succeeds here which I place a huge doubt on because they haven’t succeeded in 15 years now they’re terrible. But if they do succeed, why shouldn’t the taxpayers, who’s giving them billions of dollars, make out on this deal? And that’s what I have no problem with. 

It’s the accountability, it’s stake in the game, it’s okay. This is our taxpayer dollars. How do we make money Instead of just shoveling money to all these solo companies and all these companies for nothing? They can go bankrupt. They it for nothing they can go bankrupt. They could generate $20 billion in profits. The taxpayers see nothing. We just handed them that All because of that company is paying back the politicians through lobbying dollars and giving them money and funding their campaigns and stuff like that. It’s like this whole cycle hey, you wash my hands, I’ll wash yours and we’re fine. At least we’re seeing some accountability here. 

That’s a different take. I know Frankcurzorresearchcom. Feel free to email me and say I’m crazy. I just like the fact that you have stake in the game. I’ve been doing this for 30 freaking years and a lot of people that give advice. They don’t have fucking stake in the game. They don’t have stake in the game when they tell you Bitcoin’s going to zero when it was a thousand and now it’s 115,000. And people listened and they shorted and they got wrecked. They didn’t short. All right, I’d say 85% of the people on TV that you see. They don’t have stake in a game. They give advice all the time, but they don’t have stake in a game. This is having stake in a game. That’s one of the things that I like. Again, different opinion from probably a lot of people out there, but that’s how I feel. 

0:43:08 – Daniel Creech

I do like that perspective and I think that’s a further conversation. There’s no way I disagree with that. What about the return? Because, again it so. Therefore, our taxpayer dollars are spread out, given away, lit on fire, all that kind of stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think that’s a great argument. Hey, what about our return? Then you go down that rabbit trail of okay, well, let’s say you get a billion dollars, just as an example, when does that money go? Who uses it? And that’s not a problem in and of itself. I just think it’s a slippery slope. But it’s the way we live in and yeah, but great take. I mean, if you don’t think that taxpayers should get something, I think that’s even worse. 

0:43:41 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that perspective is even scary, and I understand that, people like Frank though. But you know nationalism and I get it, I understand it, but it’s without doing this. 

0:43:49 – Daniel Creech

I know you’re not saying this, it’s not nationalism yet, but it is definitely the step towards that. 

0:43:53 – Frank Curzio

You know, you can’t deny that, and I’m not. I I’m not putting that on you. 

0:43:55 – Daniel Creech

I’m simply saying that loud. But, yeah, it’s just like with tariffs. Hey, you’ll say, oh, tariffs led to World War II. Okay, If you want to say that, you can say, okay, tariffs ended up going to World War II, but that didn’t happen overnight. We didn’t say, all right, we’re implementing tariffs and then boom bombs are flying the next day. 

0:44:13 – Frank Curzio

And not to mention we had how many freaking years of almost 80 years, 90 years, whatever it is of people taking advantage of us through tariffs and stuff like that, which you see in a lot of different areas. Right, you do see it, and that’s why I think the country’s assigning deals right now because they know how lopsided it was. So it’s different times, it’s different variables, it’s different facts you have to look at. You can’t just say, well, we’re trading at a 22 times P ratio and it’s the same ratio. When the market crashed, I mean, we were trading at 22 times earnings, several times uh, for the past two and a half, three years and stocks are up tremendously and you’re not seeing the p ratio go skyrocket because earnings are just continue to surge. We had goldman sachs even said we have one of the best earning seasons on record when it comes the amount of companies, the amount that companies beat on earnings not just the percentage of companies but how much they beat by is the highest on record that we’ve ever seen. And that’s something when you want to see when your stocks are trading at all-time highs or they’re trading at 22 times PE on average for the S&P 500. You have to make sure that growth component is there and these guys are growing earnings. Right now they’re growing earnings. If they’re not look out, that’s where you’re going to see a lot of these names that all of a sudden warn that are trading at 30, 40 times earnings and they warn that they get wrecked. They get held hard by 20% because they lowered estimates a lot, but overall, you’re still seeing the earnings back up where we are at 22 times forward earnings and, like I said, if you think we’re expensive now, we were more expensive two years ago because earnings were a lot lower and yet our market has done great since then. So we have to continue to see the growth. We haven’t seen the cut in spending in AI, crypto initiatives, stuff like that, raising money. 

There’s a lot of positives in this market but listen, stocks pull back and they should pull back. We should have a recession every six, seven years. Our government doesn’t allow it anymore. There’s no such thing as a recession. That comes down to it. We’re highs, but in the 2020 released another seven trillion. That billion trillion right. First five trillion, then another seven trillion, and they’re wondering why. Economists are like why do we have inflation? How did I get this wrong? My god, stop fucking reading books and just look ahead please take florida. 

Stop stop freaking, freaking reading data and just take you know what Smoke a joint. Sit back and just try to forecast. Okay, Don’t forecast just by looking at stuff that happened the past 20, 30 years ago, Because it’s different. We never injected $15 trillion into economy in like a year and a half before You’re going to have inflation, and we didn’t give it to the banks to lend out. We handed directly PPP loans directly to people Thanks to LendOut. We handed directly PPP loans directly to people we had. You know, I have people next door to me before I moved, before I moved to my new neighborhood. 

But, I mean you know they had city jobs and they have, you know, two Mercedes and three cars in a driveway. 

I mean, come on, I mean you could see it if you just opened your eyes a little bit, and I wish they did. But anyway, you know not to beat a dead horse here, but I do like it. When it comes to the accountability part, and that’s all I’m saying. I just think it’s really good that the taxpayer could get a return on their investment. When they’re used to not getting anything out of their investment or the choice of what they fund, we don’t have a choice. We just give them their money and they do whatever they want with it, and it’s been lost for so many years At least. Now we’re in investments that could do good and hopefully that could lead to us maybe getting money back. That’s a stretch, I know, but let’s see what happens later on in the couple years ahead. But I think it’s too early to see if this is a good idea or a bad idea. Let’s see how it plays out over the next 24 months. 

0:47:26 – Daniel Creech

Oh, absolutely, it’s too early. Yep, yep, we got to watch this cake being made. 

0:47:34 – Frank Curzio

Frank is Chamath. He’s back Venture capitalist Podcaster Chamath Palapitalia I always get that wrong, palapitalia. I don’t even know how to pronounce his last name, I always call him Chamath, but he just raised $250 million for a new blank check company called American Exceptionalism Acquisition. A Okay, so he says the biggest gains in the future are going to come from companies that are involved in fixing the fundamental risks that come from our interconnected global order, while reinforcing American exceptionalism Tower shit and companies and bringing manufacturing jobs. I guess that’s what that means. This guy is the king of raising money. He raised over $6 billion for SPACs. All of them are trading under $4. They all came in at $10. All of them are trading under $4, except for one, that’s SoFi, which is at $22. Virgin Galactic he made over $300 million cash out of the SPAC sold in the 20s and 30s. It’s under $3 today. And he was telling everyone hey, this is a great SPAC and this is awesome and this is a fun. 

Whatever you know, I covered that Desktop Metal was another one that filed like Chairman. I think he’s a smart guy. He just made money on the backs of retail investors, like everyone on Wall Street does. That’s why we have this podcast to call people out when they fucking do that. Sorry, no more F-bombs, I promise, but I’m emotional about this. I get pissed off. So now in this filing, which I thought was pretty funny I don’t know if he developed a conscience or not but he says a new SPAC includes no warrants, because these used to include warrants that you didn’t have to disclose. Nobody knows that when you’re a retail investor, right, nobody cares. But that adds significant dilution which nobody cared about, until they’re down 90% of the SPAC and they’re like why am I down 90%? Well, you got to look at the structure of these deals. This new deal has no warrants and a large and normal sponsor promotion, although he says his shares will only vest post-merger if the company trades at a 50% premium to the IPO price. So it’s going to come out at 10. 

So if it’s over 15, then all the stuff is going to you know, he’s going to, all the shares are going to vest and he could make a lot of money if that happens. Right, everything over 15. He also notes that this sort of offering is more appropriate for institutions and retail investors and that any participants should go in with the understanding that there’s no crying in the casino. You got balls to say that, if you’re him, and saying that because you wrecked every retail investor 98% of the retail investors that trusted you when you went on TV and you said this is a value play, this is great, everybody’s going to space. Everybody’s going to go to space right With this one company, and you and Branson cashed out for $300 million plus each. You also said it’s a great long-term play. If it’s a long-term play, how come you never reinvested in this stock? How come you’re not reinvesting in it right now? Hmm, you know I’m not coming after you with you know stuff that you haven’t said. This is what you said, and now you’re saying, hey, you know, no crying in the casino. Well, I don’t think you’ve done much crying with these names. I think you’ve done very, very well. 

And a lot of people were crying because they were promised something by you and you didn’t deliver, and I would argue that you lied to them. And again, I like Chamath, I really do. I think he’s brilliant. I listen to his podcast, I listen to you know, I like follow him on Twitter and stuff like that. But just this part really, really bothers me, because you sold yourself, sold to the devil, and I just you know, once you do that in terms of credibility, you ruined it and you made a fortune off it, ruined it and you made a fortune off it. Now you want to run for Congress or whatever you want to run for, be a politician and you’re all of these podcasts and you made absolute fortune from this. But you did it on the back, by crushing, destroying retail investors on purpose, right, and that’s the problem I have with this, especially since I’ve been in the industry for 30 years. I just thought it was funny. You’re starting a new SPAC, but not only that, just putting those guidelines around. That I thought was really funny, yeah really funny. 

0:51:15 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, this is maybe the top of the market as well, along with Powell’s speech, and we’ll see what NVIDIA does next week. When I read the no warrants section of it and just the name of the SPAC, he’s a very smart marketer, obviously, but yeah, if you think that this guy gives a flying Florida about anything in retail, then I agree, disagree and I’m sorry. I do like a few of the stats that he put in there in his welcome letter in the S-1 filing. So, going back in 2017, what you would describe as a unicorn, as a private company, that’s over a billion dollars. There was about 150 of them and he was talking about how the markets are broken, and Jamie Dimon, the best bankster in the US in my opinion, has talked about this as well. There was 7,000-ish publicly traded companies years ago. Now that’s down to under 5,000. So unicorns went from Frank 150 in 2017 to over 700 today. That shows you the extent of private markets and, as Frank said, why would you go public and cash out when you have all that kind of money to be able to be raised? 

I do think he’s trying to find religion with the no warrants thing and I have to give it to him. I think that is a brilliant marketing piece. I think that that will listen. We’re all greedy and if you’re on the fence of following this, you know lying little dress up guy into another one after getting burned, unless you were in SoFi. That’s like the Joker card and I appreciate that, because you should be on the fence about him, in my opinion. And then he sneaks this in. Well, I’m going to do it different. I’m going to go out and I’m going to structure this deal, for the retail is basically what he’s trying to come across as, in my opinion, that’s not the case. 

0:52:57 – Frank Curzio

He said it’s not for the retail. He says it’s not for retail, it’s for institutions. 

0:53:00 – Daniel Creech

I’m simply reading into this and I think you put in I’m changing the structure of this deal and no warrants. I think you do that to try to get retail in. I know he’s saying it’s not for retail and no crying in the casino. But why would you continue to make your point? If you’re not trying to get retail, why would you warn Wall Street? You think you have to tell your. Wall Street buddies, no crying in the casino. Get the heck out of here. 

0:53:22 – Frank Curzio

Well, first of all these things only work if you have the retail investor. 

0:53:24 – Daniel Creech

This guy is just silly. 

0:53:25 – Frank Curzio

No, it only works if you have the retail investor. This is how it works, guys. You want the inside scoop. So they’re raising $250 million and you raise it, have a year, year and a half, to do it or he loses several million dollars. He had like three or four SPACs on the table that he had to cancel and withdraw, which isn’t a big deal, since you made hundreds of millions of dollars on the other SPAC while everybody got annihilated. So what they do is they’ll find one company, they’ll buy it, they’ll change the name of it and maybe they’ll adopt the name of the company that they buy, no-transcript to be. You get warrants and stock at $1. Now they might do options or without options. So under the table you’re going to see a $10 stock price. That comes out the only way this works. If retail investors pile into this freaking thing right away, drive the price of this up and as they drive it up, all the people in the pipe deals are going to be selling their shares that they got $1, $2, some $0.50, $3. They’re going to sell the shit out of you and they’re going to sell it even at $8 or $9, because they’re going to be so many people that get this stock at a much lower valuation. They’re going to tell you the stock that they’re buying Again. 

A lot of these companies that came out of SPAC are very, very good companies. They were good, they’re growing. But you don’t have a $350 million company of what it’s worth. And now you’re basically, after everything’s done and all the deals are done, the market cap is $ billion. That’s why the stock crashed. The same thing happened with market wise. Market wise has millions of subscribers, a lot of you guys familiar with it. That was porter’s company, right. They came out with a SPAC with. The valuation was through the freaking roof and you can’t even see it because most of the shares aren’t even released yet. I think it’s like 70 of the shares aren’t released yet. So you’re looking at a market valuation that it’s much, much higher with full dilution. But the valuation it came out of that was a joke. It’s a very good company. I know I used to work there. 

They have so many different divisions it’s really a gore network and Mark Weiss has lots of different divisions. They’re making money. Maybe revenue is down a little bit slowing. They still make hundreds of millions of dollars, right, but the valuation of that company came out so freaking high and that’s what they did with SPACs. They have to sell it to people like you, the retail investors. Get you excited, hire promoters, everybody buys the shit out of it and that’s what gives the leverage for the people underneath you to sell it. Then, after they’re done, then they leave it for dead and they’re like okay, and they’re out and they’re on to the next stock, and that’s what they do and that’s what they all did. 

I mean, why do you think so many of these hedge it? And you know what nobody got arrested, nobody got in trouble. And the sec right. What was genzo doing? He’s focusing on crypto companies. Oh my god. Crypto you’re gonna die. Everyone’s gonna lose. They’re gonna lose some money. 

We care about the consumer. That was. I love that. I. We care about the consumer. We. What a what horse shit. Oh my god. If you can’t about, what horse shit you care about the consumer, are you out of? But what horse shit you care about the consumer. Are you out of your mind what you see? What happened with SPACs? Really, you know exactly what’s happening with SPACs. You know exactly what’s happening. 

It’s very easy to see Retail investors got annihilated and you’re really saying that you care about retail investors. Come on man, come on, just don’t mind. If you’re mean, I don’t mind. If you’re arrogant, I don’t mind. If you’re an ass, I don’t care about that. But when you’re deceiving that’s a totally different story. That’s bad character. Don’t be deceiving. Don’t go to our face and say, oh, this is good for you, when you know it’s not and we’re getting wrecked right and that’s what I hate. 

That’s one For him. He’ll raise the money. They’ll launch this thing. But just be very, very careful. Buying this thing at 10, because there is probably 70% of this float that’s dying to sell the shit out of this stock at 7, 8, 9, and it’s going to come out at 10. If it goes to 11 or 12, just be careful, because it’s going to come out at a high valuation, as most of these people, most of the insiders, are going to die to sell as soon as months. Probably within the first month, first three months, you’re going to see lots of selling this thing. Just be very careful. 

0:57:20 – Daniel Creech

Count to start. Count down clock, because there has to be something deeper here related to politics, or that avenue A, the title, which is American Exceptionalism. That’s funny Quickly here, but there’s just got to be something here politically. Because who does this sound like? Frank Answer? President of the United States. What is he going to focus on? Energy production, ai, decentralized finance and defense. That’s this back company yeah. 

0:57:49 – Frank Curzio

He’s piggybacking off of Trump. Yeah, Basically Good job. 

0:57:53 – Daniel Creech

If you trade it, I hope you make a gazillion bucks. 

0:57:59 – Frank Curzio

He’s very, very smart, but if you don’t, no crying in the casino, no crying in casino. 

0:58:03 – Daniel Creech

That’s great that he actually said that. Three-foot tall people say that. 

0:58:05 – Frank Curzio

Don’t cry. In the casino I made all the money and I robbed you blind, but don’t cry when that happens. If Buffett said that, somebody’s that’s not original. 

0:58:14 – Daniel Creech

I don’t know where it comes from. 

0:58:15 – Frank Curzio

Anyway, all right guys. That’s it for us. Questions, comments feel free to email Frank@curzioresearch.com, Daniel. Your email, Daniel@curzioresearch.com. All right, guys, we’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you tomorrow on Wall Street. Unplugged. 

0:58:37 – Daniel Creech

Take care. 

0:58:39 – Announcer

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.