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 Main Street.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

How’s it going out there? It’s May 7th. I’m Frank Curious, just a Wall Street Unplugged podcaster. Bring it on fellas and I’ll tell you what’s really moving these markets. Bringing Daniel Creech. Been covering my ass at least for the past week whenever I’m going away. What’s going on, man? How’s everything?

0:00:35 – Daniel Creech

I love it, Frank, welcome back. You leave me in charge for 30 minutes at a time. Well done. At least the market didn’t crash this time I left you.

0:00:41 – Frank Curzio

I know the Frank trade. It’s the first time ever.

0:00:42 – Daniel Creech

Frank trade is over. All good things come doing in finally, thank goodness. You know, I know, I know, thank god, thank god, but Frank leaves when the markets are crashing.

0:00:50 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, just cover the podcast, no big deal get some alerts out for me for those portfolios. Yeah, make sure that you put your email address and I think that’s going lower yeah.

0:00:59 – Daniel Creech

So while I was here holding the fort down, what were you doing? I saw the x post about um, your boots on the ground when you’re on a rig, and you scared all the subscribers when you were like, oh, I hope to whatever slide down I want to take the exit strategy off of this thing in case in case, this florida rig blows up.

0:01:18 – Frank Curzio

Yeah so I was actually in a dj base in denver, uh, and at a site for a company I was looking at that. I really like an amazing company that did a massive acquisition and you probably haven’t heard of it and I won’t talk much about the name here, but you probably haven’t heard of it because usually when you see large acquisitions it’s from a bigger company or they’re acquiring something, or you might see it from private equity. You know those companies come in, they’ll buy you know a bunch of oil wells. This is a smaller company that was producing like 2,000 barrels of oil, that was able to raise a ton of money through a lot of their contacts and purchase a $600 million asset. Basically, that’s going to increase their production dramatically and the stock crashed because of that, because they were doing this over the past two, three months and we know what happened with tariffs, we know what happened with oil. So the stocks absolutely crashed. But they’re going to generate a shitload of cash flow and you’re saying, well, oil prices are coming down. Well, luckily for them, because of the terms and the agreement to get it signed, during those times they had a lock in production and they locked in production through 2028 of all production that they just bought at $68 a barrel, right? So it’s pretty interesting, considering the stock is trading around, you know, a little over $4.

So I’m doing a little more research, but I wanted to go there and they took me out to the drilling site with a drilling and I was on the rig. As it’s drilling and they’re basically drilling, was it 1,500 feet down and two miles underneath? And it’s unbelievable, when you see the rig up close, how loud it is, how great it is, how there’s so many different operators, like there’s so much going on and it was fascinating. I posted some pictures on my Twitter account if you guys want to look at Frank Curzio. But this is the type of stuff I do before. I’m really recommending some of these stocks and helping them, even with consulting and marketing and things like that, but just lots of new ideas coming to the portfolios, coming to you guys, and I really love traveling. I really love the boots on the ground.

It’s not just talking to CEOs. Every CEO of every company is going to tell you how great their company is. That’s their job. Okay, I’m not making fun of them, I’m a CEO. I’m going to tell you the same thing. Things are great, you know, but you want to talk to the workers on site. The sentiment there. Just, I talk to a lot of key people who won’t show up on conference calls and people who are very critical operations and man, they’re coming from different places where they’ve never felt more comfortable at a company than this. They see the future of this. It’s really amazing.

So I know people think oh, oil’s coming down, more oil production. We saw Diamondback come out and say you know, oil production might have peaked In Texas, Frank, yeah, in Texas. But it was amazing just to see and get up close. And this was a huge site 11 wells being drilled over the next couple weeks. Another site they took us to not too far away, about 45 minutes away. Again, I had to put the suit on the hat and everything. You know the hard hat. It was pretty cool to really be there. Dumb question what do you mean suit Basically?

0:04:09 – Daniel Creech

the flammable, oh, like harness, like safety. The flammable, yes.

0:04:13 – Frank Curzio

And you know it was cool. But I took a picture of the ropes that come down from the top and they’re called Geronimo ropes.

0:04:22 – Daniel Creech

That was the exit strategy for those guys.

0:04:24 – Frank Curzio

That’s the exit strategy if anything happens, it’s real bad. Yeah, you know you think it’s crazy, but they put them up and also they have. All the vehicles you’ll see on a site are always parked, like you know they back in, yeah. And it makes you think like this shit must happen, a lot right, like what you saw, in case you crash into the ocean, you know you gotta wear this shit and they take 15 minutes and now they give an advertising.

You gotta listen to all that shit and they shut off communications, everything. So they say it all the time and it’s not a lot of you know. Thank god not anymore. At least bowie’s back on track doing well, so not too many uh failures when it comes to planes, but anyway. Anyway, it was a really good trip and you guys are going to learn a lot more about that stock, and I’m talking more.

I just had some more questions and follow-ups, but I want to see when I really get into a company where I’m like, holy shit, I really need to see it personally. And I took three days to go there and it was great man, they rolled out the red carpet for to see a lot of these firms and there were a lot of big firms on there. You talk about Piper, you talk about Citigroup I mean, this is a small company no one really heard of and you got Truist. All these guys are going to come out, which helped. The financing is going to come out. That’s what they.

You go on Bloomberg, you go on Capital IQ. The numbers aren’t there yet to show the production because it was such a big acquisition and it just happened and now these sell-side firms are all going to be coming out with their reports on it and one or two of them already came out with reports on them, with $16 price targets, $15 price targets I mean the stock is four. So it’s really exciting times and, yeah, I just had a few follow-up questions, but you’ll probably see that make it way to the portfolios. It was really cool, really good trip and I appreciate you asking man it was cool.

0:06:08 – Daniel Creech

Quickly, when I flew out to Vegas I thought airports and such seemed very busy and in fact I picked up the shuttle guy at the airport because I had to park, and you know what I’m talking about. Like most airports, you know the the economy parking has three or four lots. Here in Jacksonville I parked in the second one Frank knows where that is and my point was I had to go all the way in the back and I’m thinking, man, you know, the other one’s closed, this is pretty crowded. I was flying through the week. I asked the shuttle guy and he goes no, this is real slow. So I don’t know where else other people park, but everything was crowded. In my opinion, that’ll seep. Did you see anything different? I thought it was very crowded. I thought things were busy, meaning airports, my planes were full, et cetera.

0:06:50 – Frank Curzio

I flew into Denver and then I came back and went into New York and I have to tell you, the Jacksonville airport on the way back Thursday and I had to fly back out Friday to New York. I didn’t think when I went back Thursday because I came back Thursday and I left early Friday that I would get a space and I’d have to valet. So it was jammed. Denver airport was insanely. There was lines of like 10 or 12 outside of every bathroom. I’ve never seen an airport that crowded. I never realized how big Denver airport was. I probably flew in and out of there two or three times, but it just it was insane. I mean, that’s one of the biggest airports, I think, in the world and it was insanely busy. It was insanely busy. When I came back Sunday it wasn’t as busy, but you know we’re going to talk about Disney’s earnings, uber earnings, but you didn’t see, it, didn’t catch your attention is my point.

0:07:33 – Daniel Creech

It caught my attention of how busy it was.

0:07:34 – Frank Curzio

I mean, it was almost the most busiest I’ve ever seen an airport in my life. So yeah, with Denver it was insanely crowded, it was just jammed. So things can change. But our point is things aren’t falling apart, right, they’re not falling apart. And listen from a stock perspective, right, there’s different spectrums. The lower end is very tough. You don’t own assets. It’s tough. Your costs are going up dramatically.

Just look at Uber, look at Disney. I mean they’re making the numbers because they’re raising costs dramatically. A lot of these companies continue to raise costs dramatically. I think Coca-Cola raised costs every single quarter since COVID, 40% of the past year. You’re seeing that across the board and they’re able to pass on those costs right now. But Uber, disney, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

But when you’re looking at the middle class, the middle class is by far middle class is identified at 50, 60,000 if you’re in Iowa, to 250,000, maybe 300,000 if you’re in Iowa, to $250,000, maybe $300,000 if you’re in California and if you’re in New York. I just saw friends from New York that I haven’t seen in 15 years. Good jobs, they’re bringing in over $200,000. They can barely make ends meet. It’s just the costs are expensive. They take 55% right off the bat, it seems like a lot of money.

You’re like holy shit, but when? And you’re like holy shit, but when you live in some of those areas, it’s middle class. They’re not driving around in Mercedes or anything. They’re living paycheck to paycheck. Especially, their kids are going to college. They’re paying for college tuitions through the fucking roof, jeez. So you know all this stuff and I’m saying that because my daughter’s going to college and I know a lot of my friends. I mean it’s listen, 50 grand automatic. You know D in no matter what. So you know it’s crazy. Those costs are up but the middle class is still spending. They’re cutting back in certain areas and some areas, but it is amazing to see how good the consumer is doing and that’s going to weigh on the Fed’s meeting which they’re meeting in a couple of hours. The market’s doing well. I think it’s up a little bit as of now, but I think the Fed is going to come out and be really dovish, not dovish hawkish.

Okay, I was going to say no, which means that they’re going to come out and say look, there’s no reason for us to cut rates. If you look at the expectations we were looking at June, we’re going to cut six rate cuts. We’re down to three rate cuts and they’re saying like it’s probably not only, we’re not going to see one today, we’re probably not going to see one in June and maybe not July. So there’s no reason for them to cut. Because if you look at the expectations, Daniel, of inflation, the expectations have it going to 3.5% or higher, but reality is inflation is not really going that much higher. Why? Because you’ve seen the rental income component of CPI come down a little bit. It’s not coming down, but it’s growing at the slowest pace in a very long time. And also you’ve seen oil prices crash, right. So when you’re looking at that and also new car prices, they’re raising new car prices.

Did you see the numbers on the used cars, the sales? Yeah, like the data that came out, it’s like the highest it’s been in many years. So it’s crazy where people are like why am I going to buy these new cars when I can buy? Listen, a car is one of your best investments. I know what you hear out there and you’re, like Frank, crazy. It depreciates right away what you do with a car and the fact that you can lift it, live in it, go any state you want. It’s unbelievable the value you get and they’re so durable I mean. I mean, there’s not a car, it’s not going to last you 10 years pretty easily and well over 100 000 miles. So people like, maybe I get a used one instead of going through this whole tower shit and all the new ones and high prices it you’re seeing it. You’re seeing it in the data, which is used cars. So how do I find ideas for used cars? How do I find these parts and sales and used parts and used car sales?

But there’s a lot of companies within that space that are probably going to do very, very well. They’re going to see sales explode. Right now, as the tariff nonsense is coming in, a lot of these guys are moving their plans. They’re starting to raise prices. They’re trying to give you employee incentives and stuff like that employee pricing. But the bottom line new cars you’re going to see prices go higher and it’s why you’re seeing whether it’s Ford or it’s GM a lot of these companies saying, hey, you know, we don’t even know if we could provide guidance, because we really don’t know what the hell’s going on with Trump. He’s all over the place. So you know the used car market there’s a lot of good names in that space too should do pretty well. So yeah, it’s just interesting.

0:11:28 – Daniel Creech

It is. I’m glad you corrected yourself there, because we’re going to disagree there. I think Jerome Powell will be extremely hawkish today, but I think it’s a little bit for different reasons. His term is up in what a handful of months, early next year, and I don’t know if you caught any of President Trump’s weekend interviews. He did, but he took questions and listen, he brings it on himself.

Fair criticism about firing Jerome Powell. Well, he put all that to bed. In fact, he took the answer, or the road, if you will, to say listen, he’s leaving soon anyway. Why would I fire him now? So I think that’s Trump’s mindset, vice versa and I’m going out on a limb here, so I could totally be wrong.

Daniel@curzioresearch.com, I think there’s a lot more emotions in politics and these independent people than what they tell us. So my point is, if you’re Jerome Powell and I put my sleaziness hat on Frank, because not him personally the environment he’s in and must operate in, Frank, I’m about to get fired, or let go, or nicely, you know, pave way, I’ve served my term. Why in the world would you do anything to help a guy that you absolutely despise? And no, he hasn’t said that, but I’m going out on a limb. It’s not hard to tell that they don’t like each other. Now why would you do anything to help Trump before you leave office, when you can argue all the data is going your way, to hold tight and just you know?

Take the name calling and stuff, by the way, truflation, which I’ve been calling out several times here, Frank, what do you think Truflation has? The US inflation rate right now I don’t know 1.58 percent, which is, yeah, that’s up from 1.22 percent in just April. Yeah, now, that’s up from 1.22% in just April. That’s still drastically different than what we’re going to hear today, because we’re forward or rear looking on that. But the point is, why would you help Trump if you’re Jerome Powell, when you have the data and you can just sit tight and ride this out?

And really the big concerns here are all the plumbing that go behind the scenes here. So what I think, in my opinion, what we should listen for today is just like Chair Powell already hinted at last meeting, when they’re slowing the pace of the balance sheet. I just want to listen for any little subtle reaction on hey, what are they doing in terms of QE or liquidity? They will do something. He will talk about it. They already started easing last meeting. We’ll see how that goes, but I think the majority of the headlines this is really going to be a dud, because there’s not a whole lot here to pull out of him anymore.

0:13:52 – Frank Curzio

I can’t see him being dovish. I could see him being bohawkish, which means we’re not going to see rate cuts right away and it could change the market perception. It likely is. At the end of the day We’ll see, but I don’t know if it has anything to do politically, right, the voting process and stuff like that. If the market’s really crashing, you know the market dictates. The Fed, right, and people always come back to me and say that’s not true. That’s not true. It’s not the economy. It is true because they looked at two months ago, a month and a half ago, when the market’s at the lows we were expecting.

Right Now, since Trump announced tariffs, we’re basically flat on the market. We were down what? 10%, 12%, whatever it was but we bounced back a lot 20% from the highs, basically yeah, yeah, but since that announcement, right, so you know. So yeah, is it political? I don’t know, but there’s no need for him. Stocks are doing good, earnings are coming in better than expected. You’ve seen the consumer pretty much hang in there and the longer you could hold this pace where you have that ammo, the better it is. Yeah, but if you see cracks in the foundation I don’t I think all bets are off, it’s not going to be like, well, I don’t want to make trump look good or anything, I mean we. I think they might have been close to lowering rates if trump didn’t back off this freaking nonsense with tariffs and trying to deal with every country at the same time, because you know best and you know, I’ve experienced this shit in currencies and everything and we’re seeing some cracks in the foundation. There’s a lot of shit going on. We saw rates really pop in the 10 year. You know a lot of shit going on under the hood and he was like oh, no, no, no, no, we’re OK, we’re OK. And now you have China where he’s saying you know, talks, we’re going to sit down.

Another stimulus plan, another stimulus plan, again, again, again, again. And the last one was supposed to be the bazooka. Right, it was such a bazooka that they have to announce another one. Right? That’s what we’re kind of saying about China. So they’re going to cut the seven-day reverse purchase rates by 10 basis points at 1.4%. They’re lowering reserve requirement ratio, which allows banks to lend even more money. They’re lowering it by 50 basis points. They continue to do this. Continue to do this. It fuels more money going into the market. In this case, if you want to put a dollar amount on, it’s 138 billion. They’re going to reduce mortgage rates by 25 basis points. Lower rates on five-year loans, lower the amount of cash that auto financing firms was holding reserves to zero from the current five percent, which you know you can’t go much lower than zero, right?

So it just tells you how horrible china is right now. It’s. It’s a disaster where the only positive of what tepper was saying is hey, we got this massive stimulus and now you’re going to see growth and revenue is going to surge and that’s why we’re going to see. You know, china’s great and we saw at the beginning, but with tariffs, you’re taking the only catalyst that you had, since they can’t really sell to the largest consumer right now, based on, you know, massive tariffs and triple digits. So they have to come to the table, and it hurts the US as well. It hurts both of us, right? So they’re going to come to the table.

And when they do come to the table, I may say this, Daniel and this is going to be a surprise to many, even some of my contacts in China, which one of them, actually, I don’t talk to anymore because he got really pissed off at me for some reason because I had a different opinion than him, which is amazing. I’m not here to shut your agenda. I’m not here to fucking be a soundboard for anyone. I’m going to have my opinion based on data. If you send me the data, I’m going to have it and you know, this guy was kind of out of line. I don’t care. Listen, when it comes. If you’re going to email me, you can email me information. I love it. And if I have Daniel, that’s what we do.

You could be pissed off. It’s our fault, right? Hey, listen, you’re spending your money based on what we’re saying. That’s you know. Again, that’s fine. Hey, Frank, you fucked up. I put money in this, this and that and I get that part.

But when you insult our credibility when I see what’s out there in this fucking business, in the newsletter business, of what people do and how easy it is to basically just disclose and you don’t get in trouble in this fucking industry and I’m trying to help people when you insult the credibility part, you’re gone. You’re off my list forever. So be careful with that. Okay, you can call me an asshole. You can say I’m pissed off at a stock and that’s fine again, but don’t insult the credibility. Don’t insult like we’re trying to cheat investors and shit like that, because that’s something that’s personal.

And that much nonsense and bullshit out there and the fact that we have no one above us, Daniel and I, that we could tell it how it is, like we don’t have someone where you got to follow this. Oh, you got to follow this covet initiative. No, fuck that right. I mean, we’re not. We’re telling you the truth. I don’t care who I offend, I don’t care who comes on here, I don’t care what my friends are within this industry. If I believe like something’s not working or something’s not going to work, I’m going to come here and say it. That’s why people listen to this podcast. That’s why I’ve been doing this for 15 years Now. The listening base is starting to explode and get bigger and bigger. I appreciate that. I’m hoping that there’s more outlets like this that just tell it how it is.

When I look at China, I’m going to say this I think China’s going to be a buy pretty close here, because what America could do with China and how they have them on the ropes right now and the shit that you’re talking about. You know, the largest economy in the world and the largest producing economy in the world. It makes sense for you guys to get along. And if you could tell me a risk in China, that that’s new Right. And if anything I taught you over the last 15 years, if you’re talking about something and you keep talking about that, risk is already pricing. It’s pricing to China. Is there more risk? Yes, price in it’s price into China. Is there more risk? Yes. Is there a massive debt problem? Yes, are they in big trouble? Yes, you see this from the stimulus price. Do they have a real estate major problem with real estate? Absolutely right.

But all this shit we’ve been talking about for a while where eventually, you know, they strike a deal with the US, it’s going to be good for both of these countries and it makes sense, mean both of these guys, they just check their ego at the door and say, okay, send us all the rare earth minerals, like, just lower some of the prices. Fentanyl okay, we’re gonna buy freaking everything from you guys. I mean holy shit. I mean you’re talking about an explosion here and that’s on the table. It’s on the table. It mean if you negotiate and again, you don’t have to go publicly and say who won or who lost. You can blame each other and whoever caved, but behind closed doors is an opportunity to really solve a lot of problems between two of the largest economies and man. It could be really huge. But it’s up to these guys, it’s up to politics and we all know what happens when it comes to politics and there’s a lot of bullshit behind the scenes. But let’s see if that happens.

But China right now, us in talks and that’s what made the market go up a little bit today. But it could sell off. Especially, I can’t see Powell being dovish or saying, hey, you know what, we’re gonna lower rates here. I just can’t see him saying that there’s no reason. I mean inflation expectations are it’s just gonna go high with tariffs. The consumer, the consumer spending right now. Right, so you know, inflation high. The economy’s doing good. You’re not really seeing the slowdown.

Yes, we saw a temporary slowdown in numbers which is supposed to rebound. I think we’re going to see that negative number go to a positive when it gets revised. If it does, it’s going to be hard to really say we’re in a recession, which is two straight quarters of negative GDP. But let’s see what happens. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that’s self-inflicted here that can go away, that can really drive the markets in China. You know, if they can come up with terms with the US man, it’s going to be huge, especially with all that stimulus in place right now. If they can come up with something positive and they come out of those meetings in a month or two and say, hey, we’re ready to rock and roll, you’re going to see China’s stocks go through the roof and again, eight, nine years, 10 years I don’t know. I just think there’s a lot of things that could be solved here. Let’s see what happens.

0:20:48 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I agree, that’s, you have to follow the data and quickly here before we get into a couple of earnings. I have to laugh out loud because the media and I understand the media has a job. That’s why you tune in here to kind of sift through it. But all we’ve heard since Terror Day and Trade War Day and Liberation Day and all that kind of stuff is is China and the US talking. And Trump leads in and says, oh yeah, we’re talking, we’re always talking, and oh no, you’re not talking, you’re not talking. Now they’re actually going to talk in Switzerland, of all places, which is kind of ironic and funny. You know, middle of the enough. Take that with a grain of salt and quickly, here we’re not talking about, we’re not being very bearish when we just talk about Fed Chair Powell and I differ with you, know, on the politics and the personal side. I understand that. But the point here is just because Fed Chair Powell might be dovish doesn’t mean he’s gonna ruin the stock market. He might hurt today’s already this year. So, going back through April, we’re reaching $233.8 billion. Wow, oh, I’m sorry, that’s the second highest monthly tally on record. I thought it was the highest. That’s monthly, but that’s still yes, and it’s still up near the record.

My point here, and just the takeaway, is if everybody was again, ceos are supposed to be optimistic. We just don’t want them to be all out cheerleaders. Nothing against cheerleaders. The point is is, if the world is falling apart and the consumer is falling apart, corporate ceos are not the idiots in a basket like this. Frank, yes, they have to use money, but I’m just saying this is a tailwind. And couple that with Frank. If anything positive comes out to trade negotiations. And you have these tailwinds because you have strong, comparative to past historic times, you have much stronger consumer and corporate buyback or uh, balance sheets. Right now, Frank, let’s get there, yeah, earnings.

0:22:41 – Frank Curzio

You look at disney. Disney bought back, uh, close to a billion dollars worth of stock last quarter, which could be good and bad, because their stock was like around 110, uh, to march, over 100, even, um, almost to April. But then I mean, I don’t know how much they bought back in the middle of April when the stock hit in the 80s, and now you’re. It’s so funny because it’s up like 10, 11%. They report a good numbers, you know, but they’re cheering these good numbers. But you know, you’re looking at a stock that’s 100, where you know the stock was 175 in 2021. Man, if you just look back, I mean you want to talk about.

I feel like this is like the-. Frank. Can I interrupt you? No, no, you can’t, because I just pulled up something that I want to mention really quick before you can interrupt me. I don’t want you to interrupt me. I just saw this really quick, holy shit. So this is going back to 2015. I mean this is a stock that was one for 114 dollars, uh, in 2015. I can’t tell you the amount of shares that they bought back since then. Uh, I mean, and you’re looking at a stock that’s 104, so you want to talk about a lost decade. G had it and maybe it’s time. The numbers are good, but go ahead. What are you gonna say? So I was like holy cow you have to give disney credit.

They are listening to the podcast, they are doing what Frank Curzio wants to do, and that is, open up new parks, boom, open up new parks, and I know this is going to take a long time, but did you see the terms? They’re not putting a dollar into that park. Someone else is building it for them.

0:24:04 – Daniel Creech

Yeah.

0:24:16 – Frank Curzio

And they’re going to be doing the merchandise and they’re going to be in marketing. But that’s what we’ve been saying like use your brain, you’re the best at storytelling, you’re best at opening up parks and this streaming shit. I know you’re like, wow, look at the cash flow and streaming and this, and now we add a 1.4 million. I wish you’d tell me what the average revenue per user is and break it out, because I don’t believe those numbers at all. I don’t know how you’re adding, why? Because you’re not providing lots of new content on the platform. You’re not. And yet you’re raising prices tremendously and you’re throwing commercials freaking everywhere, right. So you’re providing a worse experience in raising prices, which we’re seeing a lot of companies do, and I can tell you when you do that in history, you know what happens. This is where you see innovation. This is where you see competition. Where you see innovation. This is where you see competition and you’re seeing it across even Ubers. You’re looking at Ubers and Lyfts, right? Uber and Lyft are what? If you look at those numbers and Uber’s down a little bit on the quarter, they had great numbers, but the expectations were sky high. But they reported good numbers. Guidance was in line. You’re expecting higher guidance I guess I thought the numbers are pretty good and Lyft as well.

You’re raising prices tremendously. Now you’re going. That worked for you until now and it may work a little bit longer, but what that does is open the door to competition we’re seeing with Airbnb. I don’t know if you booked an Airbnb lately, Daniel, I don’t know if you do that, but I booked an Airbnb. Every year we go to Saratoga. I just booked it in July and the fees were freaking, outrageous and same. And the fees were freaking, outrageous and same with VRBO. And now you’re raising fees tremendously. Why? Because once you become a publicly traded company, wall Street wants you to grow every freaking quarter for the rest of your life, and it’s impossible to do so now that you’re raising prices tremendously. What does that open the door? Well, if you’re a Curzio One member, you’re going to hear about a fascinating company. It’s a private company that’s already up and running, that’s going to disrupt these companies tremendously, and it’s from a guy that is an industry insider. He sold two businesses to some of the biggest travel firms publicly traded travel firms for I think it was eight figures and nine figures Right. So this guy knows exactly what he’s doing. He built up a team and he has a site, but he’s you know, when you’re raising fees and you’re raising prices on customers and you’re not providing them a better service, you’re opening up the door to competition, innovation and you’re going to start seeing that soon across a lot of industries.

Anyway, getting back to Disney, a lot of positives here. Increased cash from operations from $17 billion to $15 billion. Raised earnings per share guidance significantly from 8% 9%. Now it’s 16% growth. I mean the stock based on that is trading about 18, 19 times forward earning, which is very strong growth. So it looks cheap here.

Get added to 1.4 new streaming customers, which you know they’re projecting a loss, which is amazing. I don’t know how they add them. I wish they again. You could add, as they did this in the past right, but nobody cared about that. They just wanted to see the streaming service, which they were forced into. Right. This wasn’t some revolution, everything and hey, we could do it better than everyone else. Disney was forced into it because they were hit by COVID almost more than anyone. If you look at theaters, you look at the movie, studios were closed. You look at the cruises, the parks, their whole business lines across the board were closed for them. So they said let’s do streaming Now.

The negative to me happened in the middle of the day. It didn’t really hurt the stock too much. It was when the CFO came on CNBC and did an interview and he goes Disney’s going to raise prices, we’re going to raise prices on this platform. We think it provides tons of value compared to what cable used to offer. Well, you’re not a cable company and cable used to have a massive amount of different choices and channels, especially live sports and stuff like that which you have espn. It’s still a disaster. You don’t even know what the pricing is going to be on it. Uh, your linear business it was down 13 percent. Uh, content sales licensing was one of the biggest standout right. So the revenue soared 54 percent year over two billion right operating income came over 150 Great numbers. That was compared to negative the year before. However, what did you have this year? You have the new Lion King Inside Out 2, deadpool, wolverine, the slate not so good for 2025. That’s why you’ve probably seen a lot of analysts have not really come out and upgraded Disney, even though these numbers are great.

Theme park business Most of the gains driven by higher pricing. Did you see the international for theme parks? So if you’re looking at Hong Kong and Shanghai, it fell 25%. Now why did they see growth? It wasn’t like you had this massive traffic. It was the spenders, because they’re increasing prices, which you’re competing. If you’re going to increase prices, especially if you go to Orlando, orlando has what you have all of Universal’s parks. You have other options there. You have other parks like a secondary park, so not like a Disney park, but you have other parks there, plus Epic. I don’t know if you saw Epic. Their new park is booked for like the next two months or so. So you know content not that exciting for 2025.

International park slowdown is likely to continue with tariffs, espn streaming I don’t know what they’re going to do, but not only that, it’s their sports betting, which is supposed to be big, is absolutely a horrible, complete failure of a business for them and it was supposed to be really, really big. I thought Penn would be a good play on that and we got out. We did take a small gain and stuff like that. I thought it would surge because they have so many users, but the ESPN brand they just even the videos and the players and the videos. It’s just not that good. But I hate the fact that you’re still focusing on streaming as this massive growth business, when your best content you can’t compete with Netflix if your best content does not come on that platform first and it doesn’t it comes out in the movies. That should be secondary. If you’re looking at the park that they’re going to open in Dubai, when is it going to open, Daniel? What did you say? Abu Dhabi, abu Dhabi. When’s it going to open, iger?

0:29:32 – Daniel Creech

said it was basically seven years. It’s two years to plan and just drawings and stuff, and then it’s about a five-year construction. So seven years give or take. But he did say hey, we’re not doing a hard date just yet.

0:29:46 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, but the thing is, this is where Disney got it right. When you look at Tesla and you say, how is Tesla trading at such a high multiple, it’s because of the growth, it’s because of the excitement, right. And yes, you’ve been talking about robot taxis forever. Yes, we’re talking about, you know, driverless cars forever. Right, all over the place. Now you’re talking about robots, but it’s just the future looks like you have these initiatives that are exciting. This is an exciting initiative. Now, say, we’re going to open up three or four other parks around. It takes five, six, seven years. Now you have this massive growth catalyst Instead of focusing on streaming, which is the most horrible business in the world, unless you’re Netflix.

The content is crazy expensive, crazy expensive, and they’re making money on it because they’re not paying as much and not releasing as much content, so they’re focusing on costs. They’re getting away with it now, but he’s telling you that you’re going to raise prices without having a lot of great new content coming out, and you have commercials all over this thing and try to cancel Disney on its service. It’s impossible. You can’t do it. I don’t care if you’re a freaking NASA scientist. You’re not going to be able to cancel it right now and that’s going to change. They’re coming out with measures to make it very easy to just click a button and you’re out of the subscription. You can’t do it at Disney. It’s almost impossible. You almost have to write like six letters to seven different people. It’s like it’s impossible. It’s amazing what they do Seriously try to cancel. It’s amazing. So many of these services are made to make it impossible to cancel. But overall, good quarter for Disney.

I just think look it up here at 110. I just, I don’t. I think all positives are factored in. You know, operationally they’re doing very well, lowering costs. I like the growth initiatives. Finally you open up new parks and stuff like that.

I just the streaming the ESPN, I think, is going to be a disaster and the content slate and this company is all about content and their content slate coming out is not that and I think that’s why you’re not seeing these upgrades. But if you really want Disney 18 times, I don’t know if you’ll get hurt so much. I just think if you want streaming, you can go to Amazon. I mean Amazon is great, right, prime and now live sports. I mean that’s who they’re competing with. You want to see live sports and they can’t pay up for the live sports because they’re competing against companies $5 billion and just not even know that they just spent $5 billion on this content and $10, $15 billion, which is, you know, the Apples are getting into live content. You look at Netflix getting into live sports, right, and that’s a big driver of the next growth phase in streaming. And Disney can’t really compete because they don’t have the money. They’re competing against the seven, six, five largest technology companies in the world where streaming is like their fourth, fifth business, which they really don’t care about, and because they’re adding those subscribers, it’s able to filter in to every other thing that they’re doing, whether it’s AI, whether it’s cloud, whether it’s, you know again, advertising dollars and stuff like that. So I just think there’s a much better place in Disney here.

Even you know, I wouldn’t be buying it up here. That’s my two cents. I like it, but much better numbers. I got to give them credit. Much better numbers, and I like the fact they’re opening parks. Good. I just don’t like that. They’re focusing on the streaming still as the major growth engine.

0:32:38 – Daniel Creech

I just like how Abu Dhabi has, like Ferrari World, Water World. You talk about an oasis of money and fun. So good for them.

0:32:46 – Frank Curzio

You know when you’re great at something, when you have the content, when you have the storytelling.

0:32:51 – Daniel Creech

I’m talking about Abu Dhabi, just the oil place. Yeah, they’re not great at anything.

0:32:54 – Frank Curzio

They got resources, yeah, but when you’re looking at Disney being this unbelievable like just storytelling and marketer, and just how they can license all this content and make an absolute fortune. There’s so many growth avenues for this company that they could help all of these major companies in what they do and what they have access to and what they’re great at. Focus on what you’re great at, man. I’m telling you that stock would really be $200 if they did, but it’s not going to be $200 if your growth engine, which is CFO, came on TV and said that’s our biggest thing and we’re going to raise prices in your face and provide even more commercials right in your face, unless you pay triple of what the average freaking person is playing for Netflix.

I just don’t understand that growth strategy, since your best content cannot come out on that platform. It always comes out in the movies. So are you going to pay like premium prices for streaming for secondary content that you already saw in the movies? I just don’t think so. That’s just my take. But let’s get on to uber, to uber, uber uber.

0:33:45 – Daniel Creech

My only takeaway here was I thought, yeah, expectations were high. The stock ran about 30 from its previous lows. You, the market in general, was selling off the recent bottom. Uber had rallied, similar to other stocks, but it had a strong rally into this print. I thought the print was pretty good, but really outside of the numbers, if I can provide any value here.

I think the biggest takeaway here was the CEO went on CNBC this morning. I caught most of that interview. I understand things can change quickly, but the takeaway here is consumers are not hurting near as bad as what the financial headlines are leading us to believe right now. I know bookings could have. You know, maybe bookings missed the expectations. However, they still are showing strong growth. Ride shares were up 18% if memory serves me correct. They have a strong balance sheet. They’re expanding. The point is is that the takeaway from the CEO was the consumer is not slowing down as of now. Of course that can change. We’re not bulls just for the sake of being bulls, but companies are telling you the consumer is not falling apart just yet. What else stood out to you?

0:34:47 – Frank Curzio

Let’s say $83,. You have to remember, first of all you have to look at where it’s trading price-wise. So does Palantir I’ll talk about in a minute. When you’re trading at a premium valuation which is over 30 times forward earnings, you’ve got to raise guidance. Palantir raised guidance significantly. Uber didn’t right. So now you’re seeing it get hit a little bit, but it’s near its all-time highs. I mean its all-time highs, I think, are under 90. It 37, I think, all-time highs. You’re looking at a company with $175 billion market cap. That’s growing, but at a 35 PE. Here you know forward PE and TM guys means next 12 months and TTM means trailing 12 months. So you know 34 times forward earnings. That’s a very big number that you need to raise guidance if you’re trading at that kind of valuation. But overall this company has, you know it was 64 a month ago and it’s 83, right, so you know. Same with Palantir it’s ran up tremendously, right.

I mean, if you have these names that are going up tremendously into the quarter and you don’t raise guidance and even though expectations are high, that’s what matters with the analysts are projecting, that’s what the analysts are projecting. Got to pay attention. That’s all that matters when it comes to earnings. Because if the analysts are soft, that’s our job. We want to try to provide the inconsistencies where we’re like, wow, these analysts are really low in terms of their earnings estimates, you know. And if, because they’re going to provide a very easy beat and they’re going to raise guidance and that’s what drives the stock higher. But when you have a company that those expectations they’ve reported 17%, I think was it revenue growth and they reported very, very strong growth. But you know analysts had that pegged at 17%. So you know, when you’re looking at Uber and just providing inline guidance, that’s why you’ve seen a little bit weakness here, and you know.

But overall I don’t know if I’d be buying it up here. There’s just even long-term headwinds with competition, robo-taxis and things like that. It’s just, yeah, I think you’re going to see more competition. Especially, I think you’re going to be. You know this sounds funny. You’re going to bring taxis back into play Because taxis are a lot easier to get out of an airport than an Uber. A lot of times you’ve got to wait a little bit compared to going in, and the reason why you’re like I’m not dealing with this crap, you got to take out your. We know right, that’s why Uber and Lyft are amazing, right, so I disrupted the whole industry, but the big disruption came from pricing, because you had a worse experience with a taxi and it was a lot more expensive. Now you’re coming into the price where you’re comparable and sometimes, I’ll be honest with you, I have paying and you’re going to bring that back.

And again, this disruption the pricing is definitely. The pricing is up tremendously, tremendously with these companies and eventually you know customers are going to change their habits and you’re going to see more disruption because you can create multi-billion dollar companies by just undercutting the price. And if you don’t, you know, yes, they’re not going to be making the massive fees. But when you’re charging those massive fees and you’re constantly increasing prices, you open up the door to companies and innovators and people who left these big companies, who sold the big companies, and say, hey, this is a big opportunity for me to go against these big guys now, because they can’t lower prices. They already expanded, they’re already mature markets. I mean, how many more markets is Uber going to get into? So well, what we’re going to do is raise prices. Yes, we’re delivering food and doing other things, but they got to continue to innovate, but when you’re raising prices, that’s significant and that’s how you’re making the numbers. You got to continue to do that. That’s what Wall Street wants to see. So it’s going to come to a point where people are like all right, I’m done, I’m going to go someplace else. Maybe it is Lyft, if it’s low price, maybe it’s taxis, maybe somebody else comes out with another ride-hailing app. I don’t know, but just the prices that people are charging right now are insane for some of these services and they can’t do anything about them, these companies, unless they want to see their stock come down tremendously Because they’re not going to be able to meet these inflated Wall Street estimates. And you’re starting to see that, especially with Uber. Yeah, yeah. So it’s an interesting quarter.

So we have who else was it? Healthcare? I want to talk about healthcare. Holy shit, did you see healthcare get annihilated yesterday? Uh-uh, oh, my God, I was not. So I mean healthcare. The industry came down. The ETFs came down like 6%, 7% on a whole. It was insane.

What did Trump say? Well, it’s a new hire at the FDA. He’s going to be more tougher on the approval process. He was talking about cancer and saying look, we’re not just going to allow. We’re not just going to pass and give FDA approval to a company who you know provides where you could, you know, shrink tumors. We want to see it actually increase the longevity. Oh, okay, and so it’s. You have a lot. Listen the. And so you have a lot. Listen.

The healthcare industry is the biggest corrupt industry on the freaking planet. You think crypto is bad, healthcare is bad and the whole government’s involved in everything. I mean, I’ve never seen anything where my healthcare costs have continued to increase. They take a fortune I’m the CEO of this company. Take a fortune, right, it’s a massive expense. I don’t know how small companies do this, to the point where a lot of people aren’t hiring anymore. They’re hiring consultants to say you don’t have to pay health care because it’s so much freaking money. And not only that now deductibles are tremendous.

You’re seeing the price of drugs go higher and they said and Trump actually said he’s going to match prices in other countries that are charging for drugs to Medicare. I mean, that’s huge, and why wouldn’t you? So you’re seeing some of these drug companies just charge outrageous, freaking prices for such a long time and I’ll give it to them, because some of them I get like people don’t realize that to go through the fda process and go through phase one, phase two, phase three, by the time you go through there at the average cost is close to two billion dollars that comes out of these guys pockets two billion dollars in 12 years. That’s the average that it takes for a drug to go from the clinical stage to get fda approval. So when it goes there now you’re talking about the patents of 15 years where most of them are gone three, four, five years to sell this drug You’re going to have, the price is going to increase dramatically but they continue to increase these prices. And then it’s and then the partnerships they do with cholesterol drugs is where they get a longer patent or a new patent on it for another 15 years and say they can lower cholesterol. Just the longer patent or a new patent on it for another 15 years and say they can lower cholesterol.

You know just the shadiness behind this is insane and a lot of the shadiness is going to go away, which is going to be good for what? It’s going to be good for us as a customer, right as someone. Everyone that uses these services, that uses, you know, again has prescriptions and stuff like that. It’s going to be great for us because hopefully, costs come down tremendously, which they need to do, and it’s also going to be lots of companies and hidden gems in here, like Teva just reported. I thought they were good. They said they have operations here again Israel as well but a lot of operations in the US where they’re not going to worry so much in tariffs. And then the CEO, when they asked him about hey, is this going to impact you anyway, he said look, we’re generics here. It’s a big part of our business which we provide the most lowest prices in the US when it comes to generics. So we’re hoping that Trump sees this and the Trump administration sees this and they don’t bang us out in tariffs.

Companies like that, like maybe some of the generics you know we have one of those in our portfolio in a small cap newsletter because of venture opportunities but you’re going to see some of these companies some of them are going to get hit harder than others, but there’s a lot of hidden gems in there that you could find that aren’t going to be impacted by a lot of shit that’s taking place right now and, man, it’s going to force, I think, these large companies to really the M&A and now, instead of raising prices, you’re really going to have to innovate. You’re going to have to go partner with a lot of these smaller companies and these biotech companies have good technologies and you’re going to help them, like, go through that process because they have money. I think you’re going to see the M&A market explode because of these initiatives which opens the door to small caps which have gotten annihilated in the sector. That’s one of the areas that I’m looking at. You’ll see that through the newsletters and stuff like that. But a good opportunity because, man, they got annihilated.

Yesterday I was like what the hell just happened. I was like they provide even briefing.com and some of these services, like the sectors, I think junior miners up 3%. Sometimes you see a sector down 2%. It’s like it was like down six or 7%. I was like biotech’s down six, 7%. I was like holy shit. So you know, healthcare listen in the news a lot, a lot going on. Let’s see how these things take place and hopefully, you know, yeah, the stocks are going to get hurt and that’s fine from an investment standpoint, but overall, everyone hopes your health care costs come down, especially the elderly. It’s so difficult to even get Medicaid, medicare it’s so difficult. I know because you know, you see it as you know you’re around your parents and older people and how much trouble it is. It’s really freaking hard man. It really is. It’s tight. Daniel’s over there having a good time.

0:42:45 – Daniel Creech

It’s terrible? No, it’s sad because it impacts and affects all of us. But the healthcare system is like I said it’s so broken. I was talking to a great friend of mine who’s a doctor out west and he thinks I’m a crook and in a crooked industry, and I said, hey, the only thing worse than Wall Street is healthcare. Wow, yeah, and I love that guy to death. He’s a great doctor. Yeah, Frank, did you want to talk any more on Palantir? Was your point? Just hey, it ran up, buy and every pullback, buy and every pullback.

0:43:10 – Frank Curzio

We’ve been saying that since 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70.

0:43:13 – Daniel Creech

See how easy stock analysis is. It’s very easy Just buy Palantir and pullback.

0:43:16 – Frank Curzio

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that, hey, price of sales are a joke. This is insane, you’re crazy. The valuation mistakes and I’ve been telling you and hopefully you guys been listening making money. Yes, it felt like whatever 10, 12 percent if the earnings expectations were high.

0:43:32 – Daniel Creech

You seen it come back. It’s still over what this stock ran from 70 to 125. Yeah it’s.

0:43:35 – Frank Curzio

It’s an all-time high right, but but near. You know again, if you’re looking, if you’re looking at price to sales, you would have sold at 20, 30, 50, 70 right, and we told you not to and you know again, it’s 110. It’s on its way to becoming one of the top 10 companies in the world, based on market cap, and that’s the prediction and it’s inevitable, it’s going to happen. Why? Because when you have a company that can provide these services, an immediate service to almost every major company in the world, that’s going to lower your costs and increase profits, dramatically improve productivity. You’re the holy grail and that’s what this company could do. Everyone says they have AI, we work with AI, this is great. Ai and stuff like that, and these are guys that come in to oil companies, to defense companies and just you know you’re looking at a CEO that you have to love.

0:44:20 – Daniel Creech

You have to love Alex, you have to love him.

0:44:22 – Frank Curzio

If you’re an investor, if you’re an investor in this stock, you love him because he’s like F you. If you don’t want my stock here, we raised, got it tremendously. We’re showing tremendous growth in our company. We’re seeing massive sales, massive increase in everything across the board. If that doesn’t make you happy, then sell our stock.

For me, this is a company where you got to stop looking at the valuation because the valuation is valuing in the past. You’re looking at total addressable market. This is where I got Netflix wrong. This is where I mean I didn’t buy Apple early on. I didn’t understand it. I was like it’s trading. Apple, you look, was trading at 70, 80 times forward earnings during its growth trend. Now it’s still trading, I think, at a 30 plus PE and you’re seeing slower growth. You’re seeing some downgrades of Apple. They’re dying to get into AI and they ruined that. But just, you know even the Microsofts. You have to look at the total addressable market. The total addressable market is every single company in the S&P 500 that wants to increase productivity and that could use this company. And when you look at that and see the total addressable market, now the valuation fits and again I’ve got this wrong.

We’ve been telling you the whole freaking time I’ve got some things wrong. I whole freaking time I’ve got some things wrong. I didn’t think tariffs would be that big of a deal. I didn’t think Trump would be that stupid to try to negotiate with everyone at the same fucking time. You know we get things wrong sometimes. This is one that we got very, very right. Why? Because I made mistakes in the past and that’s how you have to look at investing. When you’re making mistakes investing, don’t get pissed off. Sometimes it’s a blessing in disguise. Say why, why did I mess this up wrong? And that’s how I do it with netflix. This is what I got wrong. We didn’t get it wrong with palantir, who a lot of you have it, we have in our portfolios. I hope you guys kicked ass in it. Every single time you see a pull, pull back in this thing, buy it and hold it and buy more because that thing is going through the roof. It’s going to be one of the top 10 companies in the world, probably within two to three years. So this thing is going to go a lot higher because they have the holy grail.

You can’t look at valuation for Tesla. It’s the growth. It’s where they’re going to go over the next five to ten years. Which drives Tesla. Please stop talking about valuation of Tesla. It hasn’t mattered since the company existed, since the company first came out. It hasn’t existed. So stop talking about valuation. When it comes to these companies, it’s about innovation. It’s about where they’re going. Ai if you listen to everyone AMD today which, by the way, I’m listening to the AMD CEO I think AMD CEO is it me? I mean, I think they’re related to NVIDIA’s CEO. Oh, I don’t know. I mean, they’re the same height, are you?

0:46:33 – Daniel Creech

being funny or are you being serious?

0:46:36 – Frank Curzio

No, they are related. Oh, they are related. Okay, I have no idea no I didn’t know that either. I had a plane ride back with someone who’s very and he was telling me all about it. It was really cool, but they look like the same person to me.

0:46:48 – Daniel Creech

One one it’s just the same height, same weight. You know AI on that. Anyway, we’re being duped.

0:46:52 – Frank Curzio

But you know, every single company that you’re going to talk about says that AI is the greatest thing in the past 50 years, the greatest technology in the world, and you have the company that does it the best, better than anyone in the world. Kid would tell you if he’s analyzing it we’ll look at price of sales. I wouldn’t like, oh, they look at simple stuff and that’s why kids sometimes are the best investors, because they say, hey, I like this product and it’s great, and that’s all it takes sometimes. And you know, when I look at palantir, you got to buy in the pullback, keep buying. We’ve been telling you to buy man for a very long time and that’s one of the big winners that we had. I’m happy because a lot of people it Outside of that crypto. Daniel, tell us a little about crypto. $97,000 on Bitcoin Holy cow, what’s going on?

0:47:34 – Daniel Creech

I have to admit I am shocked about the price action in crypto. When crypto rallied from high 70s to call it mid to high 80s, I was in the camp of saying, hey, I’ve been buying Galaxy Digital for other reasons we talked about. But I was in the camp saying, hey, listen, I think crypto is going back to 70, might even have a six handle on it. That looks to be a very ignorant call because of the tailwinds and such, but I’m impressed. I think it’s great. You mentioned the other day in the office, Frank, that it’s kind of decoupling from just your risk on, risk off. I think that’s impressive.

What I am excited about, even though we get into politics quickly here, there’s a lot of back and forth. But as of now or a couple hours ago, Frank, tomorrow, thursday, the House is still planning on voting on the genius or stable coin legislation. Now, the reason I say that is because we’ve had some in recently. There’s been some Democrats that have hold out or saying, hey, you don’t have our votes and it needs bipartisan legislature, it needs both parties. This doesn’t have the backing on just the Republican side, the backing on just the Republican side, and the hang up here is hey, some Democrats are putting their feet down because they’re worried about how the Trump meme coins and the Trump family deals are enriching themselves off of crypto. They’re going to hold out, see how that plays out. I’m not saying right, wrong or indifferent. The fact that they’re still scheduled which could change to hold this vote tomorrow, I think is extremely bullish. I don’t know how legislation is not a huge factor in driving, uh, the price of crypto at this point. Frank, what say you?

0:49:16 – Frank Curzio

uh, what’s driving crypto? It’s ever will go to 200 000 is the fundamentals, right, and people aren’t used to saying that or hearing that. They’re like crypto and it’s great because you know all these deficits. And now it’s a younger generation, it’s the younger generation’s gold and, yeah, I get that stuff. I, I get it. But when you’re looking at bitcoin and the adoption that’s taking place, first of all, it took forever paul atkins to get confirmed. Right, you saw a lot of confirmations happen before that and this just happened a month ago. Uh, and his this is the sec guy. It’s just saying crypto. I mean the first one, I was crypto crypto, crypto crypto. All right, so what does this do? It opens up the whole entire landscape of something that we never had. We had administration that was going after the banks said anyone, deal with these two banks, we’re going to come after you Literally wrote letters that I have that. They wrote letters to these banks, right, they forced them into bankruptcy. They forced them into bankruptcy, these crypto banks right, you couldn’t take custody anything. Now you have you could take custody. Now you have institutions coming in.

If you look at the fundamentals of Bitcoin, there’s only 450 Bitcoin produced a day. If you take what 95,000 is the price? Just say 95,000 is the price You’re looking at at 42, $43 million, and then you times that by 30 days is 1.4 billion, right? So if you’re looking at inflows on a monthly basis of tens of billions going into BlackRock, you know, even if you times that by even like 15 billion, if you times it by 12 annually, 15 billion at 95,000 are produced. You’re seeing tens of billions of dollars just going into the Bitcoin funds, right? So that’s enough to draw. We’re not talking about microstrategy. You’re not talking about a whole bunch of other things.

Look, there’s 72 crypto ETFs on the SEC’s desk right now for 2025. 72. Most are going to get approved now that Paul Atkins just confirmed. What does this? Do you talk about ones that have options behind them? Two times leverage Bitcoin funds yield will cover calls. My favorite look it up QBF is an uncapped Bitcoin ETF, so it limits your losses to 20% while providing you unlimited upside. I mean that’s pretty cool. Now you have Solana. What are the fees on that? That’s impressive.

0:51:16 – Daniel Creech

No, it’s impressive, and a lot of these are well they’re telling you worst case scenario you lose 20.

0:51:21 – Frank Curzio

And best case scenario you get the upside it, that’ll get into which is that’ll attract money.

0:51:26 – Daniel Creech

That’s going to attract money, right? So again.

0:51:28 – Frank Curzio

It should, and you know. But now you’re going to see salon etfs. You’re going to see more ethereum etfs that have come out uh, now avalanche. You know all these other etfs. You’re going to have structured etfs. But what does it do? It provides easier access for people where you don’t have to really go to the coinbase or the crypto markets. Now you can buy a lot of these through ets, just through your normal brokerage account. And you look at Galaxy Digital finally getting a NASDAQ listing with the previous administration, even though Novogratz is one of the biggest donors for the Democrats. They were like F you, I don’t care, I know you met every requirement, but F you, we’re still not going to do it. It doesn’t matter. That’s why you’re not going to do it Now. It’s going to be either this week or oil galaxy, which is in a lot of portfolios, really start taking off.

Uh, the dubai conference just took place in token uh 2049, if you saw it, but the headline speaker was eric trump saying you know, we’re pissed off at all the banks that went after us and stuff like that, and crypto is going to change. But I wanted to bring this up if you guys could see this on youtube in this picture. I don’t know if you saw the list of guests there, so you you’re looking at. Let me bring it up here. Cz, founder of Binance. Yes, he got fined. You have Arthur Hayes, another guy. It’s in the media, it’s kind of you know whatever, but you have the CEO of Binance was there. You have Eric Trump speaking. You’re laughing, but Binance is one of the greatest freaking companies ever.

0:52:43 – Daniel Creech

I’m not saying you did, but it’s awesome how you glossed over the guy 4.3 billion went to jail for 4.3 billion for a fine for for what he did for not checking like kyc.

0:52:54 – Frank Curzio

Okay, we’ve seen people rob blindly during the credit crisis, every bank and nobody went to jail right. This is a 4.3 billion dollar fine, which is insane, and he did it and that’s fine.

0:53:02 – Daniel Creech

Binance is one of the greatest companies because when I saw what I’m saying is that you could pay a four billion, he paid was like yeah, here you go.

0:53:07 – Frank Curzio

He took it out of his left pocket. He’s like is it 4.3 or 5? 4.3? Okay, I thought it was 5.3. Here’s 4.3. Here you go. So then you had at this conference, the CEO of Tether, the CEO of Circle and then CEO VanEck. You have Matthew McDermott, who is the global head of digital assets. For who? Goldman Sachs? Christy Moy, partner at Apollo. Okay, this is what’s happening in crypto right now is the inflection point. You needed the regulation. You have it. You have someone in administration that’s saying hey, we’re pro-crypto.

My advice to you when it comes to crypto right now and I thought this would happen earlier and I didn’t expect tariffs and it really hurt a lot of the cryptos I would start buying the secondary names, not the Bitcoins and Ethereums. Go into the Solanas, the Avalanches, the Binance, which is BNB, bnb, chain link, litecoin. They’re going to see massive inflows. It’s like the spillover. As bitcoin goes higher, you’re going to see more adoption. You’re also going to see a lot more companies and stocks adopt this as well, and if you’re looking as another reason to buy this, I’ll give it to you, because when it looks at demand, I’ll pull this chart up too the total assets under management. If you’re looking, it’s a hundred trillion dollars. It’s close to that, like we’re like a year or two away. $100 trillion, a 2% allocation of what Larry Fink is saying. That’s $2 trillion, which is more than the market cap of Bitcoin. And he’s saying you should have a 2% allocation within Bitcoin, within crypto, and maybe that’s a little high. Maybe you say 1%, even at 1%. Look at the demand that’s coming in from this. Look at the demand that’s coming in from the ETFs and we only have a limited supply of this. It’s not like gold. Gold’s going to go higher, but if gold goes to $4,000 or $5,000, people are going to start producing a shitload of gold because they haven’t done so in 12 years. You look in cash on the balance sheets. It’s incredible Trillions of dollars where you see more and more companies start to come in and say, hey, you know what. We’re going to see a lot of stocks and those who shit on MicroStrategy. When it went to the 200s and stuff like that. Where is it now? It’s at 400 again, so it was 230 a month ago.

Pay attention to crypto. I’m not telling you to go all in on crypto, but it deserves a part of your speculative money, because the gains that you could make in this are greater than 90% of the stuff that you’re going to invest in in the markets, because they come out of crazy valuations. You can get into a lot of early names, names that are funded, names that have good token economics, which matter in this industry, which is why we create our newsletter, and you can find that stuff out by us. We just tell you what to buy through our crypto newsletter. But you’re looking at Bitcoin. It’s inevitable.

We said it was going to go to $100,000. It to go to 100,000. It went to 100,000. We recommend it’s 6,000. We’ve been at it for a very, very long time. Ethereum went at 180 in our newsletter. We still have it right and, yes, it went to 4,000 and it’s still much higher than that now, but it’s going to filter down to the secondary and then you’re going to see the innovation come where you weren’t allowed to launch new crypto companies because they were seeing the securities and not going to be seeing the securities anymore under this administration.

So now you’re going to see new ideas being launched, new ideas being backed by private equity, some of the biggest guys out there Ernst and Horowitz and things like that. They’re all in Fidelity, all in crypto. This is adopted already. This isn’t coming. This is adopted, it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and get on board Just a small portion of your allocation, of your allocated money in stocks. Put a small portion there. It is risky, but the gains, the risk-reward. It’s hard to find a more favorable place. You’re going to see better risk-reward than it is in crypto, especially with all these massive, massive, massive tailwinds coming.

0:56:36 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, the adoption or the financialization is going to be exciting to watch, especially if you’re a nerd and a fan of capitalism like us, because you’re going to see it implemented into the real world loaned, collateralized, borrowed against all that good stuff. Yeah, just well said there, Frank.

0:56:52 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, so tomorrow, Daniel, I’m going to be back. We have our Wall Street Unplugged Premium Podcast, which is just $10 a month, and we’re getting lots and lots of people to sign up to that. We go more in-depth in stocks. We have lots of ideas. We actually have a portfolio behind that. We recommend trading opportunities and stuff like that, which is a lot of fun, and we really go in-depth, much more in-depth than we go here.

We kind of generalize, talk about topics. We’ll break down what the Fed’s going to do. We’ll also break down some of the names that are going to benefit tremendously even from what the Fed’s doing, from different industries that we talked about. I’m not just saying, hey, look at healthcare, we have healthcare names that we’re looking at. We have the oil name that we’re looking at, that I just went to go see. We have a lot of these names, a lot of stuff we do release, not just in our newsletters but through the premium version, and it’s you know, there’s no filters at all, just like this, and it’s a really cool podcast. So tomorrow we’re going to come out with that Lots of ideas, right? You love when I say unfiltered.

0:57:45 – Daniel Creech

If this is filtered, I don’t know what tomorrow is, but we’ll see. Join us flying Florida tomorrow.

0:57:52 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, this isn’t too filtered. We’re a good balance there, Frank.

0:57:54 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, pretty much, I got to say it you obviously didn’t read the recent email from a subscriber about asking us to tone it down on the language, but we will get to that. Yes, I’m sorry.

0:58:03 – Frank Curzio

But you know, I don’t curse the curse, it’s just emotions coming out sometimes. I don’t curse the curse, it’s just emotions coming out sometimes. So, yeah, but maybe we can do a better job of that, to be honest with you. A few less F-bombs. But listen, we’re here for you. You want to contact us, Dan, with your email? Daniel@curzioresearch.com and I’m not going to give you my email because I’m probably going to get tons of them now. So, anyway, but I promise, so you make money. We own our losses when we have them, which, you know, sometimes it’s going to happen. This industry happens to everyone, even the best, even the Warren Buffett’s, who congratulations, one of the greatest runs we’ve ever seen stepping down, and maybe we’ll cover that a little bit more tomorrow. It’s been covered today.

0:58:36 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I have a few comments on that tomorrow. That was, I didn’t listen to the whole thing, but it was’t have anything to do with stock specific. No, that’s cool.

0:58:46 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, we’ll break that down tomorrow, guys. All right, we’ll see you then. Thanks so much for listening.

0:58:54 – Announcer

Take care. 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.