Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio 00:00

How’s it going out there. It’s Wednesday, January 21st. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. This is Daniel Creech. What’s going on? How’s the weekend?

Daniel Creech 00:16

Hello, Frank. Good weekend. Did you watch the, uh, I know you’re happy. Did you see the Big Ten has won now, not one, two, but three years in a row?

Frank Curzio 00:25

Happy watching football.

Daniel Creech 00:26

Are you nervous now? Indiana is a powerhouse now that was never a powerhouse before. And you got to worry about Ohio State a little bit now.

Frank Curzio 00:33

That is true. Yes. New, uh, new rivalry there.

Daniel Creech 00:36

Yeah. I think as long as that coach is there, obviously that coach is a difference maker. And I apologize. I don’t know where he’s from, but I saw they already signed another quarterback, Indiana, like through the transfer.

Frank Curzio 00:49

Yeah. They had him already. Yeah.

Daniel Creech 00:50

So his brother left him.

Frank Curzio 00:52

I just saw it happened.

Daniel Creech 00:53

Yeah. So they got a good transfer. But, uh, I think watching that game, first of all, one of the great sports stories that you’ll, you’ll ever see. Uh, just looking at the stats, uh, Indiana is, I mean, football program, 78 years old. They had 16 winning seasons only. Uh, they have the record for the most D1 losses all time.

Daniel Creech 01:12

They’re considered the worst of the worst.

Frank Curzio 01:14

Yeah, that’s a bad record.

Daniel Creech 01:15

And now you’re the best. I mean, it’s, it’s incredible. No five-star recruits.

Daniel Creech 01:20

Uh, when I saw after they won and then they were showing Indiana the stadium, like they had it filled in Indiana and then the partying on the streets and everything. But just when you saw it up there and just the speeches of everything, it made me, I think it was just anyone who’s in the portalright now,

Daniel Creech 01:41

uh, it makes Indiana like, you want to go there. Just, just that story and what they felt of how, you know, you went from worst to first is amazing. You can go anywhere you want. You can make money anywhere you want. And I get it with all the money that’s being paid in college, but just showing how, you know, that team did it with that coaching, uh, was incredible. Uh,

Daniel Creech 02:00

I will say this though, the good thing about the team is afterwards they could all drink and partyright after the game.

Frank Curzio 02:05

I mean, everybody’s like 30 now.

Daniel Creech 02:07

The average age of that team is 24 years old. Allright. I’m going to put that in perspective. Okay. My daughter’s going to college. She’s 17. She goes to college next year.

Frank Curzio 02:14

That’s a big deal.

Daniel Creech 02:15

The average age for the Green Bay Packers is roughly the same.

Frank Curzio 02:18

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 02:18

Okay. The punter is 29. I mean, Daniel, I don’t know. You have any eligibility left?

Frank Curzio 02:24

I do have a year of eligibility.

Daniel Creech 02:25

You do. Go. Just be a kick or something. You could be like a.

Frank Curzio 02:27

Well, A, I’m not good enough for division one, but on the small league that I played in, technically, because you don’t lose it. That’s what’s funny about the rules. So technically, because I got a red shirt, or not a red shirt, but a medical red shirt for injury. So, uh, yeah, if memory serves me correct, I could go play a year of college basketball.

Daniel Creech 02:44

A year of.

Frank Curzio 02:45

The worst is in 30s. How old are you going to be?

Daniel Creech 02:46

I’ll be 40 next month.

Frank Curzio 02:48

Holy cow.

Daniel Creech 02:49

Put that on your calendar, Frank.

Frank Curzio 02:50

It’s on the calendar. That’s why I said it, man. I know what your birthday is.

Daniel Creech 02:52

Yeah. That’s because they set it up automatically. Thank you, team.

Frank Curzio 02:55

Yeah. Set it up today. I know what your birthday. I put itright up there. Yeah. Thanks to my sister putting that on there.

Daniel Creech 03:00

Real quick though, the NIL has not ruined college sports, but I will say because money’s been passed around forever now, it’s just out in the open. Um, I do think it just proves the bigger fact that, hey, you can go get paid anywhere, but if you want to win, that’s what ultimately imposes to, I think, like, hey, you know, at a certain point,

Daniel Creech 03:19

everybody’s rich, you know, pro athletes all have money. They’re all comfortable. They might not all make a hundred million dollars. But the real deciding factor is, hey, what coaches can motivate either rich older guys or rich young guys and who actually wants to go and be a part of something and win outside the dollars.

Daniel Creech 03:35

And to your point, I recruiting has to get a lot easier when you go there in two years and you turn around, you have a national prize.

Frank Curzio 03:42

Real quick on this. Interview Mark Cuban after the win because he was on the field and everything in Indiana. And he made a good point. He’s like, look, we didn’t go after five-star recruits because when you do that and you, you know, it’s a culture thing,right? When those people have been there for two, three years and you’re just paying a guy to come for one year and paying him a fortune, I mean, it’s just, where’s the continuity?

Frank Curzio 04:02

Where’s the partnership? Where’s the teammates? Where’s, you know, so a lot of people feel like, hey, I’ve been here the whole time and look what you, you know, there’s just a lot of that and they didn’t go through that. And I think we saw that with a lot of teams where, you know, they tried to buy their way in so far. And I think it was a Texas A&M, I think is one of them, which was no place and they spent more money with their billionaires and stuff. But I get it. It’s kind of a shit show where it is in collegeright now.

Frank Curzio 04:22

There’s got to be some kind of regulation going on because, you know, you have pros actually, you have pros overseas in Europe. I think Baylor that came back to Baylor, who’s playing for Baylor.

Daniel Creech 04:32

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 04:32

Right. So it’s getting like ridiculousright now with the whole entire system. So, and, you know.

Daniel Creech 04:36

Boy, am I glad we could hear from Mark Cuban.

Frank Curzio 04:38

Yeah. He did make a good point though. I, you know, he did make a good point on this.

Daniel Creech 04:42

Yeah. His hair dyed and everything. You look good.

Frank Curzio 04:43

Yeah. He did look good.

Daniel Creech 04:44

I can’t stand him.

Frank Curzio 04:45

He loves that attention, man. I’d love to get him on the podcast and bust his chops on that. But he should have had it. He’s smart. He deserves it. He’s a billionaire and, you know, he’s done very well. So, you know, he did so many people have different opinions, but, you know, I definitely respect him. But, um, let’s get into the news today. Market’s bouncing back, which it should,right? Every time we hear tariffs, whenever you hear tariffs and the market goes down, buy the freaking marketright away.

Frank Curzio 05:04

It’s the easiest strategy ever. We’ve been saying it forever and ever and ever since 2017, ’18, when Trump talked about tariffs and market crashed for a few months, he said, buy the shit of the market, all-time highs. Okay. We saw that earlier this year. Well, not this year, but last year,right? With tariffs and, you know, Trump negotiating with all the countries at the same time. Wasn’t the best strategy, but buy, buy, buy, and markets go higher.

Frank Curzio 05:25

Yesterday, Greenland, tariffs on European countries that don’t follow along. You have this big thing going on in Davos. What happens? The market falls 500 points, 700 points, whatever it fell. Now it’s up at 500 points today. Uh, and this was because Trump spoke at Davos, spoke for 90 minutes. I mean, most of these guys are going on for 40, 45. He spoke for 90 minutes and it was a speech that,

Frank Curzio 05:45

um, if there was a gigantic hand to pat himself on the back, he would have did it a thousand times.

Daniel Creech 05:50

Which is normal.

Frank Curzio 05:51

What was the guy?

Daniel Creech 05:52

Nothing, nothing is different about that.

Frank Curzio 05:53

What did the guy say? He goes, yeah, I talked to one of the generals in the military and, you know, he said, I’ve never seen someone execute on every single thing. And Trump’s like, I know, I know I did that.

Daniel Creech 06:05

Yeah. Everything was a lawless or whatever. Yeah.

Frank Curzio 06:09

If you hate him, you hate him even more now. And if you like him, you like him even more now. But, you know, he made it clear, America wants Greenland, uh, and not for natural resources or whatever it’s for what he said, but for national security. But one of the big news stories he said, he’s not going to use violence to take it. And the markets went higher on this news. What are your thoughts?

Daniel Creech 06:27

Yeah. I, I mean, it’s easy to say looking backward. I didn’t think that it would be, I think it was smart politically. I try to, I try to give my perspectives politically to make everybody think. Doing all this threats, listen, like you said, this is last year’s playbook. I mean, Trump goes out, just breaks everything with a big stick, swings everything, gets everybody on board, or at least on alert, and then kind of backs off.

Daniel Creech 06:48

The taco trade Trump always chickens out has been around social media and such. I do think politically it was smart because listen, you don’t have to believe me. I didn’t expect us to invade Greenland. I didn’t think we were going to take him by force. I know headlines were out there. I think it was smart for him to make the announcement at the Davos like he did.

Daniel Creech 07:07

Um, I also thought he has to leave the kind of unknown, uh, risk in my opinion, because did you see the speech? If you saw the very end of it or close to the end of it, well, he did say, and he got that out of the way, and I think he knew what he was doing playing with markets there. Uh, he also said markets are going to double, Frank.

Frank Curzio 07:26

Double. He did quote the Dow though. He didn’t say anything about the S&P. So maybe we’re going a hundred thousand Dow. We’ll put that on our calendar. But he did say, listen, if you don’t negotiate over Greenland, talking to NATO and the other countries, we will remember. So that’s, that’s, that’s something the media, Trump does every something for everybody. Like you said, if you hate him, you hate him a lot.

Frank Curzio 07:44

If you loved him, you love him even more. And now he’s got that unknown or that kind of up in the air clause because now everybody can take and run with, oh, well, what does that mean? And what’s he going to do? Um, I did, I think it was smart. Markets are rallying, um, but there’s a lot of big shifts going on. I know we’re going to get into some of that, but I thought it was a smart political move. What about you?

Daniel Creech 08:05

Did people really believe? I mean, that’s a testament to Trump and how scared people are, but did they really believe he was going to attack European nations over Greenland? I mean, that was out on the table or am I an idiot? I had no idea that was on the table because that news obviously was on the table because now that he said that we’re not going to attack and the markets are up. So, I mean,

Daniel Creech 08:23

did he really think he was going to use violence against allies? Uh, I don’t know, but I think the bigger story here is how people believe that’s how far he’ll go. And you need that,right? It’s kind of like a parent and, you know, parenting is the hardest thing in the world, but you have to be an asshole to your kids sometimes, especially when they’re bad.

Daniel Creech 08:44

And you have to be able to take away something that they really, really want if they do something bad, even though it’s painful as a parent. And it, you know, it could be something that’s really cool for the kid and they’re going to have a great time. And it’s so hard to take away, but your kid needs to know that those are the consequences of your actions if you don’t behave. Because why our job is to keep, you know, my job is to keep my daughter safe. That’s why I care about it.

Daniel Creech 09:02

It’s not that I don’t want them to have fun and enjoy themselves, but if you go out there and do something stupid, I’m like, absolutely not. You can’t do this. And then they’re going to fight back or whatever. And if they do it, you got to punish them. But they know the consequences,right? So if they, if, you know, they cross over that line and the fact that European nations really thought this, I don’t know if it’s just propaganda or whatever.

Daniel Creech 09:21

Uh, I mean, it’s a testament to Trump because it just shows the power. And that’s, that’s what we’re looking at here,right? Because when we talk about this, we’re from the U.S. And a lot of stuff I’m going to say isn’t like me pounding the chest because I’m in the U.S. I’m just going to talk broadly here. When you’re the most powerful nation in the world, just like if you’re the most powerful country in the world,

Daniel Creech 09:40

or a powerful nation, or if you’re the most powerful company in the world, like Microsoft and they’re funding everything that you do and they’re protecting you, you don’t want to talk shit to them. Okay. It’s the last thing you want to do publicly. You could say what you want behind closed doors and put up a good fight or whatever, but you had Prime Minister of Canada Carney, and this comes on and someone else in parliament or whatever went up there and said, F you Trump.

Daniel Creech 10:00

And, you know, he was quickly scolded and said, you know, you don’t curse or whatever, you don’t say that. Uh, he took some swipes at the U.S. about Greenland, saying international orders fractured beyond repair. Is it? Is it fractured beyond repair? Because it seemed like it was all repaired and everyone was happy and tariffs are cool. Is it fractured beyond? I don’t know about that.

Daniel Creech 10:19

And he goes, the middle powers must act together. So basically you’re trying to have this rise up in the middle powers. He says, we don’t. We’re always going to negotiate for weakness. Well, you know, I’m sorry, but you’re, you know, smaller countries,right? It’s not like where you’re bullying them if you’re the U.S., but you know, you have to understand that, you know, a lot of your protection and everything.

Daniel Creech 10:39

I mean, Trump even responded and said, yo, you should be grateful to the U.S. for the freebies it receives and Canada lives because of the U.S. And again, you can say what you want behind closed doors, but when you look at, you know, you have the strongest nation in the world using their military to protect you through NORAD, through NATO, streamlining defense trade and cooperation,

Daniel Creech 10:57

integrating defense industry with the U.S., sharing intelligence, all this stuff, providing security for you. But we’re by far your largest economic partner. America accounts for over 70% of your exports, 70%. Okay. Talking over $400 billion annually, probably not a good idea to talk shit publicly about the U.S. on the biggest scale in the world,

Daniel Creech 11:16

which is Davos, where all the big leaders, all the billionaires are there. Same with these European nations. I mean, Europe just came out as we’re talking about this, saying that, you know, they’re not going to go along with the treaty and hold some of the tariff deals that they said because until, you know, I don’t even know how they worded it, but basically until you’re not as hostile about Greenland. And I mean, you look at Europe and look at their economies.

Daniel Creech 11:37

I mean, holy shit. I mean, it’s their fault,right? They broke up, first of all,right? They have all these individual cuts. They don’t even know what they are. Is it governed by the euro? Is it governed internationally? You know, the currencies, I mean, there’s so much shit going on. It’s so broken there. Uh, but Europe has a little natural resources. They have a shitload of coal. They won’t mine it because of the crazy green initiatives. That never happened. But, but they know China’s going to mine the shit out of that.

Daniel Creech 11:57

So for some reason, European governments,right, with the green initiatives, they don’t understand that coal producing Europe is the same as coal producing China or anywhere else,right? It’s going to affect the climate and the environment the same way. But they’re heavily dependent on the U.S. They hold 10 trillion U.S. debt, which people are like, you know, we’ll talk about this with Ray Dalio. People could sell it. I mean,

Daniel Creech 12:16

Europe can’t, if they sell it, they’re going to bankrupt their countries,right? Because, because, you know, they’re going to get crushed. We protect them through NATO, have over a hundred thousand troops stationed in Europe. Uh, you know, and this is with Russia,right? Right next to them, who, who, you know, again, does not get along. So, you know, coming out aggressively, you got to be careful of what you say,right?

Daniel Creech 12:35

Because there’s a lot of things that could happen. And I thought Trump did a good job saying, look, if you don’t help us, that’s fine. And it probably won’t happen. But just remember, you know, we’re going to remember that. And that, that’s a, that’s an even bigger threat, I think, uh, where a lot of this stuff will come together. But Trump is great at ruffling feathers. Everyone gets pissed off. They all get angry. They all get pissed.

Daniel Creech 12:54

And the next thing you know, everybody gets along and all deals are made. So let’s see what happens. The markets rebounded today on that positive news, but a lot, that wasn’t the only conversation there. I don’t know if you wanted to follow up to what I said. Yeah. If you don’t mind, just because, um, I do think it’s very interesting in these massive changes that are going on. And the answer there is just have exposure to assets and commodities. Uh,

Daniel Creech 13:13

but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett said in one of his interviews and was talking about how, you know, essentially what I think this is showing is how this is all game.

Daniel Creech 13:23

I mean, this is really WWE stuff, Frank, and we can have fun with that and try to explain this because to your point, what you just rounded off on Canada, why in the world would you go out there unless you’re just trying to drum up your buddies and your locker room and all that kind of stuff?

Frank Curzio 13:35

It’s a politician.

Daniel Creech 13:36

Yeah. Yeah. He can go out and get votes, but he can’t, it’s like the mayor of your, uh, old hometown, New York City. You can go out and say a lot of stuff. You’re going to do all this, but he literally has no power to change any of that. And so I think that’s a lot of what Canada is doing. I thought, I think it’s just a lot of WWE stuff for a good point. And as Bessett said, listen, you know, to your point on Europe and their,

Daniel Creech 13:56

what they’ve brought upon themselves, he said, here we are 40 years into the Russia-Ukraine war and Europe still buying energy from Russia, financing the war that they claim they want to stop. Yeah. I mean, you can’t make this up in Hollywood.

Daniel Creech 14:08

I mean, literally this is just, and I tip my hat to these guys because to get all of these globalist, pathetic people in one room in one location every year is pretty impressive. Yeah. I mean, you got to give it to them. They can throw a party.

Frank Curzio 14:21

How many jets go there with the climate change issues?

Daniel Creech 14:23

Hey, I remember a couple of times, a couple of years ago, you hinted at the, uh, we reported on the hooker prices sky high there.

Frank Curzio 14:29

Oh.

Daniel Creech 14:30

Talk about inflation.

Frank Curzio 14:31

Yeah. Talk about inflation when they go there,right? These billionaires.

Daniel Creech 14:33

But one more thing on the Canada, uh, Mark Carney, I think is what he said. Um, and again, this just shows you the story and the, the act that we have to watch as investors. Frank, he literally said this, I wrote this down. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. And he tells this story about,

Daniel Creech 14:52

you know, everybody just putting their signs up in the windows and going along with it. He is talking about trying to create a different world order, but that’s because you’re a follower, because Trump is literally doing a new world order. In that same speech at Trump, like you said, it was 90 some minutes or whatever. What did he say after threatening everybody and talking about that? Oh yeah. We just took another tanker from Venezuela. That’s why you got to believe this guy, because he’s a crazy SOB.

Frank Curzio 15:13

Yeah. You know, and we’re talking about this because it’s the stock markets,right? And some people are like, well, it’s political and you have different opinions and whatever. And again, you know, whatever opinions I have, for me, when I look at this, it’s by the U.S. and by aggressively. I mean, what they’re doing is it’s like enhancing their dominance,right? Making sure, hey, we, you know, all this shit you took advantage of,right?

Frank Curzio 15:34

That, you know, you got paid for and all this stuff that went out in the World Health Organization who hated us and we funded them and all this stuff that we funded, uh, which had, you know, just a lot of corruption within it,right? With all the craziness. I mean, the who gave China awards for how they handled COVID and they didn’t even let the who organization in Wuhan.

Frank Curzio 15:54

They didn’t allow them in there. Allright. You want to talk about bullshit. There it is. So when you look at the dominance and they’re ensuring their dominance, you have to realize, like as, as if you, as a person who cares about their family and wants to make money, you got to buy the U.S. here. You got to love what Trump’s doing. Because when you get into that circle, when Trump gets behind you,right? You have, you know, whether it’s different countries,

Frank Curzio 16:13

we saw, you know, the layout in the Middle East of what happened,right? We’re seeing a lot of wars that, that no longer exist because of him, that, that a lot of countries are on his side. And then you see what, okay, Intel, he takes stake in Intel. You could argue, okay, it’s up tremendously,right? I mean, I’m just saying, and I’m using this, not saying that that’s good or bad. I’m saying that when Trump is behind it,

Frank Curzio 16:32

I mean, being, you know, very pro-U.S., you’re looking at, I don’t know if you saw the rare earth stocks and how much they’re up. They’re up like an average of 50 cents this year. This year,right now, this year. Again, it’s January,right? It’s mid-January, a little bit after that. AI stocks, if you look at all of the travel,right now, they’re going to get all these contracts. Now you’re dealing with China and saying, okay, Nvidia might be able to sell some of their chips, the better chips to China,

Frank Curzio 16:51

uh, which is Nvidia, which is Broadcom, which is Taiwan Semi, which is on fire,right? So, you know, a lot of this stuff that he does and, you know,right now it’s like this confusion and people are like, what are you doing? You’re absolutely crazy, whatever. Uh, at the end of the day, it seems like everything comes together. And when it does, everyone who’s on his side benefits tremendously.

Frank Curzio 17:11

And as stock investors, as you guys are investors, you have to be on that side because you’re seeing those benefits much more than we saw in previous administrations that had their own policies. So, you know, what he’s doingright now with, with, with Europe and Europe fighting back, I think they’re absolutely crazy. I mean, just, uh, you know, again, you want to put up a good front,

Frank Curzio 17:30

but still you want to be careful. And let’s see, because I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think anyone knew too much about Greenland over three weeks ago. And everyone has opinions about it now and national security and stuff like that. And it’s great. It just seems like to me that Europe would benefit from the U.S. having Greenland. It just seems that way. Uh, you know, again, there’s historians, there’s people much more involved in this story.

Frank Curzio 17:50

And again, I’m not saying I didn’t do any research on it. I’ve done a ton of research on it, but it seems like this is a fight that’s just, does it really need to exist? Uh, I don’t know. Let’s see. But, you know, that’s what’s moving the marketsright now. And that’s why we’re talking about it. But I don’t know what’s going to happen with Greenland. I do know that the bigger story here is whether it happens or not, Trump, uh,

Frank Curzio 18:09

you know, just pushing America’s power and how, hey, if we’re going to help you, we’re going to need to get repaid. No more paying money to Ukraine with a blank check. And, you know, you got your wife driving a Bugatti and stuff, you know, none of that, none of that, none of that anymore,right? So it’s like, well, we got rare earth deals now with them,right? So it’s every time we give you money, we’re getting something in return.

Frank Curzio 18:29

So we’re not giving money for free, which politicians love to do because they’re getting paid on the side. That’s why you’re looking at, I mean, just look at what these guys are worth, making a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a year. They go into office, they’re worth a couple of million, they’re worth hundreds of millions after,right? So, you know, this shit going on and believe me, with offshore accounts and stuff like that, all that stuff that, you know, it’s not that easy. It’s very, very easy to hide all this shit. And none of the countries will comply if you have ASM information.

Frank Curzio 18:49

So a lot of this stuff’s overseas, nobody knows about it. And these people are filthy rich. So, you know, for me, the takeaway is buy U.S. stocks. I think this is great going into the rest of this year. Um, a lot of this stuff’s going to start going away. You saw it with the marketsright now. The Russell’s now up another, uh, you know, one and a half percent. I mean, the Russell’s been on fire, easily outperforming the market, uh, uh, to start this year.

Frank Curzio 19:09

But I would be buying U.S., uh, U.S. stocks based on Trump’s commentsright now. And if you look at, um, there’s a lot of interesting stuff. It wasn’t just, you know, Trump and Greenland and stuff like that. And it was, uh, uh, Brian Armstrong was there,right? Coinbase CEO. I thought that was interesting. This is a story that you really like. We used to, head of France Central Bank had a nice back and forth about, you know, central banks and Bitcoin.

Daniel Creech 19:28

Yeah. I’m going to try my best to be, uh, as respectful as I can be because it shows that the France, um.

Frank Curzio 19:36

This was funny though.

Daniel Creech 19:37

Yeah. The France Central Bank governor, and I don’t know if he was the head, I would assume, and I’m not even going to try to butcher his name.

Frank Curzio 19:42

Governor yeah.

Daniel Creech 19:43

But him and Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO was going in and back and forth about Bitcoin. And he said some really dumb, and I mean very ignorant Florida statements about how, you know, he trusts. And listen, what these guys do, and I say these guys as men and women globalists, they literally think they meet to try to dictate the world. I mean, that’s what they do. They’re not even hiding it about it.

Daniel Creech 20:02

You can Google, uh, clauses, um, you know, goals and all kinds of stuff. It is absolutely scary stuff. If you don’t learn to laugh about it, it’ll drive you insane. But he literally said about how you want to protect, you know, the independence of central banks. That’s a globalist carry because we’re dealing with it in the United States. And no doubt he’s going to reiterate that.

Daniel Creech 20:20

He also said he likes the independence of central planners and this private public partnership of money. And why does that about, that’s literally about control. And he said he doesn’t protect, or he doesn’t trust a private issuer of Bitcoin, Frank. That is how ignorant this gentleman is. He is literally a fool or he’s lying.

Daniel Creech 20:39

So, you know, he might not be dumb in his case. He was a fool or he sounds, excuse me, he doesn’t look dumb. But, um, and anybody talks with an accent like that, you almost take him serious. You know, it’s not like somebody’s going to be smart. You know, you can hardly understand him.

Frank Curzio 20:50

Well, try an accent. You can say whatever you want.

Daniel Creech 20:52

It’s like every third word and you’re like, man, is this guy know what he’s talking about? And you realize, no, he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a clue. And he’s, and he’s talking about how, you know, and he was arguing for the fact that, listen, central banks need the independence to print money into oblivion and to punish the people around them, all the, uh, consumers and all the citizens. And Brian Armstrong, I, I was impressed.

Daniel Creech 21:13

He held back. You could tell he had a smirk on his face. And he was like, well, actually, you know, Bitcoin’s decentralized. It doesn’t have a private issuer. There’s nobody controlling it. And it just wentright over his head. And I encourage you guys to watch it. It’s been all over social media and such, but it literally shows you how out of touch and out of tune, the quote unquote smartest people in the room are.

Daniel Creech 21:34

And all that tells you again, just buy assets. You should have allocation to Bitcoin and gold. Frank, gold is up almost one and a half percent today. Yeah. With the market backing off that, oh, Trump isn’t going to send, you know, we’re probably sending all the ships to Iran instead of stopping over there after we did Venezuela. But I mean, the idea that this French,

Daniel Creech 21:54

uh, central bank governor either doesn’t know or he’s lying about Bitcoin and the, um, limited supply around it.

Daniel Creech 22:02

And Brian Armstrong, I think did a good job, but how hard must it be to go to that meeting as Brian Armstrong or anybody knowing you’re trying to break into the good old boys club and you know, you’re going to get backstabbed and lied to and all that kind of stuff and have to sit there in a suit with him. I’m telling you that that’s impressive to me.

Frank Curzio 22:18

Yeah. I’m under the assumption that central bankers hate Bitcoin because it threatens their system of control.

Daniel Creech 22:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Frank Curzio 22:23

And maybe, uh, you know, I guess I’m wrong because the fact that the central banker had no idea that nobody issues Bitcoins and it’s decentralized is crazy. Now, what does that mean in the bigger point? The bigger scheme of things is when we’re researching things, we’re willing to change our mind if the facts change. I’m always, always open to listen to the other side. I have no ego. I love hearing people have different opinions than me.

Frank Curzio 22:44

I think it’s really cool. I love having those conversations. And at the end of the day, you can have a beer or whatever and just disagree and be friends. That’s fine. I just think when it comes to these central banks, the fact that you’re not even willing to learn or try a new system or to see if something is better, that, and I understand we’re talking about central banks here,

Frank Curzio 23:03

which is, you know, the most powerful banks in the world, the most powerful system in the world, the Fed’s most powerful organization in the world,right? They could, they could crash the world if they want based on interest rate policy.

Frank Curzio 23:13

That, it’s bothersome,right? And it’s troublesome. It’s just, how are you not open to saying, okay, hey, this, like that’s what it was with Bitcoin. Now you’re seeing like JP Morgan open to Bitcoin, a lot of these other companies and banks and institutions open to Bitcoin, but they got it. Even billionaires have said, I didn’t understand it. Now I get it. Uh, it’s a decentralization,right? It’s like no one in control of this.

Frank Curzio 23:33

No massive money printing, which is why Elon Musk broke away from Trump when he was friends with him. He’s like, I thought this was about Doge and saving money. And now you come out with the big beautiful bill and it’s massive spending is going to raise deficits. What the hell’s going on? Right? So, you know, the fact that you could always do that with every single president, you’re going to want to spend more money. The more money you spend, the better the economy’s likely going to be until you hit a point like we’re hittingright now,

Frank Curzio 23:54

which is what Ray Dalio came out and said. And Ray Dalio, you know, Bridgewater, 136 billion in assets in the management. I looked it up. I think the Pure Alpha portfolio, I think, uh, Dean, I think you’re going to be able to invest in it pretty soon. I think as a six million dollar minimum.

Daniel Creech 24:08

Oh, not even bad.

Frank Curzio 24:09

See him was there. Uh, you know, but you know, he’s making headlines and because he’s saying, he’s been saying this for a while, but talked a little bit more about it. I think it’s more highlighted because it’s in Davos, because we hear this stuff, because we’re part of the markets and we hear him talking and podcasts and stuff like that. But saying the fiat system is coming undone. Uh, concerns that countries or allies holding large amounts of U.S.

Frank Curzio 24:29

debt may look to sell it if trust arose between the U.S. and other countries. And he highlights how, look, this isn’t like something I’m making up. You look through history, this happened many times. Economic conflicts, which start out with trades and tariffs and stuff, they escalate to where it impacts capital flows and, you know, these big trade disputes and it winds up, you know, holy shit moment,right?

Frank Curzio 24:48

So, you know, getting headlines and talking about that, but you’re looking at our deficits, massive deficits, they keep going higher and higher. And the only way to get out of them, the only way is to have massive economic growth, which Trump’s trying to do, but you have to do it also while trying to curb spending, which no president has ever done or will ever do.

Daniel Creech 25:06

Yeah. Not going to do that because that’s not the way the system is. And going back to, uh, Canada’s prime minister, you know, he’s saying we’re in a rupture, not a transition. So big things are a changing. Yeah. Ray Ray. I like Ray Ray, Frank. And I love all billionaires that come from, I like success stories, period.

Daniel Creech 25:26

I know you do too. So he is not, memory serves me correct, Ray was not born a wealthy guy. So he is literally a rags to riches story. But whether you’re a born on third base and think you hit a triple trust fund kid or you’re a rags to riches guy, what the hell is it about most billionaires, Frank, that are cutthroat until they make it? And then you get to the top.

Frank Curzio 25:46

You’reright.

Daniel Creech 25:46

And you turn around.

Frank Curzio 25:47

You’re exactlyright.

Daniel Creech 25:48

You want to pull the ladder up and act like, okay, now we got to rechange the world’s scope and stuff. And now we got to really start, you know, blowing the trumpet about this. So kudos to him for calling, um, more attention to the idea that central banking is getting out of hand. And really all I mean by that, Frank, is, uh, real quick here.

Daniel Creech 26:08

I always heard, and it was true until a couple of years ago, but I always heard, hey, the smart money is in bonds because bonds are where the, you know, big money is. And there’s so much more money in debt than the stock market. Well, if you do a quick AI search, the stock market and the bond market are essentially the same size now.

Daniel Creech 26:29

And that’s for two reasons. One is because some money has left the bond market and two, because the appreciation or the rise in the stock market. Now these could be way off, but it’s basically saying the stock market is now, as of 2025, around 68 trillion and the bond market is somewhere around 60.

Frank Curzio 26:43

Is it really?

Daniel Creech 26:44

Yes.

Frank Curzio 26:44

I didn’t know that.

Daniel Creech 26:45

That really shocked me because if I had, if you had a gun in my head or if you were betting me a beer at a bar, I would have bet you the bond market was two to three times larger.

Frank Curzio 26:52

We’re talking about trillion dollar company market caps now. It’s insane how these companies are. They’re massive.

Daniel Creech 26:58

And I say all that because what Ray Ray is talking about is this supply and demand in bonds. Essentially what you, the way I dumb it down to my level is you’re talking about, hey, why would you continue to invest in government bonds when they’re printing it and you’re losing your monetary purchasing power? And the idea is, well, where else would you go?

Daniel Creech 27:16

Well, you go to gold. So Ray correctly pointed out, hey, now central bankers are holding a lot more gold. It’s a bigger reserve asset, not just U.S. treasuries. And you have this other thing called Bitcoin and you have these operating companies. So I respect him because he did say, listen, the monetary order is coming undone, but then he kind of backed it off and said,

Daniel Creech 27:35

what I mean is we’re going through big transitions and fiat currencies are not looked at as a store of wealth as much as they have been in the past. Well, no shit, because since 2020, prices are up 30, 40, 50% of all stuff across the board. So people realize, hey, this dollar isn’t buying me as much as it used to. Therefore, you’re not going to save more and more of those dollars.

Daniel Creech 27:55

You’re going to put it into other assets. It’s not a reason to be alarmed. It’s just to continue to diversify out of fiat currencies into commodities. And last thing here, Frank, you know, you should pay attention to the people that are yelling on the rooftops, but only to a certain extent. And what I want to get across to everybody is,

Daniel Creech 28:15

and Frank and I were talking about this earlier, you know, you can become numb to listening to everybody saying, oh, the world’s going to end and we’re printing money into oblivion and debts and deficits are too high. But there are transitions going on. And you look at commodities, you look at gold, you look at silver prices, you look at Bitcoin and all that, and just have exposure to all that because there are massive changes going,

Daniel Creech 28:35

uh, they’re underwayright now and they’re only going to pick up speed with volatility going forward. So I, I, I thought it was a great idea that he brought that up, Frank.

Frank Curzio 28:44

Yeah. I mean, it’s just, you know, you look at commoditiesright now, if you go to palladium is up, you look at, you know, copper is just on fire. Uh, yes, you have gold on fire. I mean, I’m just looking at, uh, you know, look at the one year chart for like, uh, platinum. I mean, you’re looking at platinum in May was 933. It’s 2500,right?

Frank Curzio 29:03

So, I mean, we all want to talk about gold. We want to talk about silver, which is insane. Uh, silver’s 93, 93 silver is. I got to look at this chart with silver. This is amazing.

Daniel Creech 29:12

Parabolic. Yeah.

Frank Curzio 29:13

Holy cow. I mean, you look at this a year chart was 30,right? So, so I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s incredible to see, you know, some of these moves in commoditiesright now. And I’m going to, hopefully I get there, but I’m going to the, uh, Vancouver Resource Investment, uh, conference and that should be pretty cool. Uh, I think it’s going to be pretty cool. So, uh, and I’m leaving on Saturday.

Frank Curzio 29:33

I think it’s on Sunday and Monday. If you’re there, be sure to say hello. A lot of people, I have a lot of subscribers that have gone there a lot. I’ve haven’t been there in five years. You speak at that, uh, probably three, four years in a row. Uh, I know the people who run it. Uh, Jay Martin’s a great guy. Uh, I meet a lot of, uh, cool people that I haven’t seen in a while. I haven’t seen Marin in person in a while.

Frank Curzio 29:52

I saw Rick Rule at the conference in New Orleans not too long ago. So I’m going to see him. Amir’s going to be there, you know, just, uh, a lot of heavyweights. So I’m going to be able to do a lot of business there, but it’s going to be an exciting environment for them finally,right?

Daniel Creech 30:04

Oh, absolutely.

Frank Curzio 30:05

Last year was okay. Still didn’t get the crowds and stuff like that. Now it’s, now it’s like, holy shit,right? Everything’s in play. Uh, junior miners, everythingright across the board, which is a lot of fun. So, uh, I, I get, you know, I, I love the fact that Ray Ray, I should say, is talking about it,right? He’s talking about it. So, and, and when you talk about the problem, it’s always good compared to,

Frank Curzio 30:25

I think the biggest events, uh, the worst events happen in these black swan events when, when nobody sees it’s coming,right? When it’s COVID, when it’s a credit crisis, no one knows like what is the full damage. We have a history of the full damage if we, you know, if we keep doing this,right? Uh, whether it’ll change, I don’t know. Trillion dollars that we’re payingright now in interest on our debt, trillion.

Frank Curzio 30:44

You wonder why Trump wants interest rates much, much lower. And if they do go incredibly low, that you might see exodus out of gold like we saw when interest rates are zero because it doesn’t pay any interest,right? So, and when you have low interest rates, every other asset class is an incredible, incredible buy, which we saw in, you know, the biggest bull run when interest rates are zero for like, you know, what is it, eight, 10 years. So, you know, I get what he’s saying.

Frank Curzio 31:04

Uh, I think we’re very, very, very far away from it. It’s just the fact that, you know, America has, has done theright thing. We’re buying goods from everyone. Uh, you know, we’re a great partner. Uh, you know, it’s just a dollar is still a reserve currency, which is never going to change in our lifetime. I mean, hopefully I live for more than 30 years, but, uh, in a very long time.

Frank Curzio 31:24

But, you know, are there cracks? Yes. But what are you going to do about it? You know, what are you going to do? Seriously? Uh, I mean, if anyone threatens just like the brick nations threatened, I mean, you have Trump is smart in saying, okay, we’re going to put tariffs on you. We’re going to bankrupt your nations,right? So, uh, it’ll cost us more, it’ll hurt our economy, but we could buy products and goods anywhere we want. It’s just a matter of getting them at the lowest price.

Frank Curzio 31:44

And that goes to one of the best speeches that I heard, which was Howard Lutnick, uh, when he said globalism has failed. And I really liked his speech because he came up with a lot of great points. He goes, cheap labor destroyed innovation. Everyone wants cheap labor. We see it in China. We see it all over the place. Everyone,right? Going to, going to China and Taiwan and all these places to get cheap labor. Uh,

Frank Curzio 32:05

sovereignty begins with borders,right? And we saw what happened with the U.S. with that. Uh, nations must control, must control their industry, energy, and medicine. Nations must control that. And that’s important,right? Because we import a lot of our medicine and rare earths from China. And China is a hostile nation,right? With a hostile government that wants to take over the world, kind of like Russia,right?

Frank Curzio 32:25

They’re not our allies. Uh, he’s saying, why would Europe agree to net zero when they don’t even make a battery? I love that line,right? Uh, he goes, green agendas without industry. That’s what we have. Green agendas without industry, 10 trillion spent. And really there’s no difference today in, in, in the use of alternative energy compared to when it was 40 years ago,right?

Frank Curzio 32:46

Still a small percentage. Uh, climate pledges without sovereignty, moral posturing while outsourcing power to Beijing. But he’s saying America first is not isolation. It’s independence without needing another country, basically, you know, from hostile nations like China for rare earths, Russia for oil like Europe uses and stuff like that. Like you said, we said earlier how,

Frank Curzio 33:04

you know, they’re complaining they’re funding the war and, and, you know, they want us to give most of the money to the Ukraine and that’s what we’re doing. And they’re trying to get money to Ukraine, but yet they’re buying Russia oil,right? To help fund them. It’s just, you know, so, so it’s just, you don’t want that. And what he’s saying is countries need to secure themselves as much as they can. And everyone’s talking about this, you know,

Frank Curzio 33:23

that this, you know, globalization thing and we don’t want any trading partners and stuff like that. And he sees it differently, but I like the way he outlined a lot of that stuff. And I thought that was a really, really good speech. Uh, you know, one of the best that I heard there where most people just kind of talk in that book, but I don’t know if you heard anything else from Davos that that would, that impressed you.

Daniel Creech 33:38

No, just the fact that, like you said, I mean, to me, you hear all this globalism talk and there needs to be a lot of changes in my opinion, because just look at what it’s done to the middle class and the, the wealthy and the poor and the, the distance, uh, of growth that we’ve seen in that. That is because of globalization. And to your point, yeah, use this as allocation targets,

Daniel Creech 33:58

not as, oh, fear and just sit on the sidelines and let all this stuff happen. Don’t do that. Don’t, don’t hear what we’re not saying. And kudos to Ray Ray because Frankie was talking about, hey, I would allocate five to 15% of gold if people, and you know this better than me, if people, institutions, money managers, whatever, start allocating a larger percentage of their portfolios to gold,

Daniel Creech 34:17

just like we talk about with Bitcoin, it’s going to cause this continued bull market. And there’s no reason, I mean, think of the world we live in, Frank, where gold, which has been around for as long as you want to argue history has been around, and Bitcoin is this new great idea. One is 90,000 and the other one is 4,700.

Frank Curzio 34:34

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Creech 34:35

That, that’s a wild world to live in. Doesn’t mean it can’t go up and down. I’m just saying use your allocation and think about that because I give credit to Dalio because he was talking about five to 15%. Um, and then real quick, you don’t, Frank, hopefully you live more than 30 years, but as long as we’re the superpower of the world, as long as the United States military is still number one, then dollar reserves, uh, remain and.

Frank Curzio 34:56

And doubling the, the, the spend on military to 1.5 trillion.

Daniel Creech 35:00

Absolutely.

Frank Curzio 35:01

I mean, you know, he highlighted that he’s not letting those companies buy back stock because you, you should use that money to, to, you know, reach your deadlines because we’re ordering stuff that takes three years. It shouldn’t take three years. I kind of like that. I don’t like the fact that he gets involved with some of these companies and telling them what they could do with their money and, you know, buybacks are a lot of times great for investors, but you know, they’re funded by the government,right? So,

Frank Curzio 35:20

yeah, I mean, it’s a different, it’s different than, you know, some of these other companies where, okay, you know, uh, it used to get away with a lot of stuff and not worrying about, you know, deadlines and things like that. But you know, there’s now accountability with this administration, which is pretty cool. Uh, more news, got a more news story outside of Davos. And listen, stocks are going to be reporting earnings.

Frank Curzio 35:39

You’re going to see lots of earnings coming out in the next few weeks. And, and Daniel, I love that. Butright now it’s a lot of this geopolitical stuff. Uh, Davos is a very big deal. You can see it all over the live speeches broadcasted everywhere on financial media channels and some regular channels as well. When, when Trump spoke and I didn’t think it was going to be 90 minutes. I was like, holy shit, this is long. Uh, but, um, some of the other things going on is Powell,right?

Frank Curzio 35:59

Sitting in on Lisa Cook’s, uh, Supreme Court hearing, which is taking placeright now. Uh, and I think you had some, some, some nice comments about that.

Daniel Creech 36:05

Yeah. I just quickly here, I love this. We need a timer, Frank, but Mr. Fed Chair Powell of the independent Federal Reserve, which is so important, who is allegedly under investigation for cost overruns and all that, is going to be a leader, Frank. I told you, he went on a big political rant. He’s, he’s getting his, uh, groupies behind him.

Daniel Creech 36:27

He’s building his ego up. God love him. He is going to go sit in, I guessright now it’s happening. The Supreme Court is hearing if Lisa Cook can be fired for calls under Trump. Apparently, allegedly she got two, one, two mortgages, Frank, 14 days apart, both claiming primary residents in different states.

Daniel Creech 36:46

That’s, that’s a no-no. But Mr. Powell is going to go sit in on the Supreme Court arguments, Frank. Mm-hmm. That is the most unpolitical or most political move you can make. Yeah. So here you have a guy out there mouthing these words about independence and how he’s going to stand up to Trump and he’s not lowering interest rates.

Daniel Creech 37:06

So now he’s getting threatened with criminal investigations. And now this guy is wading into the political arena and going to go put his thumb on the scale. You familiar with that term, Frank? Thumb on the scale.

Frank Curzio 37:15

Thumb on the scale.

Daniel Creech 37:16

Thumb on the scale at the Supreme Court hearing. I think this just increases volatility. The only thing that’s going to happen monetarily, money-wise, is this could push the, uh, interest rate cuts out a little further. So there might be a little bit more pain in the market before they have to give in and, and cut interest rates. But Frank, I’m telling you,

Daniel Creech 37:36

this guy, I’m leaning more towards, he’s not going to leave the board. He’s going to, he’s going to leave his post and he’s going to stay on the board. What do you think?

Frank Curzio 37:43

He’ll stay on the board because Trump’s going to be pissed at that. So he’ll stay on the board.

Frank Curzio 37:45

And you know, all the stories about the independence bullshit,right? The Fed independence bullshit and what, you know, they felt like Trump going after Powell and, you know, he’s trying to, you know, it was impacting the independence, even though, you know, it, this wouldn’t be settled after he’s going after Powell. Like these criminal investigations don’t get settled for longer than two years,right? So it has nothing to do with kicking him off.

Frank Curzio 38:04

Maybe he does have to kick him off the, the, the actual board after he loses, you know, after the chairman, uh, in May. But going to this is not a good thing. Like you should not be in that room because you’re supporting, you basically you’re saying I’m against Trump. I’m, you know, you’re not, you know, I get it. I understand, you know,

Frank Curzio 38:23

and Lisa Cook and you have a back and stuff like that. It’s just for someone, like the biggest story here is the independence and you going there, like dispels that argument of that you’ve been fighting for and how important it is to be independent. I think I agree with you.

Daniel Creech 38:35

And who already did this? Trump threatened to do this over the tariff hearings and everybody had a big uproar and then he didn’t end up going. Yeah. But he was going to go sit in on the hearings for the tariff because they still haven’t ruled on whether or not he has that authority and all that stuff. But yeah.

Frank Curzio 38:47

What happened to all?

Daniel Creech 38:48

This just shows you how political he is.

Frank Curzio 38:49

What happened to all the economists? And this isn’t a pro-Trump podcast. I’m saying, what happened to all the economists that said that, you know, globalization is dead, the tariffs are going to destroy us? Uh, you know, this is the worst thing ever,right? And now look what happened. I mean, we’re getting before Greenland, we’re getting along with all these countries. We’ve been making more money off tariffs than ever because it’s fair,right? It’s fair that we, you know, it’s back and forth,right?

Frank Curzio 39:10

So, you know, making these agreements, uh, you know, equal, but it’s just amazing how much shit you hear when, you know, and so much of it is, it’s such noise, uh, around, you know, a lot of these moves and the agendas and stuff like that and how it’s going to impact you and it’s going to destroy the U.S. and all this stuff. And look what it’s done like if you look now,right?

Frank Curzio 39:30

It’s just, it’s kind of amazing when you see all the bullshit and all the hype and all this garbage that that’s up there. Uh, but yeah, I, I agree with you with Powell. I, I don’t like the fact that he’s there. He could support her in other ways or send a tweet or something like that or, or whatever, but just being in that room is just, and you can’t be in that room and then shout how important it is to be independent. You got to do one or the other,right?

Frank Curzio 39:49

You can’t do that. That’s bullshit to me. I agree with you. Now we didn’t get to a lot of stocks today because there’s not a lot of stocks reporting other than Netflix. So Netflix reported and has that stock come back along with the markets or no? So down 5%, $82. This is a $134 stock probably six months ago.

Frank Curzio 40:08

I mean, you know, we have the chart up there. Put that in six months, Joe.

Frank Curzio 40:14

See six months. I mean, look at that. I mean, it’s 126 months ago. It’s a little 130, maybe seven months ago, but, uh.

Daniel Creech 40:20

It’s damn near to its April lows last year. Look at that.

Frank Curzio 40:22

Numbers. I mean, put, put, hit all on that chart, Joe. I mean, if you look at it, look at, I mean, it’s unbelievable, like, you know, this stock and how great it’s done for investors until like the past few months. Uh, but you know, Netflix numbers were great. I mean, it was the first $12 billion quarter ever. Revenues soared 18%, much higher than the,

Frank Curzio 40:42

than, you know, the S&P 500, which projected to grow when it comes to sales. Uh, advertising revenue rose two and a half times to 1.5 billion. Netflix says it’s going to double in 12 months. I think that’s super conservative. They’re going to do much more than 3 billion advertising revenue. Operating margins better than expected. Stranger Things final season, 120 million views. Holy shit.

Frank Curzio 41:03

Some slight negatives. Total view hours only up 2%. 2026 revenue guidance was in line. And these, this is what Netflix made a mistake at. And they, they addressed in the call is they set their expectations very high. And they said, well, we didn’t mean that to be forecast. We meant that, you know, it’s like, well, if you say, you know, we expect to do this, everyone’s going to assume that’s a forecast.

Frank Curzio 41:21

So that’s your four. So this is an expectation thing,right? This is a stock that should be up 10% today. But because the company’s expectations were very, very high, that it’s down 4%. Not only this, because people are saying, well, they’re a little worried about margins and total view hours. Of course, the elephant in the room is the Warner Brothers deal, which Netflix,

Frank Curzio 41:40

and this is a big deal, I think, which hurt the stock is they suspended their buybacks to help fund the all cash deal. Uh, so it had 8 billion left on the buyback initiative. And they said, okay, we’re going to stop it because now doing all cash and they want to maintain that, that, you know, credit rating. After the call, had a quick downgrade by one firm, two others. I saw lower their targets,

Frank Curzio 42:00

one lowered them to over under a hundred, which was rare for this company. And you know, you look at Netflix rocking and rolling before this, this, uh, announcement to, to acquire Warner Brothers. Stocks in the eighties now is 130. Again, it’s just an incredible collapse in the stock. I think this is going to be a dead stock.

Frank Curzio 42:19

We recommended it. We wind up stopping out of it. Um, it’s going to be a dead stock until they actually acquire Warner Brothers, which a vote expected in March and April, I believe. I don’t think that’s still a done deal, uh, because, you know, Paramount has a higher bid and a lot of political power, uh, much more compared to Netflix, who did a good job of trashing, you know, rehastings have been trashed.

Frank Curzio 42:40

And I’m a big fan of rehastings, but you know, even after he got elected, he still trashed them. He didn’t reverse course like most CEOs do and say, oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. And you know, Larry Fink, there’s no DEI anywhere when he said it’s the future for the next 50 years. This is what we got to focus on. It’s the biggest thing in the world. It’s gone. It’s fucking gone,right? It’s a new person. You got to love it. You got to love it. But hey, you know, you’re doing what you got to do for investors.

Frank Curzio 42:59

And I get that. I really do. With that said, with all the bullshit going on with Netflix, if you have an 18-month time horizon, which is like 20 years in today’s days, where you flick through, you know, where you scroll through TikTok and in one second, if you don’t like the first word of the headline, you’re gone,right? So 18 months is years. If you have an 18-month time horizon, book the stock, a 50% plus move in the stock is a layup.

Frank Curzio 43:20

It’s a layup. It’s like putting your money in a market account, money market account. I mean, this company, when they acquire Warner Brothers, is going to be on fire. The creativity, the studios, the assets, the combination, and what are they doing? They’re doing a good job saying, no, we’re not going to fire anyone, of course,right? Because they want this deal to go through.

Frank Curzio 43:39

And we need all these creative people, which they’re going to need a lot of them. But I mean, this is, they’re going, they’re already the beast. This is going to be a Goliath,right? I mean, it’s going to be incredible for this company once they take them over and merge these assets in, which takes a while. Now, I went through this with another company in 2008. It was Ashland that I recommended.

Frank Curzio 44:00

And they acquired a company called Hercules. And the stock went from 25 to 15 on the announcement, got wrecked. And then this is 2008,right? So it’s like July. And then we had the credit crisis going through 2008. And the stock fell into low single digits. But notice what happened. I mean, this stock really, I really liked the deal. I like, I liked the Hercules deal. It made them a, you know, kind of like this specialty chemical company.

Frank Curzio 44:19

Uh, Hercules had a lot of debt, but look where it went,right? It turned out, and the point I’m making here is that Ashland took it over Hercules and then they did a lot of other acquisitions. It was theright move, even though the market said, you know what, we hate it. And I think the same thing was seen here with Netflix, where, you know,right now when Netflix is, it’s an incredible, incredible, incredible buying opportunity.

Frank Curzio 44:38

Again, if you have an 18-month time horizon here, uh, I think a 50% plus move in this stock is almost a certainty here. Uh, you know, nobody likes this acquisition now. And I get it. There’s a lot of noise behind it. And it hurts the companyright now. Now, you know, everything that we talked about and the negatives and stuff like that, including the buyback announcement. But, you know, I think Netflixright now is definitely a screaming buy.

Frank Curzio 44:58

Um, another company too, Daniel, I don’t know if you saw J&J reported. Uh, J&J, if you look at that chart.

Daniel Creech 45:03

Yeah. Talk about a boring company moving along.

Frank Curzio 45:05

You know what? I mean, a good company, the numbers were good. It’s down a little bit because it’s been up a lot, but nobody talks about J&J. And I’m talking about it for a few times on the podcast because I have a couple of people that work there and I know they’ve been cutting costs a lot and just restructuring their business, some of their consumer staples division and stuff. I mean, if you look like MedTech, the division,

Frank Curzio 45:24

their innovative medicine division, uh, the callous they have coming up, major, major callous in 2026. I mean, this is a stock that should be bought even here. It’s near its 52-week high. A lot of people don’t know what, even like we said with the Dollar Tree,right? It’s, you pull up a chart of, you know, Dollar Tree, like, wait, what happened there? And you’re like, how’s the stock up? Same with Gap. You’re like, wait, what happened there?

Frank Curzio 45:43

With this company, it’s, you know, I love where J&J isright now. Uh, it’s an under-the-radar company. Everyone talks about like the bigger names in the industry where it’s Eli Lilly. Okay. Pfizer’s going to make a comeback here. Uh, you know, Merck and their oncology platform is amazing and stuff like that. But, you know, even, uh, what’s the other, uh, MRNA is, is actually, uh, you know, starting to rebound a little bit. So.

Daniel Creech 46:05

The Moderna.

Frank Curzio 46:05

Yeah, Moderna. But when I look at J&J, it’s off everyone’s radar quietly at a 52-week high. And this stock, it’s been shitty for a long time. It hasn’t really done a lot. All this restructuring and stuff like that. They finally positioned themselves. And that’s what companies do, guys. Like, I see this mistake made all the time. People hate a company and then after two years, they hate it for the same reasons. Remember two years management who are usually in this industry for 30 years.

Frank Curzio 46:27

If they get fired, they hire someone that’s been in the industry for 30 years and they go over all the stuff that they have to change to get things back on track. And you’re able to monitor that quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter. If you look at J&J’s quarter, a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. Same here, beating earnings, but look at the callous for 2026. This is now a growth stock. So, you know,

Frank Curzio 46:45

I think this is one of the best performers, I think, in this space. You know, everyone’s talking about it again, Lilly and a lot of the Lilly already made its move pretty much with obesity and pills now instead of just the shots. But, you know, I think J&J is really on its way. And I think this is just the beginning. I think we have a lot more upside here in this stock. Look at that chart. I mean, just this is five years of garbage.

Frank Curzio 47:06

Like, look at that. That’s like the shittiest chart. If you’d stop in July, you’d be like, this is the worst chart at five years of nothing. Like, look at the little ups and downs, little ups and downs. Like Josh and John should be a trading stock, it’s a dividend stock,right? So I think it’s an aristocrat paying dividends for decades and decades and raising that dividend annually consecutive years. But it’s now this breakout is for real.

Frank Curzio 47:26

And you’re looking at it, it starts since July. I mean, a 150 and look where you areright now. And I think that’s going to continue. I just think this is a stock that people don’t understand because they’re so used to this old, like nonsense. It’s kind of like the energy companies, Daniel. Like the energy companies became growth companies.

Frank Curzio 47:41

They’re not these, you know, companies you get for dividends and they have a lot of debt and you hold forever and you accumulate the dividend and the income plays. This is a growth play. This is now a growth stock. I like Johnson & Johnson going forward.

Daniel Creech 47:53

Yeah. We hid this one. Well, we bought this in July in our dollar stock club, but somebody that would be me, Frank, sold it too early. We did get out for a game, but we definitely left some on the table. That is a sexy chart on the breakout.

Frank Curzio 48:04

Yeah. No, definitely a sexy chart on the breakout.

Daniel Creech 48:06

Yeah. Good call on you on that one.

Frank Curzio 48:07

And, uh, so next week, what do we have going on next week? So next week, uh, we, it’s going to be earnings season. It’s going to be really crazy. It’s going to be a lot of fun with earnings season. So, uh, next week we are going to have, let’s see, we’re going to have start with Tuesday, really the 27th,right?

Frank Curzio 48:27

You’re going to have American Airlines, Boeing, a lot of small banks, a lot of airlines are deploying JetBlue, Northrop Grumman. We’re going to have a Union Pacific. So railroads and defense companies are going to be reporting next week. Lots of technology companies, Texas Instruments is going to be there. I think General Motors as well. Later in a week, you’re going to see Corning. You’re going to see Starbucks, Textron.

Frank Curzio 48:50

Uh, and then you’re going to have Microsoft. And that’s the big thing. When you’re seeing the Microsoft, Microsoft’s first, and then you’re going to see a lot of the other, uh, hyperscalers report probably the week after. Uh, it’s important to monitor that. Okay. Those are the stocks that are driving the markets. We want to see things going on with the AI trend where, you know, energy is a big deal. They’re going to talk a lot about energy,

Frank Curzio 49:09

but there’s been a big shift of companies that are saying, okay, I really want to learn AI, want to build this all this talent and everything. And then they can’t really compete with the big guys. Because if you get someone and you hire them for millions of dollars and they’re great, they’re going to get paid 10 times as much. They’re going to easily be poached by some of the bigger guys,right?

Frank Curzio 49:26

So instead of trying to fight it and trying to learn this whole inside industry that’s very difficult, now you can partner with Gemini. And they’re like, hey, you get all of our cloud services, all this stuff, everything integrated. Uh, you know, OpenAI is another one. You know, just you’re partnering with a lot of these big guys. And what you’re seeing is smaller retail is doing this. If you look at it,

Frank Curzio 49:45

I mean, look at the chart of Wayfair. Look at the chart of Gap. Look at the chart of Dollar Tree, which I said earlier. I mean, these are stocks that have been doing partnerships over the past three to six months with AI companies. And you’re seeing the productivity gains almost immediately. Almost immediately. We just recommended a company or AI newsletter, same thing, which has been on fire. Uh, and this company’s out of favor.

Frank Curzio 50:03

It was over $200 a share. It’s $60 a share. They just signed a deal with OpenAI. They just signed a deal with Google, Gemini, like a couple of weeks ago. Uh, and what we’re seeing is this company literally has hundreds of millions of people that go on their platform. And this used to be a pretty cool asset. Now it’s incredibly valuable because when you’re running through AI, it’s providing these efficiencies.

Frank Curzio 50:24

Now if you’re typing something in AI, which people are doing in their searches, and you type a certain product that you want, it’s going to come up with a product on that site where you can one-click buy it. I mean, you’re talking about tens of millions of new views. And it’s not just you’re getting this extra traffic. You’re getting traffic of people who want to buy your shit,right? You’re not seeing it.

Frank Curzio 50:41

It’s on TV and it’s a commercial and you’re just watching it because it’s on TV and you’re forced to watch it, you know, because you can’t really, especially Hulu, they don’t let you fast forward through the commercials,right? Which you just found out. Uh, they’re not like YouTube TV. So, you know, they force you to watch these commercials. These are people who are active buyers that are now on these platforms. And the partnerships are,

Frank Curzio 51:00

I mean, they’re saving costs to increase in revenue, they’re increasing productivity. It’s unbelievable what you’re seeing in the transformation of these companies, what AI is doing. That’s a new trend. We were in the energy trend. We really kicked ass in that. And energy is still there. We saw Microsoft partner and do some more deals with Oklo, which is on fire. And I think it’s approaching $100 now. Uh, also TerraPower, uh, Bloom Energy signed a deal with American Electric Power.

Frank Curzio 51:22

And that’s one in our portfolio. It’s up 500%, over 500%. Celestica reports next week. We just took profits in that. Another 500% plus winner for us in our AI portfolio,right? We did have some companies that stopped out. It stops unlimited. Uh, but, you know, really kicking ass in that portfolio and avoiding a lot of the pitfalls because you’re going to see the transition when they report,right?

Frank Curzio 51:41

Daniel, next week is, you know, is it just about data centers? How much are they going to spend? Are they continuing to increase spending, which Taiwan Semi just kind of told us? This is what you have to look at. Not for the hyperscalers because some of you may own them and we have Google in our portfolio for a while. It’s more about where they see the business is coming from, who they’re partnering with.

Frank Curzio 52:01

And I think that’s going to be the way to make easy money in AI going forward as more of these brands that have been annihilated, destroyed. Under Armour is another one. I mean, just, you know, a big following that has been a dead stock for such a long time, kind of like J&J,right? And then next thing you know, you know, these companies pop because management has fixed a lot of problems. But with these retailers and their big files and a big customer base,

Frank Curzio 52:23

when you use an AI, it’s really going to make a difference in productivity and growth. And we saw that especially with Reddit when they partnered with Google. Holy cow. That stock just flew higher,right? Doubled and tripled. So that’s what I’ll pay attention to next week. Should be a lot of fun. I don’t know if you look at photos or anything next week, but Daniel, but earnings is going to be full stream starting next week.

Daniel Creech 52:42

Yeah. And this quarter and also this year, it’ll be wild to see where AI is adopted, where it’s implemented, and where it actually is showing results. So, yeah, definitely in the power plays upfront. And then we’ll kind of seep that and see where that goes and kind of like that, you know, river down, spilling down river and flowing through the economy. So we’ll take advantage of that.

Frank Curzio 53:03

Yeah. It should be pretty cool. Really busy next week. So be sure to tune in. And tomorrow, Wall Street Unplugged Premium Invest will be there for you tomorrow, breaking down a lot of stocks, have some ideas and stuff like that, like we always do. We really get into ideas in a Wall Street Unplugged Premium podcast where we break down stocks. We also give you, you know, we have a portfolio linked to that, a trading portfolio, which is really cool. More stock analysis than that.

Frank Curzio 53:23

And it’s going to get a little crazy starting, you know, tomorrow and even next week, which should be really cool. So definitely tune in. So guys, questions, comments, I’m here for you. frank@curzioresearch.com. Daniel, what’s your email?

Daniel Creech 53:32

Daniel@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio 53:34

Allright, guys. That’s it for us. And we’ll see you tomorrow. Take care.

Announcer 53:38

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.