Wall Street Unplugged
Episode: 1128April 3, 2024

Disney just broke the law

Disney

I start today’s show by looking at the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index data—which came in better than expected. 

Yet, stocks are selling off. Why?

I break down what’s behind the pullback… why it puts the Fed in a tough spot… and why market conditions are incredibly dangerous right now.

Disney’s (DIS) annual meeting is today—and shareholders will vote on whether billionaire and major shareholder Nelson Peltz will get two seats on the board. I explain why CEO Bob Iger doesn’t want Peltz anywhere near the board… how Disney has resorted to downright illegal actions to try to keep it from happening… and why the SEC will most likely look the other way.  

Apple (AAPL) just released its new AI model, ReALM… and it’s already outperforming ChatGPT. I highlight why Apple is set to dominate the AI game… and how it’ll breathe life back into another mega-trend you might have thought was dead…

It’s important to understand that AI is still in its infancy. Last week, I hosted a special live event—The AI Story No One’s Telling—where I dug into the massive long-term potential of this growth trend… and how AI will be a game-changer for every single industry. We here at Curzio Research are already implementing AI into our own processes… and it’s a big part of our growth plans going forward.

If you missed the event, don’t worry—you can still watch the replay here.

Inside this episode:
  • Why stocks are pulling back [0:48]
  • The Fed is in a tough spot [10:01]
  • Disney’s illegal tactics vs. Peltz [14:22]
  • Apple will dominate AI [26:19]
  • AI is still in its infancy [33:20]
  • The AI Story No One’s Telling [39:12]
Frank Curzio
Frank Curzio, founder and CEO of Curzio Research, is one of America’s most respected stock experts. His research is regularly featured on media outlets like CNBC’s Kudlow Report, The Call, CNN Radio, ABC News, and Fox Business News. His Wall Street Unplugged podcast—ranked the No. 1 “most listened-to” financial podcast on iTunes—has been downloaded over 12 million times.
Transcript

Wall Street Unplugged | 1128

Disney just broke the law

This transcript was automatically generated.

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

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s April 3rd.

I’m Frank Curzio.

This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets.

On today’s show.

Disney turning to illegal tactics to fend off Nelson Peltz.

Apple makes a huge splash in AI.

And why this podcast may be the last one I do in person, but let’s begin with the pullback in stocks.

If you watch at CNBC, you think there’s a monumental crash taking place.

Everybody worried and went down what? One and a half percent from our highs all-time highs.

What’s interesting is the pullback is coming as we’re seeing much, much better than expected economic data.

And let’s talk about that.

So you have the PC data from Friday, which markets are closed pretty much in line but still showing you a 3% inflation, much higher than the 2% benchmark.

We all, it’s impounded in our heads from from Powell over the past two years.

C-P-I-P-P-I, right last two months, both came in higher than expected.

We had GDP from last quarter, that final revision, That was forecasted consumer spending, much stronger than expected.

And this all happened the past couple weeks, manufacturing data from yesterday, man above 50, which means manufacturing is now growing and it’s growing for the first time in 18 months.

And it wasn’t some BS indicator or what they say when jobs miss or GDP numbers miss due to this temporary, this weather b******t.

It was led by new orders.

Can’t fake that.

A DP data from today precedes the data we’re gonna get from the jobs report, which happens the first Friday every month showed a much bigger jobs gain than projected, also showed wages rising over 5% year over year.

So now because of all this positive economic data, GDP estimates of 2024 have been getting revised sharply higher each passing week.

A few months ago I was saying how we’re not gonna see more than 2% in any quarter when it comes to GDP 2024.

Two weeks ago, a lot of those estimates were pushed sharply higher.

Now expecting 2.

4% for all of 2024 and I think it’s gonna be revised even higher.

We may be closer to 3% after the latest round of data.

So now we have this economy chugging along, much stronger than anyone expected.

So why would the stock market be pulling back on this positive news? I’ll tell you why interest rates are surging.

And the surging because the Fed remember probably what are we in April, in October we were expecting six rate cuts, then it went down to three.

Now it’s one.

Now they’re saying maybe one in the fourth quarter, maybe zero.

Now why is the Fed raising rates? Why did they raise rates so much? ’cause they needed to slow down the economy ’cause inflation was crazy.

And they did that to some extent.

But they said we want it slow.

We need it slow before we start cutting and outta nowhere.

What happened? Well we have a lot of government spending taking place a lot.

You have AI taking place, which is good.

A lot of companies just valuations.

Some of ’em are outta control.

Some of ’em are not even close.

They’re still cheap based on the growth projections.

But now we’re seeing economy heating up.

We’re seeing inflation come back into the workplace.

It’s the marketplace.

Look at where oil prices look commodities, look at gold.

Look what some of these things, the commodities are going higher across the board.

Food prices going higher.

So now what’s the Fed to do? ’cause now we have interest rates of the 10 year surging.

Again, this makes for dangerous conditions.

I mean you have the 10 year start at 3.

8 and we’re expecting it was trending much, much lower.

But it started the year 3.

8, it’s now it’s pushing.

It’s almost 4.

4%.

That’s a major move.

A major move doesn’t sound like a lot but it is for the 10 year in such a short period of time.

So what that indicates is that forget about cutting the Fed has to debate whether they should just leave rates as is or maybe start hiking again.

Now that may sound absolutely crazy.

Insane.

That’s never gonna happen.

Frank, you’re outta your mind.

Told you for a long time, rates are go much, much, much higher than anyone expected.

Anyone expected.

We said that.

We also said that the Fed’s not cutting rates nine months ago, six months ago.

And the Fed’s crazy and they came out and they pivoted, thought it was gonna look like an idiot for a second there until we saw the data.

But based on what Powell is saying, based on the Fed is saying if you take him for his word, which he said that we’re not lowering rates.

Not lowering rates.

So we see the data C the day and he was right.

Everyone projected that we were gonna see rate cuts, you know, six months ago, three months ago.

And we haven’t seen him.

’cause everyone’s like, ah, Powell’s full of s**t.

You don’t know what he is talking about.

We don’t believe him.

We don’t believe that guy.

Well based on that, if you do believe him and he’s saying that we need inflation to come down.

And three months ago he said, I want to see more data that’s telling us that we can cut.

They’re not cutting.

There’s no way they’re cutting.

You wanna risk four, That’s worrisome because right now the housing market is, I won’t say frozen.

If you’re buying a new house and you have cash, I mean the home builder is doing good because of the supply issues we have.

And it costs cheaper.

It’s cheaper to buy a brand new home than an existing home right now might get a little bit less square feet, but on average, which is crazy, it’s never happened before.

History of a country.

So the home builder is doing good, but overall the housing market, you try to sell your house.

Good luck.

I live in Florida, I live two blocks away from the ocean.

Great house priced right.

Took me eight months to sell it.

Eight months.

And I didn’t get a lot of offers.

Not like b******t offers and no, what are you creating? Nothing.

That’s Florida hottest market around.

Everyone’s moving here along with Texas.

We have a economy that’s clearly not slowing.

Inflation moving higher again.

And everyone’s saying, well the Fed’s probably gonna cut.

They’re gonna cut, they’re gonna cut, they’re gonna cut, they’re gonna cut.

Remember gold? Gold was moving higher to new records on anticipation that the Fed will cut.

Now it’s moving higher because we don’t even care.

So I was laughing.

I was like, just for all the gold bulls out there and I’m happy Gold’s going higher.

I own gold, I own gold stocks and probably plays for a long time.

I was just sick and tired of the b******t.

With six, seven years, you’re hearing the main thesis inflation, if it’s deflation, it’s a store value, all this stuff, more government spending.

We saw that stuff to from 2012 to 2023 without gold doing anything.

And finally it’s pushing higher because the government will not stop spending, they won’t stop spending.

Oh I’m sorry.

They will stop spending.

They’re not gonna replace the, the strategic oil reserve.

Not gonna petroleum reserve.

They just announced that they’re not gonna do that ’cause oil’s over 80 and and they, they wanna save taxpayers money.

They’re gonna give eight and a half billion to intel.

I dunno if you saw that quarter or that the report from yesterday.

It’s getting nailed today.

Massive loss.

And what are they give, what am I giving my eight and a half billion, right? Part of the eight and a half billion my tax dollars.

What are we, we’re giving it to Intel to build fab plants in the US that is getting annihilated on and losing billions and billions of dollars.

Gonna have a manufacturing plant that, that they’re gonna build to make chips that nobody’s gonna buy.

But we wanna save money to taxpayers money.

’cause all of a sudden we care about taxpayers.

We’ll send a hundred billion dollars a close set to Ukraine.

Worry about it.

We’re gonna keep sending that money no matter what.

No matter what.

Endlessly no plan in sight.

But I know we promised you, especially buying that oil from OPEC, we said we’re gonna buy from, from Saudi Arabia.

We promised you over a year ago, we are gonna buy that oil ’cause we artificially pushed those prices down 2022, which every president does election years and things like that actually, what, four years now to help low oil prices.

You flood the market and now you’re supposed to purchase that back.

Oil prices were below 80 for how long fi the last five months.

But even going out past a year, you could have bought it all that time.

Now they’re above 80.

Oh we’re not gonna do, we’re not gonna re we’re not gonna replen you.

We’re not gonna replace it and buy oil.

Now even the promises of the Saudis, that that’s what you’re gonna do because you’re artificially lowering the price and have the Saudis on board and say Don’t worry, we’ll purchase this oil for you and it goes higher.

And then you screw them and you wonder why they’re doing transactions and getting off the dollar.

Right? Oil never traded.

You know it was dollars and that was it.

That dude deal was like China, India.

You wonder why? I mean you keep screwing your partners like that.

That’s this current administration right now.

It’s crazy but inflation is a lot higher.

What’s the Fed gonna do? The fed’s stuck here.

Do you think? Well the economy is great and that’s awesome, but inflation is going higher.

This was the whole reason why we started raising rates, guys ’cause inflation.

And it was so late to the party, waited till we had inflation.

Well over five, 6% went to nine, nine point half whatever that it crashed then it came down tremendously.

But still well, well, well well over the norm, which is 2%.

So now what are you gonna do? Now inflation’s going higher.

You say you’re gonna look at the data.

If you look at almost all the data across the board, not all of it, but a lot more.

’cause two months ago, three months ago I would’ve said, ha, I could provide 10 statistics that show you inflation.

Now it’s like 80% inflation.

You see wages rising.

Now you’re seeing, you know again the PPI, the CPI, the last two months, much, much higher than expected.

New manufacturing through the roof.

Commod starting to move higher, food prices are going higher again.

You know, you guys go out to eat, you buy your food, you know you see it.

But the economy’s fine.

We’re all fine, everything’s gonna be great.

We’re in very dangerous conditions right now and we’re talking to a fed that has no clue ’cause there’s no playbook.

There’s no playbook that saw these conditions in the past that they could say, hey, we’ll point to that time.

Like Bernanke said, listen, we cannot do what we did in 1929.

We can’t do what we did in depression, flood the banks with cash, make sure the system is stable and everything will come back.

And he was right.

You can get p****d off about the money they spent.

You can get p****d off at anything.

If that didn’t, we’d still have 30% unemployment.

If we didn’t capitalize the bank, the banks would’ve went under there.

They were done across the board, they were done.

The financial system globally was about to collapse.

They had to stabilize the system.

They knew that they had a playbook and said, Hey, we effed up 30, 31, 32.

Terrible.

Let’s not do that again.

There’s no playbook right now.

They thought, okay, remember that’s why even when we had inflation going higher, Powell very, very brilliant guy.

So economics probably for 40, maybe 50 years, I’m not sure how old he is saying it’s gonna be transitory, it’s transitory, it’s coming to, it wasn’t.

It wasn’t like you were just a tiny bit wrong.

I mean that’s as wrong as you could ever be on anything in your life.

If you are saying that it’s gonna be transitory and we go to inflation of nine point a half percent, when you think it’s gonna go back down to 2%, I mean that’s like betting a game where where the spread is is one point the team wins by 187 points in basketball.

That’s how wrong that was.

And even now there’s no playbook for this.

I mean you’re gonna cut you.

You should stop saying that we’re going to cut.

You should stop indicating to the market that you’re going to cut the time the cut was 3, 4, 5 months ago.

Inflation was coming down sharply.

Now you’ve seen inflation come back to the market.

Stop talking about cutting ’cause that leads to indication that’s happening.

And I could tell you very, very, very dangerous conditions right now.

I know it’s in election year, so we’re supposed to see stocks move higher.

We’re supposed to see fed cut rates, political, I know all of that And so does everyone else.

’cause they say it every single fricking day.

Which means maybe a lot of that is priced into the market.

Gotta be a little careful here guys.

Valuations are stretched compared to where interest rates are.

You have the government funding everything in their power throwing trillions at anything they possibly can, including giving intel eight and a half billion, which I’m gonna mention on every podcast forever going forward.

’cause that’s how p****d I am.

Can’t give my tax dollars to like Nvidia AMD, somebody else to give it to to a company who just lost billions.

Billions on their fab business.

Fantastic.

But at least it’s saving us dollars by, by not purchasing oil to refill the SPR because it’s over $80.

Gotta love it.

So yes, you’re wondering why the market’s coming down with the economy doing so well.

That’s why we have measures in place that it’s supposed to slow down economy.

And right now, if it wasn’t an election year, if it wasn’t an election year, the Fed would be discussing a possibility of hiking rates further.

But it’s an election year.

So you’re not gonna hear that we’re supposed to be in a recession.

We’re supposed to see a slow down.

We’ve seen a slow, now we’re picking back up.

That means interest rates aren’t high enough and that’s clear of what the 10 year is doing and what rates are doing and why they’re starting to surge again.

That’s telling you that’s that indication.

Let’s move on to Disney.

Favorite company in the world annual meeting today.

Shareholder’s gonna vote with a billionaire and large investor.

What three and a half billion dollars at Disney Nelson Peltz.

It’s gonna a couple board seats across Bob Iger, CEO.

The board are against this.

They don’t want Peltz near the board or anyone who’s going to put on the board.

And I really can’t blame Iger because if Nelson Peltz get in, gets in there, he’s got a clear house, you’re gonna see a lot of changes, a lot of stuff going on and, and it’s gonna be better for shareholders.

It is gonna be better for shareholders.

But a lot of this is political.

It’s political.

If you’re looking at Disney, Disney’s still a broken company.

I dunno if you own it went down to what? 80 eight’s low.

Wherever it is now.

A little bit over a hundred.

And I get it, the numbers are better, but it’s a broken company.

You might not think that because hey, the last couple quarters, especially the last one and paint this glorious picture, things are great.

I mean investment in unity as well.

Which no details at all.

I dunno, we’re great and we’re reinstating our dividend, which I think is absolutely insane at this level.

So you saw the numbers get better, but they’re getting better because they, they still cutting costs massively.

They’re not getting better ’cause they have these growth initiatives.

They don’t have these gross growth initiatives or the growth initiative because Disney is still trying to make streaming work, which it can’t.

It’s impossible.

They never will since they’re no longer spending big dollars on new content which they announced.

So they can’t really compete with Netflix Max, which is HBO.

You see programs come outta that.

It’s f it’s awesome.

It’s awesome when you see, just watch Stranger Things for the first time.

The whole, the whole entire thing.

Man that was glued, that was awesome.

That was so awesome.

Can’t wait till next season coming out pretty soon.

But even me talking about that, people talking about Netflix and things coming on HBO and all that, these are things that come on that platform.

First Disney’s best content doesn’t come out on their streaming platform.

First it’s a secondary platform and saying, hey, if you wanna watch it for a second, a third time after you see the movies, then you could do our streaming.

That doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work at streaming.

You’ll never compete.

You can’t compete unless you start saying, you know what we’re done with theaters which is gonna crush you because AI is probably gonna result in a theater making a massive comeback.

’cause you’re gonna see so many more movies produced.

I’ll cover that later way.

Hollywood’s scared s**t.

They should be, they really should be.

Every actor, every singer you should be, you think you’re gonna get protected and you are gonna say, well you know, it’s they they’re stealing our identity or or or vocals and they’re using, you know, things that that we created and I’m telling you, hey, I was gonna find a way around it.

It’s gonna find a way around it.

Just like when, when singers found a way when when you know, someone purchased their masters and I think this was Taylor Swift, that someone tells Taylor Swift this and said listen, all you have to do is like retape them in a little bit of a different format and you have them.

And I thought that was interesting when I heard that story because those are the ones everyone’s gonna want.

There’s ways around it, there’s ways around it.

There’s always, always, always ways around it.

It’s like the tax code they could put in laws that don’t make sense and change it every year so no one will ever understand it outside of accountants.

You’ve gotta pay a lot of money to and lawyers and everything else to do your financials.

But you always find ways around it when it comes to Disney.

You know, look, it’s a big day today.

Let’s see, by the time you listen to this we’ll know.

But Peltz gets board seats.

He’s not gonna push for big changes since he’s a huge shareholder.

That’s probably really, really good.

But one of the new board members that he is gonna elect is former Marvel executive, Ike Perter, the other, his name.

But I know a lot about him.

I know that Iger freaking hates him like the modem de put him in other positions where he didn’t have to, you know, operate with a lot of people and he just got p****d off and then you know, that’s who he wants to put back in place, which is gonna be, it’s really, really hard if you got two people, especially if it’s a CEO and someone else just brought on the board that hate each other that has a big voice like that.

I dunno if that’s the best thing.

If they came to a compromise and that guy wasn’t gonna be elected to the board, maybe you might get more shareholders, I don’t know.

But anyway, they’re gonna vote and the shareholders are gonna determine if Peltz gets those board seats or not.

Now obviously what do you have between Peltz and Iger? You have this lobbying taking place.

They’re going to these biggest institutional shareholders and saying this is why you should keep the board and Pels like this is why they need to change.

And he’s been vocal about it and it’s on CNBC and brought up some really, really good points.

Board members don’t have really big stakes in the company and since they’ve been around, most of his board members of stock is like s**t over the past four or five years.

And that’s fine, that’s fine if you’re lobbying BlackRock, that’s fine.

However, what’s not fine, what’s not allowed and is actually illegal is for a company Disney to pre-release the outcome of its votes before the election is finalized.

For example, Vanguard, BlackRock, t Rowe Price, CalPERS, George Lucas, all big Disney shareholders, they could vote and come out even before the vote is tally and say listen, this is who I’m voting for.

Even Cramer came out or Disney’s Charitable Trust said he’s gonna vote for Peltz.

Others said they’re not, they’re gonna vote for Iger, you know, for the current board.

But it’s illegal for the company Disney to come out and say this since it could influence the rest of the votes.

For example, if Disney says that hey, they’re winning the election right now before all the votes are tallied, which they did, maybe an institutional invest, like I don’t even know if Wells Fargo’s an investor, use ’em for example as an example and maybe they’re gonna vote for Peltz.

They might change their mind if Disney’s coming out and saying, Hey man, we’re we’re way ahead right now and why would they change their mind? Because when Disney needs to raise money, which they will, eight and a half billion dollar payment they gotta make for Hulu, which is losing subscribers, man, getting a lawyer in that Comcast deals is fantastic.

You put a a bottom valuation that couldn’t go lower than that with streaming absolutely crashing in most markets, brilliant, brilliant strategy and Disney, how to fall for it ’cause they need Hulu.

But when Disney needs to raise money, acquire another company of large investors says, you know, calls Iger and says Hey you want to come to my event and speak? That gets thrown out the window if that firm announced that they’re voting for pelts.

So this is what happened on Tuesday.

On Tuesday.

Remember votes today, this is on Tuesday.

This is early media outlets.

You had Reuters, Bloomberg, probably others, I’m not sure they reported that Disney has enough votes to fend off Nelson Peltz.

That’s what they reported.

And they said that information and of course this is what they said, these, these outlets, this is based on unnamed sources.

Others said people familiar with the matter didn’t name anyone.

They said, that’s where we got this information from.

That information has to 100% come from Disney.

Disney’s the only one that knows those results.

They’re the only one that’s talking to this show.

It has to come from internally in order for this story to be printed, which makes this illegal.

Disney should know this, they should be getting in trouble right now.

Will the SC respond are the government authorities respond? Probably not.

And Disney is a left wing run establishment.

We saw this in a fight against DeSantis and Biden publicly came out and supported Disney’s special law should put in place what 50 years ago.

Which nobody really knew about until they started fighting DeSantis and put words in his mouth that he said don’t say gay bill when he said this, you know, this shouldn’t be something that kids should be learning and they turned it into the don’t like you’re not allowed to say you’re gay, right? That’s how that, and he flipped and he flipped a little bit too crazy DeSantis, he’s like F you sometimes it goes off the rails.

They found out about this in place of 50 years special law allowing dizzy to govern it’s own properties where they could charge extra taxes on top of the local taxes.

No other company has that.

And it’s weird that the Democrats would support something like this considering, you know, if you look at Democrat’s agenda and Republican’s agenda, right? It’s all about, you know, who should pay higher taxes? Climate change, I mean the normal fights right now we’re getting into like the safety of our children, which was never on the freaking table and and immigrants coming in and murdering people.

Those things were never on the table, right? They were never on the table before when Democrats and Republicans disagreed.

They disagreed pretty much about common topics and that common topic was taxing corporations.

Democrats are more in favor of taxing corporations more.

And Republicans say, well that money’s better spent to give to the people and back and forth and whatever side you’re on.

So the fact that you’re giving Disney these special privileges seems like it’s should be a Republican thing, not a democratic thing, but I guess Disney didn’t pay the right politicians or DeSantis didn’t get the envelope anyway.

Disney needs to be called out on its illegal proxy voting tactics.

They need to be called out.

I’m sure nobody will because they’re on the right side of political aisle.

But what they’re doing is illegal.

Bill Ackman does a great job of this on Twitter, highlighted all this stuff.

But this is right.

Disney is doing this illegally.

They cannot say where the votes are leaning.

They can’t say it.

Other places can announce where they’re voting for, that’s fine.

But the company can’t.

It makes a lot of sense.

If you’re in a war, are you gonna support and and and it’s like, you know, all of a sudden you hear one side is starting to win, are you gonna come out publicly and say, I’m gonna support the other side.

It’s gonna change.

I’m gonna be like, holy s**t this the other side’s winning, I’m gonna join them otherwise I may die.

I may get killed if I support the other.

It’s gonna influence your decision before that war’s actually over before the votes are actually counted.

And nobody’s talking to that, right? They won’t mention this anywhere.

CNBC, f**k, I didn’t see this any place being mentioned and this should be a big deal.

It should be a big story with this vote taking place.

So let’s see what happens if you’re an investor in Disney, I would hope that Peltz gets those two board seats.

And I changed, I disagreed until I heard him and what he was saying and what he was right about.

And the fact that Iger, you know, he’s only gonna be there for another what year or so.

I hate the fact I thought they were gonna get outta streaming open 60 parks.

I mean it’s a great American brand, it is a great American band.

It used to be great for families.

I mean the whole left agenda b******t.

What were they doing? What were they thinking? And that’s under pretty much the current management.

And I know Iger ISS there to change that and that’s great.

But having that change along with two other board seats that are pushing for shareholder value is something that you want.

They’re doing this because they want their investment to go higher.

Which is why you’re a shareholder at Disney.

And if you don’t do this, it’s gonna be pretty much the same.

And the same has been really, really s****y for five years.

For five years.

While every company has gone gangbusters higher outside of gold companies.

And think about from the pandemic till now and the s and p 500, how much it surge off its lows and how great so many companies have adapted and doing fantastic and look what Disney still is again, when they get better because of growth initiatives and not because of cost cutting, we’ll see.

But they’re pretty close to cutting as much cost as it’s gonna cost gonna cut in that company.

Let’s see what happens with that vote.

So Apple has been getting its ass kicked, right? It’s been horrible.

So many different things.

I mean you can name that getting sued by the government now it’s coming after him.

You could say China’s terrible, which is the biggest growth market, right? Very weak demand there.

I mean double digit decline in sales.

Five iPhone.

Most importantly, it’s lack of interest to go all in on AI where all of your biggest competitors and biggest companies in the world were like so far ahead of you.

And you saw the stock prices move and announcing new products and all this stuff has been fantastic.

Well now that last part when it comes to AI has just dramatically, dramatically changed.

So Apple just released this new AI model called Realm Pay Close attention.

And most of you think AI is in a bubble or whatever.

AI is not even on your phone yet.

It’s not even on your phones seriously.

But now they just released Realm and based on a research report it just published, it’s already outperforming Open and Chat GPT-4, which is, you know, one of the top models out there.

Everybody uses that.

That’s the one that they’re using in computer.

That’s the one you know again, you got biggest technology launch on any product in history ’cause a hundred million users in in two weeks or whatever it was.

Now this research paper that was reported, which you could find on my Twitter account or you can Google it, but @FrankCurzio, stop, follow me.

You’ll see me talk about all these topics, have fun debate people, but definitely follow me on Twitter.

But that research paper was the third release from Apple in the past few months teasing AI and it’s upcoming features for its new operating system, which of course is it’s gonna be its next generation of iPads, iPhones watch, things like that.

I’m gonna tell you something, Apple is going to be a monster in AI.

They have more cash on its balance sheet than the market caps of 300 of the 500 stocks in the SP That’s insane.

I’ll say that again.

More cash on his balance sheet than the mark caps of 300 of 500 stocks A S&P 500.

That’s how much cash they have.

That’s how big Apple is.

In other words, Apple could spend tens of billions of dollars in a blink of an eye and you wouldn’t even notice.

’cause they generate what, 50 60, I don’t even know, They could spend that tens of billions over the next couple of years hiring the best developers, engineers, the best AI talent in the world.

And it looks like that’s what it did.

Now in June, mark your calendar.

’cause Apple’s gonna hold its annual Worldwide Developers conference.

And you’re hearing this here first, this is gonna be Apple’s biggest event since it released the first iPhone.

There’s gonna be tons of AI announcements of course in its products operating system and things like that.

But including its integration into its new Apple Vision Pro VR set.

And when they make that announcement, this is going to jumpstart a trend that many people have forgotten about and just wrote off.

And that’s the metaverse mock my words.

I know Frank, I talked about metaverse a couple of years ago.

I was actually gonna do a movie on it.

Interviewed a ton of people, it was so big.

And then what? They said, all right we’re gonna spend a little bit less on that and it might not.

It’s gonna take a little while to develop.

Holy s**t.

Is it developing behind the scenes what AI could do now have robots, avatars inside games perform over 1500 features to act exactly like someone who’s playing the video game is going to fill up these worlds.

It’s gonna be, that’s why Fortnite ISS great.

That’s why Roblox is great.

That’s why Minecraft is great.

You got millions and millions and millions of people online all the time.

That’s why it’s tough for the metaverse, which is open source, which means everything.

You create your own, you can have NFTs around this stuff.

You can buy and sell exchanges, anything.

Open up businesses and stores virtually.

I mean this is really, really exciting crazy stuff.

But it’s so hard to break in when you have all these other platforms that are controlled by the big guys that have so many people playing them already.

And for those who think I’m crazy, Nvidia just talked about it on their call, not only on their last call, but they just talked about it in in in their latest presentation when they were announcing their newest chip to come out in 2025 Blackboard, right? I mean they were using the term Omniverse, they talked about a lot in the last call.

Meta talked about a lot in that last call.

So now you have Apple who’s going all in on this, which is why they released a headset again, it’s really gonna pay $3,500 but that’s gonna go down a lot and they’re gonna display so many new programs of uses for gaming business, healthcare.

So if you think the metaverse was dead, remember something, the three companies that I just named, Apple, Nvidia Meta, all of them talking about the metaverse like crazy, especially Apple’s going to a ton at this conference.

These three companies have a combined market cap of more than $6 trillion and that’s what they’re talking about.

And put that in perspective, there are only two countries in the world have a bigger, and this is based on GGDP that are bigger than those three companies combined.

And that’s the US and China.

The only two countries that have a higher GDP than that The three biggest companies basically in the world aside from Microsoft are all in and aside from Amazon are all in on this trend.

Do you think it’s gonna develop the amount of money they have in their balance sheets with ai? Now that Apple event is gonna be huge.

The Worldwide Developers conference gonna happen in June.

Pay attention.

It’s gonna be a really big event for Apple.

Probably a good time to buy the stock ahead of that ’cause I think it’s got a lot of catching up to do and it’s nice to see them ’cause they have their back to the wall to go all in on AI, all the other problems, iPhone sales in China.

Okay fine.

You knew that was happening for a long time.

You could adjust, figure it out.

India, they’ve been pushing to India like crazy.

You have regulatory regulatory stuff, they have money aside for that.

Again, temporary AI is a long-term problem that they seem to fix, especially with Realm.

And now combining that with their vision Pro going all in metaverse services, AI on their phones, Apple’s looking pretty exciting right now for a company that’s been doing really, really terribly compared to its peers.

So looking at the bigger picture, what does this mean? AI still very much in its infancy.

I say well Frank Nvidia threw the roof.

I saw so many AI ones talk about AI.

Lemme explain.

Last Tuesday we hosted an AI event.

We had a Q and a session which was alive.

Great, great audience, a lot of people, hundreds of people stayed on.

There’s so much interest where I answered questions.

Again, this is all live for over two hours after the event I was tired.

A couple people asked questions, I answered half of ’em and I forgot what they asked ’cause I just, millions of data and just, you know, going for three hours is two and a half hours is not easy, right? Just constantly questions and doing stats and again preparing for this stuff.

And I was, it was great though.

It was just awesome, right? Just hanging out, drinking a beer.

Daniel freed me questions.

It was great.

That was last Tuesday.

That was eight days ago.

Here’s a list of news that happened since then.

Google, Intel, Qualcomm and Arm came together to form the UXL foundation that’s gonna help build an open source software suite to help compete with Nvidia to combining to make chips whether it happens, I don’t know.

Then Elon Musk announced his AI startup called X ai just released his latest version of its grok chatbot.

That’s an AI chat bot which is gonna be rolling out on the X platform Twitter platform, Microsoft and open AI just announced a plan to build a hundred billion dollars AI supercomputer, which they’re calling Stargate to put the a hundred billion expected just in perspective because we say billions and trillions and it kind of gets lost, right? To put that a hundred billion perspective, it’s almost three times what Microsoft spent on CapEx last year.

Servers, buildings, other equipment.

Again grow the company three times as much.

That’s how much is spending on this one project.

You think Microsoft’s all in on ai? Yes that’s gonna get real scary when that happens, but it’s gonna include millions of processors, which these chips cost upward of 30,000 each.

It’s insane.

That was just announced after this is all in this week.

Want more OpenAI? SOA has been releasing new AI generated videos.

The first short film was released using a hundred percent AI.

Go see it again.

Follow me on Twitter.

I’m reporting all this news, I’m following the right people.

We got access to great, great newsletters, great people in this industry.

The video game fallout, it’s turning into a movie they just released its first trailer, which was 100% AI generated and it looks freaking fantastic.

You can’t tell a difference from any trailer from an action packed movie.

Essentially just invested in Sanctuary AI.

This is a company that makes human-like robots.

You wanna get scared shitless, listen to this.

Not only gonna fill the workplace or fill jobs that are needed.

So they say right, especially for manufacturing, but they’re also gonna be in homes doing chores for older people, handicapped people that can’t get up.

You’re gonna start seeing these robots walking around and we’re not that far away.

You think we’re far, we’re not.

Go listen to Joe Rogan, Ray Kurtz wear, listen to that interview Little Dry.

But to see like this line computing power and how fast we’re getting to this moment is insane.

And that moment is a GI computers for perform on the same scale as humans.

We’re supposed to hit that it was supposed to take 80 years in 2019.

Right now it’s gonna take two to three years.

It it’s probably gonna happen even sooner.

Let’s continue.

This is the news from this week.

Amazon announced is spending about two and a half billion to invest in anthropic best companies in AI around started by X open.

I employees also owns cloud three, which also announced a few days ago that Claude 3 surpassed ChatGPT as the best AI platform chat.

GT four was just released.

It was the greatest thing ever.

This is already surpassing it and someone’s Rome and this isn’t like an opinion.

This is based on the chat bot arena, which is pretty cool.

Go check it out.

Chat Bot Arena, Google.

This is a crowdsource platform used by AI researchers to gauge the capabilities of AI language models.

And they put ’em through this series of tests, every single one of ’em.

And then they’re saying there’s 80%, 90% how it’s calculus or how it performs like on tasks and what it ask you do.

And they have all these lists.

So it’s it.

This is what it’s based on and it’s fair.

It’s not like, you know, it’s not biased, but you see the possessions the highest across the board for Claude 3 open AI.

Again guys this week just unveiled voice engine.

It is pretty cool.

An AI model that can clone your voice after just listening to you for 15 seconds, meaning soon.

It’s not gonna be me personally hosting Wall Street Unplugged, which had our new office staged it with a couple pictures in the back, still building it, getting everything done, new computers, light systems, really nice new studio.

It’s gonna come out great but it’s not gonna be me doing this anymore.

It’s gonna sound exactly like me.

You’re gonna see me moving my lips, which by the way, models have just come out showing how you can create a video of yourself anywhere and it’s gonna be walking and and and they’re talking, right? So when you could type in whatever you want to talk or whatever about to say, and it’s gonna say, it’s gonna move your lips perfectly.

The the best thing is you can switch languages and you can speak in a different language and your lips are gonna match the other language, whichever language you pick.

Holy s**t.

So this podcast soon it’s gonna look like me.

It’s gonna sound like me, but as you’re listening, gonna be in the golf course pounding down beers in The Bahamas, telling you guys to sell everything.

Gotta sell everything as I slice my for iron into the woods, off the tee box.

Looking forward to playing golf again.

I haven’t been playing in a while.

Been too busy.

So this was all just announced in the past week since we had our AI live event and during our AI event, and this is last Tuesday, we launched our Cury AI newsletter, which is designed to find companies that have started implementing AI into their operations and divisions.

They’re very hard to find.

You can’t just type in AI companies ’cause you get the Nvidias micros, things like that.

So many of these names, small mid cap that I’ve been finding already seeing massive benefits and productivity by using few employees spending less.

And yet you’re seeing sales margins, earnings soar.

Some of them have been implementing these technologies a couple of years ago and they’re just starting to see the benefits now and that’s why they’re not showing up in any screens.

’cause they’re not an AI company, they’re just using a technology to enhance all the visions that happens to be AI.

So they’re very difficult to find, get a deep, fun, fundamental analysis.

You gotta listen to a lot of conference calls and then you find ’em.

It’s something we’ve, I’ve done all my life.

One name’s in healthcare, small biotech drug discovery company that employs 160 people just with AI backgrounds.

Could two vice presidents, one from Meta, one from open AI, just signed two major pharmaceuticals that are gonna use their AI platform to discover new drugs, which they could do using their platform at a much, much lower cost and much quicker rate than the 13 and a half years it takes to bring a drug to market along with the 2 billion in costs if successful.

The royalties.

’cause they get a piece of the royalties.

That’s how they’re signing these deals.

It’s not like, hey, we’re gonna do these services like you have a hire a marketing company.

Yeah we’re gonna do this, this, and this.

And you see no results.

They’re like, sorry, but you paid ’em already.

Right? Most of that is s**t.

These guys have stake in the companies that they’re partnering with two big large pharmaceuticals and that’s just two.

They’re gonna be much more coming if successful, the royalties could be in the hundreds of millions if not billions, which is crazy considering this company has around a $500 million market cap.

There’s a billion in sales, that’s a 5 billion, $10 billion company, okay? You’re not gonna find it on screens because they’re not generating much sales, it’s not really a healthcare company and it’s not an AI company.

You consider it a, a healthcare like technology company I guess within healthcare and biotech of how they’re doing all this stuff.

But it’s, it’s very difficult to find in screens.

I got lucky because I said two other companies that are doing this and I saw the research report that this one was trading at some crazy astronomical multiple, which I, i, I would normally avoid.

But I’m like, why does this company I never heard of deserve such a huge premium and started digging in, I was like, holy s**t.

The whole presentation was AI, the whole entire thing.

I’ve been doing this for two, three years.

Well everyone else is playing catch up in the whole, in the, in the whole industry.

Another name in the portfolio, a hundred year supply logistic company with a $3 billion market cap that I think is gonna be a $30 billion company inside of three years.

Why is that? A couple months ago they announced, they put out a press release showing how the AI systems, which they implemented two years, Nobody really hearing about it.

Everyone focusing on on Nvidia and all this other stuff.

But these are companies that are using these technologies.

So they implemented of course some of their divisions and now they announce it’s saving the company $1 million a month.

Now that may not sound like much, especially when we talk about Google, Amazon, Apple, and the 6 trillion combined value of the three companies and stuff like that.

For this small company, it amounts to a 6% increase in earnings growth right off the bat.

Right off the bat.

In a world where S&P 500 companies outside of the major tech companies and AI are struggling for growth.

So the 6% earnings growth, it’s not just they’re growing 6%, they’re adding 6% on top of the double dig digit growth that they’re seeing.

And now they’re gonna start taking market share ’cause they can provide services that are getting products to customers much faster, much cheaper.

And applying AI to their robotics division logistics division is incredible.

It’s incredible and it’s gonna be dozens if not hundreds of these small cap companies coming out with similar announcements that’s gonna happen over the next two years.

Gonna announce how they’re benefiting tremendously from AI.

And you’re not gonna know until you see that sales like taking off and you’re like, holy s**t, how did this happen? And we see sales and earnings margins, all that going high.

What happens to the stock price? They surge.

That’s what Wall Street wants.

I wanna see growth companies, companies that are spending less and growing earnings and growing sales.

I mean look at super micro, this is company away from $90 to a thousand dollars and a little over a year because it said the hell and everything else we’re focused in 100% on AI.

This stock didn’t go to a thousand because it’s hyped up.

This isn’t like, you know, maybe I should announce specifically to the companies but the companies with AI in them that put AI in their name, we’re not talking about those companies.

B******t.

You don’t even know, they’re not even AI related.

They don’t even have AI in their business.

But this is a company where their earnings exploded and you look at earnings in 2021, $2 50 cents, they’re gonna be put $22 in earnings this year.

Talk about three years.

When have you seen that happening? Well AI, small cap company going into a large cap company, that’s an example.

That’s kind of an easy one to find because that is an AI company.

But these other companies, it’s a logistic company, it’s a biotech company that’s using AI so it’s hard to find these names.

So Launch Curzio AI. First product I launched under my own name is seven years.

Still have a special offer Curzio members because I really want you in this product just like I really wanted you in crypto six months ago, which you should be really happy with.

Even with crypto pulling back a little bit.

I mean some of these names are already up like 60, 70, ’cause it’s the time to get in.

Now’s the time to get in, the time to get in when only 6% of companies are using this are starting to use it.

That number’s gonna go to 60% in two years because they have to.

And if you don’t, you’re done.

You’re gonna become research in motion, you’re gonna become a OL.

That’s the future of the world.

And you’re gonna know that from this podcast.

Wall Street Unplugged Premium with Daniel gonna bringing on interviews with people, top people in this industry already did that for members.

Interviewed with the director of AI from the Mayo Clinic man, brilliant holy cow.

And write a special offer for Curzio members.

It’s a 40% discount, which is good on its own, but when you pay that price, I’m also giving you a free year.

So you’re gonna for two years, again, I want you in for two years because that’s when you’re gonna see this develop.

You could have ups and downs in the markets, but you’re gonna see companies really excel companies outpace everyone else.

It’s not gonna be whole sectors going higher.

It’s gonna be individual companies that are learning to use AI to enhance productivity.

Those are the things that are gonna soar.

They’re gonna start taking market share.

This is the next wave of small caps becoming large caps, which you can’t see anymore because they IPO at billion dollar, multi-billion dollar valuations and all that growth is pretty much factored in before you’re able to buy it like Reddit for 20 years.

Imagine being an internet company in e-commerce for the last 20 years.

And you tell me you couldn’t report a profit for 20 f*****g years, you wanna buy that stock.

Go ahead.

I hope it goes higher for you.

But when it crashes like a MC, you’ll know why.

Crazy, just crazy.

So AI in its infancy, it could be a big part of our company Curzio Research already is and seeing the benefits by implementing new technologies in our operations.

And we’re only in the first thing we’re doing this.

And when I say what is that gonna mean? What is that gonna mean for you? It’s gonna be really great.

’cause now if you’re looking on our Twitter page, we’re posting our videos, we’re able to take this podcast, which is 50 minutes long.

I’m gonna try to keep these at But you’re taking these and now we can put in AI systems that are gonna create 10, 15 shorts for us, which is awesome.

And that’s what what you see, seeing so many of the good podcasts in in in the Joe Rogans and and Lex Friedman.

And I actually like him.

He’s pretty good.

He gets a lot of s**t from people.

But I like his interviews.

It’s a lot of great people and that’s what we’re gonna do.

We’re gonna have much more content going out, right? Because a lot of the content is the podcast and it’s like how do we turn this podcast and all his content And you need huge marketing teams.

You don’t need that with these AI systems anymore.

So you get much more content out from us.

More videos, more shorts.

That’s how you build a brand.

And you guys know, ’cause a lot of you guys are subscribers and anyone who subscribers to one product, usually subscribers to a lot of products.

’cause they don’t not full of s**t.

They see me doing the videos, they see Daniel, we’re into this stuff.

We admit when we’re wrong, which no one’s allowed to do for some reason.

Gotta be right more than you’re wrong or get a different job.

But still, you know, I embrace those mistakes.

I wanna be perfect.

I want to be great.

And that’s unachievable.

And when it comes to stocks, it’s like golf.

You shoot a 59, you’re gonna go out there and try to shoot 50 or 57, you’re gonna get p****d.

You can’t say I, I won, right? It’s not like that.

It’s always just learning and learning and learning and just AI is so cool.

But you know, when it comes to our products and services, we know we’re better than our competitors, but they always have bigger marketing teams.

They’re able to market everywhere.

And getting new people on our file is gonna result in in great things which we’re already seeing for our company.

That’s why that event that we did on web events, that we’re doing more of these things where we’re doing ’em live, really live.

Not hey get ready for this live event.

And the whole freaking thing is taped, which some of you’re used to seeing.

Our q and a was totally live.

Our first event was totally live.

Any mistakes, anything falls behind me.

It’s live.

We’re having fun, I don’t care, show goes on.

But now we’re getting out to a lot of new people and I think that there is massive, massive, massive demand from people who wanna learn about how to invest and find someone that they could trust in an industry that’s not so trustworthy.

And it’s been that way for the past decade and it’s sad.

It needs to be changed.

That’s why I started this company to a while to find the right pieces and get ’em in line and trying to compete when you can’t really compete with big guys who have more money than you and bigger marketing teams, stuff like that.

This is a way for small companies to compete with large companies, to take market share, to change, to change it.

Instead of getting a piece of the pie, you become the pie.

That’s what a AI’s gonna do.

And that’s what this newsletter’s about.

It’s not just about cur is not just about stock picks.

It’s not we’re offering that.

Of course you’re paying for that.

You just be testing new technologies, having fun, maybe doing deep fakes, telling you they’re deep fakes.

Everyone’s so bad, but they’re really funny.

You don’t wanna start a war, a nuclear war and do deep fake and I’m talk about that.

But just a lot of the announcements, did you know those announcements? All those announcements came this week.

Do you know that? No.

We know that we’re on the right list.

We’re talking to the right people.

This is the stuff I wanna bring to you.

And every time that people signed up to our newsletter, you know, they got a, a phone call, 10 minute phone call.

And so far I’ve talked to about 15 people and most of those people have all talked about, not just a newsletter and everything and said thank you.

I subscribed to to crypto and we’re doing great, which is awesome.

That’s, that’s what we do here.

We get paid by companies to show you gains.

If we do, you gotta subscribe to more products.

It’s that simple.

But almost all of ’em, we’re talking about implementing it in their own businesses and this is what we’re doing and this is amazing.

I’m using this and just the plugins and the add, all that stuff, that’s what this newsletter’s gonna be along with.

Lots of exclusive interviews.

And if you wanna learn more, go to Curzio AI, it’s CurzioAI.com and you can claim that special offer, which is not gonna be around much longer.

And anyone subscribe, thank you so much for the support.

You’ll be really happy with that newsletter.

’cause you can see I’m excited as ever to cover this trend.

I wouldn’t launch a newsletter on a specific trend almost ever.

I’m not talking about small caps, large caps.

I’m talking about like a gold newsletter or a biotech newsletter.

You know, because it’s in favor.

This is something that’s gonna be around for the rest of our lives and continue to get better and better and better.

And you wanna be around it and you wanna be a part of it and you wanna be able to make a lot of money off of it.

So guys, you can go to CurzioAI.com to learn more.

So that’s it for me.

Enjoy the final four.

And I’m gonna talk to Wall Street Unplugged Premium investors tomorrow and listeners tomorrow.

But for those of you who are not on that list, and listen to that podcast, final four is coming.

Great.

It should be great games.

Also, look at the women’s, I mean Caitlyn Clark is just insane.

LSU Iowa got 20 million views record for women’s basketball.

Yep.

Just really, really exciting.

Connecticut’s back in it.

Bucher.

It’s just, I never thought I’d say that about women’s ba, women’s college basketball.

And it’s here and it’s exciting and it’s a lot of fun, which is cool.

Men’s and women.

Looking forward to it.

Enjoy it.

Thanks so much for listening and for everyone else, I’ll see you tomorrow.

Wall Street Unplugged Premium.

Take care.

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Put big money in your pocket right away due to the inconsistencies I see daily in the market, I’m talk about specific investment ideas I’m recommending and tracking each week that I believe would be impacted directly by everything I just talked about today.

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Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry.

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