Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio 00:00

How’s it going out there? It’s Wednesday, January 7th.

Frank Curzio 00:04

I’m Frank Curzio here at the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where we bring the headlines and, uh, tell you what’s really moving these markets. It’s Daniel Creech. What’s going on, man? How’s everything?

Daniel Creech 00:16

Hello, Frank. Happy New Year, sir.

Frank Curzio 00:17

Happy New Year.

Daniel Creech 00:18

Welcome back.

Frank Curzio 00:19

Welcome back to the holidays. It’s nice to be back. I’m really back,right? I mean, we had a couple of podcasts out there that we taped and some interviews over the holidays. Everyone got a nice break. I gotta be honest with you, it’s nice to be back,right? It’s pretty cool.

Daniel Creech 00:31

Yeah. It’s always good to travel, but it’s always good to be, always good to be back home.

Frank Curzio 00:35

Yeah. This, you know what? I was supposed to be at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. I’ve gone for so many years, but it’s been so busy. I had to go to another conference and just really good things going on with the business. We’re signing a lot of contracts for our marketing division, uh, starting to grow really fast right now. And it was just tough to really get there with everything going on. And it’s different now with the Consumer Electronics Show because everyone covers it.

Frank Curzio 00:55

So there’s no surprises. When I was going there, there was no CNBC there. There’s none of these companies there. In the last four or five years, they started increasing their presence. But, uh, this is the conference where all these companies release all their products and services that they’re going to launch over the next few months. And Nvidia, ClearStand Out, AI is a big theme there. Uh, but overall, not really anything market-moving from these announcements at CES.

Frank Curzio 01:16

I mean, Nvidia’s not seen any traction at all. But, uh, the conference I did go to was, uh, in Orlando. It’s a marketing, uh, financial media summit run by my buddy of mine, John Knudsen. And, uh, I saw a lot of people within the industry there. And we actually signed a couple of contracts that are going to come out probably in March.

Daniel Creech 01:30

Oh, well done.

Frank Curzio 01:31

Yeah, in April, which is really cool. So, uh, but I gotta tell you, it was in Orlando. So that’s, you know, I drove there. And Disney’s dead, man.

Daniel Creech 01:40

Disney’s dead.

Frank Curzio 01:41

Disney’s so dead. I hate, I hate to say that. I hate to say that. And I was like, I was getting excited because they kind of signed like the AI deal and stuff. And, you know, but it’s.

Daniel Creech 01:51

Why? Because traffic wasn’t at a standstill?

Frank Curzio 01:53

No, it wasn’t that. It was that. So we stayed at a Disney resort. It was actually a Disney resort because that’s where the conference was. And it was, it was in walking distance to Disney Springs. So, you know, I took two of my team members and I was just, said, allright, let’s, uh, you know, grab something to eat. It’s like a 10, 15-minute walk. And you go in there and, you know, I was just looking at everything. One, we ate tacos.

Frank Curzio 02:12

We had tacos. Three of us, tacos and maybe three full margaritas altogether,right? And the bill came out to 250 bucks. And I was like, what? I was like, are you kidding me? It was probably, you know, I love Mexican. I eat Mexican all the time. I was like, you know, I’m not getting anything that’s, you know, this crazy, whatever.

Frank Curzio 02:33

Uh, then Iright away, I’m like, holy shit,right? So I started looking at the prices. And Disney Springs has all these stores there and everything. I started looking at the prices. And they just, they’re gouging everyone. It’s just, it’s so expensive for everything there and raising prices. And I remember Disney used to be the place where their model was you come here to have fun and memories with your family,right?

Frank Curzio 02:53

That’s it. That’s what Disney’s about. And you don’t have fun there anymore with your family. I mean, you go in there, you’re seeing, you know, princesses with mustaches, what’s going on. Uh, the prices for drinks, the prices for anything that you want to do. They have this little train that goes around in a circle. They’re charging these kids like 10 bucks to get on. It’s just, you know, the waters are like five, six dollars.

Frank Curzio 03:13

It’s just, they have to continue to raise prices. The reason why the stock hasn’t moved pretty much in like eight years, but, you know, just they lost that. They really lost that somehow. I don’t know how they lost that, but you see it there when you’re staying at the Disney resort, which, you know, it was conference related. So, you know, it was a little crowd and everything. But just the prices that they’re charging and what you’re doing thereright now,

Frank Curzio 03:32

it’s just, uh, it’s so crazy to me where you have an alternative in Universal that you can go to, which is pretty cool. And Universal has raised their prices considerably. But, you know, it’s getting to the point where they’re raising prices and people aren’t paying them. Uh, and they’re like, I’m going to go elsewhere and there’s other alternatives. And that’s where we areright now. That’s why I’m, you know, probably we’re not seeing inflation go through the roof.

Frank Curzio 03:51

But, you know, $250 for a meal for three people, that should have cost literally $100. And.

Daniel Creech 03:57

It’s because you drink top-shelf, high-shelf margaritas.

Frank Curzio 04:00

No, I wish. The drinks weren’t even that good. You know, it was like, you know, you would have been really pissed. You’d be like, what is this?

Daniel Creech 04:05

I have heard that the drinking and eating for adults is outrageous. Some of my friends that enjoy going to Disney as adults, they just said it’s gotten, the last couple of years, they said the prices have really gone up.

Frank Curzio 04:14

I mean, it’s gotten so out of hand. It’s crazy. And so good conference though. A lot of people that I went there, like, you know, they always know our brand and they talk about us all the time, which is really cool. Everyone that goes on stage. And it was a very good conference. Again, marketing. There was like the predictability markets there, people selling that, which I didn’t understand because the predictability markets have to do with eliminating the middleman.

Frank Curzio 04:34

And I don’t know, you know, how they’re trying to make money on that. I’d be worried if I was a, you know, FanDuel and a lot of these other gambling companies that make a commission and that big, uh, where you don’t need that anymore because people determine the market. And that’s what Polymarket’s all about. So, but there was, uh, it was just great contacts, a lot of companies, good companies that are looking for exposure.

Frank Curzio 04:53

Uh, and a lot of them came to me. We had, you know, a lot of IR guys there and marketing guys there, but a lot of them come to me because of our model and how we back these companies and put our names behind them and stuff. And it’s resulting in business really exploding. And I learned a lot about our business, Daniel. I learned that I’m charging about half the prices that everyone else is charging and providing a much better service, which is great for our business.

Frank Curzio 05:12

And we’re filing in a really high-growth market instead of being just totally financial newsletters, which is in the secular decline as everyone on YouTube comes out and stuff like that and posts the videos of the portfolios and all of this. And it’s just a different market. And plus just the advertising that’s gone on seriously in the last 10 years where everyone’s a guru, everybody’s great and the performance and just wrecking people.

Daniel Creech 05:30

Wreck.

Frank Curzio 05:31

That, you know, after a while of 10 years, people are like, “F this, the newsletter industry sucks.” And, you know, you get lumped in there sometimes for new clients that don’t know you. They’re like, “Oh, the newsletter industry is bullshit.” And we get all these emails and stuff like that. So, you know, it’s very hard to market with the and compete with guys that are spending a fortune and almost lying in the market sometimes. And, you know, I’m not crazy about the financial newsletter model.

Frank Curzio 05:51

I love it. I love analyzing stocks. It’s always going to stay the same and provide that service. But just as a business, it’s very hard to grow that business when you have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money. And it’s tough to compete when you see promotions saying the stock’s going to go up 3,000% tomorrow. Uh, but with the marketing part and the consulting part and being able to be analysts and,

Frank Curzio 06:11

you know, talk to CEOs and understand what they’re looking for and saying, “This is what we could do for you. And this is the exposure we could bring to you,” uh, compared to people just buying media traffic and stuff like that and getting their stock price up for a couple of weeks. Uh, I was surprised of how many people came up to us and how many people are raising money, which means they have big budgets because they’re raising money. They want to grow their company.

Frank Curzio 06:31

And when they have those budgets, that’s when they hire these, you know, people like me to, you know, get the message out and the catalysts that are coming to marketing. So, uh, I’m very happy. I was very surprised about how many people want to use our services and, you know, and just learning a lot about the business from other competitors. And some of the competitors are really credible and some of them aren’t. And that’s fine. But, uh, it was a really good conference.

Frank Curzio 06:51

And I got to see a lot of people who I haven’t seen in a while in the Agora network, the MarketWise network, and things like that, which is really cool. So it was nice. It was a good trip. It was definitely worth it. Better than going to the Consumer Electronics Show because of the business that we booked, which is very good for our shareholders as well. So really good time. How did you enjoy? What’d you do the holidays? You went to go see your family,right?

Daniel Creech 07:08

Yes, sir. I drove to Ohio and back. Um, it was a great time. I’m telling you, I’m falling in love with North Carolina, Frank.

Frank Curzio 07:14

Are you? Are you leaving me?

Daniel Creech 07:16

No. But.

Frank Curzio 07:17

You’re gonna be a Tar Heel fan?

Daniel Creech 07:18

No.

Frank Curzio 07:19

Duke fan?

Daniel Creech 07:20

No. I enjoy watching both, but no, I can’t cheer for either one of them.

Frank Curzio 07:24

They hate each other. It’s not great.

Daniel Creech 07:25

But Lake Norman. You ever been around Lake Norman?

Frank Curzio 07:28

No.

Daniel Creech 07:28

We need to do something around Lake Norman. It’s awesome.

Frank Curzio 07:30

Is it nice?

Daniel Creech 07:30

Yeah. I stayed in a little town just north of Charlotte, both there and back. It was cool. It was very neat. So good seasons, but not cold. I don’t think they get a lot of snow. No, I’m not moving away from Florida anytime soon. The world’s at war, Frank. You don’t move during the holidays.

Frank Curzio 07:43

I know,right? Again, when I go on a trip, a few things happen. Just minor things like Trump, like, you know, taking down Maduro. And you’ve seen the videos of Maduro,right? Like saying, “Come get me. You can’t get me.” And then the next thing you know, you see Trump like getting him.

Daniel Creech 07:56

Yep.

Frank Curzio 07:56

Uh, so look, this is an investor podcast. If you’re a Republican or from Venezuela who was forced to flee the country for your safety, uh, you love this move. One third of the country had to flee. Uh, they left. They didn’t leave for opportunity. They left because they fear for their lives. If you’re a Democrat, you’re going to hate this move because you’re going to take the opposite of whatever Trump does, no matter if it’s good or bad.

Frank Curzio 08:16

That’s what you’re doing. I mean, in 2020, Schumer blasted Trump for not removing Maduro from power. Uh, and now they’re like, “Oh, look what you did.” And, and, you know, Democrats are pissed. He didn’t get congressional approval to do this as well, where, you know, Obama didn’t get congressional approval to take down Osama bin Laden. Biden took down the leader of al-Qaeda in 2022.

Frank Curzio 08:35

No congressional approval. You don’t want this to go through the systems. And who knows who’s getting paid by all these countries and whatever. Keep it silent. A lot of security risks there. And, you know, again, you see it now because everything’s video and shorts and stuff like that. And it’s been going on like for such a long time. Like you have a good like seven, eight-year runway of these social media platforms. So you see everything these politicians say.

Frank Curzio 08:54

And it’s totally opposite what they said from then and compared to now, depending on who’s host. So they’re all hypocrites. And they’re all, “I’ll be nice. I won’t say anything more than that.” So I don’t want to lean too much into that, even though, you know, you debate and it sparks, you know, outrage and pissed. And we see all the channels that talk about politics. But let’s look at this from the investor’s point of view, Daniel, because it’s a big deal because Venezuela is a large oil producer,

Frank Curzio 09:16

uh, also a hub for Russia and China,right, who have shared interests. They all have dictators looking to take over the world,right? These dictators want to own the world, period,right? It’s very simple. They want to own everything,right? They want to make as much money as possible. And they’ll do it any means possible. And that’s their country. That’s fine. That’s not how we are. But, you know, Venezuela is pretty close proximity to us,right?

Frank Curzio 09:35

We talk about Cuba, but Venezuela is a couple hundred miles away. Uh, you’re looking at resources when it comes to, you know, having Russia and Venezuela,right? Russia using Russia’s refinery for their oil and then that oil being sold to China,right? So, you know, there’s a lot going on. People worry about China with Taiwan now, uh, the military cooperation for Venezuela with those nations as well, providing weapons, financial aid.

Frank Curzio 09:57

Again, very, very important considering Venezuela is very close. They can easily attack our naval fleet with, uh, anti-ship missiles. This is really true stuff. You can read about this History Channel, everything. It’s pretty crazy. So, you know, Trump, I think from the financial view, came out last night saying, uh, Venezuela is going to be turning 30 to 50 million barrels of oil over to the US. That’s the big storyright now. Uh.

Daniel Creech 10:18

Well, it was.

Frank Curzio 10:19

This is going to continue indefinitely. But let’s get your thoughts, uh, on that and start there because we want to talk about the investment. How do you make money off of this? Is this a big deal? How, what is this going to impact more than just oil and, and, and, you know, obviously resource industries? But there’s a lot going on here. And I feel like there’s a big story here that no, I haven’t seen anyone telling, which we’ll get to in a minute. But I want to hear your thoughts first.

Daniel Creech 10:38

Yeah, short term, the best ways to make money, I think, are going to be in your shippers, which we have failed miserably at. We joke. We’ve beenright on the direction and wrong on the timing more than once. And refiners because, you know, you talked about Venezuela and their oil production. They have massive reserves, 17, 18-ish percent of the global reserves.

Daniel Creech 10:58

But their oil production sucks. Why? Because they’re run by socialists and dictators and con artists and horrible, horrible people. Now, Frank, here’s some fun trivia.

Frank Curzio 11:08

Uh-oh.

Daniel Creech 11:09

Did you know, what do you guess? I just said minimal. Do you know how many barrels a day Venezuela roughly produces? Let’s round.

Frank Curzio 11:17

Yes, they produce, um, it is 300,000 barrels a day,right?

Daniel Creech 11:22

Well, it’s about a million.

Frank Curzio 11:23

A day. Oh, it’s a million. Yeah, it’s like 900,000. But it’s 300,000 that’s going to be, that’s sanctioned oil is that he’s talking about with 300 million. Yes, that’sright.

Daniel Creech 11:31

But production, let’s round up to a million.

Frank Curzio 11:33

Okay.

Daniel Creech 11:34

Okay. That is down, down from around three to three and a half million, depending on if you want to look at late 90s, early 2000s.

Frank Curzio 11:41

Wow.

Daniel Creech 11:41

That shows you a horrible deterioration. And you mentioned millions and millions of people fled. I mean, that is a horrible economic situation over there, no matter how you stretch it. And if you don’t have, uh, some softness in your heart for that, you need to check why, because that’s just horrible. So they have a lot of reserves, but they don’t have a lot of production. In the short term,

Daniel Creech 12:00

I think this is just a shot across the bow. Frank, you and I and most others play chess or risk as a board game where the leaders of the world play it for real people. And Donald Trump just made a chess move on the global scale that puts everybody on notice. Uh, to your point, China and Russia, not exactly great friends of ours. China since the early 2000s,

Daniel Creech 12:19

according to AI, Frank, which is never wrong on Grok or ChatGPT, 60 to 7 billion dollars in loans from China, 10 to 20-ish billion, maybe still outstanding. A lot of that comes through discounted oil and such like that. Russia, so Russia is at war with Ukraine. Russia evidently helps protect.

Daniel Creech 12:41

Did you hear, did you hear who is guarding Maduro?

Frank Curzio 12:45

No.

Daniel Creech 12:46

Cubans.

Frank Curzio 12:47

Oh, really?

Daniel Creech 12:47

I’ve read that. Take everything with a grain of salt, people. But what does that tell you when you cannot trust your own citizens to protect you in your closest quarters if you have Cuban guards, if that’s all true? Back to Russia quickly on why this is a big old middle finger and a chess move. Evidently, Russia does a lot of military exercises. Um, they also do oil trades, but they do military equipment for oil and such like that.

Daniel Creech 13:09

So you have the United States goes, bypasses all military, Russian military stuff and captures a guy on a freaking military base, Frank. You know who’s not having a good 2026?

Frank Curzio 13:22

Maduro, okay?

Daniel Creech 13:23

I don’t care how you’re weak.

Frank Curzio 13:25

His wife was like, “Well, let’s go out on a wedding. What’s going on?”

Daniel Creech 13:28

Yeah. I mean, that’s just crazy. So I think it’s a major move for the shipping partners and also finance. I mean, we look through the world of finance, obviously. And then long term, Frank, how is this not a massive reduction in headwind for longer-term inflation or maybe a tailwind for low inflation, if that makes any sense?

Frank Curzio 13:48

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head here. So when we’re looking.

Daniel Creech 13:50

Finally.

Frank Curzio 13:51

Yeah. It took you like four years, Daniel. Finally, you got that great, perfect. It’s such a massive point that nobody’s really, I feel like you’re not hearing that on CNBC,right? And whenever they get a story like this, it’s so interesting. Everyone wants to know because it happened in the middle of the night with Maduro. Like, what the hell just happened? They start reading, learning, and you’re seeing, you know, all the upticks in terms of social media and the traffic and Maduro and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio 14:12

Uh, because everyone wants to know what the hell’s going on. And then you get all these channels where, whether it’s political, they’re going to talk about, and we’re looking at it from CNBC, Bloomberg and stuff. And they’re talking about how, you know, they talk about the numbers. Like you said, if you go up to a million, it’s about 900,000 barrels. 30 of this is sanctioned. So 300,000 barrels a day,right? So it’s about four months to get that, you know, 30 million barrels.

Frank Curzio 14:33

But the oil needs to be refined. This is like the worst type of oil,right? So even worse than the Canadian oil sands. And it takes a lot of money to refine this. And you have to put like just, you know, these liquid products and even, you know, natural gas, gas. Uh, but it’s, uh, you’re looking at Valero Marathon,right? Obviously, those stocks saw spikes. Uh, Chevron’s the only company that operates in Venezuela,

Frank Curzio 14:52

which has owed a lot of money from Venezuela and which has owed a lot of money, I think, from China. Uh, and you look at Chevron, Exxon, Conoco, those CEOs are meeting with Trump, I think tomorrow to discuss this. And can they recoup that money? If they can, you’re talking about billions of dollars that they’re seizing that could go directly to these companies. Maybe if they do, that’s going to be, I don’t know how big these companies are, but that’s significant.

Frank Curzio 15:11

We’re talking about billions and billions of extra revenue for free that they could pay out in a special dividend if they wanted. Uh, so that’s interesting when you look at the Valeros and Marathon, Chevron, Exxon, Conocos. Uh, oil’s at 56,right? So, you know, you see what oil is, which $56. And, you know, based on what’s going on, it looks like, look, we’re seeing more production of oil.

Frank Curzio 15:31

We’re taking more oil. We’re not seeing demand increase, which means prices are going to get hit. They’ve got hit. And I mean, you look at a six-month chart of oil, it’s, it’s, I mean, this massive secular declining market, it’s opposite of everything that’s going on in the market,right? And I can’t remember a market, I really can’t, Daniel, who’s doing this for 30 years. Usually everyone’s like, lower oil prices are great for stock.

Frank Curzio 15:51

Whenever you see the oil prices come down, it’s usually you’re seeing the economies is because you’re not seeing demand, which results in the stock markets going down. You see oil going down. When oil goes up, the stock market goes up, which is contrary to what people believe. They’re like, oh, we’re saving costs, but usually the price of oil is rising because there’s more building, there’s more demand. And, you know, the economies around the world are doing well.

Frank Curzio 16:09

And they are. They’re doing much better, especially from the equity point of view, especially if you’re looking at GDP too with ours, even though the Fed, Atlanta Fed, which is, that’s kind of like, you know, what everyone follows now, uh, who’s been more accurate in the Fed and their predictions actually lowered, I think, I think it’s three to 2.7% or something growth for the next quarter, which I was surprised to see.

Frank Curzio 16:28

This is, I think, as of four or five days ago before a lot of this stuff with the oil has been happening. Uh, my point here is when I look at this in oil, uh, probably going to be stay weak, uh, which is going to hurt most companies in the industry, uh, other than maybe some of the majors. And remember, you look at majors and they have refining capabilities as well. Uh, like I said,

Frank Curzio 16:48

Venezuela, you know, very heavy oil, so you need that. But I’m looking at natural gas. Natural gas was $5 over a month ago. It’s now $3.50. It’s probably going to be in too soon. I mean, natural gas has taken an absolute beat. And let me see, let me see if I can try to bring up a chartright there, uh, which I feel like I want to talk about oil, oil,

Frank Curzio 17:07

oil, but when you really look at natural gas, you’re like, holy cow, man, it’s been like, like a nightmare. So, you know, natural gas has not been, uh, you know, down tremendously. Again, trying to get a chart here. If I can’t bring it up, that’s fine. But, uh, it was at 340, 350. It was a month ago. It was over five.

Daniel Creech 17:22

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 17:22

So, you know, we’re seeing major moves here. Now, let’s put this in perspective as someone like you and I who talk about numbers. Uh, this isn’t a big deal. Okay. It seems like a big deal. And we say this a lot and people get pissed,right? Just like we say with the tariffs and, oh, it’s going to result in massive inflation. Remember the tariffs in China? This is, uh, 2017. We told everyone 10 million freaking,

Frank Curzio 17:43

10 million to billions of views,right? That, that everyone was worried about, you know, Trump’s first term and, you know, we’re going to rule all of our global ties and everything. I said, just buy, keep buying every time the market comes down. It came down for two, three straight months and went up tremendously,right? Uh, it’s easy to get caught up in it and say, holy shit. But the bottom line is you’re looking, say,

Frank Curzio 18:01

go in the middle of the 30, 50, say 40 million barrels of oil. That’s two days of consumption in the US. That’s what that is. So there’s a lot of noise here. And whether it affects oil prices and maybe they come down a little bit, I get it. I understand there’s a lot of volatility. But the much bigger impact, Daniel, is what you said. When I say you hit the nail on the head is nobody’s talking about how energy is a major component of inflation.

Frank Curzio 18:23

And inflation is by far the biggest threat to the equity market. If inflation is low, we could significantly lower rates, which Trump is going to do probably anyway, but it’s a lot easier to do when inflation is much lower,right? So now you’re going to see inflation even lower, especially on the core, um, not even on the core, which the core excludes that, but just the overall inflation coming down,right?

Frank Curzio 18:43

And if you’re taking that component out, the biggest component that everyone uses, we all need energy runs the entire world. Forget technology doesn’t work without energy, doesn’t work without electricity, nothing. It powers the world and it’s getting cheaper to power all this stuff in our growth markets. So you’re seeing a market move high where oil prices are going lower. Uh, and lower inflation gives a green light.

Frank Curzio 19:05

Again, Trump’s Fed to really aggressively lower rates. Uh, and considering this is the biggest risk in the market in 2026, you’re removing a lot of that risk, I believe, if oil prices stay low. And so now we have lower rates, much more government spending, deregulation among banks, which is why they’re exploiting higher. Daniel, please, last three years, what have we been pounding the freaking table on about banks?

Frank Curzio 19:26

Large bank, own a large bank, own a large bank. And I love it because whenever I recommend a stock and people say, Frank, great job, I get scared shit. I’m like, oh shit, everybody agrees. I had so many emails, really, the banks are crazy. The bank, it’s, it’s simple. The banks do, the banks are the best industry to own when interest rates are higher because they make money on that interest margin, which they haven’t made money when interest rates were zero.

Frank Curzio 19:45

So they charge massive fees. So now they’re generating the massive fees. And usually when you see higher interest rates, what happens? You see economic growth usually pulls back,right? So they’re trying to control inflation. So you see the economy slow. So when you see the economy slow, what happens to the bank? You see less M&A activity,right? Less fees, less deals getting done. This is the absolute perfect,

Frank Curzio 20:06

you couldn’t have a more perfect market ever in the history of banking than you haveright now. Because you’re seeing great, we’ve seen an economy boom, huge growth. I know some people are hurting. I’m talking about the growth that you’re seeing, the amount of money people are spending.

Frank Curzio 20:18

I mean, you know, my nephew and I went out to go see, we were trying on Sunday, uh, before for the conference to go to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the football games. We had to go to three, four different places. We couldn’t even get into these places. We couldn’t get in because they were all packed. And yes, Jacksonville is doing great and the Jacksonville game was on and I get it. But usually these places, I mean, I was like,

Frank Curzio 20:36

everyone must be filthy rich because we couldn’t even get into these places, none of the places in Jacksonville,right? Which, which is surprising. So you’re seeing the economy do fantastic. Interest rates, well, interest rates are high, which is the, it’s almost like you have, you have, you know, let me put this in horse terms. And this way, secretary was amazing.

Frank Curzio 20:56

You either have speed or you have distance. You never have both,right? And it’s like having speed and distance. You have us as fast in the world that can run the furthest at the fastest speed. That’s what you have with the banksright now. And they’re not even expensive. They’re trading 13, 14 times JP Morgan. So we’ve been pounding the table forever because Powell did a good job of not lowering rates as much as everybody wanted him to.

Frank Curzio 21:17

And that’s why everyone’s expecting the banks to pull back and then the interest margins to shrink a little bit. They’re still very, very strong. You’re looking at JP Morgan and major banks. I mean, Daniel, what do they, what do they actually pay you on your checking account? Nothing. Still nothing,right? They pay you nothing. They make a fortune on these rates,right? And now you have a booming economy where you’ve seen M&A explode. They’re making fees.

Frank Curzio 21:35

Every single aspect of their business across the board is just exploding high. You’re looking at the banks. I feel like I’m looking at Microsoft and Amazon when they report and they go over all the divisions of 30% each. That’s the way it isright now. What matters as well. So when you’re heading into next year, which is the election, you’re going to have deregulation. What are the banks? More money coming into the economy. You’re going to have more government spending.

Frank Curzio 21:54

You’re going to see massive tax refunds, which are coming from the tariffs, uh, which is going to increase spending for consumers. And then heading into midterm elections, you have a president that views the stock market as the gauge of how the economy is doing. He’s going to do everything he can to prop up that market. And now you’re taking the number one component, the biggest risk of inflation and saying, wow, inflation is going to come down.

Frank Curzio 22:14

And you follow a certain inflation gauge. Talk about that because we look at the CPI, which is kind of a joke. I said, I went back for 25, 30 years. I looked at this and how many times they revised this index purposely to make it real estate heavy because on rental incomes and rental making a huge component because usually rentals never go higher by more than 1, 2%.

Frank Curzio 22:34

And that’s why we got this explosion in inflation,right? In 2021, 2022, not only did they flood the money with all the markets, but we saw rentals going up 8, 9%. And it made that component look even bigger. And there’s a reason why they want to keep it low because everyone in office wants to keep inflation low because it allows you to have lower rates, which is going to result in a great economy.

Frank Curzio 22:53

And the economy is what wins elections,right? It makes sense. So they revised this and I said 25 times in 25 years, they revised the index to make, I’m like, why would, why would the real estate component be 30% of the CPI? Makes no sense at all,right? No, no sense at all. So now you’re taking that component of inflation and saying it’s going to be lower and you follow not just CPI,

Frank Curzio 23:13

but you follow something else and other people that track this and talk about that.

Daniel Creech 23:16

Yeah. So I’ve mentioned many times Truflation and you can look at their CPI index, consumer price index, and it’s daily and it’s updated and they give you a lot of great information about how they put together their index, where they pull their data from, Amazon, all kinds of different massive companies and such. Today,right now I’m looking at it, they have CPI at 1 spot 7.3, I think.

Daniel Creech 23:38

1 spot 7.3. Now, to give you an example, because I’m not sharing my screen, it was at 2 spot 6.7 on December 15th. So it rallied from basically August all the way up through December and now it’s falling back.

Daniel Creech 23:50

And the reason I point that out is because when you look at the BLS or Bureau of Labor Statistics, the recent change was 2.7. So 2.7 to 1 spot 7.3, that’s about 35, 36% difference. That’s a massive gap in between this.

Daniel Creech 24:08

And to couple this, we’ll get CPI readings next week along with earnings season kicks off. So busy week and busy start to the year here. But the other thing I point to Truflation is because Secretary Treasury Bessett has talked several times about a new Fed and kind of basically changing the Fed and how they operate in a major way.

Daniel Creech 24:28

And he was recently on the All In podcast, Frank, and he was talking about changes that could happen at the Fed and inflation target changes because we’ve joked here in the past that this 2% inflation rate is a horrible and stupid because you’re hurting the people that you claim to help at the lowest income ladders. So that’s a farce by itself.

Daniel Creech 24:47

Number two, Frank, because it comes from like New Zealand or something ridiculous. Now, what Bessett said was you don’t want to change the goalpost until you reach your goal because then it looks like you’re, you know, screwing with the numbers. Now, I don’t think it’s a big limb to go out on to think you get a new Fed chair, you get a new attitude, a new management at the Fed,

Daniel Creech 25:08

they can start talking about this data, Truflation. We’re already below the target according to this. Let’s assume this is accurate. But then once you get at or near the target, you can change your goalpost, which they’re going to have to because we live in an inflationary printing press monetary system. Frank, what if you say, hey, we’ve reached our goal, but this goal isn’t adequate enough.

Daniel Creech 25:29

We’re going to change the goalpost and now we’re going to go to a range of two and a half to three and a half percent. Why are you laughing at me? That’s not funny. You don’t think that’s going to happen? That’s a beer bet.

Frank Curzio 25:38

It could happen. I think.

Daniel Creech 25:40

My point is, is that there’s a lot of changes there and there’s a lot, there’s a big gap. Right now we are arguing about so much in the United States between private property and public property taxes, yours, ours, all that BS, division like crazy, and data and fraud is at the center of that. And there are going to be, I don’t know which way the dominoes are going to fall,

Daniel Creech 26:00

but the dominoes are going to fall. And I don’t mean like end of the world crap, so don’t freak out. I just mean there are major changes going on. And I think the way we interpret data and also look at fraud is going to be significant in the months ahead.

Frank Curzio 26:14

You know, as numbers people, and numbers are amazing when you look at it and you make it interesting,right? When people look at numbers and metrics, it gets boring and data analytics and stuff like that. The difference between numbers and percentages is such a big deal. Because if you say, hey, we’re going to go from 2% to 2 to 3%, what that means is say if you’re paying,

Frank Curzio 26:34

draw out a number, $10,000 of all the goods and whatever. It’s obviously a lot more. Let’s just use that as a base. And you’re saying, okay, it’s $10,000 and that’s your budget,right? So that’s your, of all the goods and services that you’re purchasing, say for a year, maybe it’s a hundred thousand, maybe it’s 10, just let’s use 10,000. You’re increasing that by 50%. That’s a massive, massive, massive amount,right?

Frank Curzio 26:53

But when you say, oh, it’s going to be like two, maybe we’ll go to two and a half, 3%, 2% to 3% is massive. That’s unbelievable. I mean, and now you’re talking about every single year when you’re looking at wages not growing as fast. Now you have AI coming where, you know, you’ve seen people lose jobs. You’ve seen it all over the place. When the biggest companies in the world are trading at all-time highs and have record revenues and they’re laying off employees,

Frank Curzio 27:14

it’s AI. It’s AI. Believe me, it’s AI. It’s been AI for the last two years. Now they can’t say, well, because of AI, we’re going to fire your ass. They don’t say that. It’s not public. They don’t want to say that ever. Just like they’re saying the big guys aren’t like, we have an energy crisis that we have no idea we’re going to solve. We’re just going to buy energy out 25 years from now,right? Which they’ve never done before in history. They’re signing contracts, three-year contracts that if you can,

Frank Curzio 27:34

if you’re an energy company or electricity company and Meta comes to you and say, okay, we’re going to sign a three-year contract with 20% increases in energy for the next three years, they’ll sign, they sign it in a second. They’re like, this is fun. 20%. So we don’t have the energy, basically agentic AI,right? So when you look at these numbers and how these guys aren’t saying anything, even though they’re meeting the president, the hyperscalers are saying, no, I have no idea how we’re going to get the energy to do this.

Frank Curzio 27:54

It is interesting how, you know, they say they moved the goalpost and it’s so easy to explain it to the average person who doesn’t know better and say, oh, inflation’s going to be, you know, instead of 2%, we’re going to have a goal of 3%. I hope it’s not 3%. That should not be the goal. I understand if it gets to 3%, I don’t think it’s a killer if it happens for a year or two, it’s not 5%.

Frank Curzio 28:13

But you can’t tell me that that’s the goal to only increase by 3% because you have to realize our prices are up tremendously since 2020. Tremendously already. Now you’re telling me they’re going to grow 3%. And so, you know, it’s not surprising. They change the goalpost all the time when it comes to CPI. And again, the point is to make sure that you’re trying to keep inflation at bay.

Frank Curzio 28:32

The only way you could view it, think about it, guys. Think about this. Inflation has been exploding for the last, ever since interest rates are zero,right? Since the credit crisis, like two, three years later in the market, inflation started exploding. All of us saw it, our costs soared, and people are telling you, no, there’s no inflation because the CPI is 2%. It’s like 2.2%, 2.3%.

Frank Curzio 28:52

There’s no inflation. But we all saw it. We all saw it as much, much more than that because, you know, rental income, which, you know, what happens if you own a house, yet the rental income component is so big of the CPI that, you know, you mean to tell me that prices are only up 2%? They’re not up 2%. Everybody knew it. Everyone’s like, inflation is going through the roof. Again, another number that they could just move the goalpost.

Frank Curzio 29:11

But, you know, when I, when I look at inflation, I think it’s a big deal when we talk about this oil, Daniel, that, that if we’re looking at oil prices at sub 60, nobody had that two years ago. Nobody had that two years ago. And it’s hard to see that when every, you look at all the markets, our market has been up tremendously last year. I mean,

Frank Curzio 29:30

if you look at the past couple of years, you’re like, yeah, we didn’t do that good. It’s only up 17%, which is fantastic. It’s amazing,right? The market’s up 17%. Usually goes up 8% annually going back to the 1950s when the S&P 500 became 500 companies. And we doubled that. And yet we were probably in the bottom 5% of the overall global markets in terms of stock market performance.

Frank Curzio 29:51

Everyone did much, much better than us. Again, they came off, they haven’t done shit in a long time. And I get it. But I’m just saying it’s, so you’re looking at economic growth, the economy based on equities, people spending money, you know, and the economies, and we’re not seeing oil go higher. Now we’re saying oil is probably going to be at 60 or lower.

Frank Curzio 30:08

JP Morgan came out and said it’s probably going to be even lower than that. And if we stay at these levels and inflation does come down, it’s going to result in a great 2026. I’m not telling you to buy any stock.

Frank Curzio 30:18

It’s not to buy any stock market because we saw AI and they’re putting up the numbers, but they were trading a year ago, two years ago when we got in a lot of these names and energy names as they were going to have these types of earnings,right? So now they’re getting it and people worrying like, saying, how come Nvidia is not moving? Well, Nvidia is up a million percent in the past four years.

Frank Curzio 30:37

Okay. That’s where the move came based on what was going to happen,right? So I don’t know if it comes from AI, but man, it’s going to come from, I think we talked about this, AI companies buy shitty retailers, shitty retailers. That’s what you need to buyright now. I mean, the Wayfarers, look at Wayfarer, look at the Donald Generals,

Frank Curzio 30:56

you know, Dollar Tree, look at the charts of those companies because they are incorporating AI. They’re not creating their AI system, but they’re partnering with the Googles like Reddit, like some of these companies. And that’s why I was high on Disney until you actually see the prices they charge and how crazy it is there. But a lot of these retailers are realizing that the names that are on their list, if you have the names on your list and the data,right,

Frank Curzio 31:17

that’s what AI is about. AI is meaningless unless you have the data. These guys have the data of these people. And the more data that you could fit in from, say, an underarm, which by the way is a massive insider buy that’s in our portfolio, and I think that that company’s going to explode higher. They have a massive user base. And now you’re tracking that user base and you throw it on top of an AI system,

Frank Curzio 31:36

which tracking this user already through 50 different methods and all through different systems as you go on Reddit, you go on every single website and tracking them. And the more data they’re able to get, the more they’re able to predict the agentic AI. And that is worth trillions, trillions to anyone in the marketing industry. Because that you want to spend, you want to have the highest rate of return,right? So your return on investment,right?

Frank Curzio 31:56

Or return on ad spend. If you’re just marketing something on TV, you have no idea who’s watching TV,right? But now you have these people like in your stores that they could track. They know how many times they go to the store. They know exactlyright now, they know exactly what you’re going to do five minutes from now, an hour from now, they know everything,right? And when you know that, now you can dictate what you’re going to sell to them.

Frank Curzio 32:15

And that’s where this market is heading. So the biggest companiesright now, they put the AI systems in place. Everyone’s like these large language models. It’s agentic AIright now. Now all these companies with these big lists who are a lot of retailers who the market has been shitty for them, they’re realizing, wow, these names are a list are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re worth more than the market cap of our company.

Frank Curzio 32:34

And now they’re like, okay, I’ll sign with Google. And Google’s like, okay, we’re taking the API. We want all the information. They’re like, okay. And Google’s like, you can use our cloud for free, forever. And every time there’s a search, you’re going to be on the top of it. And it works out for everyone. It worked out for Reddit perfectly. Look at their business exploding. Look at their profits exploding. Look at their user base exploding.

Frank Curzio 32:53

And while Google is able to take all the information from everybody that’s having conversations, I think that’s where you’re going to see the next stage of AI really make its way in here where people are like, you got the chips. You’ve seen what’s happened with Broadcom. You’ve seen what’s happened in Nvidia,right? They’re buying up all the memory. And now everyone’s like, holy shit, we have a shortage of memory. You’ve seen Micron, all these companies go higher. SanDisk, Western Digital.

Frank Curzio 33:13

That’s going to be the next stage. I don’t know if it’s data centers, a lot of these stories we’ve been talking about. We were in very, very early with AI. I think going forward, there’s different parts of AI. It’s going to impact healthcare. I think healthcare is going to do good. And also the defense industry as well,right? With all this geopolitical risk as President Trump, which I know Daniel’s going to love this, is he going to take over Greenland or what?

Daniel Creech 33:34

Well, I like how they said, I mean, yeah, well,

Daniel Creech 33:39

they like to, they, the White House likes to play, I think the media very well. Yes, they did say that that was an option. No, I don’t think they move on Greenland. Is there some kind of a deal made? I wouldn’t doubt it because you can buy them.

Daniel Creech 33:54

I guess Senator, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is out there saying we’d rather buy them or do a deal rather than take them by force. I don’t take that seriously, but maybe that’s just me. I don’t know. I will say the other trading partner that is in a pinch here is Canada, our neighbors to the north, because we get about 60% of their oil or the oil that we import,

Daniel Creech 34:16

Frank, to our refineries from there. So, you know, the Venezuela thing could have an impact on that longer term. Give us a heads up or at least a leg up on the negotiations. One quick thing on inflation. I do think we talk a lot about sentiment and kind of the investor feelings and such. And it does play a lot, a massive role.

Daniel Creech 34:36

And as far as inflation goes and inflation expectations, you hear a lot of that quoted on the media and such. And well, inflation expectations from consumers or businesses as such, if they actually buy the idea that we now have more oil in reserves,

Daniel Creech 34:55

refining capacity, supply, simple supply and demand, it should keep a lid on oil. Now that’s a big task to execute. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not just saying it’s like a data center. Oh, we need a data center. Well, you just don’t have a data center overnight. So it’s a hard plan to execute. I’m not, I’m not pushing that aside. I’m simply saying,

Daniel Creech 35:14

because there’s reports, Frank, that it would take $10 billion a year for a number of years to get production from a million. We’re rounding back to 3 million a day. It’s not going to happen overnight. We’ll see what happens.

Daniel Creech 35:25

But that thought of, hey, we have this amount of reserves and this ability, capacity, these optionalities for lack of a better term, I do think that’s a major deal for inflation. I really do. So we’ll see how that plays out.

Frank Curzio 35:42

You know, when I look at the Greenland thing, the reason why 99.999 people have no idea what’s going on in Greenland, it’s very simple. So Greenland is three times the size of Texas. Do you know what the population of Greenland is?

Daniel Creech 35:53

Not much, I would guess.

Frank Curzio 35:55

57,000.

Daniel Creech 35:56

Wow.

Frank Curzio 35:57

57,000.

Daniel Creech 35:58

I would guess more than that.

Frank Curzio 35:58

That’s a venue of an indoor stadium, basically. A small indoor stadium.

Daniel Creech 36:02

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 36:02

57,000. That’s it. So nobody ever paid attention to it ever. No one cares about it. But when you really look at the details on why this is a big deal, I’m going to tell you how you can factor this in of why you can make a lot of money on this. Okay. So Trump, this is between what? US and Russia linked the Arctic to Atlantic,right? Reduces travel from Asia to Europe compared to traveling to the Suez Canal.

Frank Curzio 36:22

Massive, guys. Massive, massive untapped resources. Massive,right? From oil and gas to what? To rare earth elements. Now, why is that a big deal? Rare earth elements are in everything. Every single technology product, everything. And China controls that.

Frank Curzio 36:39

And that’s the card that they have that they could use that we can’t really do anything about. And this is why Trump has taken stakes in rare earth companies. You could probably buy the shittiest company that says they’re going to start drilling for rare earth metals. And it’s not going to happen for another 15 years. And those stocks probably have three to five X upside easily, maybe more.

Frank Curzio 36:59

And some of them that are really going to have 10 X upside. And not only that, Trump’s probably going to take a stake because he knows he understands the importance of rare earth elements and minerals. And I think a lot of, you know, we hear about it, how China controls 85%, 90% of the market depending on which data you look at. But these components are very, very important. This is a very dirty process. That’s why where you’re focusing in Canada,

Frank Curzio 37:19

which is one of the most liberal states, and when it comes to the environment, they’re very pro-environment. Nobody wants to explore these. Now we’re passing laws that yes, we really need to explore these because of the dominance in China. So, you know, when you’re looking at why this is significant, why he’s talking about it, here it is. And whether you agree with it or not, you say, well, Trump just, he’s his own dictator.

Frank Curzio 37:40

He wants to take over the whatever. I don’t care what, I don’t even give a shit what you think. I really do. When it comes to politics, it’s just whatever. You’re never going to change. It’s like believing in a God, no matter what anyone says, you’re never, ever going to change it. If you’re Democrat, you’re never going to change your mind. If you’re a Republican, you’re never going to change your mind. Only if someone pays them and then they’ll change their mind in two seconds because that’s all they care about in politicians is money. But as an investor,

Frank Curzio 37:59

this is important because you got to look at these rare earth companies. And some of them have exploded higher. And you’re probably going to see Trump take more stakes. But I’ve seen these, even for our Curzio One membership, where we invest in a lot of private companies and we’re investing in one that’s very goodright now, Savvy, which a lot of people came into that membership just to invest in Savvy,

Frank Curzio 38:18

which is still open for a couple more weeks. There’s two rare earth companies that have come across my plate. And I’m starting to analyze now. So we might be able to get into those early. I want to see how long it does take because mining is crazy, but you have a government that’s removing the red tape when it comes to the environmental, which is very, very hard in all of mining.

Frank Curzio 38:40

You know, even the natural gas and oil leases,right? Just takes a long time. He wants to, you know, make this happen a lot quicker. And we’re in dire need of this. And Trump is all over this. And we told you, you have to follow Trump and what he’s doing. You have to be in his circle. If you follow that and you look at the Trump portfolio and all these companies that we talked about, look at Boeing’s another one,right? Was traveling to Trump to every place.

Frank Curzio 38:58

And now they just got another major order. You know, they’re all going to get business. And that’s why everyone’s going to kiss the ring. And they should because if you’re a business, that’s what you do no matter who’s in office. They did it with Biden. They did it with Obama. They did it with Clinton. They did it with Bush. They’re going to do it with Trump. And Trump, if you’re really in that circle, you’re going to get a lot of business,right?

Frank Curzio 39:17

And that’s why he’s meeting with the three biggest oil companies. They’re all excited. He’s about to hand them billions of dollars probably and money that’s owed to them. So when I look at this, I’m looking at rare earths. And yes, a lot of them have moved already. But to me, to do something like this and really like even the backlash that he’s getting and he’s double tripling down and saying like, no, we really want Greenland.

Frank Curzio 39:36

There’s a lot at stake here and nobody knows about it because it’s a country that 57,000 people live on. It’s three times as size as Texas. That’s absolutely freezing. But it is significant to make money. And that’s how you have to look at it. Instead of looking at it like you’re pissed off at Trump or you love Trump and he’s dominating, it’s America everywhere. How do you make money off of it?

Frank Curzio 39:53

And you can make a ton of money by looking at these government policies of where the current administration’s going and what they plan to do. You know, the planning’s about, I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not, but it shows a significance with Trump. It doubles down of how important rare earth minerals are. And double down because it’s not just Greenland of how he’s taking stakes in these companies.

Frank Curzio 40:15

And I think you’re going to see this market really, really take off over the next couple of years, especially what I’m hearing in Greenland. Really, you’re going to go to Greenland for what? Rare earth minerals that you’re not going to be able to discover. That’s going to be very hard to drill in that type of atmosphere and climate. But that’s how important that is too. Not just from national security of where it’s located, but also because of that massive mineral reserve, oil, gas, and those rare earth elements, which is very, very important.

Frank Curzio 40:36

And I think that’s, you know, to me, that’s a confirmation of how important this industry is and how much Trump really wants these rare earth metals and how he’s going to push and invest in these companies. You can do very well investing in some of these companies. You’re going to see a lot of those names start coming up in our portfolio. Hopefully, I have to look at the details. I have to look under the hood. Ideas could be great. Companies could be great.

Frank Curzio 40:55

But when you look at it in terms of a deal and the structure of it, sometimes it’s really, really shitty. And I want to invest in it. And that’s my job to do that for Curzio One, bring private ideas. But there’s a couple that have come across my plate. And I think they could be very, very big IPOs, you know, if we invest in these things early. So if you’re Curzio One, remember, you should be really, really excited. Everyone’s a credit investor. You get access to all proxy services for one price.

Frank Curzio 41:14

And it’s a low price, which is really cool. And we’ve been really, that membership has been exploding because we’re getting a look at lots of really great deals, especially over the past 12, 18 months. And I think we’re going to get into one of these deals for rare earth minerals pretty soon.

Daniel Creech 41:29

I wonder when the last time we bought a country?

Frank Curzio 41:34

I mean, I don’t know. Did we buy Puerto Rico?

Daniel Creech 41:36

I don’t know. We’d have to Google it. That is kind of funny though.

Frank Curzio 41:39

It’s, listen, we just bought.

Daniel Creech 41:41

There was a great late comedian, Tim Wilson, that said, you know, we paid for the Louisiana purchase. If we sold Louisiana today, we could triple our money.

Frank Curzio 41:50

Yeah. Well, I could tell you that at least, you know, Gulf of America,right? We could Gulf of America.

Daniel Creech 41:59

That’s just changing it. I’m talking about buying it by transaction.

Frank Curzio 42:02

It’s so weird because it’s never happened,right? With territory, you feel like, you know, it’s so past us and it’s been so long ago that all the territory owned is owned and that’s it. It’s official. That’s the way it is. Unless you go to war and take it. But Trump sees it differently. And I know China is like, they’re worried that China is going to invade Taiwan, which I said would not happen. And I had great,

Frank Curzio 42:22

great insight to this going to the National Security Seminar, which is a special invite where, you know, all the colonels graduate and, you know, just at the Army War College. And I was honored to be there. And, you know, they take people from, you know, influencers outside the world to really talk to these colonels and stuff like that. And I remember colonels are very, very, very high up.

Frank Curzio 42:41

Like if you don’t know the military ranks, Colonel Jessup, if you have a few good men, how big he was, there’s 300 of them,right? That we had access to, I had access to. And their national security threat was China going to Taiwan based on an intel. And I stood up and said, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. And they were very surprised. And they loved that I said that because it was a much different opinion than what they get everyplace else. And I said, I’m not saying that your intel’s wrong.

Frank Curzio 43:01

I’m just saying that, you know, China would really, really screw themselves by doing that. It would really, really hurt them tremendously. I mean, with the rest of the world. I mean, in terms of what would be cut off to China, we know they need their resources and stuff like that from everyplace. But it just doesn’t make sense economically for them to do that, for them to go after Taiwan.

Frank Curzio 43:20

It’s going to be a huge conflict. Even though technically, people don’t want to hear this, China owns Taiwan. Technically, if you look at the history, seriously, go back in your history, they could claim it. It’s, it’s, will they go to war? Will they invade Taiwan? I don’t know. But that’s a threat that you’re hearing a lot all over the news. But I don’t see China actually doing that.

Frank Curzio 43:40

I really don’t. And if they do, then you’re seeing lots of conflict. And that’s where escalation really gets crazy. So we’ll see. And that’s why people, I think, a little bit worried about Venezuela. You’re taking away a hub that’s close to the US dictatorship that was, that has close ties to Russia and China, you know, and they’re allies. And you’re taking that component away.

Frank Curzio 44:01

It’s pretty crazy. So I could see why people are nervous. But let’s see what happens on the geopolitical front, which you have to understand and cover. One, it’s going to help you make money and get you out of the market if things escalate. But you have to understand this because it does influence the equity markets, the bond markets, everything, the geopolitical risks. And they’re definitely heightened now, you know, over the past three weeks that all this stuff’s been happening in Venezuela.

Frank Curzio 44:19

And now you’re hearing that all the rumors with Taiwan and stuff like that, which I don’t think is going to happen. I just don’t see it economically. But it’s a good storyright now. And I could be wrong. So let’s see. If it does happen, I mean, there’s a whole set of who knows what’s going to happen to overall markets because it’s a direct conflict with the US. And, you know, you’re shutting down basically Taiwan Semi,

Frank Curzio 44:38

which is why we’re paying so much for Taiwan Semi to stop building all this shit in the US. Because if China takes over that and the rare earth metals and all the secrets, everything, all the best chips, NVIDIA, everything, you’re taking that all away. And China now owns that,right? So the US has to fight back. So it’s going to be interesting to see. I don’t see it. But it’s a good story.

Frank Curzio 44:58

And that geopolitical risks, Daniel, that that can result in, you know, headwinds for the stock market and the bond market as well.

Daniel Creech 45:04

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dominoes are falling. Things are shifting around. A lot of changes are going to happen. We don’t know every direction. But yeah, there’s just going to be volatility. So be prepared for that. That’s, I mean, look at commodities, gold, you know, all that kind of stuff. That’s going to continue. So maybe not in a straight line. But you don’t have craziness without crazy reactions.

Frank Curzio 45:22

True. And always, always, always overreactions now. Now the media is so real-time. And everyone needs page views and eyeballs and, you know, these crazy stories and headlines now. And, you know, heading into 2026 and now that we’re in 2026, what are some of the things that you like? What are some of the things you see? I mean, people are like, “Bang, Sonna.” I’m kind of Wolf Research,

Frank Curzio 45:41

who I respect for, came out and downgraded, I think, Bank of America and another bank, which I thought was cool,right? I like when people do things that, you know, are totally opposite from what everyone else is saying. Because we would be telling you to buy banks for three, four years. I don’t know if I’d be buying a major bank now. I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you to be buying JP Morgan now.

Frank Curzio 45:57

I think the community banks, I think a lot of those banks are much better buys now that we’re going to have relaxed laws. They’re going to be able to grow outside of their regions, which is really cool. And they were always limited to growth because there’s certain laws that don’t allow you in banking industries. The only industry like this, you cannot become a large cap bank. One of the four majors. You’re not going to have like a fifth or sixth major.

Frank Curzio 46:17

You’re not allowed to. Soon as you get to a certain amount of assets, you have to put your tier one ratios. Now, if you’re lowering those and deregulation, now you get more competition. But I think you’re going to see that even from the lower ends where they could finally compete a little bit more with some of these bigger guys. And that’s why I’d be focused on in terms of the banking industry. But what do you see in 2026? Because we were big on AI.

Frank Curzio 46:36

We were big on banks. And, you know, we wereright a lot. We thought crypto would do great. And crypto really tailed off at the end and got nailed. So we’re talking about positives and the negatives. But what’s your, you know, what are you looking at in terms of sectors for 2026?

Daniel Creech 46:47

I still like, I still think the gold trade and resource trade has a lot of legs left in it. I definitely think there’ll be pullbacks. I’m not saying it’ll go up a straight line. But again, I just don’t think you have the geopolitical arena or environment without massive moves and commodities such as that. I am reassessing the natural gas trade.

Daniel Creech 47:07

I’m not bearish on it yet. But I am definitely not as bullish on it just because, again, sentiment. Once you come to realize, and it’s never been about running out of energy. I don’t, I’ve never bought that. And that’s BS. But we don’t need to talk about that now. But when the market or investors or Wall Street, however you want to put that,

Daniel Creech 47:26

when they realize that maybe supply or the access to supply is not as big of a deal, that’s massive. That’s a, I don’t want to use paradigm shift on that, but it’s damn close. So I like basic materials. I like some energy. And then I like, from a charting standpoint,

Daniel Creech 47:46

so over the break, I’ve tried to read a lot about charting and technical analysis and different things. And I’m not all in on it by any means. But I do understand, or I don’t, let me take that back. I understand why it’s very popular. And it’s amazing to see how much money looks at technical analysis and is traded on it. And with that, I would look at different technologies.

Daniel Creech 48:07

So I’ve talked about like quantum computing. D-Wave is one of them.

Daniel Creech 48:15

Rig Rigetti, I always mess that one up. But anyway, I think the tech trade, just like you were talking about with AI kind of going to the memory and down that river, I think it’s going to be pretty impressive. So I know it’s boring, but I still like tech, energy, and, well, pockets of energy and basic materials.

Frank Curzio 48:37

Yeah. I mean, one sector that I do like with geopolitical risks is defense companies who are very big on drones, air environment. I mean, we recommend this. I’ve never had a stock this long in our portfolio since 2017. But we recommend this around 25. And it’s 300, well over 300, you know, 1100%. Kratos was one that we got into in 2024 or 22. And it’s up,

Frank Curzio 48:56

it’s almost 100, over 300% we’re up on. You know, I like these specialty defense companies where, you know, like the Palantirs as well,right? And that was one of the other things we talked about in the National Security Seminar. I remember when I went there a couple of years ago, I think it was trading in the 25, 30, 35 or whatever. And I loved it. And all of them hated it. Like they just, they weren’t crazy about it,right?

Frank Curzio 49:17

Which I was surprised about. And I said, “Look, this company is going to dominate.” And what they could do in the total addressable market when it comes to Palantir is so much bigger than what everyone’s modeling for. And we wereright on that one. And, you know, when I look at these defense companies, it used to be the largest defense companies. And that was it. Now you’re having these specialized defense companies that are working with the big guys. And we’ve been on that trend,

Frank Curzio 49:36

you know, with the Palantirs and the Kratos and air environments and stuff, thinking they would get taken over by these big guys. So, you know, it’s amazing to see like these special niche companies within defense saying, “Hey, we’re going to start our own companies.” And they’ve been doing fantastic and getting so much business because those, you need the experience. And those guys are coming from the Lockheeds and Raytheons and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio 49:56

And they’re starting the companies because they have the contacts and the government contacts. You know, and I think that’s going to be a big trend with all the geopolitical risks, which is not going to stop. It’s heating up much, much more and be that way all year. I love, love small caps. I love small capsright now. I love them. I mean, there’s large caps that I like that have been beaten up. I’m not, you know, large caps in terms of the hyperscalers.

Frank Curzio 50:17

I think I like Amazon here. I think Amazon’s going to outperform 2026 out of all the hyperscalers, out of, you know, the big technology companies. I also like Oracle on this pullback. I think it’s well overdone with the business that they have. I think it’d be fine. But small caps, their valuations are the lowest they’ve been compared to large caps in 25 years.

Frank Curzio 50:35

And we’ve been able to pick off so many of these names within biotech with our small cap newsletter. I mean, we’re having one of the best years, I think, that we’ve ever had at this company when it comes to our small cap newsletter. We have, you know, both those names I just mentioned in a small cap newsletter. We recommended another biotech that was up like 80% in like two months. It just, you know, we’re able to see the disconnects and some of these things sell off too much.

Frank Curzio 50:54

And they have all these catalysts. And not only that, small caps have been shitty for a couple of years now compared to large caps. And think about if you’re a CEO of a company, what are you doing? Okay, you’re cutting costs,right? Now you’re focusing on, okay, we have four components. We have four different businesses,right? Well, let’s cut it to the two that are working. Let’s get rid of these other two. Let’s close factories.

Frank Curzio 51:13

Let’s do all this. And now if you look at that restructuring from two to three years after your restructuring, these are the small cap companies that have been around for 10, 20, 30 years, even longer. Now that you’re restructured and now you have the model where revenue is going higher and you have this economic growth, you have lower interest rates, you know, you have a market that’s going to promote risk,right, for small caps.

Frank Curzio 51:32

This is an industry that I think you could easily make triple-digit returns on so many names. And even in the mining space, you look at silver is exploding,right? You look at gold exploding. But a lot of these stocks, these stocks are probably still 50% off of their highs, a lot of these from when we had the last bull market when gold and silver prices were higher.

Frank Curzio 51:52

Even silver, you would think silver companies have gone much, much higher. They have. But not to where the prices are. So when I’m looking at small caps, I think it’s one of the best places to be. You have to be selective. And this is what I’ve been doing my entire life with small caps in every single newsletter back from Jim Cramer and Stocks Under 10 to small cap specialists with Porter to, you know, Curzio Venture Opportunities here,right?

Frank Curzio 52:13

For, you know, for that long, for 25, 30 years. I love small caps. I love defense companies. A lot of the Dow components, I think the Dow has a good year. My biggest play was, I thought was Boeing was going to outperform tremendously. It did outperform. I think it went up 27% compared to 17%. It was close to leading the Dow in the last two months.

Frank Curzio 52:32

They reported good earnings, good cash flow, but it came down a little bit. Boeing, that order they just got, one of the biggest orders they’ve ever received from Alaska Airlines. I mean, when you look at the statistics, you look at what’s going on with the fleets, these aging fleets, and you look at the economies around the world doing better, there’s a massive amount of planes they need to buy.

Frank Curzio 52:51

There’s only two companies that do them. And Boeing has the best of the best plane,right? So when you’re looking at Boeing having the best plane compared to the ones that they’re buying the most compared to Airbus, you’re going to see those orders. Yes, it’s been a nightmare,right? It’s been a nightmare for these guys. And now they finally got things. I mean, Alaska Airlines was not going to do that order.

Frank Curzio 53:10

They were like, “FU, we’re not going to touch you guys because we hate the way you’re doing business.” The fact, it’s not just that big order. It’s the fact that somebody, the CEO saying that Boeing’s got to get their act together. And now you just did this is a confirmation that the biggest skeptic, one of the biggest skeptics of someone that buys and is a bigger, huge customer for Boeing is saying like,

Frank Curzio 53:30

“Hey, we think you’re past that and we’re going to deal with you.” It’s just this, you know, this massive approval for Boeing. I think the stock’s going to take off again. We thought it would be the best outperformer. It wasn’t. It was like in the middle of the pack. It outperformed the Dow easily by more than 10%. But I like Boeing. I like Pfizer. I like Goldman here. I know Goldman’s at an all-time high. But,

Frank Curzio 53:48

you know, just the M&A deals, the market, the lower interest rates. I mean, you’re looking at, you know, private equity is going to start surging. You know, the leverage companies,right? You’re going to have more leverage when you have lower rates. You know, I just think this sets up great for Goldman, great for Morgan Stanley. But Goldman, you know, and the Dow, I think these are companies that would do very, very well. And I think 2026 is going to be a very,

Frank Curzio 54:08

very good year, barring any crazy geopolitical risks like what I mentioned before with China and Taiwan. But if you’re looking at the dynamics, if you’re looking at inflation coming down, we’re definitely getting lower interest rates.

Frank Curzio 54:20

We’re going to have, you know, a pro-stock market president and, you know, strong economic growth with a lot of the money going back to consumers from tariffs,right? With these tax refunds and a midterm election where he needs the economy to do great because his midterm election is significant.

Frank Curzio 54:36

It’s significant for Trump to get his rest of his agenda done for the next two years after that. It sets up very, very well where if you see a pullback, and we’re going to see pullbacks in the market, I would use it to buy your favorite stocks and add to some of these names because you’re going to see volatility just like we’ve seen in past years. But at the end of the day, where are we? We’re at record highs, just off record highs.

Frank Curzio 54:55

And I think we’re going to see the same thing in 2026. You’re going to see this down and up and down and up. It’s going to give you a good chance to buy some of the best names. And I’m looking forward to it. You’re going to see lots of great names in our portfolios. And I think you’re going to see a good year for speculative assets, especially Bitcoin, crypto coming back, small caps. I mean, Dan, what do you think? I just can’t see speculative names not going much,

Frank Curzio 55:14

much higher when you’re talking about the whole economy and this massive growth because history, that’s what usually happens. As most speculative names do great, just like they get annihilated when the economy is terrible. If you really think we’re going to have a good market and the economy is going to do well, low interest rates, it’s hard to say that you don’t think that’s going to transfer over to speculative assets like small caps, Bitcoin, crypto, and things like that.

Daniel Creech 55:33

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would be, I would definitely be long volatility and long risk assets. I mean, you don’t have the shifting forces that we haveright now and have minimal returns both up and down. So prepare accordingly.

Frank Curzio 55:47

Allright, guys. So listen, we are going to close the Savvy CapRais, which is, you know, an awesome company. I talked about it a lot going into this year. This is a competitor to Airbnb. This is Eric Goldreier, who spoke at my conference. And he did, and I think everyone there who was at the conference invested in the company.

Frank Curzio 56:08

It’s a really good name. This is a guy who had two big exits in his career. He doesn’t have to work anymore in the same industry, hospitality industry, eight-figure and a nine-figure exit. And he said, “Look, you know, Airbnb and Vrbo have raised prices significantly.” He’s not trying to take over these companies. What he wants to capture is 1%. If he does, it’s a billion-dollar company of the market.

Frank Curzio 56:26

So, you know, we’ve gotten a lot of demand. In order to get into that deal, you come into the Curzio One membership, which I’ll tell you the price of it. It’s for accredited investors, $5,000 a year. And then you get to invest alongside me of me choosing the deals, looking at the terms, even setting some of the terms of these deals. You don’t have to invest in all of them when you’re a member.

Frank Curzio 56:45

But you’re also going to get access to every one of our products and services, which, you know, is worth probably about four or five times that just in price, probably about 20 times that based on performance outside of crypto. And you have access to our conference where you meet the CEOs of these companies that we’re investing, which is really cool. And we’ve gotten huge demand. I talk to everyone. If you’re interested,

Frank Curzio 57:04

send me an email, frank@curzioresearch.com, especially if you want to get to the Savvy deal. I can guarantee you get to the Savvy deal. It’s $25,000 minimum, again, for accredited investors if you call over the next week or so. But we’ve just signed up a lot of new names because of this type of deal. And these are the deals that we’re getting. Even the next deal is going to be really exciting that I’m working on too, two deals.

Frank Curzio 57:24

So it’s up to you. Once you’re in that membership, there’s no pressure to invest in the deals. I give you the terms. I tell you what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll invest, you know, 100 grand, 50 grand, or whatever. And then it’s up to you to determine and say, “Hey, I don’t like this deal.” You like the deal. It’s up to you. But my job is to look at these deals, make sure they’re structuredright. I’m putting my own money. You get to invest alongside with me. And, you know, that’s worked out.

Frank Curzio 57:43

And we’re in a lot, a lot of good companies. I think, you know, one members are really going to make a killing because we have Sugar Phoenix set to go public. And we got into that early. I’m really happy with some of the biotech companies that we were in in a certain fund at low evaluations. And now they’re raising money at high evaluations because of the data. And pay attention because some of these companies, guys,

Frank Curzio 58:01

are going to be reporting that we have in our private portfolio, the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. It’s always overshadowed by the CES. It’s massive. It’s where all these companies release their data. And even the biotech CEOs that I talk to, they’re all like, “Yeah, we’ll go to JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.” It’s massive,right? You’re going to see massive moves in biotech and healthcare over the next couple of weeks because they released this information.

Frank Curzio 58:20

This is the conference for these guys, the conference. And I think we’re going to see a lot of good results out of some of the companies that we invested in at early valuations. So I’m excited for Curzio One members. If you’re interested in coming in, it’s $5,000 for the year. And you have access to all that stuff, access to me. The conference was fantastic. We might do two conferences a year going forward.

Frank Curzio 58:39

I’ve been getting that a ton from guests, from our clients. But you get access to a lot of stuff and the private investments of being an accredited investor. So if you’re interested, call me. I’ll get on the phone with you. We determine if it’sright for you. I talk to all the members, which is really cool. And I just talked to two members in the past two days. Both of them signed up immediately. There’s no pressure for you to sign up when you talk to me.

Frank Curzio 58:58

I just give you the scoop and let you know what we’re doing. But once you’re a member, you have access to these deals. And it’s becoming a big component of Curzio Research right now and definitely a huge component in our performance because I’m getting ideas from people that are brilliant across all these industries. And man, it’s led to so many freaking ideas for us. And, you know,

Frank Curzio 59:17

I mean, Celestica is 40, it’s 300 because, you know, we had insight of the data centers needing switches. And they don’t have switches. Like not having PVC pipes for your house, you can’t live in them,right? So these guys came out with the best switches. They were able to charge 10 times the amount. And the stock exploded because of the contacts I have of the accredited investors around the Curzio One membership.

Frank Curzio 59:35

So I’m really proud of that. I love you guys that are in that membership. So really cool. And look, Canway of 2026. Excited about it. Daniel, what’s going to be your top pick?

Daniel Creech 59:45

Yes, sir.

Frank Curzio 59:45

For 2026? Come on, give me one. I’m not going to let you off the hook before we go.

Daniel Creech 59:50

No, I can’t do that because it was a recent, it’s my most recent CRA.

Frank Curzio 59:54

Oh, I love that. That’s such a good plug for business. Good job. Thank you so much for saying that.

Daniel Creech 59:58

You’re welcome.

Frank Curzio 59:58

I need a pick. I can’t. I just got, you got to subscribe to our newsletters in order to get the pick.

Daniel Creech 01:00:03

That’sright.

Frank Curzio 01:00:04

In order to get the pick. I’m going to go with one company that you guys know. And don’t laugh about it because I said it was going to have a pretty good year. And it’s definitely up from its lows. It’s definitely up. And I’m pretty sure everyone on our portfolio should be up on this name now since we really pounded the table to buy it a lot lower. But there’s a lot of stuff going on at Wrapright now that I think is going to surprise the hell out of anybody at the end of the year.

Frank Curzio 01:00:23

Just, you know, a lot of meetings, a lot of international stuff, the whole, you know, only device in the world that’s non-lethal. And it’s becoming very big internationally. It’s becoming very big in so many of these circles in, you know, DHS and security guards and legalizing it where security guards could use it, which is, I think, six, seven times the market of police. They just, it has a shot to be very, very big right now.

Frank Curzio 01:00:43

And it’s been a shitty road so far. And the stock is up year over year, which is good. But I think this could be the year for Wrap. So that’s the stock I’m giving you. Let’s see. Hold me to it. Everyone help me to Boeing and, you know, wrong being the best Dow performer, but outperform the Dow easily. We’ll see what happens. But guys, thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. And we’ll see you tomorrow at Wall Street Unplugged Premium.

Frank Curzio 01:01:02

Allright, guys. See you then. Take care.

Announcer 01:01:18

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.