Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio 00:00

What’s going on out there? It’s Wednesday, March 4th. I’m Frank Curzio, you’re listening to the Wall Street Unplugged podcast.

Frank Curzio 00:05

We’re breaking down headlines and, uh, tell you what’s really moving these markets. Daniel Creech, what’s going on, man? How’s everything? I mean, not too much to talk about in the markets these days, huh?

Daniel Creech 00:18

Nope, nothing in markets. Happy March. March Madness will be here in a couple of weeks.

Frank Curzio 00:22

March Madness. I, I always relate this back to, uh, Frank Drubbin from Police Squad when the, the building was blowing up in the background and the fireworks, and, and he saw like a guy, like, launch out of the, the fireworks. That’s why he’s like, “There’s nothing to see here. Nothing to see here.” The whole building and all the fireworks going off. Uh, yeah, a lot going on.

Frank Curzio 00:40

I think the most important story by far is that I saw i-is Canada, where sales of cannabis are flat year over year. I mean, nobody’s drinking, no one’s smoking anywhere. What’s going on?

Daniel Creech 00:53

I don’t know. That shocks me. Year over year, they’re flat?

Frank Curzio 00:56

Year over year. Yeah, year over year. Adult sales, whatever that means. I don’t know if they’re tracking sales of kids, but they say adult sales. So, of, of children, I don’t know if maybe they have another stat out there, but I’m assuming that most people who smoke are adults. Uh, but, uh, yeah, surprise. I think, I think, I think we need more people to drink and more people to, to smoke weed.

Frank Curzio 01:13

And ’cause everyone’s angry all the time with protests and everything going on with the big topic, which we’re gonna dig in deep and tell you the best ways to play it and what’s really going on in markets and stuff that you’re probably not hearing in the media because it’s so political right now. But, you know, the war that I ran,right? So the Strait of Hormuz is closed right now. This is an area where 20% of the global oil market flows through.

Frank Curzio 01:33

Well, 5 million barrels of oil per day. We roughly, you know, it’s about a hundred, um, it was a hundred million barrels,right?

Frank Curzio 01:41

Yeah, give or take.

Frank Curzio 01:42

I assume give or take it global.

Daniel Creech 01:44

We’re rounding, yeah.

Frank Curzio 01:44

And it’s leading to a surge in oil prices. We’re well over 70 now, around 74. Also, natural gas prices surging as one of the biggest facilities, the LNG facilities in Qatar, which amounts to 20% of the global LNG supply was attacked. It’s offline. 70% of the LNG from that facility flows into Asia.

Frank Curzio 02:05

So a lot of disruptions taking place. Where do you wanna start? What are your thoughts? ‘Cause I have a lot of places I wanna go with this.

Daniel Creech 02:11

Well, I will say, um, you know, the Trump or the, excuse me, the war investing playbook or blueprint is essentially just log onto Truth Social and check what President Trump is posting about. Um, I’ll say this, and this is a little disclaimer here. I’m not, I’m not trying to talk so straight about what’s going on so nonchalantly because,

Daniel Creech 02:32

you know, the war and the deaths, I don’t care about the Iranian, uh, leadership deaths. I care about the American troops and their families. So worried about that. Frank, correct me if I’m wrong. Here’s what scares me about this. I think it’s brilliant from Trump’s move to try to secure and get the oil flow back to normal. ‘Cause as you just said, 20% of oil,

Daniel Creech 02:51

um, I read that basically 20% of LNG, I know 70% from that facility, but essentially you have 20% of both oil and natural gas or liquefied natural gas flowing through there. Obviously a big deal.

Daniel Creech 03:01

I think it’s very positive that China, it wasn’t President Xi, it was somebody else came out and asked for a, or said, “Hey, you know, we need a ceasefire, you know, getting cut off from Venezuela and now Iran.” They’re probably starting to see a domino pattern. Um, what I don’t like, Frank, is if you can secure this Strait of Hormuz,

Daniel Creech 03:21

why does this not turn into another Russia-Ukraine from a market perspective? And what I mean by that is if you don’t disrupt the oil flow, then is the market, not the individuals, not Daniel and Frank, but is the market going to care about how long this bombing takes place or whatever?

Frank Curzio 03:39

I mean, i-it’s, you bring up a good point,right? I mean, it was such supposed to be such a big deal when, when, you know, this war was gonna be prolonged between Russia and Ukraine,right? And just the politics involved in that was insane,right? And, and it just, you know, whatever. I, I won’t even get to the politics ’cause I’m gonna get tons of emails. I don’t wanna go off on a tangent on that. But, uh, you realize where, you know, we’re not seeing that disruption in oil.

Frank Curzio 04:00

Uh, a-and, you know, make no mistake, guys, oil runs the world. Okay? Forget about, you know, AI, forget about technology, forget about, you know, the pharmaceutical industries or whatever. Oil rules the world,right? And from a national security standpoint, it’s, it’s incredible right now with this move because I,

Frank Curzio 04:19

I don’t understand the politics behind it because we have, you know, and I get it. If you like Trump, you love this move. If you hate Trump, you know, you hate this move. I-it’s just every one of our administrations dating back for 20 years said, “We’re gonna go to war with Iran if they produce a nuclear weapon.” Everyone. You see Clinton saying it. You see Bush saying it.

Frank Curzio 04:37

You see both sides,right? We just had one person that had the balls to actually do it. Uh, from a national security standpoint, it’s incredible how we’re wrecking communist regimes, which I don’t think is being talked about enough. First with Venezuela, now Iran. I mean, these are serious threats,right, to, to, to our children. Uh, how are we getting China tremendously, even Russia?

Frank Curzio 04:56

So I, Iran was generating around 3.3 million barrels of oil crude per day. 1.6 of that goes to China through the Strait of Hormuz, which is closed right now. Uh, and another 500,000 barrels of oil per day, uh, flows to China from Venezuela,right? So this amounts to 17% of China’s total oil imports, which is now cut off.

Frank Curzio 05:15

If you forget about rare earths, forget about everything. I mean, you can’t even drill for rare earths without oil,right? So, uh, where is China gonna get this oil from? You just said, “Well, we’re hoping for a ceasefire.” Damn right they are.

Daniel Creech 05:25

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 05:25

Holy shit. They’re like, “Oh my, you know, we really need this to stop right away,”right? And you’re seeing Iran trying to escalate it and bombing even partners and trying to get prices of oil. I mean, you know, that’s their whole entire business,right? That’s their whole economy is oil and, and exporting oil. But how’s China, you know, a $2 million, $2 million barrel a day hole that they’re in right now? How are they gonna get that?

Frank Curzio 05:45

Iran also supplies tons of weapons to Russia. They’re not supplying any weapons to Russia right now with the war. Uh, so how is that gonna impact the war against Ukraine,right? So this clearly weakens Russia. And, you know, we can’t forget the importance of oil and what has happened in the United States over the past 20 years. And this is something that I, I covered extensively.

Frank Curzio 06:04

I visited every major shell area, you know, 20 counties, 30 counties in each of these areas in the Permian Basin, in the Eagle Ford. We, I flew to North Dakota and the Wilson Basin, you know, just in Pennsylvania, you know, just to learn about these technologies when, you know, it was, I believe, 2010, ’11, ’12, like just blown away. Holy shit. Like shell technology. ‘Cause now the US is the largest producer in the world.

Frank Curzio 06:25

When you accounted for oil and liquids, we produce around 22 million barrels of oil per day. We consume 20 million. We don’t need oil from anywhere. And we could produce and turn those forces on tremendously, which, by the way, the shell producers are like, “We’re not gonna do that. We’re not gonna take advantage of high oil prices,” which means they are definitely gonna take advantage of oil prices. So, you know, just do the opposite of what they’re saying.

Frank Curzio 06:45

They’re supposed to take advantage of oil prices. They’re like, “It’s gonna take months.” It doesn’t take months. It takes weeks to turn it back on. Uh, I know this technology very well. Uh, and when you can make a lot more, I mean, this is massive margin. This is the difference between gold going from 4,000 to 5,000. I mean, it’s massive. It’s, the margins for these companies, a breakeven could be 3,000, 3,500.

Frank Curzio 07:05

So, you know, 4,000’s cool. 5,000 gold is insane. Like 70 barrel, $70 a barrel compared to 55 is, is, is massive. And we’re at 74. So from, you know, a national security standpoint, look, look, it, it makes us an absolute powerhouse. You can’t make weapons, chemicals, can’t produce energy without oil.

Frank Curzio 07:25

Uh, so this move from a national security standpoint makes America much, much, much more powerful as a nation, uh, while also lowers the risk of having crazy lunatics that hate us having access to a nuclear bomb. And, and a lot of people comparing this to the weapons of mass destruction, which we all know is bullshit. Listen, every single administration, Democrat or Republican, understands that this is what Iran was doing the whole freaking time.

Frank Curzio 07:45

Okay? So, so the fact that we’re not all on the same page here bothers me. It really does. Uh, the fact that we’re seeing, you know, protests where Iranian women are celebrating in the streets because the current regime discriminated against them and treating them like, like pieces of shit. Uh, but our liberal women out here who are not Iranian are protesting against a war. And I don’t know why they’re doing that.

Frank Curzio 08:04

If you’re protesting, “Well, our troops shouldn’t be there,” I’m gonna tell you from someone who knows a lot of troops who visit facilities, who went to the National Security Seminar, this is what they prepare for. This is what they do. Okay? And if you don’t wanna do that, you don’t wanna go to war, you don’t join the military. These people are trained to be heroes. It’s almost like a fireman. If you don’t wanna go into fires and put fires out and be a hero, don’t be a fireman. Be a policeman.

Frank Curzio 08:24

So I don’t understand the protests here only because whenever Trump does, you’re gonna do the opposite. I’m just surprised that we’re not more on the same side. Uh, ’cause like I said, if you love Trump, you love this move. If you hate Trump, you’re gonna take the opposite of whatever he does. I just, I’m surprised there’s not a more united front. And, and the assholes in Congress that are saying, “You need to let us know what you’re gonna do first with all the massive leaks and everything,” yes,

Frank Curzio 08:44

let’s let you guys know who know nothing about war, exactly the process of what we’re going to do and how we’re gonna talk at Iran. That’s exactly what we wanna do, especially when all these countries are actually paying you through offshore accounts, which we all know is factual. So, you know, politics aside and all the bullshit i-is, when I look at America, it makes us much stronger by weakening these communist regimes that hate our guts that if they had nuclear weapons,

Frank Curzio 09:04

they would kill us. Uh, so, you know, outside of that, when I’m looking at the Strait of Hormuz, you brought up a good point, Daniel. Once it opens, it’s gonna be different. Uh, boats are scared to go through this canal right now because not just because of the dangers and, and, you know, Iran’s like, “We’re gonna bomb everyone who goes through,” but also the insurance rates for shipping companies have gone through the roof.

Frank Curzio 09:23

Love insurance companies, biggest scams in the world. I love it. You know, you give insurance for this and now they’re gonna jack up the rates completely,right? Uh, so which Trump came out and what did he say? He said that, you know, he’s countering this by saying the US will escort these boats and insure the tankers,right? So it’s assuming that this is gonna open. So you have the US protecting these boats. They’re gonna get insured.

Frank Curzio 09:42

This is gonna open, which means for me, what I think is what you said is I think oil prices are gonna level out here. Barring Iran doesn’t stop bombing all of their Middle East partners, but the fact that we do produce so much oil in the US is such a big deal because 20 years ago, if this would happen, I mean, our markets would be down tremendously.

Frank Curzio 10:02

And they’re not down tremendously. They’re down whatever, 2%. Uh, and I saw a couple of stats here, which I, which I thought is, is amazing because when you look at the US and everyone’s like, “Everyone’s getting off the dollar,” and notice what the safe haven is right now,right? Is the dollar. Notice how our market is down about 2% in the past two days before today. And the rest of the markets,

Frank Curzio 10:22

the global markets on average are down more than 5%. And a lot of that has to do is ’cause we, if we didn’t, if we didn’t produce our own oil, we’d be down more than the overall markets. This happened 20 years ago. We’d be fucked. We’re not because of the amount of oil we produce. So that’s a really big deal.

Daniel Creech 10:33

Yeah. It’s, it’s wild. And quickly on the insurance because, and, and I’m not, I’m not the reporting expert here, but just take everything with a, with a grain of salt. The Strait is not closed technically. Nobody can, nobody can say it works.

Frank Curzio 10:46

It’s not closed. Yeah.

Daniel Creech 10:46

No, it’s not closed technically. Just like.

Daniel Creech 10:48

It’s closed technically because nobody can get insurance.

Frank Curzio 10:51

Just like technically we’re not at war.

Daniel Creech 10:52

So that’s what you’re right. Yeah.

Daniel Creech 10:53

Right. Well, so technically I don’t think Russia is either. I think they’re doing a military opera, you know, it’s like a, they don’t even use that word.

Frank Curzio 11:00

But technically Sam Altman did not have a kid.

Daniel Creech 11:04

He didn’t. Anyway.

Frank Curzio 11:07

Before we got on, Daniel had the best rant that I wish we would taping. I really wish we would tape it.

Daniel Creech 11:11

We’re gonna look at that Bond villain in a minute. Are we gonna, are we gonna talk about how our coin flipping between a goofball, curly-headed guy and a Bond villain guy are running the biggest AI models? Quickly on insurance, Frank.

Frank Curzio 11:22

Yes.

Daniel Creech 11:24

That’s why I said you pay attention to the insurance.

Frank Curzio 11:25

Greatest companies in the world. Greatest companies in the world. Just, I’m just saying that.

Daniel Creech 11:27

So they’re not gonna insure anybody at, at anywhere reasonable rates. So Trump is directing some office I’d never heard of in the US government to step in, provide insurance and all that, or escort with the US Navy. Obviously that’s a big deal. But the flow, again, not to talk easily about war, but if the flow of oil continues, uh, that’s the good thing.

Daniel Creech 11:47

In the meantime, um, I would not, I, I’ve learned my lesson, Frank. You know, I love the shippers around chaotic times. So you have NAT, uh, FRO, um, NAT, Nordic American Tankers, the insiders, the gentleman that owns it and his son, I think they both own now 5.5 million shares. They’re constantly doing insider buys.

Daniel Creech 12:07

But Frank, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not touching these because I get my kicked every time. These are more trading vehicles in my opinion. But charts, they’ve clearly broken out with, uh, the nervousness there. I just don’t wanna chase it here. Outside of that, the blueprint for me is, Frank, if you like companies like Dell or the AI Powerplays or whatever,

Daniel Creech 12:27

again, I’m not looking over the war as it’s not important. I’m simply saying unless, I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet from volatility, but unless you really think this is gonna turn into a boots on the ground Iraq mess, which I don’t right now, I think you look at buying the best of names on this pullback and knowing it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for the next month or so.

Frank Curzio 12:45

Listen, I, I, I, I agree. I couldn’t agree more. Uh, I, buy ever the pullback we’ve seen in the past 50 years, buy the dip and names that were killing it before this started. Okay. Consumer staples are doing great. Did you see Target today? Target’s on our portfolio. We’ll break that down more. Target’s up 25% this year. 25% this year.

Daniel Creech 13:00

About freaking time.

Frank Curzio 13:01

Right? With, with the market relatively flat. Uh, yeah. Best Buy come out. I wouldn’t say there were solid numbers. Just the expectations were so freaking low because they, they can’t grow revenue at all anymore. Uh, you know, but Netflix now they’re no longer buying Time Warner. Another stock we have in the portfolio, I think, is really gonna take off.

Daniel Creech 13:15

Yeah. Good call last week there. Back for more and it’s on our side now.

Frank Curzio 13:18

Yeah. Listen, we knew that they were going to, I know that was the, actually that was last week,right?

Daniel Creech 13:24

That was your, that was your thing. Yeah. The day after. Unfortunately, and we did send it out. We’re talking to premium subscribers on Thursdays here. Sorry, everybody. On Wednesday, we did send it out during the do day. I know a lot of people didn’t get that, but then after close is when the news comes.

Frank Curzio 13:35

And Dell too. Dell too said that it wouldn’t be surprised. Dell.

Daniel Creech 13:38

We don’t have that one, Frank. You can’t take a big deal from that.

Frank Curzio 13:40

We don’t have, but we did say that like, like that stock, I could see that stock reporting very strong earnings and it taking off. All it cost us just flat.

Daniel Creech 13:45

Yeah. It went up 20%.

Frank Curzio 13:46

It’s been, it hasn’t done anything and been down for such a long time. I’m like, this is, and, and went up 20% that day. But Netflix, look, you know, that was a good call, Netflix. I’ve had bad calls. That was a good call ’cause nobody had Netflix. Nobody, everyone’s like, “Oh, this deal is a done deal.” And, and listen, politics, we keep telling you how important politics are. You could listen, you could hate what we say, whatever. Our job is to make you money. Just, just, you know, you gotta get behind.

Frank Curzio 14:05

These companies need to, you’re looking at a board of directors that lost, what’s her name? Susan Rice, whatever her name is. Uh, uh, basically it’s because of her. This, this is gone,right? I mean, Netflix is just anti-Trump. They were anti-Trump the whole entire time. Even when it became president as a corporation, just shut your mouth. You don’t have to like be, you know, go total opposite direction like Salesforce did.

Frank Curzio 14:25

Oh, you know, we need troops in the street and stuff like that. But you, you know, you just, you shouldn’t keep going and going and going. And, and I could tell you that people at CNN are shaking in their boots right now from people that, uh, two different people that I spoke to that are in that industry, uh, because they don’t know what they’re gonna do. Those operations with Paramount, they saw when Paramount took over CBS, uh, you know, they had massive layoffs and stuff.

Frank Curzio 14:43

And, and yeah, people were very happy with the Netflix at CNN, obviously. But, uh, yeah, it’s gonna be interesting to see. But Netflix, yes, no longer buying Time Warner. That thing’s probably just gonna goright back to 120, 130. Uh, data centers, nuts and bolts in AI, not necessarily the hyperscalers,right? We haven’t been saying, “Well, just buy all the hyperscalers.” We do have Google in the portfolio. That’s, that’s killed it.

Frank Curzio 15:02

But it, it’s this $600 billion, guys, that are flowing this year and it’s gonna go way up to 7, 7, 800 billion next year. That’s gonna flow down. This money has to flow down to these companies. So a lot of these names have gotten hit. I just think there’s, there’s tremendous opportunity there. I would continue to avoid software companies. I’m not hearing from the CEOs. We told you ones that we would buy that are benefiting a little bit from,

Frank Curzio 15:22

uh, from AI, but a lot of them are not. And I’m not even with Crowd, CrowdStrike, I, I’m not hearing the CEOs come out and really convince me enough. Like Salesforce’s like, “Hey, I wouldn’t say it’s 2% of your revenue,” you know? So, so, you know, you’re not gonna have pricing power anymore. Uh, when it comes to oil stocks, I think that their earnings are gonna be huge, uh, which is really big, Daniel, for the S&P 500.

Frank Curzio 15:44

And I could tell you why. This is the only sector out of the 11 in the S&P 500, you have the 500 stocks that, that are within like 11 sectors. The only one that report a year-over-year declines in revenue. Oil last couple of years have been this massive drag. While you have these technology earnings are surging, the stocks aren’t doing well, but they’re still report, reporting great numbers.

Frank Curzio 16:03

But oil has been a drag on the overall S&P 500. You’re taking that out of the market now because these guys are gonna generate a shitload of money. Expect huge buybacks from these companies. They’re gonna raise their dividends. Some might pay special dividends.

Frank Curzio 16:15

And you say, “Well, if oil comes down, as long as oil holds like 68, 70 bucks,” which I think it will here ’cause there’s just too much uncertainty and it’s gonna be like that because this war’s not gonna end in a few weeks, like Trump first said, uh, you’re gonna see these oil stocks report unbelievable earnings and they, they’re gonna be buying back their stock.

Frank Curzio 16:32

I mean, these, these companies are, are run very well compared to past times when we’ve seen oil go down in the 50s and stuff like that in the 60s, uh, you know, from $100. They’re, they’re, they’re just well-run companies. And now you’re gonna see those profits take off, which is gonna be good for the overall S&P 500, which I think is expecting 14% growth in earnings, which is probably gonna be even higher now.

Frank Curzio 16:53

You took the worst sector out of it and now you’re gonna see that growth going forward. And this is the beginning of the year,right? So, you know, going forward, we’re really gonna see those earnings, uh, as long as oil stays, uh, relatively high, which again, this conflict is not gonna end, you know, in weeks. It just won’t. So, and more evidence to buy the dip. One last thing here, Daniel. According to Jefferies, buying equities, uh,

Frank Curzio 17:12

at the onset of major conflicts has produced pro-positive outcomes in roughly 68% of cases. So, and that’s going one month. In six months, 62%. In one year, 71% of the time during these conflicts, when you’re buying, it ends up much, much higher. Okay.

Frank Curzio 17:29

And, and if you, if I dug into the research ’cause you always have these subsets and basically those returns would be like 85, 90% if you took out, uh, the oil embargo, all the stuff when we didn’t produce a lot of oil. These are like shocking events from like past 25 years ago where we saw the markets really get crushed,right? If you took out those events and just went over the 20 years, that number’s more like 80, 85%.

Frank Curzio 17:49

So the negatives, let’s be fair. I’m not sure how you get a regime change in Iran when you have no ground forces to implement it. Like, oh, people rise up and, you know, we’ve done that to other countries. They rose up and then we left,right? So.

Daniel Creech 18:02

Well, we have a history of arming, arming other people, Frank.

Frank Curzio 18:05

Yes. Uh, the war, like I said, is gonna take longer than a few weeks. Uh, I think it will. I think that’s being priced in now. Uh, so the market’s gonna be volatile, I, I think over the next few months, giving you plenty of opportunity to buy your favorite names on pullbacks. So I’m expecting earnings to be strong, but this is a buy America market right now. And I, I just think that, you know, it’s gonna be volatile. Be smart.

Frank Curzio 18:25

Uh, I wouldn’t go all in. You don’t know what happens. This war could escalate very, very quickly if I ran the size of the bomb lot of its Middle Eastern partners. Uh, and oil would probably go to $100 if that happens. I don’t see that happening as a, since they don’t have a Navy and Air Force, which we’re hearing from our president, uh, that’s taken ’em out already. But, you know, for now, I think it’s a good buy the dip market.

Frank Curzio 18:43

It’s gonna be volatile and, uh, it gives you a good opportunity to, to buy stocks when, uh, when they pull back here.

Daniel Creech 18:49

Yeah. I agree. I mean, I, I don’t think volatility’s out of the woods yet, but, uh, you know, don’t, don’t go all in and then be upset if you read a headline and our market’s down 2.5 or 3.5% at the open one day. So.

Frank Curzio 18:59

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, allright. Let’s switch too and see it,right? There’s a lot going on. I get it. Every place, you know, everyone wants to know what’s going on with, with, with the war, but how you could benefit and, and hopefully, you know, we, we gave you lots of ideas there. I will say there’s a big story in the market with Block,right? Who, who basically laid off 40% of its workforce, 4,000 of the 10,000 employees.

Frank Curzio 19:19

Some people argue, well, they, that’s all the employees they hired since COVID. Um, okay. But if that’s the case, how come they didn’t fire ’em in 2022, 2023, 2024,right? Why are you firing ’em now? They’re firing ’em now because of AI. Okay. So you could believe whatever Dorsey said that advances in AI, change what it means to run and build a company.

Frank Curzio 19:39

To me, these layoffs come as no surprise. What are your thoughts, the initial thoughts on this?

Daniel Creech 19:43

I will take the other side on this because I, now when I take the other side, I mean.

Frank Curzio 19:48

You got a chart, man.

Daniel Creech 19:49

This specifically. Yeah. And, um, this is when I got wrong, uh, in CRA. I think I bottom ticked it if you pull back. I think I sold it back in May. It was horrible. Anyway, the point is, Frank, I’m not trying to badmouth Jack Dorsey here, but there seems to be a pattern with him and other founders like this. And again, I’m not,

Daniel Creech 20:07

I’m not putting them down, but there’s a certain culture that doesn’t care about making money, Frank, and from a business standpoint. And you know this better than me. There’s a lot of businesses that aren’t profitable and all this kind of stuff. The reason I say all that, Frank, Jack strikes me as a guy that,

Daniel Creech 20:28

like a kumbaya type. Okay. And what I mean by that is, do you remember when a guy named Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X?

Frank Curzio 20:37

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Creech 20:37

Do you know how many people he fired from Jack Dorsey’s team?

Frank Curzio 20:40

Like everybody.

Daniel Creech 20:41

About 80%.

Frank Curzio 20:42

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 20:42

And he even was critical, he being Elon Musk, saying this, this is unbelievable. Like people don’t do anything here. Now, I’m not saying that’s all and I’m not accusing everybody that doesn’t work at Block or XYZ.

Frank Curzio 20:53

Good point.

Daniel Creech 20:53

I’m simply saying there is a pattern here of overhiring, uh, or it seems to be with Jack Dorsey. Um, why now? I would like to think, Frank, and again, I don’t know exactly, but I think you and I hit this nail on the head pretty well. And this is what, one of the reasons we got into Palantir when we did around 25 a share,

Daniel Creech 21:14

the market started forcing the hand of nonprofitable companies to get their act together. Block is the same way. They have not been profitable for a long time on a general accounting accepted principle. And I think that with interest rates, I, I honestly don’t know what his reason for right now is other than the fact that like, hey, things are getting so good here and this is just such a drag.

Daniel Creech 21:35

We need to turn the profit machine on. Um, that’s a guess from Daniel Creech, but I wanna hear your thoughts ’cause we can go back and forth on this AI. I agree with you. The AI is gonna be disruptive to the job market. I’m just not ready to go in. Uh, I, and did you see his post on X, how he told everybody this? The guy didn’t even take time to capitalize letters,

Daniel Creech 21:57

periods, sentences, all that kind of stuff.

Frank Curzio 21:58

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Creech 21:59

I mean, I, you gotta enjoy this guy.

Frank Curzio 22:02

I, I, I mean, look, you’re not gonna fire 40% at once,right? I mean, that, that’s, that’s something that you never hear. So it, it’s, you know, it’s not because they’re doing bad. Uh, you know, yes, you can get rid of employees. And the way he said, he’s like, “Look, we could make this slow, but it’s gonna destroy morale.” I appreciate that because he’s right. ‘Cause I think companies where you have,

Frank Curzio 22:21

you know, you do have these layoffs and you’re like, “Holy shit, am I next and am I next and am I next?” And it really does. It, it really destroys a company when you do that. So, uh, listen, I, I think this a lot has to do with AI. Uh, it is a technology company. AI is replacing so many industries at the quickest place, at quickest pace that, that you’ve ever seen. We’ve highlighted this for over two years.

Frank Curzio 22:41

Uh, and, and I think the bigger thing, I mean, it just comes to no surprise. You’re gonna see more companies do this now that they opened the door for this. But if you’re looking over the next three years, the economic textbooks are gonna have to be rewritten because everything, it’s kind of like when, you know, inflation was supposed to be transitory. Like they didn’t understand that.

Frank Curzio 23:00

They didn’t understand it because the last time we did this and bailed out the world, we gave money to the banks. The banks decided to lend it. This time we’re like, “Here, everyone, everybody gets a check. You get a check. You get a check. You get a car. Like Oprah, you get everybody.”

Daniel Creech 23:10

Everybody gets a car.

Frank Curzio 23:11

And you know, they just, they, it wasn’t in the textbooks ’cause nobody ever handed out $5 trillion to, to businesses and PPP loans and to people free. So they, you know, usually economists, I’m not saying anything bad about them, but you know, they’re great. They study past,right? All the past. And then they, that’s how they dictate. They’re like, “Okay, based on this, this is what happens.” So there’s no like innovative thinking. I could tell you right now, I think the unemployment rate in three years is gonna go to 10%.

Frank Curzio 23:31

And I think the economy is going to boom. And there’s not one textbook that says that that should happen. Usually when you have unemployment going through the roof, it means that you’re going to come away where, you know, there’s not, not people in the workforce and that translates into a weakened economy, less people spending. And if you want data, uh, to support this, uh, David Sacks reported, uh, something in Anthropic.

Frank Curzio 23:51

He showed a job listing. There was a job listing on Anthropic for a software engineer on their website for $570,000. That’s more than 95% of CEOs make, $570,000. So what Anthropic is saying is that, you know, they’re, they’re hiring software engineers. This is just one at a very, very high rate.

Daniel Creech 24:10

And the story, Frank, AI’s not killing jobs.

Frank Curzio 24:11

Yeah. Right. But, but you’re hiring one guy for 570 that’s taken the place of eight people. You still have that big money and that guy’s gonna buy a big house and that guy’s gonna be spending that money. But what you’re doing is you’re gonna get more and more people that are unemployed. Uh, and you know, 570s, whatever, seven, eight salaries on average, you could say for, for, so, you know, eight people get fired, but the spending is gonna stay the same,

Frank Curzio 24:32

if not go higher because you’re hiring more and more people for these AI at higher prices, uh, and higher salaries. So I could see the economy growing. You, you could look at the S&P, more data as the S&P where profit margins are the highest. I think they’re closing in on 14%, the highest they’ve been in 15 years. Okay. You can’t tell me AI’s not part of that.

Frank Curzio 24:50

Uh, we’ve highlighted how the biggest companies in the world, my 30-year career plus career, I’ve never seen companies at their all-time highs, which we’ve been pretty close to. And this is before some of the hyperscalers have pulled back, but I’ve never seen where these companies are at all-time highs and laying off employees. Usually business is good. We wanna hire more. We wanna grow more.

Frank Curzio 25:09

We wanna scale more. No, that they’re cutting back,right? So, you know, a lot of this has to do with AI and we’re just scratching the surface on agentic AI, which is digital people that are 24-hour workers that are not gonna bitch, they’re not gonna answer your back, they’re not gonna complain about anything, HR, no one, this and that and what you could say.

Frank Curzio 25:27

And, and I, I called someone her instead of they, none of that shit anymore. You know, just all this craziness that goes with 401(k)s. I mean.

Daniel Creech 25:36

I think your agentic AI is gonna be pronoun or pronoun accurate. Is that how you say it?

Frank Curzio 25:41

I don’t even think it matters. No one’s gonna talk to it other than just doing their work,right? So it’s just gonna do the work for you. So.

Daniel Creech 25:46

If your AI bot calls me they, Frank, we’re gonna have a problem.

Frank Curzio 25:48

Oh, I’m definitely gonna set that up to do that. Yeah. ‘Cause we’re definitely looking all until.

Daniel Creech 25:52

Hey, it.

Frank Curzio 25:52

Every company needs.

Daniel Creech 25:53

What would you like to talk about today?

Frank Curzio 25:54

Yeah. Oh my God. It’s so funny. It’s so funny. But so, so when I, when I look at AI, I mean, to me, this story’s a very, very big deal. It’s just showing, uh, of how AI is taking jobs and you’re not gonna lay off. Listen, I hear what you’re saying and you brought up a good point in, in like how many extra jobs they have for X and how Elon Musk fired so many of those people. But to me,

Frank Curzio 26:13

it’s just, yeah, 40% at once is telling me that, wow, there’s a lot of good stuff going on. And, and it’s sad. It sucks. Put up a chart of the stock again, Joe, in the past week.

Daniel Creech 26:24

Yeah. It surged 20%right on that news.

Frank Curzio 26:26

I mean, you know, there’s something wrong about that. There is something wrong. I mean.

Daniel Creech 26:32

Oh, no offense. It’s cut through, but what’s wrong about it?

Frank Curzio 26:33

I’m just saying.

Daniel Creech 26:34

You’re massively saving people.

Frank Curzio 26:35

I’m just saying, listen, it’s, listen, we’re business and this is great. The company goes higher and you high five and if you’re in the stock. I’m just saying like you’re laying, people are losing their jobs and it’s resulting in such great news for the company. It’s just, you know, I don’t know, the moral part of it.

Daniel Creech 26:50

Oh, it’s up. Yeah. I mean, we’re not, we’re not saying it’s not painful for those.

Frank Curzio 26:53

But what we do is we talk about stocks and everything and Block, I mean, if you can cut back 40% of your employee, that’s your largest expense for every freaking business outside of the hyperscalers who now decided to spend $600 billion, four or five of them. Uh, but salaries is just, holy cow.

Frank Curzio 27:08

If you can cut back 40% of your salaries, your profit margins are gonna go absolutely through the roof and every employee’s gonna be incredibly happy who exists with the company because they’re gonna get pretty much good bonuses at the end of the year ’cause it’s gonna be so much money, so much cash flow that, that you’re gonna generate. And, and that’s what companies are doing. That’s a company’s job. Bottom line, you see shit like the company’s job is to,

Frank Curzio 27:27

to increase the, the number one goal, increase productivity, lower your costs, increase output, make more money,right? How do you lower costs and produce more? How do you scale,right? This is all about productivity and, and AI. We can’t see the limit. This is, I say it over and over again with this trend. It’s the first trend I’ve ever seen where scalability is infinite.

Frank Curzio 27:44

You cannot see like when this is going to end yet because you could still see massive, massive, massive productivity gains. That’s why the biggest companies with the smartest people in the world on their staffs that have been through boom and bust markets for 30, 40 years are spending more money than they’ve ever spent on this trend. That’s how groundbreaking it is and, and how game-changing it is.

Daniel Creech 28:02

Did you see, um, if you wanna stick on AI for a moment, did you see Larry Ellison’s comments about how all AI models are.

Frank Curzio 28:11

Yeah. He’s a software company.

Daniel Creech 28:12

Training on the same data.

Frank Curzio 28:14

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 28:15

And it’s gonna commoditize them.

Frank Curzio 28:16

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 28:16

And then he was saying.

Frank Curzio 28:17

But that argument’s been there for two and a half years. Like all the data they’re getting is the data that’s off the internet,right? So that’s how they’re training themselves here.

Daniel Creech 28:23

Yeah. Which is true. I, I thought it was good for him. You know, when Daniel Creech says something, nobody cares when Ellison says it. You pay attention. What I was getting to, and I think is neat on what you’ve hinted at in the past, is he said Ellison was making the point of, hey, the real bread and butter or the real, in my opinion, cash and opportunity would be for private data. And you know,

Daniel Creech 28:43

you’ve talked about different retailers and all this kind of stuff making deals, you know, online. Uh, I know it’s not a retailer, but like Reddit and online platforms, uh, making deals with large hyperscalers. Did you see Newsmax make a deal with Meta essentially for the same thing around AI?

Frank Curzio 28:58

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 28:58

I, my point was, A, do you, do you have any comment on Ellison saying, hey, the real bread and butter or opportunity is in private data? And then he went into say how Oracle is using AI for private data and that’s better than the large language models on positive.

Frank Curzio 29:16

That’s great what he said. And I, I agree to some extent where, yes, a lot of this is being trained, but the agentic AI, this, the difference is this is inference. They’re learning and they’re learning by real outcomes of what your business is producing. So yes, they’re gonna take everything in the past on how to operate the business, how to do everything.

Frank Curzio 29:31

The biggest thing with agentic AI, why we’re just scratching the surface, probably we’re in the first inning is these bots are learning,right? And they’re acting autonomously and constantly improving themselves. We’re not even close. We’re not close to the point where, like if we used agentic AI and had all these bots where I could say, okay, just do everything for me, but we’re pretty close to where they could,

Frank Curzio 29:51

they could probably produce 60, 65% and that’s gonna go to 75%. It’s gonna go to 90%. It’s gonna go to 95%,right? And then you have the AGI,right? So it, it’s, yeah, it, it’s, it’s increasing workflow. I understand what he’s saying. I get it. But the fact that they’re in the private data network, they’re learning and getting better and better how you get better outcomes.

Daniel Creech 30:11

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 30:11

Okay. How you increase your funnels. Okay. These funnels are working,right? So all this data that we used to manage through CRMs and stuff like that, you’re getting it fractions of a second much quicker. Oh, I need to change the headline on this. This isn’t working. Okay. Now it’s working. Holy cow. Now we’re getting 70 cents, uh, for every dollar on, on a return on ad spend, which now means I could scale the shit out of this. You’re gonna get those decisions like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang now,right? And, and that’s what he’s talking about. And I think.

Daniel Creech 30:33

Well, this just goes to your point on who owns the data is what really, that’s your bread and butter. And that’s what he was saying.

Frank Curzio 30:38

You own the data. That’s why Amazon is just a matter of time. Meta is just a matter of time. I mean, three point whatever, 8 billion, whatever they say, how many people have, you know, unique visitors and, and have accounts or whatever it is. Uh, you know, and, and that’s the thing. Newsmax, you should be, I didn’t hear that news about Newsmax, but when I heard that news about.

Daniel Creech 30:53

It just went across briefings recently. Yeah.

Frank Curzio 30:55

Yes. I mean, that it’s a scream and buy because basically you’re gonna see this outcome tremendous. You’re gonna give all of you, and they have a lot. I know, I know the deep, you know, inner workings of, of Newsmax. I had a close friend that worked there. Uh, you know, uh, who is it? Ruddy. He’s great. And, and the amount of data, they, they were actually selling newsletters there for a long time. They had massive,

Frank Curzio 31:14

massive newsletter following and said, okay, we’re going all in conservative business, starting a news channel and stuff. Uh, their reach is massive. I mean, they have tons of people. Now you’re throwing AI all over that. And that’s exactly what Google wants. And Google’s gonna say, hey, you have free access to our cloud, cloud all services and everything. We just wanna be able to get those names and put them through the million of other data sets. This way we learn more about them for all the other advertisers,right?

Frank Curzio 31:35

So it’s why, uh, everyone in the newsletter industry loves tapping that news, Newsmax conservative list of people that wanna, that believe the world’s gonna end and buy gold right now. So.

Daniel Creech 31:44

Yeah. It’s working for ’em now.

Frank Curzio 31:45

Yeah. It’s working for them right now. Absolutely. So, uh, yeah, no surprises there. So.

Daniel Creech 31:51

Now I’m second guessing myself. I know it was the news though.

Frank Curzio 31:55

I didn’t see, yeah, I didn’t see the news on that. I just know Reddit did the same and Reddit’s changed the whole landscape of their company. Uh, really, I think it was below a hundred. I changed the whole landscape of their company once they did that deal, uh, with Google. So, uh, allright. Let’s go to, uh, private equity,right? And not private equity, but private credit, like the private credit market.

Frank Curzio 32:17

So Blackstone’s flagship private credit fund had lots of outflows, 1.7 billion. Uh, redemption requests from the 82 billion Blackstone private credit fund, uh, known as the symbol is BCRED, rose to 7.9%. So basically 8% of its assets. And everyone’s saying private credit is, you know, this massive concern.

Frank Curzio 32:39

Holy shit. And a lot of this, even it’s, you know, software companies, a lot of these companies have, have access to software companies. We’re seeing some of these companies blow up here. Uh, and I don’t know if it was a CEO who went on for Blackstone or not, but it, it was.

Daniel Creech 32:52

John Gray.

Frank Curzio 32:53

Yeah. He, he.

Daniel Creech 32:53

President, I think he’s president and CEO of Blackstone yesterday.

Frank Curzio 32:55

So he, he was great. But to me personally, I think the private credit thing is overdone. And I always say it’s overdone when everyone’s talking about it. And, and you know, I’m gonna say it’s overdone because we’ve been talking about this for over two years. It’s the reason why we invested in Shakafina. When I sat down with Shakafina, this is one of the private companies we invested in that we raised a lot of money for.

Frank Curzio 33:14

Uh, when I sat down with them, they’re doing a rollup and they have insiders in there have been in the private markets, uh, and the credit markets for such a long time and said like these markets are getting annihilated. So what Shakafina is doing is their rollup is they’re buying these small companies within fictionary space. Uh, and they’re able to buy ’em at 10 cents of the dollar ’cause these guys have these companies,right?

Frank Curzio 33:35

They buy them and they, they’re supposed to basically, you know, restructure them and spin them out and, and you know, have these huge liquidity periods. They’re not able to do that. The valuations of these things came down tremendously. So now you have these businesses on the books and these guys need dry powder. So even if you’re getting rid of it and you’re selling it 10,

Frank Curzio 33:54

20 cents on a dollar, you get rid of it,right? So now you get rid of that asset and now they’re selling it for such cheaper prices. And what I learned two years ago when I sat down with these guys, Shakafina, they’re big into private equity. They, the, the CEO, Scott LaPorter, and, uh, you know, he was responsible for the rollup with Hilton from their hotels and buying casinos and then actually spinning off the casinos.

Frank Curzio 34:15

And he did the same thing during that time. It might’ve been, don’t quote me on it, 2002, 2003, 2004 when casinos weren’t doing that good. So these guys do this and say, okay, this is an industry that sucks right now ’cause we can get assets for 10 cents on a dollar, 20 cents on a dollar. So, you know, I had access, fortune access, knowing that how bad the private markets were and how these guys are just dying to get some of these assets off.

Frank Curzio 34:34

Two years later, we’re still talking about it, which means the whole world knows about it,right? If the whole world knows about it, that means it’s not a big of risk as, as you think. Okay. And you could talk about it, you could sale on it, but when you’re talking about it, everyone sees it, the banks see it, the private equity firms see it, everyone sees it. And I think that’s when the CEO of Blackstone got on. He kind of said that and he was like,

Frank Curzio 34:53

you know, uh, the stock actually is, is up after he was speaking. Uh, you know, and, and you saw a lot of those names within that space start going higher. But I, I just think this is a market that’s overdone. I understand why it’s pushed because if you’re short this market, you wanna push it. And that’s what, ’cause all you need is redemptions. It’s, it’s just a,

Frank Curzio 35:11

it’s, it’s, it’s the easiest way to, to, to make money is to scare the shit outta people,right? And this is what happened with New York Community Bank. This is what happened with, with, um, what was it? Silicon Bank,right? What, what was that? Uh, the, the bank in, in California,right? When, when that crashed.

Daniel Creech 35:26

Yeah. I know.

Frank Curzio 35:26

All you gotta do is say, okay, these assets aren’t insured. And since they weren’t insured, everybody, you, you spark this redemption period. And as people are removing their assets, you get annihilated,right? And, and that’s what you wanna do. And I just think there’s a lot of news flow out there where people are short this market right now. You’re gonna see a lot of covering because everyone’s saying, you know, this market’s dead.

Frank Curzio 35:45

A lot of trouble. The software company’s back. Says, look at this shit. Most of ’em, if you look under the hood, the numbers aren’t as bad. I just think that, um, this, uh, private credit story, uh, and, and this ultimate collapse in this, I, I just think it’s overdone here. It’s probably a good time to buy some of these names, including Blue Owl Capital, which has got annihilated as well.

Daniel Creech 36:04

Yeah. Blue Owl is the, uh, definitely one.

Daniel Creech 36:07

They, you know, they had, and the big scare here is, hey, these private equity companies, uh, Apollo, Blue Owl Capital, KKR, a lot of these guys, Frank, take this with some salt, uh, Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, a lot of these firms basically have 25% exposure of all their loans to software as a service companies.

Daniel Creech 36:28

Okay. So both can’t be true. If AI is going to eat the software platforms and cause them to either earn less money or rerate them, then you have two problems. Either you have to, and now, and a lot of these loans are probably three to five years. Okay.

Daniel Creech 36:44

So I’ve read different numbers about the maturity wall and how much debt needs to be refinanced. It’s in the billions, of course, uh, between this year and next year. But here’s the issue that the coin is still spinning or flipping, uh, in my opinion, Frank. If, if we have debt coming, if we’re an AI company and Blue Owl Capital loans us money,

Daniel Creech 37:06

if our revenues and earnings are gonna get significantly hit, not only do you have to refinance the debt or pay it off, which I’m assuming is not an option, you have to refinance the debt in a higher interest rate environment with lower earnings potential. That is not good. Um, I’m not saying that’s the case across the board. I think you can be selective and start picking up here.

Daniel Creech 37:24

I would just pay attention to the charts and keep it emotional less as possible. Um, I did think to your point about overdone, Blue Owl Capital sold some portfolio assets to meet redemptions and kind of try to put investors’ panic at ease. Didn’t work. However,

Daniel Creech 37:43

what I think is underreported is they sold those assets not for pennies on the dollar, but cents, a few cents off a par. So par is a hundred, meaning, you know, you’re getting your money’s worth. They sold it for 99 and change. They took a little bit of a hit.

Daniel Creech 37:56

But my point is, who’s on the other side of that willing to pay basically fair value for a scary portfolio of software company loans if they’re that upset? So I, I’ll be honest with you. I, I kind of wanted to ask you, if you’re on the other, like, A, I understand why Blue Owl is selling a portion to meet redemptions and ease investor fees.

Frank Curzio 38:18

Yeah. It’s all about redemptions.

Daniel Creech 38:19

But whoever’s on the other side, why are you paying fair value instead of waiting for a deep discount? Is it because you think they’re waiting in and you don’t, you think the portfolio?

Frank Curzio 38:28

Dave, Dave, that point.

Daniel Creech 38:37

Like, it was all reported. They’re selling assets, but very little. I don’t think as much emphasis was on what they sold them for.

Frank Curzio 38:37

Yeah. But I think that portfolio’s probably worth a lot more than, than what it is,right? So, so that’s why they, they, they, you know, you wanna sell your good stuff. You don’t wanna sell stuff that’s a dividend. You gotta raise capital ’cause of redemptions. You wanna sell stuff that you’re gonna get as close to, to par as you can,right? And, and.

Daniel Creech 38:47

Well, that leads to the next fear. If you’re selling all your good assets at par, that means you’re, you’re holding all your crap.

Frank Curzio 38:53

Yeah. And now, and now investors are really gonna, you know, I’m, I’m painting with a broad brush to point to the investor sentiment. But I understand that, hey, if you’re selling off your good assets at par and now you’re holding assets that you couldn’t sell at par, no wonder redemptions are gonna go through the roof. Yeah. I, I mean, redemption’s going through the roof before this. I, I just think,

Frank Curzio 39:11

you know, when you have this story and a lot of these funds also have, have, have, you know, clauses that you can’t, you know, they halt redemptions. Like you can’t, you gotta hold.

Frank Curzio 39:19

Yeah. They can legally say, you know, you know, for a while. And, you know, sometimes people might think that that’s, you know, shady, but in, in, it protects ’em from an environment like this. It pretends, uh, you know, protects ’em from a run. Like on a bank, a bank lends out all its money. I mean, you could have a run on a bank. Uh, you know, so, so with Blue Owl Capital, uh, more evidence of this is,

Frank Curzio 39:38

is one, they, they just wanted to really shore up their balance sheet. But Oppenheimer just came out with a note today on them saying that, look, this is overdone right now. Uh, you have insiders buying Blue Owl right now. So, you know, to me, I think Blue Owl is, is a buy here. I think a lot of these companies are buys here now that they’ve come down. Uh, and, and, and again, I’m familiar with this market. Uh, you wanna scream that there’s fire, uh, from the top of your roof.

Frank Curzio 40:00

If you’re short, that’s what you wanna do. You just have to present the scenario. And when you have these redemptions coming out, you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna get annihilated,right? We saw that with the banking crisis. Not banking crisis, a credit crisis like the recent one with, uh, you know, with, um, Community Bank, New York Community Bank. We saw it with some of the credit banks,right, that, that got nailed because they just have redemptions.

Frank Curzio 40:20

And, and basically Biden said no one could do business with these guys. So not only do they have redemptions coming out, they can’t even get more business because, you know, they were auditing anything that had, any bank that had any crypto exposure on the balance sheet. So for me, I think these are screaming buys. This is a big story. I think these are screaming buys right now. Um, and I, you know, again, I’m opposed to say.

Daniel Creech 40:37

KKR are essentially big insider buys. I haven’t seen any Blue Owl. Doesn’t mean there isn’t any Blue Owl.

Frank Curzio 40:40

Blue Owl. Yeah. The president just bought a hundred thousand shares like today. Uh, so it’s, um, uh, a hundred, oh, more than a hundred thousand dollars worth, worth of stock. I, I just think, you know, following these markets and, and seeing what’s going on and, you know, how easy it is to influence the media and scare people and get these redemptions going, I think they’re gonna hold those redemptions.

Frank Curzio 40:58

I think that these, these stocks are buys right now. And I don’t think, uh, the fact that everyone’s talking about it, the private markets, the private equity, uh, and also just the private credit markets mostly, uh, it’s usually factored in, you know, and just from my experience of doing this for a very long time. So I don’t, I just think that these are screaming buys right now. Moving on. I mean,

Frank Curzio 41:18

I guess we’ll talk about Best Buy tomorrow with their results. They’re interesting. But I, I wanted to, I thought this is like one of the best stories. Did you see the prediction markets that you hear about this story? So the prediction markets.

Frank Curzio 41:29

So on Kalshi and also on Polymarket, I think they had, um, you know, I told Kameny that, uh, there was bets against him and someone made $500,000 on a bet that he would not be, uh, he would no longer be in power by like March 2nd or something on March 1st. Oh, and there was odds on that and he got killed,right?

Frank Curzio 41:50

And then there were the guys, I mean, the guy’s like, yeah, I won my, like I said, and, and I don’t think they’re paying it out because they’re saying, okay, maybe we shouldn’t do this. And I don’t know if you have inside information on that.

Daniel Creech 41:59

They’re not paying it out?

Frank Curzio 42:00

I don’t think they’re paying it out. I think they came out and said they’re not gonna pay that one out or something like that because, uh, I guess you, I don’t know how it works where you can create anything you want there. Maybe you can create anything. It’s, I don’t know if, if it’s Kalshi or Polymarkets, create the market or somebody creates the market like that.

Daniel Creech 42:13

Yeah. I was curious who, who decides.

Frank Curzio 42:15

I don’t know how it actually works. Like who decides like all the topics and everything,right? It’s easy when you’re looking at football games, basketball, but who, who creates all those topics?

Daniel Creech 42:20

How can you put it out there and have volume and then not pay it out?

Frank Curzio 42:23

They add volume and they will, and because I, I think they just thought that it was more like a Venezuela thing and okay, he’s in jail. They didn’t think he was gonna get bombed and, and the whole regime was gonna get wrecked. 49 of those members, you know, got killed. And I don’t think they wanna cheer people getting killed, but it just made me think like, imagine where this could go. I, I imagine if you are a leader or something and,

Frank Curzio 42:42

and, and you know, you’re on Polymarket or one of these markets where there’s tens of millions being waged, waged on you that you’re gonna, you’re gonna be dead in three days and people are betting on that shit. Like, I mean, how crazy is that,right? How crazy is that? I just think it’s really wild. So I do think it’s really wild. But, uh, you know, there’s just so much going on with prediction markets.

Frank Curzio 43:01

They, they wanna regulate it. I don’t know how they’re gonna regulate it because it’s so easy to, to, you know, to create a market. I mean, there’s insiders. We have politicians that trade insider trading all the time, made a fortune, never getting in trouble. And it’s, I guess it’s still legal. Isn’t it still legal?

Daniel Creech 43:15

Yeah. Damn, damn. Well, I guess to my knowledge, they haven’t passed anything. So yeah.

Frank Curzio 43:18

It’s still legal. So.

Daniel Creech 43:19

Sweet old Nancy can still be raking in her millions.

Frank Curzio 43:22

Will Iran close the Strait of Hormuz by? And this is March 31st. It’s not officially closed,right? So.

Daniel Creech 43:29

See, that’s an interesting one because how that, that’s another thing. Iran can’t close anything. So how do you win or lose that?

Frank Curzio 43:38

I don’t know.

Daniel Creech 43:38

Iran doesn’t own it. They can’t close it.

Frank Curzio 43:41

I don’t know. I don’t know the laws around it if who can close it.

Daniel Creech 43:43

Yeah. That’s interesting.

Frank Curzio 43:44

But yeah, it is interesting. It’s not officially closed. Just like when not officially a war,right? Congress has to declare war.

Daniel Creech 43:50

But that’s my point. I mean, hell. I mean, what do you?

Frank Curzio 43:53

I don’t know. Some of these markets are pretty crazy. It really is.

Daniel Creech 43:55

How much volume was on that? Sorry. 11 million.

Frank Curzio 43:58

11 million.

Daniel Creech 43:58

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 44:01

Oh, this is so great.

Daniel Creech 44:02

New Supreme Leader of Iran. Yeah.

Frank Curzio 44:04

Iran strikes, uh, Iran strikes Israel on, see it on the right side, March 3rd, March 4th, March 3rd. Yes. A hundred percent.

Daniel Creech 44:12

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 44:12

You’re on that. But you’re betting on like war outcomes, which is pretty freaking crazy. And, and.

Daniel Creech 44:16

Oh yeah. I’m not making light of that. I just, like I said, I don’t understand how you can.

Frank Curzio 44:21

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 44:22

Yeah. That doesn’t.

Frank Curzio 44:24

I mean, listen, if you’re high up there, if you’re a cabinet member and, and, and you see these markets, it’s pretty easy to make a phone call with somebody to be able to buy this stuff overseas if you know exactly what’s coming before everybody else. I mean, Congress didn’t know this was coming. So, uh, but there are few, there’s obviously the people in Trump’s inner circle that knew what was going to happen and how, when, when we gotta attack them and what was going on.

Frank Curzio 44:43

So it was pretty crazy. Yeah. These markets are just insane. So you can go anywhere with these. But I could tell you, I don’t know how, if you’re looking at, at the fan duels, you know, all the sports books and stuff like that, I don’t know how they make money. I don’t know. This is a clear threat to their business of making the vig.

Daniel Creech 45:02

Oh, absolutely.

Frank Curzio 45:03

You used to make the vig when we had, we had bookies when you were little, you didn’t have all this online shit. You used to, you know, they took 10% of the bet. Uh, you know, they’re making that money,right? So then, they’re the middleman when you, you’re eliminating basically the middleman here. And that’s how you disrupt markets and you destroy companies across the board,right? It’s eliminating that middleman. And, and we’ve seen it time and time again across all these industries.

Frank Curzio 45:22

And, you know, those margins get smaller and smaller. I just don’t know how those guys are gonna survive with, with these, these, these type of markets popping up. And this is just the beginning of this.

Daniel Creech 45:29

Well, they’re joining ’em. I mean, these guys.

Frank Curzio 45:31

They try and they’re investing. They’re joining. They’re trying to get their own predictability.

Daniel Creech 45:34

Robin Hood broke into the brokerage world by doing 0% commissions. They didn’t put anybody out of business. They just made everybody lower their commissions and do fees somewhere else.

Frank Curzio 45:41

Yeah.

Daniel Creech 45:42

And the only reason I say that, DraftKings.

Frank Curzio 45:43

Well, Robin Hood didn’t have a massive, huge, you know, just massive, huge business when they said, okay, we’re not gonna charge like, that was their, that was their, that was their disruption,right? That was their model where these guys are running a model that, no, it’s kind of like with Salesforce and AI.

Daniel Creech 45:55

But DraftKings and everybody else are just doing prediction models now.

Frank Curzio 45:58

Yeah. But they’re not doing prediction.

Daniel Creech 45:59

I mean, they’re gonna jump into it.

Frank Curzio 46:00

Yeah. They’re jumping into it. Meaning that if they do prediction models, remember these guys aren’t generating fees off the prediction models,right? So even if they do prediction models, what’s the business model? How do they make money? How do they generate fees off of it?

Daniel Creech 46:11

Frank, this is the lowest hanging fruit. You know this. This is your ranting hotel. You know, I don’t, I don’t park here. I don’t care. You’re paying a valet fee. You’re paying a parking fee. You know?

Frank Curzio 46:19

Yeah. But you don’t have to pay it if there’s an alternative. I have to park at the hotel.

Daniel Creech 46:22

DoorDash fee. I didn’t order any hotel, hotel food. I don’t care. You’re paying.

Frank Curzio 46:24

Yeah. I mean, I’m at the hotel. I have to stay there. I don’t have to use FanDuo. I can go on the predictability markets and not worry about paying all that commission and, and, and, you know, that money to them. So yeah, it is interesting. It’s definitely interesting. So a lot going on. We’re gonna cover a lot of this stuff tomorrow as well. Uh, so, you know, just, um, my, I reiterate this,

Frank Curzio 46:44

you know, buying on the dip is really, really huge, uh, because, you know, we’ve seen it over the last 50 years. I mean, it just provides good opportunity. The market’s actually taken off today. I just saw them again. So the Russell’s up, uh, 1.2%. NASDAQ’s up 1.2%. So, you know, obviously the Iran tax are going to be, you know, first and foremost and how that escalates.

Frank Curzio 47:04

But overall, just listen, it’s not changing the landscape of US companies that, especially within AI, especially like the targets that are really kicking ass, getting AI involved now, you know, they seem to turn the corner. You know, these are names. I love buying out of favorite names that people say you’re absolutely crazy, but we do have Target in portfolio and it’s doing very well for us, which is nice. But that’s where really we’re focusing right now.

Frank Curzio 47:23

And Deander, what you’re looking at in the markets and what you’re focusing on. So.

Daniel Creech 47:26

Yeah. I mean, like I said, I, I, if you don’t, I’m not trying to make a platform for President Trump here, but if you’re not checking his social media post, uh, tomorrow we’re probably gonna get into crypto, um, because he tweeted directly about the Clarity Act and the Genius Act and all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Creech 47:42

Um, no, like I said, I, I don’t think the volatility is over with all this. Of course, I mean, that’s, that’s not really valuable. My point here is I would look to, and tomorrow I can go into more of this. We had Dell and the Dollar Stock Club portfolio sold out it for a gain. It fell further. Now it’s back to essentially where we sold it. But going through their transcript,

Daniel Creech 48:02

um, Frank, if you just control search for record, it probably comes up 30 times. Record cashflow, record profits, record growth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so my point is, is that yes, this is going to drag on. This is going to be a volatile war. Hopefully the United States, nobody, we don’t lose any more people on our side. And again, I would just use,

Daniel Creech 48:22

I would just scale into your very best names and your high conviction ideas because, and if you wanna take some new risk or new ventures like into private capital, Blue Owl, KKR and all that, that’s fine. I just, I would stick to, uh, the low hanging fruit, which is the stuff we’ve been pounding the table on for a while now.

Frank Curzio 48:39

Yeah. I, I don’t know if you saw Tesla’s upgrade too from Bank of America to.

Daniel Creech 48:43

I did not.

Frank Curzio 48:44

Uh, it’s, yeah, 460 Target. Where’s Tesla right now? Was it 400 around? Uh, yeah. Let me see. Yeah. 404. I, I just, I hate this upgrade. I hate this upgrade. It’s just, you know, one, you talk, it’s being upgraded because of Vanson, autonomous driving, robotaxi services. That, that’s not Tesla.

Frank Curzio 49:03

That’s not why you’re buying Tesla here. I just, you know, they’re, they’re almost late to the market. Waymo’s in a lot of the markets, especially on the West Coast. Uh, it’s up 50% over the past 12 months, 45, 50% over the past 12 months. And yes, it pulled back like, you know, 10% this year. So, you know, a little bit, but it’s still up, you know, a ton if you look at the year chart. Uh,

Frank Curzio 49:22

and, and now you’re talking about robo, like robotaxis was there. Like that, that you, you know, I could see if you think Optimus is gonna be huge, but they also talk about that with, with the robotics part. Uh, what’s the market cap of this? Joe, pull it down. What’s, what’s Tesla’s market cap these days?

Daniel Creech 49:35

What are you buying it for then? Mars?

Frank Curzio 49:37

I have no idea. No, they say ’em ’cause autonomous vehicles, but they also said that, um, they talk about, you know, the Optimus part of the brand and they say it values, they have a value of Optimus, uh, the analyst is placing. And what’s the market cap of the stock?

Daniel Creech 49:52

One and a half T.

Frank Curzio 49:53

One and a half trillion. He’s placing the Optimus humanoid segment at $30 billion. That’s it. Only $30 billion. So that’s all he, he’s, he’s looking at. I mean, to me, when I look at this company, I mean, that’s not the reason why I would be buying Tesla here is because of robotaxis.

Frank Curzio 50:09

I, I think that story was like five years ago of how they’re gonna get into this market and they kind of got in this market a little bit later than some of the competitors and stuff. I just, I don’t like this note. I really don’t. I, you’re upgrading a stock that’s up 50% in, in 12 months. You’re upgrading on shit that people were talking about like two, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago. I mean,

Frank Curzio 50:27

talk about Optimus, talk about whatever, talk about space, talk about you building data centers and whatever it is. But I just.

Daniel Creech 50:33

The price target’s only 460?

Frank Curzio 50:35

460. Yeah. Not 20%. That’s, that’s kind of normal. Right? 460. Yeah. So 460 is 40. Yeah. It’s 15%. So yeah, it, it’s, uh, when I’m seeing upgrades like this, like some upgrades, like another upgrade was too, it was Telsea. I know her. I used to know her when I covered her, uh, you know, and, and she’s, she’s great. She has her own shop now.

Frank Curzio 50:53

I forgot what place. I don’t know if it was, where does she work? Jesus, I forgot. She was so great. She was a, Telsea was great for the retail analyst. Um, I might’ve interviewed her back in the street in the Real Story podcast when I used to do that, but she upgraded. She has her own shop for a long time, but she upgraded Target today. Today you’re upgrading Target? Like now you’re upgrading Target after they reported a great quarter.

Frank Curzio 51:13

Like now, you know, I get it, but it, it’s, you know, where were you? Like where were you on this? Like.

Daniel Creech 51:18

Hey, Target has finally turned it around for us in the portfolio. Their numbers were not that good. And their CEO, who’s been there for 20 years at different things, he went, he did a horrible interview the other day. He did not, I’m sorry, I, I, I want us to make money in that and our subscribers. Did you catch any of that interview he did?

Frank Curzio 51:34

I didn’t catch the interview, but I really liked the quarter because it wasn’t that the numbers for the past 12 months, it’s, it, you clearly see a turnaround.

Daniel Creech 51:41

Let me explain to you why the interview is not good. She asked, what did Target do to lose their way? And he gave no answer. Well, we’re at our best when we give the best products and services.

Frank Curzio 51:49

He wasn’t at the company.

Daniel Creech 51:51

Yes, he was. He’s been there 30 years.

Frank Curzio 51:52

Wait, this isn’t the new CEO?

Daniel Creech 51:53

Not, yeah, but he’s been there forever. He’s not an outsider.

Frank Curzio 51:56

Yeah. Oh, that’s true.

Daniel Creech 51:58

Anyway, hey, I hope we’re, we’re making money. We’re finally in the.

Frank Curzio 52:02

BlackRock. 85 in what? Mid-November? Holy cow. Almost December. 85, 120. I, I, I mean, look at the market cap on this. This is when, when market caps, you have to look at market caps. Look at the market cap of this stock. What is it? It’s not even, what is it? Holy shit. That’s the only market cap. This thing could easily double from here and be, now look at that. So, so you’re looking at a market cap of, what was that? 55, Joe?

Daniel Creech 52:22

Yeah.

Frank Curzio 52:23

55 billion. Pull up Walmart. And I know Walmart’s kicking their ass and I get it. But I mean, you’re looking at Walmart, look how much bigger Walmart is compared to this company. Yeah, they have global brands and stuff like that, but this is the comp. I mean, you’re talking about a, wow, Walmart has a trillion dollar valuation. Look at the valuation on, what is it? Walmart is trading at what?

Frank Curzio 52:41

46 times, um, 43 times, 44 times forward earnings. They’re not even growing earnings that fast. They’re barely growing sales. Uh, I cannot believe the multiple on Walmart that people are paying right now. And, and you’re gonna see this rotation because I think you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see it over the next couple months. I think you’re gonna see rotation where people are like,

Frank Curzio 53:01

you know, Walmart could easily be over a hundred billion dollar market cap and double from here and still be incredibly cheap compared to its bigger, biggest competitor. So, you know, you always wanna look at market cap seriously. Market cap just to see what the valuation is compared to their biggest competitor because your goal is to say, okay, if they can get a small piece of the total addressable market, it should result in it going higher.

Frank Curzio 53:20

If they already captured a large piece and if this was, if, you know, you have Walmart at, at say, you know, 80% of the market, Target’s like 15%, you, you know, there’s room for Target to capture more of the market that they lost over the past couple years. And to me, when I saw that quote, I didn’t listen to the interview, but what I saw is a clear turnaround, uh, of, of a future that looks really bright.

Frank Curzio 53:41

More AI focused than it’s ever been, you know, getting rid of a lot of bullshit, not getting involved in politics as much, you know, and we see when companies are able to turn the corner on, on those initiatives, when, you know, they get buried like Budweiser and stuff like that, that they’re able to do much better and, and, you know, and come back. So this is a brand I think is gonna continue to go higher from you, Target. I think we’re gonna do really well in this position.

Daniel Creech 53:59

Yeah. From a stock price, I, I think you’reright and it, and it should continue to march higher. My point is, is if you’ve been at the company forever and you can’t answer the idea that you went woke as can be and scared your customers off, then I just, I wouldn’t look past it over a trade in my opinion. But hey, I’m not a Tarje fella, Frank.

Frank Curzio 54:18

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything’s, it’s so amazing how much politics is going into stocks right now,right? It’s factors in. I keep, you know, we keep driving home that point of how important politics are and it really is. And you’re even seeing it all over CNBC. Fetterman was on today. It’s just all this, you know, not, it’s, it, it, it’s, it’s dominated by politics. And if you played the right way and you played smart,

Frank Curzio 54:37

it’s not that difficult to make money by, you know, buying the stocks that are doing the right thing, trying to stay outta politics. They’re on politics. They’re at least in Trump’s circle. Be in the current administration circle, no matter if it’s Democrat or Republican, and you’re gonna do fine. If you’re not, you know, look what happened to Netflix missing that bid, which is actually going to be very good for that company, I think, in the long term. That stock’s going to 130.

Frank Curzio 54:56

So, uh, yeah, covered a lot today. Let’s, we’re gonna really dig into a lot of these stocks, more into Target tomorrow, more into Best Buy, more into a lot of the stocks in our portfolio for Wall Street Unplugged Premium. But, um, yeah, guys, if you have questions or comments, feel free to email me, frank@curzioresearch.com. Daniel, what is your email?

Daniel Creech 55:11

Daniel@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio 55:13

Allright, guys. We’ll see you tomorrow. Take care.

Announcer 55:16

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.