Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio

How’s it going out there? It’s Wednesday, April 8th.

Frank Curzio

I’m Frank Gurgeon, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, your breaking headlines, and, uh, tell you what’s really moving these markets. Daniel, how’s it going, man?

Daniel Creech

Hello, Frank, you crazy bastard. Sorry, talking like Trump now.

Frank Curzio

Crazy bastard. I mean, his tweets have been really crazy, although I can’t really see them with my eye, but I’m re-trying to listen to them. But I got a—did you ever get a stye?

Daniel Creech

I have had one, yes.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. And what happens? You get, like, it’s almost like this little pimple on your eye. It gets a little bigger. I use this medicine called styeright here, and it’s supposed to work. And this is what happens when you use that medicineright there. Bang. You get a—I feel like Rocky after, uh, Mick cut my eye. Where was a ref? Like, where was a ref when he cut his eye and blood squirted all over his face?

Frank Curzio

Like, don’t you think that was like a—like a tell back then? But yeah, my eyes—it’s actually better than it was yesterday. So, um, I know a lot of you listen to this on iTunes, but if you happen to watch it now, which you can do that on Apple, you can do that on Spotify and YouTube, um, you probably don’t want to see meright now. Actually, it’s probably very entertaining to take a picture of me. Anyway, lots of cool things. Got the Masters.

Frank Curzio

I want to say congratulations to Michigan. They deserved it. They had the best team. They played fantastic through the whole tournament and beat UConn. I love UConn with the spread, which was six. I mean, it was seven. Seven and a half it was. It went down to seven, and they went—why would it buy six? I love UConn because UConn beat Duke.

Frank Curzio

Duke beat Michigan. They have a great coach that I know they were going to limit to threes and stuff, but Michigan’s just that much talented, and they deserve it. They played—they didn’t really play that well, but they still won that game. And, you know, congratulations to them because they really are the best Michigan team, I believe, even better than the FAT Five. That team is absolutely insane.

Frank Curzio

It just goes to show how NIL,right? All the guys come and roll over the place, new players across the board, even for Arizona, for everyone, all those teams that are up there. NIL, you’re just going to have—you have no idea of what you’re going to predict.

Frank Curzio

Anyone that comes out with the early top 25, top 20 teams for college basketball, it’s a complete waste of time because the number one team can have five brand new people through the portal that are going to go there, and they can come from the pros overseas now. It’s crazy. It’s entertaining,right? It’s more entertaining people watching it than ever, but it’s crazy. And congratulations to Michigan.

Frank Curzio

Doesn’t matter if they won. That’s all anyone cares about.

Daniel Creech

Yep.

Frank Curzio

You love college basketball, don’t you?

Daniel Creech

I do. The hatred for them isn’t near as much as football, but yeah, I like their coach. I mean, I really like their coach. I wish he’d go somewhere else, but whatever.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, no.

Daniel Creech

Good for them.

Frank Curzio

Well, you hate Michigan. Well, you hate every—you hate Michigan. You hate Duke,right?

Daniel Creech

I don’t hate Duke. I hate Michigan.

Frank Curzio

Oh, do you hate Michigan? Oh, yeah. Ohio State, I forgot. I thought for some reason I thought you hated Duke for college basketball. Oh, yeah.

Daniel Creech

Nope.

Frank Curzio

Wow. I didn’t even—I didn’t even, like, try to, like, poke you there, but.

Daniel Creech

Nah, it’s allright. You knew what you were doing under the silver spoon.

Frank Curzio

No, that was cool. I’m glad you said that.

Daniel Creech

But like I said, the rivalry is near. I mean, Ohio State sucks in basketball, so it’s not like a good rivalry.

Frank Curzio

I would say that.

Daniel Creech

Football and basketball is totally different.

Frank Curzio

They got murdered one game, Ohio State. I thought even they won. I don’t know if they beat Michigan, but they came very, very close to beating Michigan. I think I had Michigan this year. Actually, they played a good game. But yeah, anyway, no, I didn’t mean to dig because I don’t consider Ohio State a basketball team at all.

Daniel Creech

Exactly. Nobody does.

Frank Curzio

Football. So, yeah. But congratulations, seriously. Michigan deserves it. And then we have the Masters, which should be really cool,right? We have, you know, Rory won it last year. He had his dinner with the Wagyu filet mignon, which is, you know, Japan beef for those of you who don’t know, which if you ever tried it, you know. Yellowfin tuna was his meal,right?

Frank Curzio

So whoever wins it gets that nice dinner with all the Masters champions, which is really cool. But going into this event should be interesting. I mean, who do you have winning it? Don’t say Cape Cod.

Daniel Creech

Oh, no, he’s playing too bad. I would rather see somebody win for the first time. If somebody repeats, I want it to be like Scheffler or somebody. But, well, I would like an LIV guy to be up there and possibly win. So DeChambeau or Romm or somebody, just because I like the LIV PGA still fight going on.

Daniel Creech

But yeah, if it’s not Scheffler, then I want somebody new to win because, man, what an experience that would be to be a first major for somebody.

Frank Curzio

I like Cam Young. I mean, he’s playing great. I have a close friend that knows him well, and he is as straight as could possibly be. Never drinks, never really goes out. Just all he does is golf, play, golf, play, golf. And he finally broke through, and he looks really good. So coming in, I really, really love.

Frank Curzio

I would say this is a… it’s not a sleeper, but apparently, according to the odds, it’s a sleeper. Colin Maracawa. I mean, he pulled out of the PGA, and I get with back problems, and that was, you know, a couple of weeks ago. So leading up, I mean, I think he was leading the FedEx going in. The last three events, he finished first in Pebble.

Frank Curzio

Seventh at Genesis. Fifth in the Arnold Palmer. He was red, red hot going in. I think he was the favorite at the players. And then he got hurt just swinging. And again, you’re going to take into the fact that and take into account that he’s going in, and he could be hurt, but he’s playing. But 31 to 1 odds. Putting 100 to win 3100.

Daniel Creech

That means his back’s hurt.

Frank Curzio

On Maracawa. Yeah, I know. You have to look at the prediction markets. They always know that stuff, so they know exactly what’s going on before it happens, which is great. But it should be a great tournament. I love it. If you haven’t been to the Masters, definitely go. I’ve been there once. It’s unbelievable. You could just… you could eat off the ground there. The prices are very cheap as long as you’re going to buy, you know, all kinds of merch, which, of course, is merch that you can only get there.

Frank Curzio

It’s, you know, certain things that you’ll only see there. I actually bought a beautiful picture. Spent, you know, a lot of money on it. It was one of, like, 30 of the 11th hole that I still have. This is beautiful. But everything’s kind of cheap there when it comes to sandwiches and drinks to keep those prices very low, believe it or not. And what a place. It’s so beautiful. I’m telling you, man. I mean, I went there. I think it was 2017.

Daniel Creech

I know. But a ticket to get in, if you don’t get the lottery, is freaking 10 grand. I mean, yeah.

Frank Curzio

Is it that much to get in? 10 grand?

Daniel Creech

I was looking at tickets yesterday, and tomorrow’s practice, or today, today’s practice round was… I saw a ticket for 3 grand, and then Thursday was 9.

Frank Curzio

Wow. Is it that much?

Daniel Creech

Yeah.

Frank Curzio

Holy cow. Allright.

Daniel Creech

It’s a lot better than the… what? Is it like 200 if you get in the lottery? It’s under 200, I think.

Frank Curzio

I don’t know. I went through… yeah, sponsorship. I think it was through Merrill Lynch. One of my friends took me and stuff, so I didn’t really care about that. But I didn’t know that that much… yeah. No, that’s insane to go there. No, it’s insane. Plus, you get a much, much better view on TV. It’s that crowded. It’s really nice. It’s definitely a great experience, but not for that price. Now, let’s talk about the markets, because after being down for 100 weeks in a row,

Frank Curzio

which at least that’s what it felt like, today, Daniel, I like to call us Adjustment Day. Okay? So it’s Adjustment Day.

Frank Curzio

And Adjustment Day is interesting because everything is adjusted, which I really don’t understand some of these moves. Okay? Because we knew this was going to happen, and we knew there was going to be a deal between the US and Iran,right? There’s a ceasefire, two-week ceasefire between the nations, and as they try to negotiate a deal. And at this time, Iran’s going to be up straight to Hormuz.

Frank Curzio

We just got a headline going across that Israel is bombing Lebanon still, and that wasn’t part of the deal. But Iran said, listen, we’re not opening this up until Iran stops. Until Israel stops, we’ll see what happens there. Butright now, there’s a deal on the table. Straight’s going to open. The markets, the Dow Jones, I think it was up 1200. It’s up a little bit off its lows. It’s still up close to 1100.

Frank Curzio

And we’re up, you know, 2.5% across the board. The major indices overseas, it’s more like 4-5%. Gold higher, crypto higher, speculative stocks higher. Of course, crude is lower. The big surprise here is how much lower oil is. And we’re looking. It was down 20% now.

Frank Curzio

Again, the market’s turning a tiny bit on that headlines, and now it’s down 16%. 16% oil is down on a move that kind of… if you’re a betting man, and I’m saying if you’re a hedge fund and you’re betting this and you’re leaning to one side, knowing that the deadline’s coming,

Frank Curzio

which Trump’s like, I’m going to annihilate the whole entire thing to everyone’s debt. Where he’s saying a lot, everything, whatever he was saying, all kinds of crazy stuff. And that deadline was here. It’s today. Knowing that there’s got to be a deal. If something else is going to happen, there’s a lot of… it’s a crazy bet. But to see oil move 20%. 20% at one time.

Frank Curzio

Now it’s like 16%. It means that people were on the wrong side. And I could tell you, if they had offices in New York City still, they’d probably be jumping out their windowsright now, because a lot of people who are betting this have gotten annihilated. Annihilated. I mean, it’s still at $95 crude, you know, which I think it was down to 92 and it was whatever it was, 116 or something.

Frank Curzio

A little bit higher than that. But I was very surprised in this move in oil. I knew that eventually it was going to happen, because if you look at the Strait, that’s a solution that works for every single country in the world. Basically, every country. Every major country in the world. Where it’s, you know, Asia. It’s Europe. It’s the US. It works for everyone to get that solved,right?

Frank Curzio

If there’s a deal in place. It’s not like, okay, that close kills everyone. It hurts everyone,right? So there was going to be a deal to open it. They just had to come to terms with theright deal, and that’s what they’re looking to do. So to see oil… I don’t know what your thoughts are. To see this kind of moving oil that much on news that was kind of like, you know, I would say expected, at least now,

Frank Curzio

over the next week or two, this is algorithms leaning heavily towards oil going even higher. Going on the wrong side here. And man, they’re getting annihilated today.

Daniel Creech

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, oil’s been a meme stock along with markets and everything else, basically, for the last month. So I’m not too shocked about it. I think it’s great. I think, you know, consumers, peace talks. I think the plunge in oil is correct. You’reright. I mean, it’s just… it’s craziness. But you can’t have…

Daniel Creech

you can’t have the moves we’ve already had over the past month and then not have more dramatic moves. And I know it’s not, you know, earth-shattering to say, hey, you know, volatility. If you don’t think volatility is here to stay or is going to continue to increase, I just agree to disagree. And I don’t know why you’d be surprised.

Daniel Creech

Speaking of being surprised, Frank, I have got to say, and I want to be as kind as I can here and not come across as arrogant, because our listeners are smarter than many other listeners to different podcasts.

Daniel Creech

And the reason I’m going to point this out is because I, Frank, am even shocked about the overreaction and the absolute stupidity in reaction, in Florida stupidity, okay? To the reaction of Trump’s tweet about ending civilization. If you continue…

Daniel Creech

if you continue to look at President Trump and you think that whatever he says is the beginning of how he’s going to act, you are not paying attention or you just can’t stand him. And I respect that. That’s fine.

Daniel Creech

But if you genuinely thought he meant, when he tweeted out the civilization was going to end, if you thought he meant the entire country of Iran, you are so damn dumb it’s hard to talk to and to listen to people with massive stages. And you can say anything you want. Freedom of speech. Have at it.

Daniel Creech

But to listen to people with podcasts and different stages, literally say to other people and talk about the 25th Amendment and talk about how crazy Trump is and all that. Just ignore that. That is beyond noise. And I know you guys… it needs to be pointed out because it’s out there. But I know you guys didn’t panic over that as you shouldn’t. But Frank, did you…

Daniel Creech

are you surprised at all about that reaction, or am I just on an island by myself?

Frank Curzio

No, I’m not surprised at that reaction. I mean, you know, it’s just…

Daniel Creech

You’re not. Meaning, it didn’t surprise you that people were going… thought that he thought he meant the entire country and people wanted to take a lot of office.

Frank Curzio

I mean, the media’s doing everything they can. Even now, they’re saying, you know, that Trump caved and, you know, Iran won. Iran has no military, allright? We annihilated them. Okay? They did not win. We need the Strait open. This is a good solution. So to say that, you know, oh, Iran is dictating this and these terms and, you know, they kind of won and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio

I mean, they’re just dying the media to go after him. There’s so much to go after Trump about. It’s just, you know, stupid shit like this just gets me pissed off. But I thought the biggest headlines for me was during when he spent time at Easter with those children.

Daniel Creech

Can we talk about that? Joe mentioned that where he said he could sell the autographs.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. He was like, if I could sign an autograph for you guys, I’ll sell them for $25,000. You could sell them for $25,000 on eBay. He was saying about the auto pen and stuff. And then one of the kids goes, Donald Trump, you’re the best president. And he goes, yep, I agree. It’s like, you know, love him or hate him, you go…

Frank Curzio

to me, it’s like the next president. I’m just… I mean, imagine Kamala here and what she would be doingright now with the nonstop giggling and stuff. It’s just, you know, you need someone with charisma, at least. And you’ve had that from Democratic parties in the past. You’ve had it with Obama and stuff like that. So it’s just, you know, having someone like Biden who at the Easter Bunny last year had a direct…

Frank Curzio

did you see that? The Easter Bunny had to grab him because he was…

Daniel Creech

Speaking of the 25th Amendment there.

Frank Curzio

It was so great. They were like, he was directing him, and he was like, the Easter Bunny was like, no, no, you got to go this way. He had no idea where to go. It’s just… but he’s fine. He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him. And everyone, you know, he was never sharper. What was that saying? He was never sharper.

Daniel Creech

Yeah.

Frank Curzio

But with Trump, look, it’s, you know, the craziness of his tweets, I think everyone is used to. The bottom line is, how do we make money in this? In stocks. And you could see airlines up across the board. If it’s a Delta, Southwest, American, United, we’re up 10% plus. Cruise lines came back tremendously. We talked about Carnival. Hey, you got to be careful with high oil prices. And I’m going to tell you something. Okay? You’re looking at oil pricesright now.

Frank Curzio

Oil prices, Joe, put year to date and compare them to, like, the S&P 500. Okay? So while they’re down, did it come up? And put one-year performance. We have a come up. There it is. What is it? Over 60. Oil prices are still up 60% this year, guys. They’re still up 60%. Okay? Yes, we had a decline. It doesn’t mean that Carnival’s a great buy here.

Frank Curzio

It doesn’t mean that airlines are fantastic. I mean, you’re looking at $60 oil before this happened. It’s $95 still. Okay? Yes, it can come down even more, but this takes a long time. There’s a lot of destruction here. A lot of plants have blown up. It’s not that easy to move this as quickly as you want. Turn everything back on. We know even plants in Qatar are going to take years to come back online. Their largest LNG facility.

Frank Curzio

So, you know, to say, like, oh, wow, Carnival’s a great buy here because they don’t have to worry about the higher cost of oil. No, they do. They do. Okay? And we saw this massive spike, really, over the past couple of days that went from, like, 100 to 116 because everyone’s like, whoa, what’s going on? It might not be a deal. You know, now at $95 at these levels, still, it’s crazy where oil is, but it’s not…

Frank Curzio

listen, good news for those companies. Oil has come down. We have a solution. Maybe oil continues to fall, but getting it under $80 is the key here because you’re looking at… you’re still seeing these costs up tremendously for so many of these companies. Now, looking at this news, it couldn’t have gone better in terms of timing. And why is that?

Frank Curzio

Because we have earnings starting next week with the banks. And I wanted to break this down because this is really interesting. You know, I say this all the time, Daniel and I, there’s certain services that we pay a lot of money for and, you know, that a lot of people don’t have access to, and we share a lot of that information and stuff with you guys where we get data. But there’s a free source FactSet.

Frank Curzio

Maybe that’s why the stock has gotten annihilated. We’ll talk about that later. Where they report their earnings, and they do it, like, every week to 10 days, and they have a PDF. Just put in Google FactSet earnings PDF. And it’s like a 30-page report, I think. And it really breaks down the S&P 500 earnings. You know, historically, what does it mean? The growth this quarter is expected.

Frank Curzio

Next quarter is expected. What sectors are going to report the highest earnings beats and are expected to, and which ones are reporting the worst? It goes into details of which companies are leading the charge. Obviously, it’s, you know, going to be Exxon and Chevron, but it’s so detailed that they give away that for free. It’s really cool. So, you know, that’s kind of the standard what we look at with the S&P 500,

Frank Curzio

where you combine all the earnings together. That’s what we’re looking at,right? You combine all the S&P 500 earnings together and say, okay, it’s trading at 19 times forward earnings. Here’s what you need to know. Earnings for Q1right now, which start next week, projected to grow north of 13% year over year. If you look historically, that number, 13%, we’ve been growing double digits for the past six quarters.

Frank Curzio

But if you look historically, we’re usually growing earnings around 8%. That’s much, much higher. Now, this number could be deceiving because a lot’s coming from two sectors that have been a huge drag on the S&P 500 in terms of earnings for a very long time, which is materials. Materials is metals and mining. We know metals and mining are doing better. We know, you know, gold has come off.

Frank Curzio

Silver has come off, but they’re up tremendously over the past pretty much 18 months to two years. And also, we have energy, which is on fire. So, you know, these two sectors are now… they were the worst in terms of being the growth drivers. Now they’re the biggest growth drivers, and they’re taking the whole index up. And maybe we start there. I want to get your thoughts on it,

Frank Curzio

Daniel, because, you know, when I’m looking at where the index is trading, I’m going to dig in a little bit more into numbers and show you why, you know, we could be at a tremendous buying opportunity here, but there’s a lot going on. Please read that report. It’s really good. Just sift through it. If not, you can just listen to us. But you’re looking at tech companies. They have not come down during the quarter where, you know, since December, you expect estimates to come down.

Frank Curzio

Other sectors have. I’ll cover that in a second. But what are your initial thoughts on 13% year over year growth, which is very, very high on top of near-record margins?

Daniel Creech

I think it is high. The crazy thing that sticks out to me is that analysts are expecting the S&P 500 to rise 27% over the next 12 months to their target. Now, that was before the 2% move today. So let’s round down and say 24%. I think that’s outrageously high.

Frank Curzio

They’re expecting the S&P 500 to… the index to move higher.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Their target’s 8,330.

Frank Curzio

That’s on average?

Daniel Creech

That’s the bottom-up price target.

Frank Curzio

And what is… and what percentage is that this year?

Daniel Creech

Well, minus 2%. It would be… let’s just round. Let’s say the market… the bottoms-up estimates expect the market over the next 12 months from April 2nd to go up 25%.

Frank Curzio

Holy shit. Is thatright?

Daniel Creech

I don’t know if it’sright yet. Time to tell.

Frank Curzio

Holy cow. No, is that real? Like, I had no idea.

Daniel Creech

That’s an age-based thing. Look at the thing.

Frank Curzio

Wow. Guys, read page 13 of that report. Because I’ll tell you what I pulled. Holy cow. I didn’t know. I didn’t look at that.

Daniel Creech

That’s what stuck out to me,right? Because… first of all, because… but, you know, we always talk. There’s a big difference between Main Street and Wall Street. And can you have… and I think we’ve been pretty on par here. You know, this whole rate hike and inflation, all that, that’s all BS. That is a waste of time. That is noise.

Frank Curzio

You have a nut raiser.

Daniel Creech

You actually have massive tailwinds from an earnings perspective to continue rising because of what Frank just described. That can happen, and you can still have a lot of misery and pain in Main Street and stuff. So don’t misunderstand that. Just because the market goes up, we’re not saying the economy is booming. There’s just enough… just like during the Biden administration,

Daniel Creech

there’s so much stimulus from a federal level pushing this market. It’s going to be very hard to have a recession or even not impressive numbers on paper. Again, we’re talking paper and markets, not reality and Main Street. But yeah, that’s what stood out to me there. I don’t know.

Frank Curzio

Great. You know, I was focusing on not the S&P 500 in terms of how far it would go up or what’s expected, but more about the earnings. Because when you look at… just talked about, you know, materials and energy really leading the way now that they flipped,right? Now they’re growth drivers. But I could tell you one sector that’s been revised significantly lower, and this is since December. This is what you track. You want to see if the estimates are going lower because it’s very hard,

Frank Curzio

even in this market. Remember, oil prices are down. That’s great. We might have reduced geopolitical risk a little bit. But if you’re a CEO of a company and this is earnings season, this is Q1. Usually in Q1, you’re going to say what you’re going to do for the year,right? Your guide for the year. How do you come out and raise your guidance with this much uncertainty? Well, you don’t know what interest rates are going to be. You don’t know if this is going to… I mean, even today,

Frank Curzio

we just had a ceasefire yesterday, and this morning we have… they’re saying we’re not pushing the ships through because, you know, we have Israel, Bob, and Lebanon still. So that’s in 24 hours. So how, as a CEO, do you go in there and issue… raise guidance with this much risk where you have no idea what the Fed’s going to do? You don’t know if they’re going to cut? Before this news came out last night, we were expecting…

Frank Curzio

people were talking, like you said, which was ridiculous. We could see a rate hike because inflation is going higher. Now we’re back on board with rate cuts. It’s going to be one. It’s going to be three. It’s significant, you know? So if you’re a CEO, how do you do that? But I could tell you one sector that revised their earnings significantly, significantly, significantly lower is consumer staples. And this is since December. This is where these numbers are.

Frank Curzio

I’m going to highlight some of these numbers. Okay? So Bunge Global went from $1.81, this is an average estimate, to $0.85 this quarter. Molson Cores, Daniel. Molson Cores, $0.58 it was supposed to earn this quarter, and everyone revised their estimates lower to $0.39 for this quarter. Archer Daniels, $0.89 to $0.68.

Frank Curzio

Mondelez, $0.79 to $0.61. These are massive, guys. These are massive. And then General Mills, $0.82 to $0.64. All these companies should be completely off the table. Don’t try to bottom fish. Yes, these stocks are significantly lower. They’re getting hit by whatever if you believe in that they’re getting hit, which there’s a lot of evidence to with GLP-1s and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio

But there’s a lot of names here that, you know, I wouldn’t try to bottom fish. You want to wait until they get back to the 200-day moving average before something… because they’re not just coming down. Their estimates are coming down significantly. And that’s what you’re not seeing in technology. So how do you own the staples when you’re seeing these earnings come down tremendously when sectors like information technology, their profit margins…

Frank Curzio

their profit margins are 25% on average for information technology,right? If you’re looking at these companies, their margins are tiny, and their earnings are coming down. So you don’t want to buy companies where their earnings are getting revised lower and lower and lower. Yes, General Mills could beat and go up 15% in a day. Chances are that’s temporary. You have the shorts leading the wrong way, and that stock’s going to go, and it’ll probably come back down.

Frank Curzio

You don’t want to buy companies where their earnings continue to come down, down, down. There’s too many companiesright now that use AI where big technology companies, a lot of them that we’ve recommended, you’ve seen them come down in price, but their earnings are fantastic. I mean, look at Micron. Blew out the numbers. That stock’s well off its highs. Nvidia blew out the numbers. Stock well off its highs. You know, Google just pulled back,right?

Frank Curzio

So off its highs and amazing numbers. So there’s companies, when you see them lowering earnings, stay away from these companies, please. Trust me. I’m not telling you because I’m a genius. I’m trusting you because I lost so much money trying to bottom fish sometimes. That’s where technicals come into play, where you could say, okay, Mondelez beat. Let’s wait one more quarter. It’s above the 200-day moving average. Okay. Insider’s buying. Now we have a bottom.

Frank Curzio

But with that sector, that was one of the things that stood out. Also, interesting numbers. Daniel, guess what analysts are projecting earnings to grow over the next two quarters? Q2 and Q3 on average. How fast do you think that they project to grow on average over those quarters?

Daniel Creech

It’s 13% this quarter,right? 13.2%.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, I thought it was about 13. Am I wrong? What’s the next one?

Daniel Creech

20%. That’s surprising. You do not see a two-handle on earnings growth. And remember, they did… so Q2, they expect to grow 20% from last year’s Q2,right? That’s what they say last year. Last year’s comparable quarter and Q3. So it’s around 20% on average. I think it’s 19… it’s 21% for Q2, 90% Q3, and profit margins north of 13%, which are near records.

Daniel Creech

Also, a few people talk about this in the media because it’s not exciting. Everyone wants to say the market’s… you know, the market’s going to crash. Dollar loses reserve currency status, and you’re going to die. And people love those headlines. Oh my God, you’re going to get in… I love newsletter writers. Dollar’s going to lose its reserve currency status. But buy my newsletter of stocks. It’s like, what the fuck?

Daniel Creech

It doesn’t get better than that,right? Oh my God. It’s like, yeah, they’re going to drop a nuclear bomb on the United States of America. Buy housing. It’s like, what? It’s like, what are you thinking? So, you know, people say whatever they want to sell newsletters, and I get it. You know, I’m poking fun because I actually know these people personally who do that, and I make fun of them to their face. But look at what the market’s trading at.

Daniel Creech

It was like, you know, technology, everything. The S&P’s expensive. Right now, the S&P 500 is trading at 19.8 times forward earnings. That is below the five-year average. It’s below the five-year average, meaning those who are saying stocks are super expensive were cheaper now than over the past five years on average,right? Which means that you…

Daniel Creech

these same people should have said, we’re crazy super expensive for the last five years. They should have been saying that. But some people are just saying it now, which is factually incorrect. I’m also hearing that large cap is expensive. The AI, you got to watch out. Joe, pull up that chart that I sent you, and this is, you know, tech gains. So when you’re looking at the tech gains here, this is amazing.

Daniel Creech

You got that up? Blow it up a little bit. Make it bigger. Look at this. So now that we’ve seen technology come down, and since 2024, even 2025, so this is a mega-cap technology. Right now, it’s trading at the same exact levels of when ChatGPT was released, which was 2022, late 2022.

Daniel Creech

That’s what we’re trading on technology. So all the AI gains, basically, you could say are gone in large-cap technology. Are you kidding me with the massive growth they’ve been seeing? You could say, well, CapEx, are they going to make money? Yeah, they’re making money. They’re reporting record earnings, record profit margins. They fired 15, 20% of their employees. This is the value that you’re getting buying technology now.

Daniel Creech

If you believe AI is real, which there’s not one indication that anyone will show you at all, and I don’t care if you’re reading Michael Burry or whoever, they’re going to show you that AI, they’re not making that money, or the CapEx is going to slow down. It cannot slow down. If you slow down, you lose trillions in market cap. That’s how Google gained a trillion in market cap, and it’s how Microsoft lost a trillion in market cap, basically.

Daniel Creech

Okay? There’s a lot of money at stake of why they’re spending $100 billion each, the big hyperscalers, in order to get an edge on AI and make their systems even better and spending on data centers because the whole world is going to run on AI. We’ve seen what it does to industries. It destroys industries. It destroys the industry that was undestroyable, people thought, which was software,right?

Daniel Creech

So if you’re looking at big technology, there’s Amazonright here, which I love. I love Nvidiaright here. But have you seen Microsoft? Throw up a chart of Microsoft, Joe. Have you seen the price of this stock? Yeah, it’s gotten hit hard.

Frank Curzio

It was $555. It’s under $380 now. I mean, it’s even underperforming the market today. And this is down, what, 20% year to date? Over 20% year to date. It’s down 7% since March 13th when Barron’s on its front page said, buy Microsoft stock. It hasn’t been this cheap in a decade.

Frank Curzio

Here’s why that headline is horrible, and here’s why that advice is horrible. Because yes, it’s true, and this is what, you know, you could interpret the numbers the way you are, you know, any way you are, but the numbers are the numbers. Yes, Microsoft has not been this cheap in a decade. You’re exactlyright. However, it’s trading at 21 times forward earnings, and it’s projected to grow the earnings around 15%.

Frank Curzio

Why would you buy Microsoft here? And it’s what we said about Disney all along, which did shit and has done shit since 2016,right? You could have bought Netflix and everybody else. If you guys could shake your head, I’d love it. Okay? This is why. It’s not that you hate Disney. It’s because there’s better alternatives. Microsoft’s trading at 21 times forward earnings. They’re growing earnings at 15%.

Frank Curzio

Nvidia’s trading basically at the same multiple, and they’re growing earnings and sales at 75%, five times faster than Microsoft. Why would you own Microsoft when you could own Nvidia, which is the pure play? You don’t have to deal with the software bullshit with Microsoft.

Frank Curzio

And just like Disney, if you want to buy streaming, you buy Netflix, where you don’t have to deal with all the garbage around Disney and everything else going on,right? So if you want exposure to AI, you’re looking at Microsoft, and everyone’s like, wow, Microsoft’s great. Look how much it’s come down. It’s so cheap. You’re looking at Nvidia trading the same multiple, growing much, much more faster, five times faster.

Frank Curzio

Why would you own Microsoft here when you could buy Nvidia? That’s how you should always invest and look at investing. It’s not so much… I can’t tell you how many times, Daniel. You probably know this, Joe. You probably know this. I’ve looked at stocks who I’m going to recommend, and then when I compare them to other stocks, I wind up saying, okay, I’m recommending the stock in theright industry. The macro is there.

Frank Curzio

It’s AI. It’s a spending. But you know what? The better play is this. And I’ve done that time and time again where this is the better play. So if you’re looking at Nvidia, you’re looking at Google, I would be Amazon are much, much, much, much, much better buys than Microsoft here. That is in complete collapse. $555 that stock was. That’s incredible. $555. It’s under $380.

Frank Curzio

So anyway, earnings next week. Pay close attention. Anything else you want to continue on that? Because banks are set to report what? In pretty much, I think, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,right?

Daniel Creech

Yeah, big banks kick it off next week.

Frank Curzio

And a lot of sectors, it’s going to be interesting. Banks are supposed to report solid earnings. I think they report solid earnings. I think there’s a lot of risk in their forecasts. I see them reporting and those stocks getting hit hard. You have lower rates coming. They’re all going to come, but they think it’s six months away, nine months away, and their bread and butter has been net interest income, which is massive. I think those numbers are going to come down,

Frank Curzio

especially with new savings agents getting released. They’re starting in Europe, which are going to basically find ways to take that money that you have in savings and put in the highest interest possible, almost on a daily basis. They’re probably going to be on a weekly basis. But, you know, when you have the major four major banks giving you 0.01% on your money, and you can get, you know, interactive brokers.

Frank Curzio

People don’t know. If you have $100,000 in it, you can get 3.5%. Same with Robinhood now. You know, you leave money in those accounts. You don’t need to put your money in banks anymore. You really don’t. You could operate out of some of these brokerage accounts because they provide banking services. They provide much higher rates. Banks have been F&U forever, forever,right? And they’ve had the politicians in their pockets. They have the laws in their pockets.

Frank Curzio

They have everything in their pockets. Now you have savings agents coming out. You have crypto regulation coming. There’s a lot of competition. And listen, you got wealth management on fire for these banks, and they’re great. But that net interest income is the reason why these stocks have absolutely taken off, because interest rates were not supposed to be this high for this long. Even they forecast it.

Frank Curzio

They said the last 24 months, you look quarter by quarter, net interest income is going to come down. Net interest income is going to come down because rates are supposed to come a lot lower, and they didn’t. And now, believe it or not, they’re forecasting for net interest income to go higher, which I think they’re going to overshoot, especially JP Morgan. I don’t think they’re going to earn, what is it, $100 billion, I believe, in net interest income.

Frank Curzio

Insane. Absolutely insane. So pay attention to the banks. They’re going to say a lot about geographies, different areas that are going well, credit across all classes and stuff like that. There’s lots of ideas you can get. JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon’s awesome at that, really breaking it down.

Frank Curzio

So not so much that you want to listen to bank earnings to know what’s going on with the banks, but you could really dissect it and find lots of ideas within so many different sectors when you really dig into some of those calls. And they’re all going to be reporting next week, starting off with earnings season.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Just on the earnings front, real quick on me with energy. Obviously, the energy looking back and really, you know, Q1 ended in March, so the spike happenedright at the end of Q1. So some of that will be in the numbers. It’ll be interesting to see what they say about going forward.

Daniel Creech

Frank’s already talked about, you know, increasing production and stuff. Again, it’s great to see oil pull back significantly. It’s just an emotional thing for markets, in my opinion, which I think is very powerful. But looking at a lot of the stocks in the energy sector are down big today, and that’s great. If you just recently got in and,

Daniel Creech

you know, if you were in last week and now you’re treading water or you might be a little nervous, that’s fine. I understand that. However, I would look to continue to have energy stocks on your radar. If you have any weakness through earnings, I would really, I would look to first buy versus sell or get out because hopefully this truth’s last.

Daniel Creech

You know, I don’t know what you’re over/under his, Frank, on this, but we are not going back to $60 oil. And because of the bombings and interruptions, like Frank said earlier with Qatar and their LNG facilities and all that, energy prices are going to remain elevated, and that is going to be a massive tailwind for a lot of companies.

Daniel Creech

So again, I know today’s ugly. Venture Global, we don’t have to get into it today, maybe a little bit more tomorrow. VG is the ticker. It’s down over 10% today, but that is one of the companies that you ought to have really on your radar, depending on what they say. But just don’t expect us to go back to pre-Iran war anytime soon, not because we couldn’t cause a deal or end the conflict necessarily,

Daniel Creech

but because of what has been done on the interruption side with Frank. Evidently, oil and gas production is not good when you’re throwing bombs at the production facilities. So dumbing it down to my level, that’s a negative there.

Frank Curzio

How do you think the call’s goingright now?

Daniel Creech

It goes on the negative side of the T chart, Frank.

Frank Curzio

How do you think the call’s goingright now between Trump and Netanyahu? I think Trump’s like, hey.

Daniel Creech

I bet he’s standing on his desk, jumping up and down, yelling.

Frank Curzio

I bet you Trump’s like, hey, enough with the bombs. I said, you’re done. And go back to bed and don’t talk and put yourself in the cell like you did for a couple of months. And he’s going to be like, okay, Mr. Trump. That’s how that conversation is goingright now. That’s how important this is to keep the straight open. The fact that there’s still bombs is absolutely insane. There’s a companyright now. Listen, I want you to pay attention to this, okay?

Frank Curzio

There’s going to be educational segments. It’s going to be really cool because we’re going to talk about a company that probably none of you have in your portfolio. It’s called Levi’s, which you should be familiar with because this is literally a 100-year-old brand, if not pretty close to that. It’s been around forever. Jeans, we’ve all worn them pretty much. Even when I was really chubby, in fact, when I was younger, I still had Levi’s jeans.

Frank Curzio

They actually fit. I wear sweatpants most of the time. But Levi’s came out with a great quarter today, and the stock is pumping,right? So, you know, if you put in a chart, put in like a five-year chart on Levi’s really quick, and you’re looking at that stock, it’s kind of been like crappy. I researched it. I looked at it. They have good numbers and everything, but there’s a lot going on under the hood here, and they have the CEO on as well.

Frank Curzio

This isn’t so much a call to buy Levi’s. This is much, much bigger than that. Please pay attention. Nobody’s talking about this, and I think it’s going to make you a lot of money or save you a lot of money. Okay? So why is this news relevant? There’s a major shift going on within retail, and it’s going to crush some of the big box retailers who sell everything or tons of brands through their stores. Okay?

Frank Curzio

Not their own product, but tons of brands. And there’s so many of these. So Levi’s, if you look, same store sales, always an important metric here. And if you report positive, that’s good. And it’s compared to last year,right? So same store sales are basically your shops that are open up more than 12 months, and their same store sales increased 7%, which is massive.

Frank Curzio

The reason why it was totally due to something called DTC, which is direct-to-consumer. Okay? So it’s direct-to-consumer sales. Now, what does that mean? Levi’s, their bread and butter back in the day used to be, hey, the wholesale market. We sell our jeans. We’ll give them to all these third parties.

Frank Curzio

So they manufacture them, sell them to all these other companies, big box retail stores. Dan, why don’t you take a guess on how many stores Levi’s sells his jeans through?

Daniel Creech

You mean Levi’s stores?

Frank Curzio

Levi’s. No, not Levi’s stores. All in general, how many stores?

Daniel Creech

Oh, Frank, I’m horrible.

Frank Curzio

No, no, no.

Daniel Creech

1,000. 1,500.

Frank Curzio

Okay. That’s an amazing guess because I would have guessed like 4,500. That’s an amazing guess. And you’re way wrong. It’s 3,200 stores that they sell to,right? That’s why I want you to guess because it’s a guess that everyone would be… Most, I think, before I even said that, I was going to say increase it by 10x. I didn’t know it was 3,200 in over 100 countries,right? So this includes Target,

Frank Curzio

Kohl’s, Dick’s, Macy’s, Walmart, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, all the above. So when you sell through third parties, your margins get compressed since you sacrifice price for scale. You want to sell more, meaning that you could sell millions more jeans. They’re going to be at a cheaper price as these large outlets are going to buy in bulk. So this is a common practice that’s been around forever,right? For decades and decades and decades where these big companies,

Frank Curzio

they resell. I call them companies. They buy the products at much cheaper prices than retail because they buy in bulk. I think this model is going to be obsolete soon, and it’s going to impact some of the biggest companies in the world. Levi’s is a massive brand. Now, 53% of his sales are coming through direct-to-consumer.

Frank Curzio

Direct-to-consumer are much, much, much, much, much, much, much higher margin, much, much higher margin than having someone else sell them. This number, 53% of sales, it’s up from under 30 ten years ago. Now, here’s how you should look at this. And please look at this. This is when I see a call like Levi’s and we sale all the time. I’m not listening to the call for Levi’s.

Frank Curzio

I’m listening because it’s going to give you literally… I can give you 50 ideas from this Levi’s call, and it’s significant. That’s why the CEO is on. That’s why they’re making a big deal about it at CNBC. But they’re not talking about the main point. We’ve seen companies raise prices tremendously,right, Daniel, through COVID, since COVID, and they continue. Some companies are trying to raise prices even today. You had Sony raise prices for PlayStation 5.

Frank Curzio

We talked about Sam’s Club, airlines for baggage. They’re going to raise them. Even if oil prices come down to 30, they’re going to keep those there. They’re not going to say, oh, okay, now we’re going to take them away. No way. It’s getting more difficult to raise prices in this market because at a certain level, it results in lower demand. And people are like, F this. I’m not paying for these prices anymore. That’s what’s happening in streaming,right? Where you’re like, okay, I don’t need all these streaming services.

Frank Curzio

And if I’m not getting good content on any of them, like Disney’s, then I’m going to cancel my Disney account. So you look at a market where we have inflation higher, food costs going higher, oil prices higher. Again, oil prices are 65% higher this year, even though they’re down,right? All these hurt margins. So if you’re a company like a reseller,

Frank Curzio

you can’t raise prices anymore because it’s going to push maybe someone else into, you know, a competitor. So companies like Walmart, Costco, Macy’s, Dick’s, Target’s, they’re going to squeeze companies that they buy bulk from. They’ve been doing this for years. And small companies like Levi’s had to take itright up the, you know what? And they can’t risk losing this big retailers or sales plummet.

Frank Curzio

Daniel, you research how many companies where you see a company losing Broadcom. Who was it? Broadcom. It might have been Marvell. It wasn’t Broadcom. I think it was Marvell and another company, Skyworks. It was Skyworks. Skyworks lost, I think, Apple, and it accounted for 25% of its sales,right? And it got crushed. And you see that with a lot of companies where,

Frank Curzio

you know, if you look at Levi’s, how much accounts for each one of these big box retailers? So they don’t want to lose them. However, they couldn’t do anything about it. So Levi’s is like, okay, we’ll keep prices lower. We’ll do anything Walmart wants. Okay, it’s lower margins, and it crushes us. Pull up a stock of Levi’s stock and pull up a picture of this. Look at Levi’s. And this is with a picture that I sent you, Joe.

Frank Curzio

Throw that one up.

Frank Curzio

I sent you an email where it’s a comparison. This is the past five years. Look at this, okay? Levi’s is down over the past five years. Look what Costco and Walmart are. These are resellers of products. They just take products that people produce, and they resell them, and they make the margins, okay? In a world of AI, all third parties are getting annihilated.

Frank Curzio

They’re going to disappear one by one by one by one by one by one by one when it’s going to turn up to a million. That’s what AI is about because when you have AI, you can go direct to consumer. And the days of companies like Levi’s getting itright up to, you know what? Are over. They’re over because they’re partnering. And we’ve talked about this, Dan. You and I talked about this the last six months,right? Partnering with Google,

Frank Curzio

Gemini, with ChatGPT, Anthropic, Claude. Using these AI services makes it easier for the small mid-tier retailers to sell their products, to get people directly to their websites, selling directly to consumer. I mean, social media. Look at a brand called Noble. Noble isn’t anywhere other than really social media,right? And they’re blowing up.

Frank Curzio

That’s a Ripoli firm’s my friend. He partnered with Tom Brady, and they’re everywhere, all over social media. They’re not selling that brand, Noble, through outlets anymore. Look at Nike. Nike’s like, allright, we want to try to sell more through our own sales instead of selling it through Dick’s Sporting Goods and all these other sporting goods places because, again, their margins get hurt. Sell them through your own website.

Frank Curzio

So you have social media search throwing AI on top of it. If I was Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Dick’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, throw it in there. I think these guys who basically third-party resales, I think they’re in deep shit. They’re really in deep shit here because this is the next sector that’s going to get hammered.

Frank Curzio

And people are like, no way, Costco. No way. I’m telling you, okay? We told you about this over and over and over again. We told you AI is going to take people’s jobs. Oh, less technology. They didn’t take jobs. Block laying off 40% of its workforce. The big technology companies laying off 10, 20, 25% of workforce. Okay? This is similar to how software companies got hammered because of AI. It’s similar to how consulting firms got hammered because of AI.

Frank Curzio

It’s similar to data providers. Throw up FactSet.

Frank Curzio

Put up a chart of FactSet and put up a year chart on that. Yeah.

Frank Curzio

So you have FactSet. Then you have Thomson Reuters is another one. You put on Thomson Reuters. You have Gartner, which is IT. Put IT there. Just put IT. So you have IT. There’s Gartner. Again, another service provider. Look what that stock was. 430. What was it? 450. It’s 152. If you look at FactSet, Thomson Reuters, all these informational parties are third parties.

Frank Curzio

All they do, they’re aggregates. They get APIs, and they basically take them off every single place of publicly traded information. This is public information on 10Ks, 10Qs, everything,right? All the data. And it crushes numbers. They pull it from everywhere, and they charge you a fortune for these services. We have Capital IQ here, which we were able to get a 25%, 30% discount.

Frank Curzio

They used to raise our prices by 3% every year. I’m going to talk about a service that costs us over 30,000 a year. It’s costing us under 20, and I’m going to tell them to lower it again, or we’re going to go someplace else because we don’t need it. We could model for our own systemsright now,right? So this is what AI is doing. It’s crushing. It’s crushing industries. Andright now, these third-party resellers, I’m telling you,

Frank Curzio

be careful because now these companies have the ability to go to Google and say, here, Google, here is our entire list of names of 20 million, 30, 50 million names. Here you go. You got them. Okay? Here’s the case, the kingdom. Google says, okay, you use my cloud for free. Okay. Now you have our AI systems. Anything that comes up, it goes directly to your site.

Frank Curzio

Anyone does any kind of search at all. Boom. For any kind of type product, boom, it goes directly to you. One-click shopping. You click it. It goes directly to you, direct to consumer, and you’re good. And I can’t tell you how many companies are doing this all the way from Reddit, which I hated, which is on fire. We have another one in our portfolio. I think Etsy is going to be another one. These companies are individually, instead of going through these bigger resellers,

Frank Curzio

which, again, you still have… I think the wholesale market was up 8%. So Levi’s is still doing good in the jeans front with them. But you’re seeing this transition take place where Costco, Walmart, they were the gorillas in a room. They controlled these smaller retailers and said, this is what you’re going to do, and this is what we’re going to pay you or F you. And they had to take it. They don’t have to take it anymore.

Frank Curzio

And this is a major trend. Not only I see some of these companies like Costco, Walmart, Macy’s, Nordstrom’s, Dick’s getting hit pretty hard. They can go down 20% from here. I mean, Walmart’s… Put on Walmart, Joe. What’s Walmart trading at? This is amazing. What’s Walmart trading atright now? I cannot believe Walmart is trading at this valuation.

Frank Curzio

It’s trading at 43 times forward earnings. Walmart trading at 43 times… Allright. We had software companies trading at this, and now they’re trading at 23, 24 times forward earnings because they rerated. Walmart’s going to have to rerate because if you’re going to have those brands, and they sell a lot of cheaper brands that you don’t hear of as well.

Frank Curzio

But if you’re going to have those brands where they can go direct to consumer, have higher margins, and they’re less reliant on Walmart, what’s Walmart going to do? It’s going to be a lot harder. So it makes sense what these guys are doing. Not just that these companies are going to get a hit, but buying the Levi’s, buying the Etsy’s, buying the Reddits, buying some of these other companies, and even especially within retail that sell their products through these.

Frank Curzio

Now they can go direct to consumer. It’s much, much higher margin business. It’s easier distribution because they’re partnering. And Google gets all these names for free that they run through their AI, and then they get to know you just like they know every single thing you’re doing over the next 30 seconds, minute, next ten years from now to the second. They’re going to know exactly what you’re doing for the rest of your lives.

Frank Curzio

And we could change that because everyone is on the internet. But that’s a very important call today, Levi’s, from that perspective.

Daniel Creech

Well done on the twisted sister reference of Levi’s not going to take it anymore.

Frank Curzio

Oh, my God. I take it.

Daniel Creech

Well done.

Frank Curzio

Any other companies? I have one more that I wanted to mention that was in the news. I thought it was pretty fascinating. Remember, there’s not… Other than, you know, oil prices coming down, negotiations, geopolitics, next week is going to start getting busy, and the next three weeks is always a lot of fun. Definitely stay tuned to Wall Street Unplugged. We cover a lot of these. We dig in deep. We have access to all these conference calls that you have access to.

Frank Curzio

We have systems that break it down by bullet where we can look at 20 or 30 of these in an hour and then pull out some stuff, dig in further. But we really go in, get lots of ideas after earnings season, especially this earnings season is going to be volatile. Okay? You’re not going to see a lot of companies raise their guidance unless they’re crazy. If they do, they better make those numbers. If not, you’re going to see a lot of these companies get annihilated.

Frank Curzio

They’re going to go down 15, 20% today if they don’t make their numbers. So this earnings season is going to be tough. They had a tough three months, higher oil prices, higher energy prices, higher, you know, inflation, food prices, and stuff like that. Let’s see what the numbers are. Let’s see what they’re going to report for the future. But it’s going to be a lot of volatility. And I think you’re going to…

Frank Curzio

There’s a lot of mispricing still in this marketright now that I think we could take advantage of. So definitely tune into our podcast over the next couple of weeks because, Daniel, I love covering these stocks.

Daniel Creech

That’sright. What’s your last stock?

Frank Curzio

Tesla.

Daniel Creech

Ooh. Okay.

Frank Curzio

Daniel’s favorite name.

Daniel Creech

I don’t mind Tesla. We made money on this a little bit.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, but you love Elon Musk. That’s your favorite guy you told me,right?

Daniel Creech

One of them.

Frank Curzio

One of them.

Daniel Creech

I like all of his… Hey, I’ve given him credit when he deserves it, but I’ve also called him out where I think he deserves it. So, yeah. But kudos to anybody that can promise, you know, anybody that can say, hey, you know, we’re going to be living on Mars soon. And people are like, oh, that’s great. Bit of stock up. I tip my hat to them if I had one.

Frank Curzio

Well, you’re going to love this segment.

Daniel Creech

Let’s hear it.

Frank Curzio

This goesright up your alley. Okay? So JP Morgan came out with a note, and this is from a few days ago. And they said, we’re lowering our estimates and reiterate our underweight rating for Tesla. After the firm reported Q1 26 deliveries, which we talked about last week, their words were basically terrible.

Frank Curzio

That basically said 7% less than what they forecasted. And we said the same thing. We said, it’s very hard to buy Tesla here because it’s trading at 200 times forward earnings. That’s okay. Okay? It doesn’t mean you should sell the stocks crazy expensively. Even, you know, if that’s the case, you wouldn’t have had many of these growth markets, many of the growth stocks in the NASDAQ 100.

Frank Curzio

You wouldn’t have had Netflix in Eternity Prime. These companies trade at high multiples when they’re growing really fast. It’s when the growth gets removed. That’s when you get your ass kicked. And the growth is getting removed from this company, which is dangerous. It’s trading… Where is it? 350. You know what the target is? Did you see that note, Joe? Do you know what the target price is?

Daniel Creech

No.

Frank Curzio

It’s 145. 60% lower than where it is.

Daniel Creech

Is this the same guy that’s had it forever, though? Or that’s not a JP Morgan guy?

Frank Curzio

I don’t think it’s a JP Morgan.

Daniel Creech

There’s somebody else that’s always had like a $50 stock price target, whatever.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, I think so. And I want to just check that out because I think there’s a guy from… It’s a JMP. I want to make sure that we have theright note here.

Frank Curzio

Target on Tesla. So there’s a couple of them. So, yeah, JP… This is JP Morgan, but there’s one that’s been, you know, a sell since the stock was like $3 a share.

Daniel Creech

Yeah.

Frank Curzio

So this is interesting because a couple of years ago, okay, they reported deliveries. These deliveries came in at first. This is like… I think if you go back three years ago, two years ago, and JP Morgan highlights this, the estimates for their vehicles were 1,366 at one time.

Frank Curzio

That’s the expectations for Q1 2026. I think that was about two years ago. And now it’s 74% below that. So their estimate for 2026, if you look at 2026, their estimates, even JP Morgan, the average estimate… This is two years ago. You know what the average estimate was that stood for this quarter? So basically, two years ago, they’re breaking out the numbers.

Daniel Creech

They’re predicting this quarter.

Frank Curzio

And so what they were predicting two years ago, what they were projecting for this quarter was $9.77. Okay? So this is… I’m sorry. That’s for 2026. $9.77 for the year. They lowered their estimate now to $1.80. Okay?

Frank Curzio

For 2027, that number once stood at $13.22. Okay? This is… You can’t make these numbers up, guys. This is something that you’ve never seen before in your life. You’ve never seen a company two years ago that was supposed to… For 2027, they’re predicted to generate over $13 a share in earnings. And now those projections,

Frank Curzio

JP Morgan is predicting $2.25. That’s how much lower,right? So you’re looking at a company thatright now it’s an EV company. It’s an EV company and also energy storage company. Energy storage installations surprisingly fell by 15% year over year. That was 40% below estimates.

Frank Curzio

Okay? First such decline since second quarter 2022. So energy storage annihilated. You’re looking at EVs annihilated. What does that leave? Okay. Well, it leaves robotaxis where Waymo’s eating Tesla’s lunch there and many more. I think Tesla is Austin only when it comes to fully driverless, where Waymo’s in like four or five cities and also expanding,

Frank Curzio

I think, to Florida and Texas now. So they’re behind the curve there. You’re looking at Optimus. Okay. Great catalyst. Holy shit. These robots. Everyone’s going to have them. He says it’s going to be 10 billion, even though there’s just, what, 8 billion people in the world. Well, less than that. They’re not coming out. Probably they say late 2027. I’ve covered forecasts all my life of new products. Whenever anyone says it’s coming out,

Frank Curzio

you got to push it out 12 months. It’s just like a mining company when they say, oh, all costs for this mine is going to develop, you know, seven years from now is going to be, you know, 200 million. That’s 400 million and double the time frame. Okay? That’s what you have to do. If you do that, then you could model because never, never you see those things go ahead of schedule ever, even with Tesla.

Frank Curzio

So you’re looking at Optimus coming out 2028. Where are the earnings going to come from? You look at stock trading at a 200p that’s not growing, that’s seeing that its two main businesses, energy storage and EVs, getting annihilated. And their growth market, which is exciting as hell, is not going to kick in till 2027,right? 2028,

Frank Curzio

before they really get going with robotaxis, before they really get going, you know, 2028 and Optimus. I agree with this note here. I think Tesla is a very dangerous stock to own. I would not tell you to short it because people have shorted this stock and gotten annihilated. Don’t be stupid because Musk is great about telling exactly… He knows exactly what I’m telling you. He knows that it’s 20…

Frank Curzio

He goes… He knows that if these Optimists don’t come out in 2028, they’re effed. He knows that. So he’s going to do everything he can to get them out in early 2027. At least do anything he can to push them out where people see them, where some people are able to buy them maybe at much higher prices. He knows the risk. He’s great at telling the market. He’s great at seeing those risks and addressing them and removing them.

Frank Curzio

And that’s why that stock has done so well. That’s why I wouldn’t short it. But, man, it’s hard to see how this stock goes higher from here and not fall well below 300, given the lack of catalysts over the next… Over the remainder of the year. What’s going to happen this year that’s really going to be exciting for Tesla to push these shares higher? They don’t have any catalyst,

Frank Curzio

which is the worst thing ever when you have a growth stock trading at a massive multiple. This is very, very dangerous for this company. This is danger territory for Tesla. I’d be very worried here.

Daniel Creech

I agree. You make a good argument, but Tesla has never been a fundamental story. I don’t think it ever will be. Careful saying ever.

Frank Curzio

Exactly.

Daniel Creech

However.

Frank Curzio

Exactlyright.

Daniel Creech

This thing could reverse back and go to 500, its previous highs, if momentum and all that stuff gets exciting and you get that type of growth environment. Again, it could trade at 500 times. It doesn’t matter about that. This is all about Musk. If you believe in Musk, you’re going to buy it and love it. If not, you know, you can stay. But I’m not being funny here because it’s a great argument, and I think you made a solid point.

Daniel Creech

But throw that out the window because if we get a risk-on market and Musk says something cool about Mars or anything, and I’m not being a smartaluk there, this stock’s going to take off. So I think there is value there on saying, hey, there’s a lot of risk here, but you don’t short a name like this with a CEO like him. And, again, I’m a weirdo. This is great because it proves markets are not efficient.

Daniel Creech

So anybody that tells you that, listen to them very carefully and very little.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. And SpaceX, I think they own 1% of it. It’s not going to move the needle for this company, how big it is. I will say this, though. You’reright. When people say, okay, the company never traded on valuation before, you’re 100%right.

Daniel Creech

Fundamentals.

Frank Curzio

Oh, fundamentals. Never traded on fundamentals before. You’reright. Neither has Palantir. However, when you see a major component change, okay, you’re not going to trade on those fundamentals if you’re growing. And this is, you know, again, I credit Kramer to this. Kramer taught me how to be a growth investor. Okay?

Frank Curzio

And that’s why I’ve made so much money in so many growth stocks and people wouldn’t touch because they’re trading at high valuations based on a PE because they’re not looking at a PEG. They’re not looking at the G, the growth projections. And a lot of these companies are growing like crazy. So you invested in OpenAI in its first, second round. You’re like, you’re absolutely crazy. It was 100 million or whatever.

Frank Curzio

And now it’s, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars,right? Because of their growth, because of what the potential could be. However, when the growth stops and it didn’t stop, it’s slowing incredibly. It’s disappearing. I mean, it’s disappearingright here. I mean, listen, this isright from their note. Okay?

Frank Curzio

We advise investors to approach Tesla shares with a high degree of caution, mindful of execution risk, and the time value of money with the context of the materially stronger, distant-out earnings expectations implied. Okay?

Frank Curzio

Which is by the rise in Tesla share price that has occurred alongside, listen to this, a material collapse in consensus for all performance metrics through at least the end of the decade. So when you’re seeing that growth absolutely collapse and your stock price is still… That’s the difference where, yes, you can’t say if a Palantir…

Frank Curzio

Palantir is still growing like a weed. It’s growing tremendously fast,right? If you look at some of these companies, you have growth models where Nvidia is growing like a weed. Okay? That’s price comes down. Tesla’s price, okay, came off its highs a little bit. It’s not growing like a weed. It’s not even growing at all. They’re seeing massive declines here. And, you know, when I see that,

Frank Curzio

I see so many companies get annihilated, annihilated, annihilated. 30, 40, 50% declines when their growth stops. You get a quarter or two that’s not that bad, but those numbers they reported last week were much worse than anyone imagined. And also, if you look at energy storage installations down, falling 15%, it’s 40% below estimates.

Frank Curzio

So good luck with Tesla. If you’re an owner, make sure you’re holding it long term because maybe 10 years from now it’ll be a lot higher. But, man, over the next couple of years, there’s just so many better choices for me of companies that are trading much cheaper and growing much, much faster than this company that would be in my portfolio other than Tesla.

Daniel Creech

I like it.

Frank Curzio

Allright. Covered a lot of stuff today. Pretty good show,right? I just hope this goes back and forth because I love Trump’s tweets. Not to the point where anyone’s getting hurt or bonded or anything like that, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. But, yeah, apparently Israel didn’t get the note that you need to stop bombingright now. That’s why the strait’s open, which I’m sure they really don’t care about.

Frank Curzio

But they should care because it’s going to be interesting to see what the headlines say over the next… Throughout this day, throughout tomorrow, if these gains hold. But if there is this ceasefire, it’s going to take place in the next two weeks. I really don’t see it picking up again or anything happening. The strait is open. That’s a signal that the end of this is here. And if it is, you’re going to see things re-rate. And now what comes into play,

Frank Curzio

Daniel, it’s going to be earnings season. It’s going to be interest rates going lower with the Fed. It’s going to be deregulation. All those positive catalysts going into an election year,right? Huge election year. Huge, huge election year. What is it? I think we just… What is it? The Republicans, I think, won the Georgia runoff election for majority tail, whatever name was.

Frank Curzio

But I think it’s like a… What is it? Five or six in the House, maybe seven margin. It’s very, very tight. So, you know, everything Trump knows is he’s going to be handing out massive tax checks as well, trying to get interest rates lower, get the housing market back going. A lot of people on the sidelinesright now.

Frank Curzio

Those are all positive catalysts as long as this geopolitical risk goes away and we’re going to run over the next two weeks heading into earnings season. So it should be interesting.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. That’s a big if. You know, tomorrow we can talk. Evidently, Iran wants to charge a toll of a dollar a barrel going through the strait. They want it paid in cryptocurrency. Maybe that’s why Bitcoin’s up 3%. You never know, Frank.

Frank Curzio

Good for them. They should get money.

Daniel Creech

But…

Frank Curzio

They should.

Daniel Creech

We’ll see how that happens. I mean…

Frank Curzio

If they could stop… If you… If they have an area that they could stop ships from flowing through, they should charge a toll,right? I don’t know. That’s what I think. I mean, you… Oh, it should be… No.

Daniel Creech

Well, I mean, from their perspective…

Frank Curzio

I mean, everybody else is making an absolute fortune,right? You’re transferring all the oil through this. If that’s… Not that they own the strait, but the fact that you could stop it. Okay. If that’s what they want…

Daniel Creech

I was going to say, tell that to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. They’re allowed to charge. So we’ll see how that plays out.

Frank Curzio

You’re making freaking 90% margins on that oil. They’re fine.

Daniel Creech

But to the point is, I mean, you know…

Frank Curzio

And who’s going to pay it? That’s the thing. Who’s going to pay it?

Daniel Creech

Well, that and… Yeah. That just brings a whole lot of things into play. But it is the straight-of-horn moose we keep pounding the table on because it, in fact, impacts, excuse me, growth and inflation. And that’s really all you need to care about. So…

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

But, yeah, in Daniel Creech’s crystal ball worldright here, Frank, if you get normal passageway back through that, forget what oil goes to. Oil does not need to go back to 60. If the market understands and believes that ships can pass through that strait unharmed, we will have a massive, massive blow-off bull market into the midterms.

Daniel Creech

A massive bull market. In fact, Frank, I’ll have some fun with you and I’ll go on record here. If the market interprets that, I will go on margin and start buying stocks, Frank. How about that?

Frank Curzio

I like it. I like that call. Is that the crystal ball? Is that just your inner feeling?

Daniel Creech

That’s stupidity and crystal ball. More stupidity on my part, crystal ball on its part.

Frank Curzio

That was confident. I like it. That’s really cool.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Because, like I said, we get back to… Then you have Trump at the bully pulpit being the best marketer going into a massive election, which he’s going to lose historically, and that’s fine. So you want to lose less. But, yeah, you’re going to throw everything at it and you’re going to goose markets. And, again, we’re not saying everything’s fixed. We’re just simply saying asset prices would…

Daniel Creech

Or I’m saying asset prices would absolutely skyrocket, in my opinion.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. There’s a lot of disconnects in the market.

Daniel Creech

And they better to make facts sets 12-month, 26, 25% bottoms-up target.

Frank Curzio

There’s a lot of disconnects still after this move. There’s a lot of disconnects. I mean, Nvidia should not be trading at where it’s tradingright now. That’s just one of the large caps. But there’s so many small caps that have gotten annihilated that have great earnings, great stories, great projection of growth going forward that are down 30, 40% since this happened, and they’re going to re-rate higher. And we got a lot of those in our portfolio, which I’m really excited about. So… Allright, guys, that’s it for us.

Frank Curzio

If you want to hear more of us, you can do that tomorrow at our Wall Street Unplugged Premium Podcast, where we break down the markets. We get more in-depth into individual stocks. We also have recommendations that we put into a separate trading newsletter, which is awesome. So, again, we get more in-depth and give you a lot more ideas in that. And that is… What do we charge? Like $10 a month for that? I may be folding that service into everything else and giving that away for free,

Frank Curzio

basically, when I condense all the services, which should be happening this month, which we told all our subscribers already. But, for now, it’s pretty cool. And it’s… You know, we have trading ideas almost every single time that… You know, almost every week, I would say, pretty much, if not every week, maybe 30, 40 recommendations a year, probably, on this thing. At least 30, which is really cool.

Frank Curzio

But we get more into detail, more stock picks. And we also break down a portfolio in that podcast. And that’s tomorrow. It’s called Wall Street Unplugged Premium. If you’re interested, you can go to our website to take a look and learn more about it. Other than that, if not, then you can listen to us and find us on Twitter@FrankCurzio. We’re getting lots of new followers. A lot of our posts are going… Hitting the six digits now, which is really cool that we’re posting about.

Frank Curzio

A lot of people listening to what we have to say because we have different opinions. So if you want to follow us on Twitter@FrankCurzio is a good way to do it. Other than that, we’ll see you tomorrow. Allright, guys. Take care.