Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio

What’s going on there? It’s Wednesday, February 18th. Uh, I’m Frank Curzio. Host of Wall Street Unplugged Podcast.

Frank Curzio

Where we break down the headlines and, uh, tell you what’s really moving these markets. Daniel Creech, how’s it going?

Daniel Creech

It’s going well, Frank. How are you, sir?

Frank Curzio

Uh, doing very, very well. Thank you for asking.

Daniel Creech

It’s a happy Wednesday.

Frank Curzio

Pretty good, I guess. You could say things have been better for me, but yeah, I’m doing okay.

Daniel Creech

Why? What’s wrong? Where are you going with this?

Frank Curzio

Uh, despite, um, selling my house, getting divorced.

Daniel Creech

Okay.

Frank Curzio

Uh, other than that, yeah, everything’s pretty cool, I think. Yeah, I’d say everything’s allright, you know? Other than that, yeah, let’s move on to the markets. Are you watching the Olympics at all?

Daniel Creech

Uh, yeah. I, I’ve caught a little bit of the Olympics. Um.

Frank Curzio

Hey, you X’d?

Daniel Creech

Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah.

Frank Curzio

You X’d?

Daniel Creech

Not gonna lie. I was not expecting that on this Wednesday, the 18th. Shout out to a friend of mine in Arizona. It’s her birthday. Change the topic. Olympics, Frank. Did you see?

Frank Curzio

Look a little flustered, Daniel.

Daniel Creech

Well, I just, I’m shocked. That’s hilarious. It’s not funny. That’s my sense of humor. It’s not funny, ha ha, but it’s funny.

Frank Curzio

I share my life on this podcast. Everybody knows that. So yes, yes. So it’s been going on for like nine months. Uh, and look, it’s not about, you know, it’s just a good thing for everything all around. But you know, when you have kids and stuff like that, it’s not the easiest thing. But, um, you know, it’s good for the long term. And I’m not one to talk bad about anything else or anybody or whatever.

Frank Curzio

But you know, it’s always two, two parties involved. But yeah, just things are a little bit different now and any change and stuff like that. And, uh, yeah, it’s been pretty good. So, but it gets a little hectic sometimes. But other than that, like you said, let’s get to the Olympics.

Daniel Creech

Allright. Well, I will say you take, and I like this sport.

Frank Curzio

There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going on with the Olympics. There is a lot of craziness. I mean, the guy was cheating. Did you see that? And he got called out in curling?

Daniel Creech

No.

Frank Curzio

Oh my God. I love curling. I feel like curling is like, is like, like it’s archery, except you could hold the arrow and just carry it across the whole, like, you know, landscape and then put it in the middle. That’s what curling is. Because they use the brooms like that and they could slow it down.

Daniel Creech

No.

Frank Curzio

It’s like so ridiculous. It’s, to me, it’s not even a sport. Yes, it’s kind of fun to watch, but why did it have to have the brooms? And so, I mean, you could literally throw it behind you and with those brooms, you can get it to reroute, go the angle exactly where you want. It’s almost like, I don’t know, anyway, as much as you could possibly do where you could take that rock and place it any place on the freaking floor,

Frank Curzio

the guy still cheated with his finger and he got caught and someone called him out.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Do you have that? So.

Frank Curzio

So great.

Daniel Creech

This is fun. I didn’t effing touch it, he says.

Frank Curzio

I didn’t effing touch it. You listen.

Daniel Creech

That guy needs to listen to our podcast. Anybody that knows.

Frank Curzio

I don’t care if he’s a foreigner or not.

Daniel Creech

Anyone that gets into an argument and catches someone cheating or like the defense part is, I don’t know if you have the video, if you played it, the guy’s like, so some guy caught, you know, saw it and called him out and said, you could look at the video. And the guy in Canada who cheated got very, very mad and angry. And usually that’s the ultimate, you know, testament saying, okay, there it is. Is that it?

Frank Curzio

That’s AI.

Daniel Creech

Oh, now that makes sense.

Frank Curzio

See, this is what AI is good forright now.

Daniel Creech

AI would make it fun. This is great. But you know, he uses his finger,right? You’re supposed to hold the top.

Frank Curzio

Now recapping, he’s sliding and he’s got a hold of this. I think it’s called a stone, not a rock, Frank.

Daniel Creech

It’s whatever. Same thing. Yeah. Stone, rock.

Frank Curzio

But anyway, what you’re saying is once they let it go, you’re not allowed to touch it again. And this guy clearly touched it with his finger again. If you were a Canadian trying to defend this guy, you would probably say, well, he’s still behind that green painted line. Evidently, that doesn’t matter. There you can see it clearly looks like he’s making contact.

Daniel Creech

Well, the other team called him out and he started yelling and started cursing at himright away. You know he’s guilty when he does that.

Frank Curzio

These are like, it wasn’t like, what are you talking about? It’s like, I’m you. I didn’t do it. No way. I didn’t do it. They’re like, look at the video. And you see his finger.

Daniel Creech

You know, it’d be my luck. Because curling is a silly sport. It’s entertaining as can be though. I don’t know that there is anything to it. I will say this, two things quickly. My luck, Frank, would be, you know, this curling guy starts mouthing off to you. You don’t have to be athletic or, you know, there’s some skill there in the brushing.

Frank Curzio

Is this actually a, is it like, is it a sport though? I mean, you could be like 400 pounds and do this. Like there’s no advantage. Like I don’t understand the sporting aspect of this. This is like, it’s like, how is this possible? Like how is this even a sport? And now that I use these brooms, I have no idea. I mean, it’s so cool. It’s like USA won the gold and they beat Canada for the first time, the women’s. And I was like, allright, cool. That’s great.

Daniel Creech

Could you imagine the learning curve though, of running and putting all your weight on that brush and busting your face and busting your knees?

Frank Curzio

I don’t know.

Daniel Creech

There’s no way you do that for the first time and you run down there and scrape theice or scrub theice or brush theice and don’t like make a fool of yourself.

Frank Curzio

Like, do you think the guy.

Daniel Creech

They make it look easy. So that’s how you know they’re good at it.

Frank Curzio

Who’s risking his life or the downhill, like looks at these guys and hugs them and say, hey, you’re athletes in the Olympics with us. I mean, really? I mean.

Daniel Creech

Oh, I’m sure they make fun of each other.

Frank Curzio

I mean, give me a break. It is insane. But anyway, that was, that was also, did you hear about.

Daniel Creech

Way to bring some excitement to a.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, it’s cool.

Daniel Creech

Different sport.

Frank Curzio

That’s awesome. Listen, cheating, cheating. Look at that cheating. It’s kind of like with steroids. I wish all baseball players took steroids. They make that sport so great. It was so much fun when they were all taking steroids. When you had that, you know, like boone hitting, like, what do you hit, like nine homers? And then the next year he’s like, I didn’t take steroids. He hit 54 homers. He was a shortstop. It was so great.

Frank Curzio

I love it. But it was great because, you know, you don’t have like, you know, one nothing games and a pitch count and everyone stealing pitches and stuff like that. But gotta make sports more, more entertaining. Like football. Football’s insane. Football’s just so entertaining. But you also look at, you know, Snoop Dogg. He was, he went to a restaurant, ordered cheeseburger, chicken wing, chicken nuggets, all this stuff, French fries at a restaurant. And his credit card didn’t work.

Daniel Creech

Really?

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

Huh. That’s interesting.

Frank Curzio

Like how do you find, like, I wouldn’t even make a point.

Daniel Creech

Like the internet was down. You mean his credit card didn’t work?

Frank Curzio

His credit card didn’t work. Yeah. Somebody else like paid for him and stuff. And he probably took care of him. Like everybody’s credit card didn’t work. I’m like, damn, he’s not a capital one guy, is he? He’s not on the cat. That would be messed up.

Daniel Creech

I don’t know if there’s anybody to.

Frank Curzio

What’s in your wallet? Not.

Daniel Creech

There’s anybody you could cover for and not have to worry about getting paid back. It’s probably old Snoop Dogg.

Frank Curzio

I know, but he has such a blast. Everybody loves him, man. He’s just smoking up and having fun. He’s just great. He’s so entertaining. I love him.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. He’s the marker.

Frank Curzio

He’s the one person I think that’s a celebrity that could really say whatever he wants. I think someone asked him about, um, like he slapped one of his girlfriends or something like that. And they said, you know, do you ever take that back? He’s like, no, the bitch deserved it. And nobody even said anything about it. Like you would get kicked out of, everyone was like, what do you, like, he could literally say anything he wants and never gets in trouble.

Frank Curzio

Like I don’t know of another, another entertainer like that. Like that, there’s no way like he could ever hurt his reputation no matter what he does. It’s just amazing. I like him. No, he’s really good. But also, you know, it is entertaining. I mean, I like Bobsled. It’s awesome, man. They’re going like 70, 75 miles an hour, whatever. Speed skating is cool. I think Jake Paul was a judder, Leirdam, which is his girlfriend.

Frank Curzio

She’s actually beautiful. And she won the gold. And that was pretty cool. When you see the videos and stuff like that, he was crying. And she’s really cool. She seems like she’s awesome. And she won from Norway. But if you look at a medal count too, you’re looking at the United States, underperforming. You do have hockey, which looks good for the gold in both of themright now. We’ll see when in the men’s, but the women’s should be a lock even against Canada.

Frank Curzio

We’ll see if the hockey teams have been doing well and a lot of medals are coming out in the next week or so, but it should be interesting. But Norway’s on fire and good for them.

Daniel Creech

Yep.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. Winter Olympics, Norway makes sense a little bit,right?

Daniel Creech

Yeah.

Frank Curzio

I mean, what else is there to do in Norway? They gotta be great at every single event,right? It’s like, I don’t know. Good for them.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Plus it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Frank Curzio

Yeah. No, Italy’s beautiful. One of my best friends is in Italy too. His daughter was there and he went to Olympics. It’s unbelievable. He went to a hockey game. It’s really cool. But it’s awesome. Really love any Olympics. Really, really cool. And lots of news.

Daniel Creech

Some excitement.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, I know. Lots of news on AI front. I mean, we’re seeing, you know, Amazon nine straight days of declines before yesterday. What a 1%. Everyone’s happy. A lot of people coming out positive on it. You know, you have Buffett coming out and selling some shares again. That could be done three months ago in the 13Fs, which would get to a little while. But Bogus Taylor came out and named it a top idea,

Frank Curzio

especially when it comes to agentic AI, you know, big AI winner. You know, you’re having, you know, I saw several people within 13Fs, you know, and their positions and stuff. But I think Amazon’s ready to explode here. I think this is a company that could be $300 by the end of the year. I really do. I think they’re going to have a moment where it’s going to be what they’re doing within AI.

Frank Curzio

And the fact, remember, AI is about data. And Amazon, arguably outside of Meta, who has three point whatever, five billion accounts through their platforms. I mean, Amazon has more data on people than almost any, any, any company, anything in the world,right? And now with AI and agentic AI and what they could use, I mean, it’s not even just social media and you’re talking.

Frank Curzio

They know every single one of the habits of what they’re buying, everyone’s birthday, what they, you know, what their spend is. I mean, this is just data that they’ve been accumulating for 15 years minimum that they have. And throwing AI all over this is just incredible. You throw in the cloud, you throw in just, man, everything with, you know,

Frank Curzio

just agentic AI and smart homes and smart technology. I mean, Amazon is just, this is a company that’s going to, I think, rock it incredibly high. I think it’s a joke of where it’s tradingright now at 200. I think you’re going to have that aha moment that you had with Google that went up, you know, tremendously and doubled and added a trillion dollars in market cap.

Frank Curzio

Amazon, what’s, what’s Amazon’s market cap, Joe? Scroll down a little bit. 2.2 trillion. I mean, you’re looking at Google’s, what, four? Microsoft, I think it’s four. Nvidia’s four. Apple has pulled back as well. It might be close to three and a half. So, yeah, Amazon, I think just the catch-up trade here and they’re spending more money than anyone else.

Frank Curzio

And these guys are familiar with building. They reinvented the supply chain. They know how to build infrastructure. There’s companies that don’t know how to do that yet,right? That’s why you saw Meta’s deal with Nvidia, you know, buying all their, the next generation chips, the great CPUs, you know, everything, next gen Ruben, you know, just the whole,

Frank Curzio

you know, Ethernet switches, gear, networking gear, everything,right? The whole suite. And they’re saying, well, they didn’t put an amount on it. It’s tens of billions of dollars,right? It’s so much that Meta accounts for 10%, nearly 10% of Nvidia’s revenue on that deal, which is incredible. But Amazon’s spending more money than anyone. And again, another company that their return on investment is incredible,

Frank Curzio

like Meta, you know, outside of, you know, what they’ve done with the metaverse and stuff like that. But they’ve been incredible when they put money to work. And, you know, it’s been proven time and time and time again with these companies. And even at that stock price, it hasn’t been proven Amazon. But I think it’s a steal here. I think it’s incredibly oversold. And these guys are operating all cylinders and doing great.

Frank Curzio

I mean, you’re looking at that cloud, like dollar for dollar, they’re growing just like everyone else is growing. And maybe the percentage is a little bit slower because they were bigger. I think they’re still number one in cloud behind my, you know, and then you have, what, Azure, Microsoft, and then Google, and, you know, Oracle, Alibaba, and all that stuff. But, you know, these guys at this price, I think Amazon’s a steal here to buy.

Frank Curzio

And this, and Meta as well. Meta’s a dirt cheap stock. I mean, those are two of the hyperscalers that I love the most. And they’re actually spending pretty much the most money next to Google. So just surprised to see it. But a lot of people adding to it, even on this pullback, you’re looking at Mizuno upgraded Palantir to buy. Palantir’s been getting nailed. And you’ve been talking about software stocks.

Frank Curzio

I don’t know if you want to start with the AI part, but within software, because it’s one story. But holy cow. I mean, this software thing’s getting a little crazy, huh?

Daniel Creech

Yeah, absolutely. We’ve talked about this for the last couple of weeks, last couple of podcasts, and software as a service stocks have been absolutely hammered. And I wanted to ask you, Frank, because next week, as time would tell, we have next Wednesday, you have Nvidia, king of AI, as well as Salesforce. They’re not the king of anything.

Daniel Creech

I’m not saying that, but Salesforce reports. And what’s interesting, Frank, is when you look at, you know, we use Capital IQ. What shocked me is that I was looking at if analyst estimates have moved around very much in the last couple of months. And really, and you know, we don’t need to get into thisright now,

Daniel Creech

but you have EPS normalized and then you have gap EPS. And the big difference there is stock compensation and amortization and all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Creech

But are you shocked, Frank, or surprised at all that only one analyst has downgraded the EPS for Salesforce going into next week’s earnings over the last month when shares are down about 18% during that same time?

Frank Curzio

No.

Daniel Creech

No. See next question.

Frank Curzio

No. I mean, we started with Disney. Disney, I think we saw maybe one or two downgrades of 35. Put a chart up there of Disney really quick, Joe. Put a five-year chart of Disney.

Frank Curzio

So we look at Disney and I could tell you if someone’s been covering this for a long time, put the five-year. Okay. You got 180 there. So from that 180 mark in 2021, this is COVID. They kicked ass in COVID, of course, and they patted their numbers and lied. You know, look at that chart. I mean, this is from 2020. If you look it back,

Frank Curzio

2019, the stock has done nothing since 2019,right? So, I mean, you want to talk about shit? Should keep going. 18, 17. This is a stock,right? This is Disney. Are you freaking kidding me? This is Disney. Look where the stock is. Now you’re looking at that from 2021 when that stock has come down. We called this, we nailed this. We said this is all bullshit. Smoke, smoke green, well, smoke mirrors, all bullshit,right?

Frank Curzio

Just adding these names and not even accounting for average revenue per user,right? And the stock crashed. I think there was one downgrade of that whole 180 to 90 period. You know, and everyone’s so like, oh, reiterating our buy rating. We’re lowering our target by 30%. We’re reiterating our buy rating. We’re lowering our target by 20%. It’s a strong buy, but we’re lowering our target from two.

Frank Curzio

And these targets were 225, 250, and then they lowered them to 180. Then they lowered them to 160. Then they only lowered them to 120. And they maintained that buy rating. Why? Because, well, Disney has a lot of debt. And in order to get those investment fees, if you are the CEO, if you’re on management team for these companies and you need to raise money, you’re not going to go to the assholes who got to sell on your stock. That’s not the way it works,right? Okay.

Frank Curzio

You’re going to go to the guys who have the buys on the stock. That’s the way it works. I don’t care. It’s not this conspiracy theory. It’s simple,right? And I would do the same. I would do the same. I’m not going to, oh, the guy has a sell rating. I’m going to give you investment banking interest. When you’re like, you’re telling me my company’s horrible and terrible. I don’t even know if there’s a sell rating on Walt Disney, which is funny, but it doesn’t surprise me with software.

Frank Curzio

What’s surprising is that, you know, look at Caden Software came out with solid earnings today. I think that was a big deal. CDNS. You know, that was a pretty big deal because they came out with earnings and they said, look, it was different. It’s up 9%. The stock’s still down from 370 to 309. The reason why this is a big deal is because they came in and said that we are excelling at agentic AI.

Frank Curzio

We are booking more business,right? JP Morgan came out with a positive note saying AI should enable cadence to unlock better automation capabilities for customers, drive improved monetization. We’re not seeing that. We’re not seeing a lot of other software companies like Palo Alto. Put up Palo Alto. Getting nailed. Cybersecurity stock,right?

Frank Curzio

And this is after reporting week guidance. So much down. It’s down 6%. It was down 8%. So now it’s still 220 and it’s 150,right? And you figure it, okay, this company should do okay. I love what the CEO said. Listen to this. This idiot said, he goes, I’m still confused why the market is treating AI as a threat and at least a cybersecurity.

Frank Curzio

Really? If that’s the case, why was your guidance weak? Why? Why was it weak? It’s because Anthropic, OpenAI, they’re building their own cybersecurity AI tools. Anthropic, they just released the latest AI model. This is Claude Sonnet 4.6, which is better at using computers, coding, design knowledge, everything than any other model out there. This is the coding one.

Frank Curzio

This is the coding. This is what’s so disruptive. It’s the Anthropic model that’s coming out. This is an open, not really OpenAI. This is Anthropic that’s coming out that’s disrupting coding. And to the point where now you could put Unity Software, throw up Unity Software.

Frank Curzio

And I should have had some videos for this. So Unity Software.

Frank Curzio

Which is Unity. Yeah, you. Just you. And at 15, this is $52. Put in a five-day chart. Five-day. Look what happened to this stock. Like this stock has gotten annihilated. It doesn’t look that bad, but it’s got, I mean, this stock got hit like 18%,right? This stock got nailed tremendously. Why? Because Unity Software and even Take Two got hit.

Frank Curzio

I wouldn’t worry about Take Two, their proprietary and Rockstar Games and stuff like that, and coming out with a new grand theoretical six, they’re going to kill it. And I think they’re releasing that in November, which probably means another year after that. They always miss it by two and a half years, but they always come out with a good number.

Daniel Creech

They’re never coming out with another grand.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, I know. It’s never going to happen. But with Unity, when you have AI, now you could type in prompts. And I was showing prompts through my newsletter, you know, the Cursive AI newsletter. This is about three months ago, showing how you could say, create a stick figure and it’s snowing and you’re jumping over rocks. And they created like three or four prompts.

Frank Curzio

You created a game. Last week, if you’re looking at even Gemini and you’re looking at some of these other systems that are coming out with these new models, now you could type in prompts and create worlds. Like you’re creating a world, an entire world, like a metaverse world now, just by a couple of prompts, which is insane,right? You couldn’t do this without coders.

Frank Curzio

And you’re looking at Unity Software, another area that’s getting annihilated. But look at the software. Do you, Joe, you have the software with the ETF of the software and software ETF?

Daniel Creech

The IGV or something. Or you got another one?

Frank Curzio

Yeah. So if you bring this up really quick, so this is the, now put a comparison to S&P 500 and then throw in a month after that. Look at this. What does that percentage say on the bottom? How much is it down? 16% in a month. Software stocks. This is an ETF. This isn’t one software stock.

Frank Curzio

This is the average, meaning that some are down probably 20, 25% in a month. They’ve got annihilated with S&P 500. It is, you know, what? What is it? Up a tiny bit, whatever. So.

Daniel Creech

Looks like down a half percent on that one.

Frank Curzio

Oh, it’s down a half percent on that. Okay. So it’s relatively flat.

Daniel Creech

But still, yeah, it’s flat compared to.

Frank Curzio

I mean, holy cow. And you’re seeing these people, they keep saying, well, I don’t know why this is impacting. I don’t want you need to have AI incorporated into your business in a way where with Salesforce, like you said, no one’s, are they lowering those estimates going into the quarter? Because it’s not really fundamentals. Because people are like, oh my God, the fundamentals are still good. I don’t know why these are going down.

Frank Curzio

The market’s telling you something. Stop like punching the market in the face, saying the market doesn’t understand. The market’s smarter than everybody. It’s telling you that a lot of these companies are not into agentic AI, which is the future of this business, meaning that they’re not going to have the pricing power they have. So a lot of these companies are probably going to lower guidance and the analysts haven’t lowered their estimates yet. So when I look at these companies,

Frank Curzio

it’s not so much that they’re not meeting estimates, it’s they’re getting rerated because they’re not these super hyper growth stocks anymore. And that’s what happens when an industry gets mature. It happened with Microsoft. It happens with Apple. It happens with every big company. When you have this massive growth rate, then all of a sudden you become, oh wait, maybe we should pay a dividend. We have lots of free cash flow.

Frank Curzio

Let’s buy back our stock now. Now you become a mature company.

Daniel Creech

Yep.

Frank Curzio

With this industry, you don’t see this massive growth ahead anymore where you’ve seen this disruption that could take place a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. So when you remove the growth component, that’s what’s happening to this industry where you’re seeing companies trading 30 times, 35 times, throw up Snowflake. I love you just barking at audience like Joe.

Daniel Creech

Throw this up, Joe.

Frank Curzio

Now what’s, so this is a company that went from 280 to 178. Oh my God, this is great. You should be buying it because it’s on a pullback. Scroll down. What’s the PE for this company? What’s the FOD PE? What did that say?

Speaker 3

124.

Frank Curzio

124 times FOD earnings is trading,right? So you look at some of these companies, Salesforce is cheaper. It’s trading below a market multiple. I wouldn’t be buying that. If you think this sector’s going to rebound, you want to buy the Snowflakes. The most expensive ones are going to rebound tremendously. But it’s funny how these analysts aren’t rerating. They’re not lowering their estimates. And it’s going to make Salesforce,

Frank Curzio

it’s going to be a tough beat. But I’m concerned about the guidance because Palo Alto’s like, what AI? It’s so overblown. Why are you lowering your guidance for? Why are you lowering your guidance for? Right? Palo Alto, why are you lowering your guidance for? Cybersecurity stock. Why?

Daniel Creech

Ooh.

Frank Curzio

So, you know, instead of asking like, I don’t understand. I don’t understand. Understand it. You’re getting rerated because you’re taking away this unlimited growth component that you had, this massive scalability where people are paying whatever it is for all these services to lock in every kind of component into your CRM system that you’re partnering with every single hyperscaler.

Frank Curzio

I mean, these guys are partnering with each other, some of them software companies,right? They all want to try to keep it in-house as much as they can. But hey, oh, you’re going to go here? Okay. Well, maybe we use Salesforce as well as our software, along with cloud from Google, along with this. And they put together a suite of services. And it’s almost like a fund of funds. And I think people are realizing, you know what?

Frank Curzio

I don’t need this shit anymore. You know what? Because it’s really expensive. I have a business. We have a CRM. It’s almost impossible to have the perfect CRM. There’s no such thing because there’s so many different facets of your business. It’s whether it’s not just, you know, sending emails is crazy. I mean, that was a big risk to us that nobody told me about where, you know, if you’re sending out, pretty much we send out millions of emails on, you know, a monthly basis.

Frank Curzio

And you got to make sure that they all get delivered properly. You got to have theright systems in place. If not, if that changes, they could shut you down and shut your business down because now you have to come up with different email addresses,right? So, you know, it’s having funnels in this. It’s, you know, your Salesforce integrating this. There’s like 30, 40 different things, but it’s different for every company. And you always needed that company to say,

Frank Curzio

okay, here’s what we’ll do for you. Okay. Here’s what we do for you. Okay. We’re going to tweak this. Now that you don’t need coding and you could just put prompts in some of these systems, it’s definitely a threat. Like, I don’t understand why these CEOs are going, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s a threat. It’s a threat. And it’s up to these companies to say, like we saw with cadence and say, hey, we know it’s a threat, but you know what?

Frank Curzio

We’re using agentic AI. We’re kicking ass with it. Okay. Good. You’re the company that’s going to fucking win in this industry,right? That’s how you play it. Instead of sitting there as a CEO and going, I don’t know what, like the Palo Alto CEO, I don’t know why people, your stock is getting fucking annihilated. Okay. That’s not what people want to hear. I don’t know what’s going on. You’re the CEO. You got to know what’s going on.

Frank Curzio

Give me a fucking break. How do you know what’s going on when your stock’s getting hammered? I don’t get it. But just understand the risk. You can’t tell me as a CEO you don’t understand because it’s clear as day to anyone else outside the industry of why software stocks are getting hit. If you incorporate AI like cadence has done, you’re going to accelerate. You’re going to take market share. You’re going to control more of that total addressable market.

Frank Curzio

And that’s why they’re kicking ass. And even on the way down, cadence only came down 8% compared to all these other companies that have come down tremendously, which is what? 16, 17%. Throwing cadence really quick.

Daniel Creech

It’s well off its highs, but.

Frank Curzio

But you’re going to see it. It’s off its highs, but it’s not too bad,right? So it’s 376, but go in the past month if you can against the software index, Joe. If CNBC ever fricking uploads for us.

Daniel Creech

Yeah, we got to use a different one. This is horrible.

Frank Curzio

It’s just, yeah, I try to use something that everyone could follow along with. Joe, what’s going on? What are you doing? Killing me.

Frank Curzio

So you have cadence. But anyway, if you put up cadence and put up, when that comes up, put up the comparison against the really quick, the software. And hopefully you guys are watching this,right? Apple, actually Apple, congratulations. So proud of Apple. They’re so good. They’re finally going to have podcasts with videos. Oh my God. So revolutionary. I love Apple. The least innovative company in the world.

Frank Curzio

They copy every idea and then they copy it and make it 10 times better like they did with the iPad.

Daniel Creech

Yeah, they’re looking okayright now. Their AI CapEx is not alarming anybody.

Frank Curzio

No, it’s not because they missed a whole fucking trend. So cadence, if you look and you look at the last month, look at the month.

Frank Curzio

And even there, like you see the uptick, but even before the uptick, that lineright there, which is today, it’s up 9%. Notice how it’s down like 10% compared to the rest of the industry, which was down like 19%,right? Because they have AI capabilities. These guys are getting it done. So now you’ve seen this spike up. This is what’s going to, this is how you select these software companies. When Salesforce reports, when are they reporting, Daniel?

Daniel Creech

Next Wednesday.

Frank Curzio

Okay. When they report next Wednesday, that’s what, how are you incorporating, how is AI working for you? How are you using AI specifically? Why is it working? How is it increasing business? Is it resulting in you raising guidance? Are you seeing more of these companies using your AI features? Because in cadence, they’re using their AI. They got agentic AI. They got the bots. They’re using it correctly. When you look at these companies,

Frank Curzio

if you have a Palo Alto says, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know. Treating AI as a threat in cybersecurity. I have no idea. What were your stocks getting your ass kicked? For me, I want to short the stock when I heard the CEO say that. You really don’t know. You got to be kidding me.

Daniel Creech

Do you think the CEO of Salesforce needs to talk agentic AI?

Frank Curzio

He needs to get back down for business, first of all, and stop talking politics and playing both sides because he’s destroying his base. Like either pick a side. I mean, you are as left as you could possibly be. And then all of a sudden you goright and saying that we should have troops like in San Francisco. Now your base hates you to the point where your own employees, and this is a bigger problem with Salesforce, their own employees are like,

Frank Curzio

you need to cancel all the contracts with the Pentagon and the government that have to do itice. Imagine your employees say that. I mean, no offense. I run my own company. I would fucking throw every one of them out of their ass outside of that. If that happened, you don’t want to work for me? Fine. I’ll replace you and everybody that I’m pricing you with, I’m giving a fucking raise too. That’s what I would say. You do not have thatright. That’s San Francisco shit.

Daniel Creech

Oh, my suggestion.

Frank Curzio

That’s California stuff. No, but that’s California stuff. Imagine all your employees that you have to cancel your contracts. Like they don’t, that’s like, okay, I’ll cancel them and then I’m going to lower your salary by 30%. That’s what you should say. Hey, I’m going to do what you want. Now you get no benefits. You got no benefits anymore. Full-time places. This is what you wanted,right? Less money,right?

Frank Curzio

But this is what you run into with a bad management team and they’re a horrible management teamright now. So they got to build up their credibility. They got to report. They better raise guidance because the stock has gotten annihilated. Raise that guidance. And they have to talk about how AI is being incorporated with their business and how it’s leading to more of these clients spending more money on their products and services because of the AI capabilities.

Frank Curzio

And that’s when you’ll see that stock go higher. Just like you see them with cadence. Cadence is gone. You could buy itright now. It’s going to go a lot higher. They’ve proven that. I’m a software company that knows how to use AI. A lot of these software companies are more like Palo Alto. I don’t know why this is happening. This sounds so weird. I mean, ServiceNow. What did ServiceNow do?

Daniel Creech

They already reported.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, they reported.

Daniel Creech

They put up great numbers.

Frank Curzio

But where’s the CEO?

Daniel Creech

The coolest guy, Bill McDermott?

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

What about him?

Frank Curzio

Isn’t he like buying?

Daniel Creech

Oh, recent. I’m sorry. I thought you were on an earnings kick.

Frank Curzio

That’s your boy. I’m giving you like a layup here.

Daniel Creech

Hey, well, my boy, I took a 15% loss.

Frank Curzio

He’s my cap guy. I don’t know who you love more. It’s like a tie.

Daniel Creech

No, cap guy.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, that’s true. You do love cap.

Daniel Creech

I like golf. I like golf more than I like Salesforce. I like the idea of the business and the numbers, but I don’t care about software. I care about golf. I just want to make money off. I can’t make money off golf.

Frank Curzio

So throw up ServiceNow.

Daniel Creech

So ServiceNow made a brilliant move, in my opinion.

Frank Curzio

And I love this.

Daniel Creech

Now, from a trading standpoint, I would much rather take a trade and you can use the previous low if you’re a short-term trader in now, in OW, ServiceNow. But they already reported earnings. They had solid earnings. And they came out yesterday on the 17th.

Daniel Creech

And Frank, I don’t know what else you would like to see better when your stock is in free fall. But Bill McDermott, so chairman and CEO, he holds both titles. I’m not going to butcher these other names, but the president and chief financial officer, a vice chairman and chief people and AI enablement officer. I don’t even know what that means. Hopefully they don’t.

Frank Curzio

Not really important.

Daniel Creech

Oh yeah. Well, it kind of sounds like, you know, you’re making it.

Frank Curzio

Anything you put AI at the end of it sounds like it’s a big deal.

Daniel Creech

I don’t know. He better not have any suggestions. Let me make sure. Oh, it might be a woman, but they better not have any suggestions aboutice and you, you know, you fire them.

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

Careful.

Frank Curzio

No.

Daniel Creech

But anyway.

Frank Curzio

You have your own opinions outside. Don’t tell me how to run my business because of it.

Daniel Creech

On a serious note, all those people, the titles I just named, canceled all of the designed trading plans, rule 10B5-1, for all future plan sales.

Frank Curzio

Which is when they sell stock, they do it over a plan. This way, there’s no insider selling or, you know, news. And they do it like you’re selling these shares over time,right?

Daniel Creech

They announced it. And then it’s going to happen on a schedule moving forward.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. The stock’s down.

Daniel Creech

So they canceled all that as the stock is tanking, which is good to see. Not only that, but somebody should step up and put their money where their mouth is if you believe in your company.

Frank Curzio

Exactly.

Daniel Creech

Enter coolest CEO, Bill McDermott, with the best blue eyeglasses I’ve ever seen. And I’m not gay. I’m just complimenting. Going to purchase 3 million shares of the stock. Now, this can’t start until February 27th. So that’s a little over a week away. That’s the purchase date on this announcement. But Frank, what do you like more? Stop selling or actually buying? Now.

Frank Curzio

I love it.

Daniel Creech

One more caveat. $3 million to this guy. It’s a lot of money. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a lot of money to him. Okay. I still think it’s cool, but I just want to put everything in perspective as I can.

Frank Curzio

I think both of them are fantastic. I mean, that’s what you want to see,right? And I’m bringing up Salesforce right now. I want to see.

Frank Curzio

Other than a couple of buys by a couple of directors, you still have selling, proposed sales. It’s selling, selling, selling, mostly selling, selling, selling, no buying.

Daniel Creech

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Frank Curzio

Right. And you could see this on sites like free sites like Finviz. Just putting the symbol, scroll to the bottom. Finviz is actually a pretty good site. I mean, they’re getting to the point where it’s the street.com and fortune with it putting 50 billion, you know, pop-ups every place and you can’t even read the fucking site. But you still get really good information on it. And it’s free. And we like to give away free stuff. That’s why we use, you know, CNBC as a chart,

Frank Curzio

even though this billion’s better, but everyone could follow along a lot easier. It’s what you want to see,right? When your company’s like getting nailed, it’s okay. You run through ups and downs. Every business does it. Microsoft had 10, 12 years. Look at Disney now,right? It’s how do you, how do you cut your costs? How do you focus on theright avenues,

Frank Curzio

theright businesses, theright entities that are making money, that are doing good, that have growth? You know, how do you focus on that? You’re going to be laying off employees. You’re restructuring your business. And then you come out the other side. And as you’re doing this whole entire thing, the ultimate endorsement is buying your stock when it’s down. It’s the simplest thing. All these software companies, shut the fuck up and buy your stock. Just say, my stock is cheap.

Frank Curzio

Don’t say, I don’t know what’s going on. Buy a million shares. Buy $5 million worth. You know you have it,right? Buy it and say, hey, I don’t know what’s going on and I really don’t care. All I know is my stock’s cheap and I’m buying it.

Daniel Creech

That’sright.

Frank Curzio

That’s all you need to say. You don’t have to go in like Palo Alto. Oh, I’m not too sure. I don’t know what’s going on. Are you kidding me with these CEOs? Go in there and buy the if you want the ultimate endorsement.

Daniel Creech

How about Palo Alto going into today’s earnings?

Frank Curzio

Did I? What do you mean?

Daniel Creech

Did you own the stock? I know you did. I’m kidding.

Frank Curzio

No, I didn’t.

Daniel Creech

I just like how you’re fired up about the CEO.

Frank Curzio

It’s okay if you missed a quarter. It’s okay. Like understand and be like, listen, we are having trouble with AI, but this is what we’re doing,right? Be transparent. And that’s okay. People like that. Your stock’s getting hit anyway. Be like, this is what we’ve done to incorporate AI into our system. This is what we’re doing. This is what our clients are doing. They’re starting to buy this. This is what we’re doing. We’re ahead, agentic AI, almost anybody.

Frank Curzio

We’re partnering with Meta, we’re partnering with Google. This is what we’re doing. Like that’s what people want to hear. That’s how you stop the bleeding because it’s, you have this, everyone worried about it. Instead of saying, I don’t know what’s going on, one, buy the crap out of your stock. Most, this is a stock service now is down 50%,right? We just saw software stocks over the past month. Put a month chart up, Joe.

Frank Curzio

Compared to the S&P.

Frank Curzio

How much is it down in a month? Allright.

Frank Curzio

So this is down along with the market, 16%, but it’s gotten annihilated before this month. Pretty much before a lot of the software companies have gotten annihilated. They haven’t been performing well, but this major pullback in the past month. ServiceNow, I’m just surprised that you participated in this because this is a stock that got nailed. If you put in other stocks, they’ll be down 25%, 30% from their highs.

Frank Curzio

This one’s down 50%. Now where the insider’s doing, listen, we ain’t saying nothing. We’re buying our stockright now. We’re canceling all these sales because we’re not selling at this level. That’s an ultimate signal to me. I love that. That’s what ServiceNow, cadence. If you want to pick away at software companies, which everyone’s talking about all over the place, you want to see insider buying.

Frank Curzio

You want to see these companies talk about agentic AI when they’re reporting. You want to see them raising guidance, not lowering guidance because that means AI is taking business. That means that customers aren’t spending as much as they used to spend. That’s how you separate and you’re going to find diamonds in the rough, which I think ServiceNow, you want to follow the insider buying. I have no problem buying here because if I’m, and when is he buying the shares?

Frank Curzio

He’s not buying themright away. You can’t buy themright away,right?

Daniel Creech

Well, on the release, the date is the 27th is when he can start. That’s the way I read it.

Frank Curzio

And how much is he buying?

Daniel Creech

He’s going to buy 3 million worth of shares.

Frank Curzio

3 million worth. He’s telling you buy 3 million shares, $3 million.

Daniel Creech

$3 million worth. That’s a massive, massive insider buy, guys. So you see these buys by funds and stuff like that. They’ll come up on the insider buy. You want to see the CEO. You want to see them make, that’s a major buy, $3 million. That’s huge,right? So now he’s telling the whole market that I’m buying in a couple of days from now. So if you want to buy now, you can.

Daniel Creech

That’s the ultimate to ServiceNow and cadence, the two that I see. I might feel differently, although I just don’t like the politics behind Salesforce because you have a problem with your team, with your employees telling you, like dictating what kind of business you should do because you’ve been involved in politics for a long time.

Daniel Creech

Get out of politics. You could support Trump here. I mean, there’s ways. Don’t get me wrong. You know, we saw the far left, Larry Fink is far left as you could be. DEI, this is the whole world. The whole world needs to follow. This is the biggest thing in the world. The biggest thing, bigger than ETFs. DEI everywhere. Every company needs it. Oh, we’re not going to support you.

Daniel Creech

We’re going to throw you off the board because we control every single company because we own shares, even though everyone else owns them, but we own them,right? We could manage their boards and do whatever we want. And then as soon as Trump gets elected, DEI what? I don’t know what happened. Okay. That’s a good transition. But Salesforce, you got to wear masks or you’re killing people,right? Oh, you’re killing people. You should go to jail.

Daniel Creech

And then you could have said, okay, we kind of agree with Trump’s doing, you know, not so much what I, you don’t have to go that far and say we want troops in San Francisco,right? You know, that’s an extreme. That’s an extreme that’s going to disrupt your base, which is your company and your employees. There’s more problems with Salesforce under the hood,right?

Daniel Creech

It’s not just a software thing. And that’s when I want to see them and how they’re going to talk about that. Because really, you know, you have your employees dictating how you’re doing business. That’s the worst thing ever. Because now what are you going to do? You can tell your employees to fuck off and then maybe they leave. That hurts your business. Or you say, okay, we’re going to cancel these projects and lose business. And then what do you think’s going to happen? Because you’re giving these people power.

Daniel Creech

They’re going to say, oh, well, what about this project? What about this company? We don’t want this company anymore. And that’s what you open the door to. And that’s a major problem that they have. It’s going to be an interesting call because it is a cheap stock. It’s gotten hit, Salesforce. But if we see insider buying, they don’t have insider buying. If we see some kind of transition and saying, hey, agentic AI is working tremendously.

Daniel Creech

We’re raising our guidance. Maybe that’s another one I’ll put in this list. Butright now, you know, Salesforce, Palantir, I like on this pullback because they’re totally different than any of the software company. One of the only ones that can incorporate AI into a business immediately and see massive results of those companies. That’s why they got an upgrade today. I mean, 140 Palantir. I think this is a steal.

Daniel Creech

But Palantir, cadence, and ServiceNow are three that I’d be picking away at that I really like at these levels. Yeah.

Daniel Creech

From a trading perspective, I would go ahead and take, you know, and I’ve talked about this. I’ve liked ServiceNow. I like Palantir with a 120 stop if we’re trying to pick bottom short term. I like now with the purchasing and all that kind of stuff. CRM, I’m with you, Frank. I think it’s a great conversation, but it’s such a coin flip because it doesn’t matter about the numbers. It matters about the guidance and such like that.

Daniel Creech

So if you want to trade the space and go bottom fishing, I definitely think now, in OW, now the ticker, ServiceNow and Palantir are solid pullbacks. So yeah, kudos. Couldn’t agree more there, Frank. And I don’t have any other suggestions. But I will say on Salesforce, you know, like you said, you let them start dictating contracts, then they’ll run the cafeteria.

Daniel Creech

The whole place will be vegan. It’d be a horrible environment to work.

Frank Curzio

I can’t believe like you would choose to be a vegan. I just don’t get, I don’t know. Sorry. There’s vegans out there.

Daniel Creech

I was going to say, yeah, we can’t insult everybody today.

Frank Curzio

I know. I know. I just, I don’t get.

Daniel Creech

That’s the goal.

Frank Curzio

Oh my God, man. Just a delicious steak. I mean, come on. It’s awesome.

Daniel Creech

You want me to transition to 13Fs?

Frank Curzio

I don’t know. I’m just thinking of a nice juicy steakright now. Instead of 13Fs, let’s go to Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. They were on CNBC. Nice 15-minute interview. World Liberty Conference. And you know, just talking how crypto is important and blockchain. And what I loved, what they said is something that we’ve been saying for a very,

Frank Curzio

very long time, even with crypto. I know crypto’s gotten annihilated, but this is highly disruptive to an industry that hasn’t been disrupted ever. And this is the banks,right? This is a boys’ club. And he was talking about how they were forced into this because they got canceled.

Daniel Creech

Yeah.

Frank Curzio

For no reason. Because they were wearing a Trump hat or whatever. And they just said, well, sorry, we’re not going to do business. And they did this to, you know, thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. We got the banked as well for doing, you know, for investing in the metaverse. And you know, again, that amounted to nothing for us. You know, metaverse is, you know, one of the mistakes that we made. But it’s the fact that Bank of America said,

Frank Curzio

you know, they gave us another call and it was an answer machine saying, don’t bother. You got to remove all your assets in a month and everything. And it’s tough when you have payroll and everything running through that bank for like five, six years. And we didn’t even do anything wrong. We generate no revenue from that,right? So asking no questions or whatever, that’s what happened with the Biden administration and telling the banks, saying, listen, if anyone is doing anything, these are letters, open letters.

Frank Curzio

You’re doing anything crypto, we’ll come in and we’re auditing you. Get everything off the books. And they talked about this highly and they said something that we’ve been talking about of how disruptive crypto is and blockchain because it removes so many hurdles where it makes it, what do we say? And I think it was, was it Eric Trump or Trump Jr.? I forgot. He said, if you’re using crypto,

Frank Curzio

and we say this all the time, makes it easier, faster, cheaper. He actually said that. That’s what we say all the time. When you want to disrupt markets, that’s what you do. Make it easier, make it faster, make it cheaper. You know, make it better for both parties. And when you could send a wire for two cents and it gets there in minutes compared to using these banks where it takes three, four days, they got to do these old checks, KYC, all this crazy stuff.

Frank Curzio

And then they charge you 30, $60, whatever they’re going to charge you, 30 probably domestic, 60 international. Just the fees that they’re charging. And you look at, you know, JP Morgan, what is their interest rate on their checking account? Zero still,right? 0. Whatever. You know, it’s incredible the amount of fees that these banks charge. And what do they destroy?

Frank Curzio

They destroy retail investors with these fees. Oh, you don’t have enough in your checking account? Bang, we’re feeing you to death,right? It’s not the rich people. They’re like, oh, we’ll provide all these great products for you and great. You get into these IPOs too and our wealth division, all the shit, you know, buying their products and everything. That’s great. $5 million. It’s come into our funds and everything. That’s great with these guys.

Frank Curzio

But when you’re smaller and you don’t have the, you’re getting annihilated. And because it’s a boys’ club, because you’re looking at the lobbying dollars that are spent in this industry and the politicians and how bought they are, you know, this, you know, crypto is very, very big here.

Frank Curzio

And why a pullback so much is because we are light years away from them signing this deal where you’re going to make crypto, you know, basically legal and stablecoins and paying interest on stablecoins. That’s a very big deal because other countries actually do that. And that’s what we want to do here. They’re not allowing that, but we’re very far apart to where, you know,

Frank Curzio

Armstrong, who’s Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, said, we’re not even close. So they have to get this deal on the table becauseright now the uncertainty is absolutely killing crypto. But that, listen to the interview. It was really, really good. I know if you don’t like Trump, you’re not going to like it because they’re talking about how, you know, how great their empire is and all this stuff.

Frank Curzio

And again, I’m talking about the crypto part where they were just talking about how they didn’t come up with this idea. They were forced into it because every avenue that they worked in for the last 40 years, they got closed. They went after Trump. They tried to put him in jail. All these lies, all the shit that’s coming out. And they had no choice. Closing their bank accounts and everything that they had to find other means.

Frank Curzio

And they just talked about why crypto and blockchain is so important and why it moves hurdles because it really does remove these hurdles,right? These software companies, basically, that’s what these tokens are. They’ve gotten annihilated. Again, maybe they come back. It’s, you know, been a real shit show for four months. I mean, total just the liquidation out of these names. And of course, they follow Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Frank Curzio

But it doesn’t mean a lot of these technologies aren’t fascinating and they work tremendously and they absolutely disrupt the banking system. That’s why they’re all launching their own stablecoins and everything,right? Now they’re into blockchain. Now JP Morgan was always like, Bitcoin’s terrible. Now they’re into Bitcoin,right? There’s a reason why. They know they can make money on it, but they were just so far behind. They needed to catch up. They got the reset from Biden.

Frank Curzio

Now they’re catching up a little bit. But I really loved that interview. I thought those guys did a good job explaining the crypto and the blockchain part.

Daniel Creech

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

And to your point, this is really aggravating for me because it shows how the system is set up and how our representatives don’t care about the average guy. It’s kind of like, is upsetting to me as the Fed is. The Fed goes out there and tells you that they want to help the poorest among us all the time.

Daniel Creech

And it’s complete BS because you wouldn’t have an inflationary system that guarantees prices to go up if you were really trying to help the poor people. And with this thing, Frank, I want to ask you a couple of questions. Number one is, and listen, I’m not telling you how to think, just to think.

Daniel Creech

If I’m in the Democratic position and we have the midterms this year, I would not want to pass anything legislatively because I would fear that that makes the current administration, the Trump administration, it would give them some sort of victory to run on. A, do you like that or not, Frank?

Frank Curzio

I do, but you don’t really.

Daniel Creech

I’m cynical. You’re a nicer guy than I am.

Frank Curzio

You don’t need them to pass stuff,right? I mean, everyone’s voting on party lines anyway. So if you’re voting on party lines, it could get shit passed,right?

Daniel Creech

No, because they’re going to have to have certain.

Frank Curzio

I don’t think you need two-thirds of the vote, do you?

Daniel Creech

Okay. Well, I don’t know that you can even get, even if you go along party lines, I’m not sure that they can get all their own people, they being the Republicans.

Frank Curzio

Maybe it’s close.

Daniel Creech

But Democratic-wise, there’s no reason I would cross over the aisle, even in crypto. Now that’s just me. And I could be totally 100% wrong on that.

Frank Curzio

But.

Daniel Creech

Number, oh, go ahead.

Frank Curzio

The reason why I think you might be wrong on that is because of the dollars. And that’s all the politicians care about. They don’t give a shit about people,right? They give a shit about dollars. They do a good job.

Daniel Creech

You lobbyists. So you would.

Frank Curzio

No.

Daniel Creech

Oh.

Frank Curzio

Just the amount of dollars, not lobbyists, the amount of dollars. Yeah, I guess, yeah, lobbyists. But the amount of dollars that came, this is why Trump won the election, is because of crypto.

Daniel Creech

Oh, crypto definitely.

Frank Curzio

Crypto. I mean, yeah, you had Elon Musk and everything. The amount of money that he generated from crypto.

Daniel Creech

You’re saying there’s incentive for Democrats and Republicans both to pass something.

Frank Curzio

Because the amount of money.

Daniel Creech

Because they could earn lobbyists. Okay.

Frank Curzio

Yes. They did. I mean, a lot of money will go to their campaigns. A ton of money will go to their campaigns if they support this. And you might get a few saying, okay.

Daniel Creech

Okay. I’ll give you that.

Frank Curzio

So that’s, you know, and they realize that. It’s why Kamala changed, you know, again, they shut down the crypto industry. And all of a sudden they’re like, no, no, we support crypto. Like it was too late,right? It was too late. And they realized like when Trump supported crypto, because Trump was saying, I hate Bitcoin. It shouldn’t exist. And then he saw the dollars and said, Bitcoin’s great. It’s awesome,right? And then he got all this money in from the huge donors,right,

Frank Curzio

throughout the industry. These guys sitting on billions offshore capital. And now you’re looking at Democrats saying, okay, you know, we need that money. That’s all it is. It’s about how do you funding a campaign? How do you get this money? Crypto is away. You might see a couple of people change their mind on this because that’s really important. Then saying, no, we’re not going to support crypto. Otherwise,

Frank Curzio

when you look in the midterm elections, all that money from crypto is going to go into those midterm elections for the Republicans.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. And I think I’ll give you that. That could be a deciding factor that will put legislation in. And I do want legislation to happen. I’m just giving you my opinion on why it wouldn’t. The other thing is this with this stablecoin yield. And what drives me insane here is the fear mongering. And I know that’s just part of it.

Daniel Creech

But think about, this is why it’s aggravating to me. Becauseright now, like you said, if you’re at one of the major big banks or even smaller banks, Home Bank Corp, HOMB, is a regional bank. I think that that is amazing company. I like that. I love reading through the CEO comments and conference calls. But he at least comes out transparent, Frank, and says, listen, we’re not the bank to be chasing yield.

Daniel Creech

We’re not going out and offering high CD rates. We’re not going to pay the highest amount on checking. The reason you bank with us is because you know it’s going to be safe and we’re going to give you the banking that you deserve. You know, we’re going to lend to you and all that kind of stuff. That’s fine. What drives me insane is that even the opportunity to say, I’m going to give you a perspective here, Frank. The banks are supposedly saying,

Daniel Creech

listen, if you’re a stablecoin, Frank, you can’t pass on any yield of the treasury bills that you own because that would cause a flight of capital away from our banks, crash the system, ruin everything. Okay. Forget that we’re not choosing to pay anything. You’re not allowed to. And they’re calling for legislation. And if you want to act like a bank, then you have to be legislated or,

Daniel Creech

excuse me, what word am I looking for? The rules and regulation over you. You have to be regulated like a bank. And here’s why that’s complete Florida BS. Because it’s not a fractional reserve system, people. If you buy a stablecoin, it’s backed one-to-one in your treasuries. Unless they’re crooks in line. That’s the way it’s set up. It’s got to be. If that treasury bond is paying you 4%, the maximum you can pay is 4%.

Daniel Creech

Okay. That’s not like the banking system. Okay. You put $1,000 into Bank of America. They loan out 8, 9, $10,000 against your 1,000. That’s fractional reserve. That’s a lot of the problems we have, people. That is the ingredients that make the cake go. Okay. I like that, Frank.

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

Fractional reserve doesn’t exist in stablecoin yield. Why that is not being beat like a drum and shouted. I have not heard hardly anybody, including Brian Armstrong, mention that. And that pisses me off because I’m not that smart. And he should be saying that because that’s much more of an easy way to communicate with people. He should say, hey, why can’t we pay? And forget paying the full yield.

Daniel Creech

Why not just pay half? You buy a treasury bond that pays 4%. Why can’t you give 1% or 2%? Does that make sense?

Frank Curzio

Yeah. No.

Daniel Creech

And it’s not being explained like that. And I guess I may be getting something wrong. Email me, danielkerzierresearch.com. But I think that that’s horrible. So I really think crypto needs legislation, the Clarity Act to pass before we get, it feels like, Frank, remember back to your basketball days when you can’t hit a shot? It feels like there’s a lid on it. And then finally somebody makes one and you go,

Daniel Creech

okay, the lid’s off the basket and then you can start scoring. I feel like the lid is on the crypto basket until we get more legislation. And that’s just where I’m standing. I think you can trade it and bounce around. But I don’t expect Bitcoin to do anything impressive on the upside. And if that doesn’t happen, I don’t see how the rest of the market follows through, in my opinion.

Frank Curzio

It’s all about passing this. Yeah. They need to pass the laws. Otherwise, yeah, we’re going to be so commissioned.

Daniel Creech

So I’ll take the no. Do you take yes that it gets passed this year? I hate to take no. I hate to be so pessimistic.

Frank Curzio

I know people like yes or no answers. Believe me, I know them more than anybody. It’s so tough. I want it to be yes.

Daniel Creech

Well, me too.

Frank Curzio

I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, what’s going onright now, they’re not even close. I mean, you got to be honest.

Daniel Creech

We’re all going on a limb. They’re not doing it this year.

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

And then I hope I eat humble pie as prices are skyrocketing higher.

Frank Curzio

I can’t believe you’re not optimistic, really.

Daniel Creech

What?

Frank Curzio

No, I’m just kidding. No, it’s true. I agree with you. I wish you were more optimistic about it.

Daniel Creech

Oh, yeah. You know, I’m not.

Frank Curzio

No, I agree with you. I just don’t. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t see.

Daniel Creech

It’s very hard to be optimistic about. They’re wily creatures, these politicians.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, I know,right? Let’s get to 13Fs. So 13Fs are what all the fund managers and even some of these companies as well, when you’re looking at Nvidia or Release, I think, you know, a lot of these guys, if you have over $100 million that you’re invested, they have to report these 13Fs in filings. And they show the new positions, what they increased their positions in, the exited, the decreased positions.

Frank Curzio

You know, they have to show basically their book of what they’ve done the past three months. And they close it like two weeks ago. But it’s always interesting,right? We cover this. And you know, there’s a couple of interesting ones where Berkshire Hathaway we looked at Amazon, where you know they lowered their stake from 10 million to 2.2 million. That was a big deal. You know, they decreased Bank of America. They decreased their Apple position a little bit, not much.

Frank Curzio

And yeah, you have Warren Buffett that’s now, you know, going to leave the company after 175 years. Greatest investor ever. I love him. Seriously, he’s amazing. Unbelievable. And you know, so when I look at 13Fs, you want to be careful because they could, I mean, in reality, they could have a 20,

Frank Curzio

they went from 10 million to 2.2 million. Right now, they could have a $20 million position in Amazon,right? If they bought in the last two years.

Daniel Creech

Or zero.

Frank Curzio

Or zero. So you know, you just want to be careful. But what you like to see with not the algos and a lot of these guys, the algos, you’ll see 300 names that they’re buying and selling increase. You know, these are just algos that they’re in and out in two seconds, front running the market and making money off of, you know, everybody else. When you look at some of these investors like Appaloosa, which is David Tepper, you know, Loeb,

Frank Curzio

Ackman, Warren Buffett, they’re buying and saying a lot of times when they have a new position, they usually add to it over time. And it’s interesting because sometimes they’ll take a big positionright off the start. And then you’ll see that position, you know, maybe that stock could pull back or they have a bad quarter here or there. And it gives you an opportunity to buy it cheaper than when, you know, Warren Buffett or David Tepper started buying it.

Frank Curzio

But you know, that’s one of the things that stood out to me with Berkshire and that’s making headlines. But also Appaloosa, which is David Tepper, who I really love. He had a couple of mistakes in the past couple of quarters, but overall, one of the greatest investors ever. What I like is the EWY. Did you see that position? South Korea ETF, it’s South Korea’s on fire. EWY.

Daniel Creech

Nice.

Frank Curzio

And I think this, so let’s look at this one first. This is South Korea. Right. So this is South Korea fund. And you know, South Korea’s been on fire. A lot of international markets have been on fire. And then you’re looking at BALL was another one.

Frank Curzio

BALL was another one that he bought, which is maybe the most boring company I’ve ever seen in my life. Aluminum packaging for beverages and personal care. And this is a consumer staple stock. Consumer staples are absolutely on fire. Look at this South Korea ETF. Look at this. I mean, this is insane. I mean, what a move. And he’s been buying and he’s been buying probably a few months ago. So maybe, probably.

Daniel Creech

Well, he was buying October to December.

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

I mean, that’s when the quarter ended. Like I said, he could be out of that. But I mean, that’s the time period. So yeah.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. Yeah. So you know, and he’s usually in these things for long term, but already he’s making a killing here. But you know, that was off the radar for me. I didn’t see anybody, hey, buying South Korea lately. Like you’re not hearing that anyplace. And it just shows there’s always a bull market someplace,right? And you know, you’re looking at this chart going, holy cow. And you see this, actually, if you compare to a lot of countries,

Frank Curzio

a lot of countries have been on fire. The stock markets are up a lot more than we’ve been up over the past 12 months. But yeah, that was interesting. And BALL company, two of the positions that he is, that he’s got a new positions. He also increased American Airlines’ Micron position, decreased Alibaba. Now he was in a lot of China stocks and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio

PDD. So you know, he’s slight decreases in those stocks. AMD from like a million to 300,000. Uber, I think he’s gotten annihilated on. You know, Baidu, I think that, you know, some of these China names he’s done pretty well on. But also Amazon, a little bit of a decline, you know, probably just rebalancing a portfolio. But I just thought EWY was something worth mentioning. And also BALL as well.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Very good. Quickly for me, I can’t believe you rattled off a bunch of those guys’ names and didn’t mention Stanley Drukenmiller, Frank.

Frank Curzio

Drukenmiller.

Daniel Creech

Horrible. Anyway, I want to give you an atta boy here. So I’ll see your South, what was that? South Korea he was buying?

Frank Curzio

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Creech

EWZ. Is that Brazil? Well, Stanley was buying calls and three and a half million shares, according to Whale Wisdom of EWZ. That kind of got my, so first of all, one of his biggest new buys, according to Whale Wisdom, was the XLF. That’s the financials, the big dog financials ETF.

Daniel Creech

Anytime somebody as smart as him buys a big ETF, like you were just saying with Tepper, you ought to pay attention. That’s been a nice run because like I said, he had to buy that from October. So he bought it under 32.50, say. So that’s a nice pop. He’s also got calls. Frank, he took a new position, 1.3, I’m rounding, shares in Alcoa, AA.

Frank Curzio

I like Alcoa.

Daniel Creech

We’re big on that. That’s been a great dollar stock club pick for you, for us, for subscribers. Frank, I don’t know if you bottom ticked it, but yeah, let me give you some, a little over 60% since October. So well done there.

Frank Curzio

Alcoa. And it’s, listen, it’s no surprise. But keeps telling you guys, I know you hate Trump as people have emailed in, oh, Trump, I don’t give a shit if you hate him or not. Our job is to make you money. Follow the stocks out of with Trump. He’s in that Trump circle. They’re in the Trump circle. They were in the Trump circle. He was in the Middle East with them. Alcoa is a company. What’s their market cap? Even now, it was half the market, whatever it was. It’s 15 billion. It was under 10 billion.

Frank Curzio

I mean, this company, it’s like, it’s almost like you see you’re in China and all of a sudden you see some guy that’s like seven foot tall. It just doesn’t belong. Okay. Well, you got to ask questions. Alcoa being in the Middle East doesn’t belong. It didn’t belong with Nvidia, AMD, Boeing, all the biggest, the industry, IBM, these massive companies,right? And then you got Alcoa. I’m like, what the hell is Alcoa doing there?

Frank Curzio

Well, you know, if you’re part of Trump’s circle and they’re building more US, US, US, that they’re going to push more money. Like we have to realize about Trump. And even if you listen to Donald Trump Jr. and you listen to Eric today, Trump, the amount of money behind the Trump organization is freaking insane.

Frank Curzio

And I know this personally. I know people behind the scenes. I know people behind the scenes that have done things for Trump, fantastic things for Trump. And now they’re raising SPACs and stuff like that. And they’re raising literally $250 million in a day. I’m not even kidding. Because of how big that circle is. When you are in that circle, you’re going to get business thrown at you. Alcoa, if they’re like,

Frank Curzio

oh, we want to build plants, aluminum, whatever, Trump’s going to be like, here, you’re calling Alcoaright now. This is what you’re going to do. And it’s a difference maker. So, you know, it’s a layup. We’ve been telling you this with these Trump ideas. I’ve been posting this stuff on X and we’re getting massive traction. Just talk about, just shut up. I don’t care if you like them. Trump’s very powerfulright now.

Frank Curzio

If you’re in his circle as a company, look at Nvidia. Did you see Nvidia and how many shares they bought of Intel? I mean, you know, we knew it was taken, it was massive,right? Let me see if I can find it.

Daniel Creech

We’re not as happy with Intelright now. It’s down for us, Frank.

Frank Curzio

Well, we’re frustrated. But when they first started investing in it,right? But you know, with Intel, but you’re looking at, I mean, just every single stock that they have been involved with, not crypto, but stocks. When you’re looking at these stocks, it really is incredible. It really is. So, you know, Alcoa, good. I’m glad people are making money. I love when people make money.

Frank Curzio

We do make mistakes and stop out of things sometimes. But that was one of the, you know, that’s been a big winner.

Daniel Creech

Well, I’ll give you another one. You interrupted me too fast, Frank. You know what else he took a position in?

Frank Curzio

What?

Daniel Creech

He bought 740,000 shares of Bloom Energy, BE. Joe, can you pull up BE, please? See, I have to say please. That’s the difference when your name’s on the door. I’m nice to Joe. You can bark orders at me. I have to say please.

Frank Curzio

Joe, don’t shut up.

Daniel Creech

So real quick, Bloom Energy, regular, everybody knows we bragged about this, as you should. Second half position, we have taken profits, but the position you still hold is up over 600%.

Frank Curzio

600%.

Daniel Creech

I think.

Frank Curzio

I’m so happy. Listen, if you own this in our AI newsletter, real quick before I say, if you own it, please send me an email, frankersresearch.com. You know, you owe me beer, first of all. But yeah, definitely send me an email because I want to see how many people actually own this name. And I hope it’s a lot of people, really. This is what we do our job for. Because look, we’re going to stop out of stocks. We’re going to get things wrong. This is a difference maker.

Frank Curzio

Like if you have this stock and you could stop out of five or six stocks and you’re perfectly fine when you have a 600% winner,right? You stop you out 30%, 30%, 30%. This is what you’re swinging for. The fences, Bloom Energy, what we said, Celestica is another one we took 500% returns in an AI newsletter. You know, this is what investing is about. You want to be able to have these and you can’t miss them. And I want to try to make sure if people are missing them,

Frank Curzio

I want to know why they’re missing them because I want to try to focus and see how do we get more people involved in, you know, in a lot of our names and not just selecting and picking some of the best stories. This is a fantastic story, but sorry to interrupt you, good dang.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. Let’s pick better conviction on my end. What I like about this, and this is what you said, you have to take 13Fs with a grain of salt because they are delayed. These only go until the end of the year. Obviously, we’re in February now. So he could be completely out of this position. And if you look at the chart there, he could have bought in October. You know, we can play with the chart.

Daniel Creech

Let’s say you buy at the very beginning of October. He rides it up. You can sell it. So I don’t want to mislead everybody and say, oh, he’s in this. I’m simply saying this caught my eye because when you look back and you try to think, hey, what caught his eye? Was it just a simple trade? We can wait for the next 13F to come out. Yes, we have to wait a little time, see if he still holds a position, if he’s added to it or whatever. But my point is that this has been a great winner.

Daniel Creech

It’s been a very volatile, I don’t want to say easy, that’s not theright term, but it’s been a great swing trader for those guys that like to take momentum positions and such. I think if you look at this, I don’t think it’s a big limb to go out. Any positive news in the market, I think we’re just on a road to nowhere. But any positive news on the market in general, and that thing breaks out,

Daniel Creech

if it can break above its recent highs after the volatility, I think that thing could really see a nice pop. I hope Mr. Stanley’s still in there because, well, he’s my favorite hedge fund.

Frank Curzio

Where do we buy this at? 20s? 25?

Daniel Creech

Yeah, it was in the 20s.

Frank Curzio

Nice. And how many?

Daniel Creech

A little under 20. A little under 22.

Frank Curzio

Stanley Drukenmiller to Drukenmiller to be in his fund? What are the fees? Massive fees,right?

Daniel Creech

I’d pay whatever he charged.

Frank Curzio

Yeah.

Daniel Creech

That guy’s charged $33.

Frank Curzio

Well, think about it. We got to change our pricing, I think,right? So people pay $1,000 for a newsletter. We gave this to them at 20. And then people are paying, you know, two and 20 to freaking Mr. Stanley over there. And he’s giving this to them at 130.

Daniel Creech

Yeah. You know the answer to that?

Frank Curzio

Man.

Daniel Creech

He’s a billionaire. I’m not.

Frank Curzio

Yeah, I know.

Daniel Creech

That’s why.

Frank Curzio

That’s why.

Daniel Creech

So, well done, Stanley.

Frank Curzio

Yeah. Damn, I’m going to raise the price on that newsletter.

Daniel Creech

But anyway.

Frank Curzio

I’m just kidding.

Daniel Creech

We’ll go over more 13Fs Minyana. But you always got to talk about, I always have to talk about his. So I like that. There’s several more, but I’m going to, I’ll leave it at that.

Frank Curzio

Okay. We’re going to end with this, guys. I just released my exclusive interview with Eric Quick. He’s the CEO of Kafri. I’ve been talking about this company and it’s fascinating because they are using amino acids to take the caffeine out of coffee. Now, it doesn’t sound like it’s a big deal until you realize this freaking process, which is from the Stone Age.

Frank Curzio

And this process, I’m not kidding. There’s two processes, actually. There’s one that’s solvent, which requires like nail polish removal and methylene chloride, which is used in paint stripping to remove it. Or the other one, non-solvent, which is fun. And it’s a company called Swiss Water, which is the leader there in Vancouver. This is the process. I’m not kidding. This is the process. So coffee beans are sent to the Vancouver facility from Brazil or wherever,

Frank Curzio

you know, maybe, you know, just a couple of places,right? They soak the beans in water and solubles. They take the caffeine out. Then they use GCE, that’s green coffee extract, take it to flavor back into the beans. Then they have these massive tanks, massive, massive facilities, increase of facility because of demand in 2021. They built this, I think it’s 80,000 square feet, whatever it is. It’s insane.

Frank Curzio

So these massive tanks are then used to process at a huge facility. And after the decaffeination takes place of the coffee, you have to move these wet coffee beans to a resting silo for two to three days to dry. Then they get tested to make sure how much caffeine gets removed. And it’s usually 90% where these guys’ amino acids remove 100% and the taste is absolutely the same,right?

Frank Curzio

Then it goes through machines of how much caffeine is out of the coffee. Then it has to be tasted. If all’s okay, then it’s re-bagged, stored in massive warehouses, packed on a truck, and then shipped back to other countries or customers. That’s the process of taking caffeine out of coffee beans, which is insane compared to putting this formula that is going to be in the patent pretty soon in there.

Frank Curzio

So we have great contacts. This is a person that signed with us because we were doing the deal with Eric Goldrier, which is savvy. And we said, listen, we don’t want to put both these deals out at the same time. And people approached him to raise money. They’re raising $5 million. They took two and a half million themselves in this filing,right?

Frank Curzio

So we’re coming in at $20 million valuation for something that is disruptive. And we said this on the last podcast and somebody I pointed out, we said this is a $100 billion market. They’re like, well, the caffeine market’s $55 billion. That’s for coffee. We’re talking about the entire market is over $100 billion. Even $55 billion is insane,right? Because this isn’t a company that’s disruptive. That’s going to be like, okay, well, we’re just doing this on the side and that’s it.

Frank Curzio

And we’re going to be a competitor. They have the ability to control the entire industry. And that’s why you’re looking at the CEO, Pete’s Coffee, massive,right? Just got bought by, who is it? Dr. Pepper Corick is on their advisory board and says this is insane,right? So you’re looking at the management team where David Bega, Nobel Prize for Protein Design,

Frank Curzio

George Church, CRISPR Technology at Harvard,right? Again, CEO Pete’s Coffee as an advisor, you have theright people. And Eric is great because Eric is more of a CEO, not a scientist, because they have great scientists on the team. Now they’re raising money. And with this money, they’re going to expand. They’re going to build these patents up. And now they’re going to,

Frank Curzio

probably within a year or two, you’re going to see something that actually you can go thereright now and taste test it at UC Davis, which is like the coffee hub where all these companies are a part of. It’s the biggest coffee hub in the world, I believe, that just, you know, focuses on science and technologies for coffee. So this is a $20 million deal. And this is an exclusive interview I just released because we’re raising,

Frank Curzio

we have $2.5 million that we could raise for them. I could tell you we released it yesterday. And we’re already up to about $750,000 on day one. Okay. Because once you see the interview and you see everything and I cover everything, you have all the documents there. You’re going to see a fantastic, it’s a 35-minute interview. It’s not boring at all. It’s amazing. You’re going to learn so much and be like, holy shit,

Frank Curzio

I can’t believe that they’re doing this Stone Age stuff to the caffeine. And the trends, you don’t even need the trends to be better, but the trends are very favorable. And for decaffeinated coffee, the younger generations want that. They want half caffeine and all this craziness. So you’re looking at these trends going up tremendously. You don’t even need them to go up tremendously. I think it’s like 33% of the market,

Frank Curzio

even if they stay the same. But the process is costing these companies tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars over a five, ten-year period in costs. Not only that, their carbon footprint, they have to get, you know, just carbon credits and stuff that they can eliminate now. I mean, you know, again, I avoid carbon credits as much as I can, but it’s such a dirty process. And now that eliminates all this, that’s what companies want.

Frank Curzio

How do we find a better way to be more productive? How do we lower our costs, increase output, increase our margins? And this is the most simple process you could possibly have. And this is something of, this is why you get into private placements for deals like this. Because if these guys get it right, you’re coming in at a $20 million valuation and this could easily be a billion-dollar company.

Frank Curzio

They may not execute. Maybe there’s competitors. Maybe someone else comes out with another formula. Of course, there’s risks. But when I look at this market and the people behind it, the guy who’s running this whole entire thing, biggest investors from the SlimFast Fortune, $2.5 billion from his father-in-law, they had the right people in place. I’ve spoken to all these people. The interview’s fantastic. We just launched it. If you’re interested in learning more, again, private placements,right?

Frank Curzio

A lot of news and more private placements are going to be available. We do that for our investors. I look at these deals. You’re getting the exact same terms I’m getting in. No BS. You don’t have to invest in any deal once you’re a One member. But if you’re interested in learning more, you can set up a call to become a One member. It’s not that expensive for credit investors only. And you get invited to our conference and you get access to all products and services. 

Send me an email, frank@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio

For this deal, if you’re going to do it, if you’re thinking about it, I would do it in the next few days. If not, don’t bother. We’ll have more deals. I don’t think we have another deal lined up for a month or two. I would come out with four or five private placements a year. I probably look at 60 of them, 50 of them at least. And I turned down most of them. This is one that has fantastic terms, fantastic management team,

Frank Curzio

disruptive technology makes it easy, faster, cheaper. Everybody’s watching these guys. Everyone from Starbucks to everybody’s talking to these guys that go in the presentation, all the major coffee companies. It’s really exciting. And that’s on the table right now. That’s the latest private placement we offer for One members. If you’re a One member, go in there. If you’re going to, if you have any questions, of course, you can ask me.

Frank Curzio

You don’t have to invest in any deals again. There’s no pressure. If you’re going to invest, I would do it quick because I think the $2.5 million is going to go very, very fast with this deal. And that’s what we’re seeing right now. You know, on day one, $750 is gone already, which is really, really cool. That’s how much has been committed. 

So if you’re interested in learning more, frank@curzioresearch.com. Other than that, huh, Daniel, we covered a lot today, huh?

Daniel Creech

Yes, sir. Do it again tomorrow.

Frank Curzio

Do it again tomorrow. We’ll go more into 13Fs and have, you know, a nice pick for you tomorrow. 

And any questions or comments, again, email me, frank@curzioresearch.com. Daniel?

Daniel Creech

Daniel@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio

Allright, guys. See you tomorrow, Wall Street Unplugged Premium. Take care.

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