Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Daniel Creech

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

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

Andrew Horowitz. What’s going on, man? It’s been a while that you’ve been on my podcast, so nice to have you back on, frank. How are you doing Everything good, yeah, everything good, Keeping busy. You look great, by the way, nice tan going Frank. How are you doing Everything good, yeah, everything good, keeping busy. You look great, by the way, nice tan going man what are you going to do?

0:00:29 – Andrew Horowitz

You know it’s pickable. Well, it’s pickable. I’ve been obsessed, and like a crazed maniac, about this pickable thing. Are you getting good, though, or what? I’m good, I play with the top players at the court, so I guess that’s good. Right Not to brag, but I’ve gotten very good.

0:00:45 – Frank Curzio

That’s nice. It depends.

0:00:49 – Andrew Horowitz

If there’s like nine guys that play in your neighborhood, then you know, compared to there’s nine guys that are all 80, for God’s sakes.

0:00:55 – Frank Curzio

You asked a one-up me. That was actually funny, so let’s get to it, man. So I love having you back on. I’m going to ask you a very simple question. Okay, we love going to the economy. We always dig down into stocks and ideas and we go anywhere with this right, which is why I love having you as a guest. It’s not particularly one subject the economy. I mean people. You could argue that the economy is doing very well right now. You could argue that the economy is starting to struggle right now. It depends. We’re in a negative number right. First quarter GDP, next one’s going to be over 3%, based on Atlanta Fed, you know you got retail sales that are not so good, housing’s not so good. Job number was good today, you know, good last week. Adp not as good. It’s this back and forth Inflation is it going to go? Is tariffs going to impact it? What?

0:01:43 – Andrew Horowitz

are your thoughts on. The economy is actually in good shape if you’re on the side of the equation that you want to see good and it’s bad if you want to see bad. I heard, for example, david Rosenberg talking a few days ago and he was just going droning on and on about all the bad news, all the bad things that were going on with the economy. So I was like, oh okay, that’s interesting. And the economy? So I was like, oh, okay, that’s interesting. And I was like, was that true?

But the, the, the, somewhere in between, if you’re in a, an area where, let’s say, how florida I mean housing is on fire, right backed off a little bit, but there’s jobs a plenty. There’s other areas around the country, that is not it. So it’s all a matter of perspective right now. But if you take that and step back and look at just economic, economic numbers that are being presented to us, there’s a mixed bag. I agree 4.1 unemployment rate not bad. 144 000 on adp came in a negative. 33 000 private payrolls are suffering, government payrolls for whatever reason, I don’t know how. All of a sudden there’s more government payrolls after we slashed all these jobs. But government payrolls are really what pushed up last month’s jobs number and when you look at things like retail sales, yeah, they’re poor but they’re still being relatively resilient compared to what we thought it was gonna be.

The big issue and the turning point is gonna be probably this month well, I should say last month. This month we’re gonna get last month’s numbers on inflation right. We’re going to get the CPI, the PPE, we’re going to get the PPI, we’re going to get the CPE and I would think that, because the tariffs went on to most shipments that were started probably in April or so, june is going to be where we’re going to start seeing the uptick and I think that’s the consensus across the board. Now, whether it takes another month or so we shall see, but I think there is going to be a very noticeable and I think that a reasonable amount of inflation is going to start to kick in. It’s going to keep the Fed on hold and whether or not president trump wants to keep on just needling and pushing uh powell to resign, that low iq stupid man that he is, uh, you know the fact is uh, and I don’t mean that, of course, I think it’s crazy that we even say that, but I don’t think anything’s gonna happen.

The shadow banking thought where trump may appoint somebody and then create a lame duck position for powell from now until, I think, next april. That’s possible, pushing interest rates down possible. But if you’re seeing the economy is resilient and we see that at the same time, you know this will be actually double whammy next month. The 4.% unemployment rate and higher inflation is really going to piss some people off in the markets. So I think it’s a mixed bag.

0:04:30 – Frank Curzio

Let’s look 12 months from now which I think we both like to do right when the market’s heading right, because you always want to position yourself. Of course you want to position yourself as a trader and you know we’ll talk about lots of opportunities. But when I see a guy like Rosenberg or Peter Schiff, I feel like, no matter what happens, they’ll never change their mind. They’re always going to be bearish and I like that both research but they’re always bearish, no matter what right they hate the economy, no matter what, everything will be perfect. And when guys like you and I, we look at the data and we’re willing to change our minds. When I see 12 months from now, I don’t like this. But the spending bill’s passing right passing which means a ton more money filtering into assets. I mean the depreciation alone that’s coming in that bill, which people are going to start, they’re just starting to talk about now, is unbelievable.

You could write off stuff dating back from a year ago, which is massive for businesses. You have deregulation where banks and look, I understand the credit crisis, we went through it, we lived through that. I get it where it was, just the regulation was overboard. But when you have regulation where these banks have to keep enough capital to withstand and they show these scenarios of a 33% decline in commercial real estate, 10% unemployment rate, a massive decline, 34% decline, 30% decline in the stock market. And you know those situations together are likely not going to happen. I don’t think they’ve happened since the Great Depression. They didn’t even have during the credit crisis. So you see deregulation of the banks, more money. You see a lot of money on the sidelines where and you’re looking at interest rates they’re going to come down regardless and if they don’t come down now, you know that the next Fed chair is going to come in in May and they’re going to be a lot lower, say, a year and a half from now.

0:06:07 – Andrew Horowitz

When I look at that far-.

0:06:09 – Frank Curzio

I would put a pin on that one, but go ahead Okay go ahead, go ahead, put a pin on it because, from what I see is, the conditions right now are ripe for asset prices to go a lot higher. And I’m not saying that I’m cheering a spending bill because I know there’s so much garbage in that stuff. I’m just saying our job is to give opportunities to our investors and the opportunities are really looking really good when I look 12 months out from now because of all these tailwinds that are coming.

0:06:33 – Andrew Horowitz

I think the interest rate issue is an interesting one, because now we just, in this bill, increased the debt ceiling to a few trillion dollars and the Fed has been holding back. Why do they call it the debt ceiling?

0:06:42 – Frank Curzio

when they keep raising it, it doesn’t matter.

0:06:44 – Andrew Horowitz

It’s the heaven, the debt heavens. Good, but the Treasury Secretary has been holding back with new issues because they didn’t have the ability to do so and now they need to fund a lot of this. So there’s going to be a lot of new issue coming out and that’s going to be trickling out, I would say, in the bills plus maybe two, three, four, five years maybe. I don’t think they want to really push down the other side. That’s maybe going to raise interest rates, as more people don’t want to buy that. And then you have the issue about the lowering of the rating by Fitch, a non-event. To a degree, you know we can scoff it off saying the rating industry. You know we like when a rating industry will increase our rating, but when they decrease it, oh, they’re no good. You know they don’t mean anything. And when we have a situation like we have now, with the massive amount that’s going out, I do think that there is going to be the potential for a problem. We saw what happened with the dollar over the last year, down to levels that we haven’t seen since, like 2021. Very weak dollar. Why is that? Because we know that there’s going to be a tremendous amount of spending and the concern about the us economic situation long term, the spending that’s going on the republic. By the way news alert frank the republicans are not the uh. They’re not the party of restraint any longer, right? They’re not the party of fiscal responsibility any longer, they’re spenders. You want to compare? Oh, they’re spenders, they’re both spenders. And this bill, which is supposed to be all about holding back, cutting back and all that not happening. And I think this gives a lot more opportunity for Trump also to go out and do a lot more hardcore tactics when it comes to the tariffs, because he has the backdrop that we did get the tax deal not rolled back but held when the taxes are held. So I think 12 months, yes, you have to be selective. I think that interest rates, I don’t think they’re going to be a lot lower. It would be nice to be a little bit lower, but I think those days are gone for a while. I do, and I think that the inflation rate will not really subside that much. That doesn’t mean oh my God. You know this is going to be the same cycle that we have, where we’re seeing an incredible amount of opportunity from technology and what that has spurred on what we talked about.

In the last time I was on your show we talked about utilities and new. Remember I talked about this nuclear energy. Yes, Right, we don’t talk about nuclear energy anymore, it’s new, clear energy, because it’s much more palatable to people to think about this. So we had stocks like SMR and Oklo. We had NextEra and Exelon Southern. You know those companies are doing great, Just great. I mean the nuclear nuclear SMR, small modular reactor stocks Unbelievable. Still haven’t been proven necessarily, but Amazon is doing an incredible amount of investing there. So I think we’re going to have pockets of opportunities and with that we have to be I don’t want to call it, uh stock pickers, because I hate that whole thing, the whole stock pickers thing, because that becomes what does it mean?

you know it. I think it is a market where we need to be uh, uh bullish, but I think we need to be a little bit reserved. Also, we can’t be like leveraged up in this kind of environment that is so chaotic. That’s the only point I was going to make, but, yeah, there are a lot of opportunities, frank.

0:10:10 – Frank Curzio

You know you mentioned nuclear is one of them, and I guess, even when you say I do hate the term stock picker’s market, because when I look at some of these stocks and you look at like the SMRs and stuff and I wrote some of this down and we could even go into some of the other ones that are really taken off here but even Oklo has an $8 billion valuation, zero revenue, you know, for a technology that has to go through state, local, federal approval, that has not been proven and it’s not scalable at all right now. So you’re seeing contracts come in but they’re not really paying for it until this stuff’s going to be ready, which is at least three, four, five years of the people I talked about in my industry, and then you’re assuming that again getting all the approvals across the board. I mean you’re going into American politics, which is a nightmare when it gets bureaucratic, especially when it comes to energy and stuff like that, and you’re seeing the energy and great coal utilities with. And that leads to my next question how does this filter down to sectors? Because I think people are like wait, you think the market’s going, I don’t know what the S&P is going to do, I don’t know what small caps are going to do, but I really like a lot of small caps here.

I just think they’ve been totally out of favor for such a long time. They have adjusted. They adjusted to high interest rates. They adjusted. They’re not going to be impacted by tariffs as much because a lot of those businesses do business just in the US already. They cut their costs already. So now you’re looking at them transforming their business because the last two years have been so bad. There’s a lot of great names in there. Same with the S&P 500. I’m not telling you, the whole S&P 500 is going to go up, but there’s certain sectors that within it which you touched on with nuclear. What are some of the other sectors? You see, you know, over the next whatever I don’t like to go ever go out more than 24 months because the world could change dramatically. But even like the next six to 12 months, you know what are the sectors that you’re looking at, saying we got to find some more stocks within these sectors because they just look that positive. Yeah.

0:11:44 – Andrew Horowitz

I mean. One thing you have to note is everything is a caveat, right. We don’t know who’s going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow in this administration and say, oh, that company we don’t like anymore. You know what I’m saying? We don’t, we don’t. That happens, it’s not even an exaggeration, that literally happens, yeah, exactly. So what I think is really interesting? One of the top, the top, the top sector inside the S&P 500 sectors this year. Crazy enough, I wouldn’t have thought of this when I looked at it recently. I’m like, oh, industrials, part of that’s because Boeing is up like 20% this year and you get Caterpillar and a few of those. But also I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the defense area from this bill. I mean, a lot of that’s been pulled forward, a lot already. You know, you see that. But there’s definitely opportunity in the defense area. I think you’re looking at some new areas too in the I’ll call them industrial. I guess to a degree, transportation industrial, but I’ll mention that in a second the stocks there. But the industrials also have one of the first places to get the trickle down of monies from a stimulus bill and by all accords, this is a stimulus bill. So the money that’s going to come in. Now, look at what happened with gold and gold miners, and that’s. You know, every time I think about gold and gold miners, all I think about is gigantic, like gigantic trucks, right, and cranes and stuff that you and I probably would have a real kick taking a ride on, right, you know. And these big trucks that are going through these mines being filled up and dumped somewhere else, sifted through all these kinds of things. Now, you know, do we need all these new trucks? Well, maybe, but you know what Caterpillar has as an example, or even a deer, or you know, pick your poison of what particular rental company that you’re going to look at. A lot of these companies are built on revenue from sales, but they also get revenues from services, massive revenues from services. By the way, right, you, you want. I was on a boat last week and there were Caterpillar engines and something happened. It wasn’t catastrophic or anything, it wasn’t a problem. But what you call the Caterpillar guy you know, that’s the guy you call that deals with the Caterpillar engines. So all these kinds of services and things that happen, and if, in fact, we are going to continue on with what we’re doing or building the infrastructure back in America. That is something that’s been talked about and a lot of the the the sausage factory that was built inside of this build is going to have a lot of that, state by state, county by county, refreshes of bridges and tunnels and railroads and roads and all that stuff right, and that is industrials generally speaking. So I think that’s kind of an interesting under-the-radar play that people don’t think about because we only want to think about Apple and we want to think about, you know, nvidia. That’s all we ever talk about, but I think that’s interesting.

Healthcare again let’s go to healthcare. Like I’m gonna say, healthcare, healthcare is is on my list because they’re just so horrible, it’s just so bad. There’s a couple of stocks I like in that area. Another one that’s probably below the radar crisper. The idea of having crisper, crispr, therapeutic stamps You’ve liked that for a long time yeah.

Liked it for a long time and it’s been very good. I’ve been in and out of it many, many times. I rode it all the way up, took a giant chunk out of it, started buying it again and up a bunch on it now. So I think it has a great roadway to go.

0:15:01 – Frank Curzio

When you’re looking at other sectors. When you’re looking at other sectors because industrials is interesting and industrials could even filter down to drone companies. When you’re looking at the bill and the Golden Dome and all this stuff. So when you look at infrastructure and you say industrials, it’s so wide I mean you talk about is it cement companies? Is it planes, is it engines, caterpillar? I mean there’s a thousand companies in those. So get more specific in terms of what do you see, because I would even throw drones in there as well, because they’re talking a lot about drones which you’re seeing. Avav go higher. Kronos is another one AVAV we’ve had forever, we’ve had on portfolio since 25. It’s 250.

0:15:35 – Andrew Horowitz

Is that Air?

0:15:35 – Frank Curzio

Environment, right, air Environment, yeah, and same with Kratos, because just the and I love the fact when you’re looking at you know not that we’re getting into another sector, because I also consider it again a little bit in industrial space, but you know, defense companies used to be four or five of these guys and now you’re seeing these, the Palantir’s, branch out like this specialized defense companies that are small, that the big guys are actually doing business with these guys, right, and when you see the Kratos and AVAVs, like those names just made a lot of sense to us which is doing well, but what? What is some of the names like within those sectors that you see going higher?

0:16:07 – Andrew Horowitz

So if you talk about the drones, I mean when we, when I mentioned drones and anybody that’s listening right now is thinking about this whole idea of drones, we’re not talking about the handheld drones that are going up just to kind of take pictures of, you know, you walking along the street, those, those maybe. But you know I’m talking about the driverless cars, the autonomous car concept right, where you can do maybe, deliveries of goods or people, right, short-term rides, especially EV style. So you have a couple of companies in that area that are very interesting, like Joby, j-o-b-y, j-o-b-y, and you have like Archer Aviation. Archer just did a massive offering at 10 bucks and just blew it out and the stock was down like 15 or 18 percent. But now that that’s kind of cleared. I think there’s, you know, because you have to clear the offering Right. So the offering is cleared, people have it. Now they’re going to, I think, get back to business. And the reason for that was because Archer ran up hot during the idea that they got the thumbs up. There was an executive order actually dealing with these kinds of companies in the autonomous aviation area, really trying to promote that. So you got an EV company which is Archer, which which is um archer, and then you have the, the jobies and and archer to a degree where they’re, they’re, they’re working on. I’ll even throw ai in there ai, assisted, driverless flight for pickup and delivery of people’s goods, your pets, whatever it may be. So it’d be nice if you walked up to, uh, an airport specialized area in an airport. You know, you say I’m going to, I want to go to the other airport, right, but I want to deal with traffic. I want to go from LaGuardia to New York, to Newark or, for that matter, these things are so small they can land on a basketball court in your neighborhood, right, and and they pick you up and you go wherever you’re going to go.

Now, obviously, there’s a lot that has to go into this. Right, you have to deal with flight plan issues. You have to deal with aviation. You know who’s going to be at a thousand feet, two thousand feet, five hundred feet. You know what’s going to be the, the roadways. That, if you will, you know the rules of the road is a big issue. That’s going to have to it’s more of it’s more than just giving them authority to do so, because if you have like driverless, autonomous driving with Tesla or Waymo. They have roads already. There are roads. There are no roads up there. So we don’t want people crashing into everybody. You know you don’t want to be crashing into your Domino’s pizza delivery or your Amazon delivery as you’re going to the airport. Right, that would be kind of ugly.

0:18:46 – Frank Curzio

I have to tell you, you know you mentioned Archer, right. So Archer $6.5 billion valuation, zero revenue. Joby $9 billion valuation. They generated $100,000 in revenue. So just the value of these companies and the expectations of these companies to get this right is already factored in right. If they get it right, these things could have $50 billion valu, 50 billion dollar valuations. We know that, I’ve seen it. I’m not saying that’s not going to happen. I’m just saying that it would be nice if these things were a lot lower compared to and I know maybe some people own them a lot lower and have done well, but you know these valuations you’re pricing in that this is definitely going to happen. It’s going to happen within 12 months and I don’t know if I agree with that, with those valuations I’ve seen this technology.

I’ve seen it. I’ve gone to the Consumer Electronics Show. I’ve seen it three, four years ago. I’ve seen these things. I actually saw it. When you get in them and the aerial displays and stuff like that, they’re on like the bottom level in the Sands Expo, which is part of the Consumer Electronics Show every single year that I attend in January, and you know it’s there, you could, you could see it. But just the scale. When I see things like this in trading, these valuations, I’m like, is it scalable? Is it here already? And you see some big companies invest in it. But when evaluations are getting like this, I’m like whoa, it gets a little crazy.

0:19:53 – Andrew Horowitz

So do you look at these as trading vehicles or investments? No, these are. They are trading until they become investments. That’s how you have to look at these. You have to look at these as I’ll be in the same thing with Palantir. Palantir, when we got into it at like 13 or 14 or whatever it was added to it, snapped back, took some out, put some back in, until it became a solid investment with real revenue, you got to move around and be kind of on your toes.

0:20:17 – Frank Curzio

Just like Tesla. Tesla.

0:20:24 – Andrew Horowitz

I mean, the expectations are so high. They were in general revenue. Next thing, you know, boom, you know it was like it was incredible amazon same exact discussion about amazon. You know, if you, a lot of people wouldn’t go near it, okay, I have no problem with that. Question is when to hop on the train. You know you’re not. It’s very difficult to hop on the train once it left the station yes, it is difficult when it’s a lot higher.

0:20:38 – Frank Curzio

You feel like you missed it and yet you know you could have said that for Netflix. Oh my God, I missed it. It was $100. It went to $300. It’s $1,400. I’ve done that before. Sometimes you miss it.

We’re talking about the big guys. What do you think about? I mean, the Mag 7 has obviously led this right. It’s led this tremendouslyas you see these companies. There is separation between those netflix you could throw in there as well. You know tesla. Again, I don’t think it’s the best idea to be arguing with the president, since you’re getting a lot of subsidies. I don’t think that’s a great idea. Uh, you’re already pissed off democrats by switching. Now you’re pissing off a lot of the other people that buy your cars, which are republicans, and now you know when you piss off both sets of people, it might not be that good for your company. But are you viewing these Max 7 companies and Netflix as well? But are you viewing them as the leaders of this market? Or do you see a little bit of rotation, which we’re seeing into international? We’re seeing a little bit last week into retail? I mean, we’re seeing much more better in terms of breadth in the market, where it’s not just these companies leading the whole market. They are the whole market.

0:21:43 – Andrew Horowitz

They’re leading it still, but you’re seeing it filter into a lot of different areas now there’s definitely a rotation that that went on in the beginning of the month and whether that’s going to hold or not. You know everybody’s kind of wants to be like, oh, I want. I’ll give you an example oh, I really want to buy small caps. It’s time to buy small caps. You buy them, they go up a little bit and you’re like, oh, maybe I don’t know if that was a good idea. You know, you’ve like kind of buyer’s remorse. Just put it into apple and put it. I mean, why is apple going up there? They admitted, they admitted last week that their ai sucks yeah, they admitted it, they don’t have it.

0:22:12 – Frank Curzio

They said we’re gonna have to go.

0:22:13 – Andrew Horowitz

Yeah, we’re gonna have to go outside, we’re gonna have to do something else, like, uh what, while all these other companies I don’t know if you tried, for example, co-pilot on the iphone. This is like my new best friend, frank. Like I just talked to this guy put him on with an australian accent most pleasant fellow, you know. I call him hi coppy, hi andrew. You know it’s this whole thing right. And I, I’m driving in the car. It hooks up with my apple uh play for the car right and a car play. And I’m driving down the road with my wife and we’re going down the keys of maybe a couple months.

And I said, you know, we have this trip coming up next year. Why don’t we find out more about where we’re going? And I had this like half-hour discussion with everything about it. Then I said at the end of it do me a favor, prepare me the highlights of what we talked about, prepare me an itinerary over three days for those areas and with alternatives and times, et cetera, and then package up so I can utilize it to, you know, to use as my itinerary. Awesome, like a second Next step. Right, next step would be. Next step would be please create reservations at those restaurants on those days, yeah, and also schedule me for transportation to and from and in between stops, as well as my transportation to and from the hotels Kind of cool, right, very cool and that is available.

Set reminders in my calendar and if anything changes, please let me know so I can make adjustments. Also, use my Visa credit card ending in 872 to charge everything. Yeah, just a thought, but that’s kind of one little thing. If you take that and now take that what I just said, that model, and put it on. Hey, I’m on a diet. Do me a favor, lunch in the office. I want to order things that are no gluten, gluten-free, no dairy protein, intense. I want the next five days. Find me a restaurant that could do it and do me a favor, give me recommendations. Once you get there, say you know what. Please do me a favor. Schedule an order to be delivered through Uber Eats or whatever over the next five days in the office at 1230, every day.

I mean this goes on and on. Yeah Right, this whole thing goes on and on. I mean this goes on and on. This whole thing goes on and on. Take a look at my client list and see who I’ve contacted in the last four months and who I haven’t. And do me a favor start sending emails out to schedule meetings using this calendar app so they can book the meeting and put Teams in there. And when I do my Teams meeting, make sure that the meeting is recorded and then fully summarized in the end and put that in Salesforce in their notes tab once it’s done.

0:24:48 – Frank Curzio

See, you understand that part and I understand that part. Right. What do you think is a percentage of the US population that could understand those capabilities of what AI is coming down the line? I mean, we’ve seen it with Microsoft. They just laid off 9,000 employees Name me another company ever and I’ve been doing this for 30 years. That’s at an all-time high. That’s laying off 4% or 5% of the workforce, right? You don’t see this right? I mean they have to have return on that spend. Right, return on that investment. You know, you’re seeing it right. I percentage of people that say, wow, ai, they’re excited, but what you just described is detail of how you could use it.

0:25:23 – Andrew Horowitz

So let’s try the AI. I got the AI right here, Okay. Hey, what’s the percentage of the population of the United States that really understands AI? Do you think?

0:25:31 – AI

Hey Andrew, the percentage of folks who truly get AI is relatively low. While many have a basic idea, the in-depth understanding of how AI works is limited to a smaller group like tech professionals and enthusiasts. It’s growing, though, as AI becomes more integrated into daily life.

0:25:49 – Frank Curzio

Is that Australian?

0:25:51 – Andrew Horowitz

I put it Australian. I don’t know, it sounds Australian, doesn’t it?

0:25:55 – Frank Curzio

That’s so great You’ve got to see. If you don’t watch this on YouTube, I know a lot of people listen to iTunes. You just took your phone and just answered a random question this isn’t scripted, by the way, so you just did that and that just came up with that but you see the potential of how a tiny percentage understands like people listen. It’s going like holy shit. I could really do this stuff and you can get even more detail than that, right. It could run your whole life to the point where that’s. I mean, think about how much time of your day is wasted on things like this, right, and? And now everything’s going to be automated, right. I mean, how incredible is that and what the future is? And that’s got to lead to even more better stock picks, right? I mean, it’s just crazy.

0:26:29 – Andrew Horowitz

I like to get tickets for a concert. I don’t want to pay a ridiculous amount of money, hunt around all the various sites to find me tickets to a Taylor Swift concert under $1,000, or $500, $200, whatever you want to pick a seat that is not above the 400s. And if you can’t find anything, keep on searching every single day and scrub it until you find something for me. I mean the consumer aspects of this. Then how about the other stuff? Take a spreadsheet Well, better than a spreadsheet. Take a cash flow analysis right from a company that puts it out right. They put out their cashflow analysis. Or you can find it on Yahoo finance, whatever. Take that, stick it, you know, in a PDF or an Excel. Stick it into AI and say do me a favor, please explain to me the trends of what you think is happening from a revenue expense situation and where this can be positive or negative on margins, et cetera. But you know, give it some prompts, we’ll spit out a whole thing for you.

0:27:27 – Frank Curzio

You know, it’s amazing, even in our business. I mean, you, I’m pretty sure you use Bloomberg, I use Capital IQ. You can go to, you know, s&p Global. You can go to so many different sites. Right, it’s a fortune. It’s a lot public data, right, we’re not talking about the forecast. The forecast can be a little different because you’re going to have to pay for that, and that’s Goldman Sachs and stuff like that when you get consensus estimates, but a lot of the data that you want if you want to do different screens of different stocks and in the US and also in Canada, lowest P ratios, companies that mention AI in their latest conference call, that also mention quantum computing, that are also trading, you know, again, cheap valuations, PEG ratio, price of sales. You can go whatever you want. They’re able to pull that data and give it to you, like this, which is why it’s great for us. Are those systems even going to be necessary? I mean?

0:28:15 – Andrew Horowitz

a lot of things aren’t going to be necessary in my opinion.

0:28:18 – Frank Curzio

And this is our industry. So think about your industry. If you have a job, think about your industry. Don’t be afraid of AI. Understand how to use AI to increase your productivity and the value of your job is going to double, to triple, because a lot of people aren’t doing this yet. And that’s the biggest thing I tell people with AI, is it going to take jobs? It will, but you could take advantage of it right and just by learning a little bit, because still, the learning curve right there. If I had to guess, I’d say less than 3% of the population 4% are able to do what you just said. To get that specific, to make it that to add that much productivity to their lives. And if you’re doing that now, what’s going to happen? Because it’s going to be so much easier to learn, going forward. Right, it makes it so much. Part is a start, but it really is incredible when you see these technologies and what they’re able to do. I agree.

0:29:03 – Andrew Horowitz

I agree a hundred percent. Now, I don’t think we’ve actually tapped the full surface of what the opportunities are, and that’s what I think all the excitement about is, with NVIDIA and with Microsoft and with the cloud. You know all the different clouds, google, google. I got a question right. I can’t tell you the last time that I searched something which is google is my main search provider, that I searched something and I actually went to click on something, except for maybe it was a product. If I had a question, a general question, the ai generation from gemini on top of the um of the screen or some other summarization of what I’m looking for is always there and I have yet to remember in the last number of months, if not longer, that I’ve clicked on something to get me more information because it’s all right there.

0:29:50 – Frank Curzio

It is all right there. I mean, Google has done a great job because I think AI, out of all the Macs, the biggest, the hyposcales, the Mac 7s, AI players with trillion dollar valuations. They were the most disrupted by this because they have their own agenda. They, you know, you type in things like that. They’re not going to give you certain things that you’re actually looking for, which you could find another AI, the way they transitioned that company. And now, right now, on the leaderboards, which is the tech leaderboards, when it comes to their system, Gemini 2.5, they’re ranked number one, which you know, that changes weekly.

What’s it going to do? To search? It’s going to kill search. But the search that they have right now is listen. I’m going to tell you what Google’s going to do. I’m going to tell you what Google’s going to do. Google, right now, has access to everyone in the world. Okay, correct. So much so that my TV is a Google TV and I just noticed that it went to an automatic update.

Now, when you get a computer, the default is we’re stealing your whole entire life and sending it to everywhere and we’re going to make a fortune off of you. That’s the default. That’s when you’re on the internet, when they say hey, we changed, we updated our policy. Don’t click it. Do yourself a favor, don’t click that policy, because by ignoring it, you’re accepting. Yes, that’s the law. Now, with your TV, they track every single thing. So with Google, google is basically tracking you with all your sites and everything on the internet, and now they’re fitting into the commercials that they’re going to feed you personally.

If you have YouTube TV, you could shut that off automatically. You know what they do now. They make you go to a website and look how many characters you have to type in to go to a website. Then you go to the website and then you’ve got to go in and figure out all this stuff. They make it almost impossible for you to turn off. The fact that they have access to all your information is more relevant than you saying, oh okay, I want to go into search. Those names are worth thousands of dollars to advertisers when they were worth $50 before AI existed, before you could really use AI. So the fact that they have access to everything through YouTube, tv, through Google, all your searches, everything you go on your phone If my phone is set where it automatically erases a lot of the stuff, to clear a lot of the stuff, to clear cache and stuff like that and then every single time I’m on the phone, google asks me Because on Apple phone, with their Google, it’s automatically their browser Do you want to sign in? Do you want to sign in? Do you want it to constantly? Do you want to sign back in? Do you want to sign back? Because they’re tracking every single thing that you do, even when you shut off. Apple’s even terrible at this, too. Apple always brags. Well, we have more safety bullshit. I’ll tell you. I have my own phone store. You go into your phone. I’ll show you three or four settings, you’ll be like, oh my God, they’re tracking everything all the time. That’s the value I think Google has. It’s. I hate it, but you’re right, it is disrupted to that company. Yeah, sorry about that rant, but let’s, let’s get, let’s get into a little bit. Really feel frank. So let’s get a little bit more into ai, because you were doing trades where you’re not and I love that you do this because I think so many people I tell people that I don’t like disney and like, well, disney’s going up. It’s tell people that I don’t like Disney and like, well, disney is going up. It’s not just that I don’t like Disney. When I look at Disney, their whole growth model is still built on streaming and Netflix does it a million times better Now that you can get streaming as a side business. When it comes to Google, when it comes to Amazon Prime, when it comes to Apple right that these guys are and they’re getting sports so I’m like these are much better plays and they’ve done much, much better. Netflix has outperformed dramatically. What you’re doing is you’re saying one of your trades is, when it looks within AI, you love one company and not too crazy about the other. You really love Dell but you’re saying, hey, it’s going to be at the expense where AMD is trailing. Talk about that and how you use those trading strategies. So I mean, I’ve liked Dell.

0:33:18 – Andrew Horowitz

You so I mean I’ve liked Dell. You know it’s interesting because I thought a number of months ago, when Dell was kind of coming down and when the whole market was falling apart a little bit, I looked at Dell and I looked at a few different things and I looked at their product line. I looked at also what they were doing. I found out from some of the talks that Michael Dell was having about what he’s doing with AI and really I don’t think a lot of people thought that Dell necessarily was going to be so centric Then think a lot of people thought that Dell necessarily was going to be so centric. Then the governments you know the government uses Dell a lot, a lot, and they want to ramp up their AI. I found that their government side of their business is enormous and growing dramatically. I had some conversations with colleagues in the business and did some research on this and found significant amounts of growth opportunities there and I said you know, let’s take a look at this. You know I looked at the multiples, I looked at the valuations, looked at the growth potential. There was nothing negative. But the stock got cratered, along with everybody else back in April, right, so we started kind of nibbling there and adding more to that there, buying some, and it’s just been. I mean, it’s a rocket ship this year, right, and you know, I think there’s still an opportunity for that, because the upgrade cycle necessary to run certain things, not on your phone necessarily per se, but on your computers, um, I mean, I have, I have a computer in my office. It’s five of dell. That’s five years. It was the, it was the. We actually call it the beast it’s. It was, it was the top, it was everything you could imagine and more. And everybody’s like what are you getting that from? Like, I, like it, want a good computer. I want to make sure that in five years from now I don’t have a problem, which has been the case, but it’s starting to slow down like every computer does. Right, and I bought a Dell laptop and a couple of the Dells and I realized that you know they really have a corner on the market for quality, for for service. You I had an issue with uh about a month ago. Uh, we called dell, uh, my people were on the phone with dell. I mean, dell got ramped it right up to their uh higher level, just their service, everything about them. Okay, put that aside from the personal side, what they’re doing and what their requirements from storage and machine and their tie up with nvidia is enormous and there was a great opportunity, okay, at the.

At the same time, recently we were short AMD and the 150s came down below a hundred, closed that position. Amd then shot up to what 135 or so. We started shorting AMD. Why? Amd is a company that shows a massive amount of promise all the time but never seems to really come out with the solution. You know they’re always hyping up that they have this or they have that. They’re nowhere near. Because we know the average person looks at, I think, amd, intel and NVIDIA and says, oh, they’re chips that you put in your computer. Not so Well, they are. But Intel, which lost their way a number of years ago, right, was part of the motherboard, the main CPU, et cetera. They have other things too, of course. Way behind, missed the boat several times.

Nvidia is a, not only a chip set, if you will, or a system. It’s also an OS, if you will. It’s a design system, it is a, it is a, it’s a cult, right? It’s what you build things on and what they help you and they provide for you is a suite. Think of Adobe Creative Suite. Like, what is that? Well, it’s a whole. You want to be in production, you want to be in in advertising, you want to be in design. They got that whole suite that works well with each other and they they’ll help you put those things together, right? That’s just a simple you know. Look at that. Nvidia did the same thing in a different way, creating the opportunities for developers to now build and gave them all the tools then. And what are the? It’s kind of like the Gillette Razor. They’ve given you the initial Razor. You just got to keep on buying the things to fill it up, which are the chips, right, and you got to keep on doing that.

Amd they’re thinking about going that direction. They may have something. It could be, who knows? It’s possible. They recently got a nice short squeeze. We said you know what. They’re just not going to be the player in this area, especially when we get even more advanced and jensen wong talking about robotics and all these other things that are coming down the road.

Amd is great company. I just don’t see that they’re going to be a major player now. They may be like the other chip companies out there, whether it’s a, I don’t know, qualcomm, uh, micron, uh, you know. Pick your company that has a, um, a chip that does something inside of a computer, a smart system, an appliance, you know, whatever it is right. A car for autonomous driving? Yeah, they’ll be kind of like that, I think, amd. But they just can’t compete at that level unless they start stealing people, which I don’t see happening. So, amd, we found that you know we’ll ride this, we’ll do like a cross trade of. You know we like Dell as an example in the technology space. Amongst others, we also hold NVIDIA, we hold Google, by the way, we don’t hold Apple, we hold Microsoft. A nice piece of that. But, amd, we went short not too long ago in our managed growth strategy.

0:38:20 – Frank Curzio

I would tell you and I’m personally short Keep an eye on it because I’m with you with AMD light years behind, light years behind, light years behind, light years behind. I have great contacts in the data center industry. People who work on these have built the biggest data centers for the hyperscalers and it’s the first time ever that I heard from the first time ever, right. So I’m interested to hear the next quarter Just keep an eye on it if you’re short that they are making the systems going from dry or just you know, cooling systems, where it’s air cooled, to liquid cooling systems which provide much more fast and much more output and stuff like that. They’re lying about the energy. It does provide less energy, but the whole rack is seven times more energy. These guys go really into the details. For the first time I’ve seen some of the, even from Supermicro. They’re actually building their systems around, not just NVIDIA. For the first time they’re saying also for the new generation of AMD chips. I’m with you 100%. They’re way behind. It’s the first time.

0:39:07 – Andrew Horowitz

I heard that it can take long. Yeah, but do they have the design tools that NVIDIA has?

0:39:12 – Frank Curzio

That’s the question. No, no, but you’re talking about. You know a difference with a $4 trillion company and you know it’s 20 times the size and I’m negative on.

AMD. So with AMD, I’m interested to see if that translates into you know, you only have to catch up this much, right. When you’re that far, it’s almost like IBM, right, IBM still has a relatively small market cap to the big guys and you’re like, wow, it’s at all times. It’s still relatively small to these. You know trillion dollar companies, you know so you don’t have to, but it is going to be interesting because now their stock price is reflecting that. You’re right, it was $100. Now it’s $140, $135. So let’s see. I’m interested to see if they’re able to do this. And it was the first time I heard it, because I’m willing to change my mind when the facts change. I need to see more details. I was just surprised that they said, hey, we’re starting to makem, by the way, ibm.

0:40:02 – Andrew Horowitz

I’ll have respect for ibm when they rename the company red hat, because really red hat is what pushed this company to where they are today.

0:40:08 – Daniel Creech

Yeah they have somebody listen great, great acquisition.

0:40:11 – Andrew Horowitz

They, they, who. Who thought that would work? Because totally different cultures. I know people that work ibm, by the way, and I know people work for red hat, good friends of mine. It’s like, oh, those are, those are two different people. It’s like a totally different overall. But anyway, I mean you look at IBM.

0:40:27 – Frank Curzio

IBM’s market cap. I hate to say just $270 billion, but you’re looking at. The bigger players in this industry are massive, right? Look at this chart, this is IBM guys.

0:40:39 – Andrew Horowitz

It’s Red Hat yeah look at Red Hat.

0:40:41 – Frank Curzio

I mean it’s up 64% almost a similar chart that I just put up between Dell and ASP500, same thing over the past year and that was actually since April. I mean this is like the past year. This is a very nice chart for IBM. It’s almost pushing 300 again all-time highs for that company. Good for them. Good for them, which is good eventually, is any of the names or any of the sectors I know you’ve been into quantum as well that you talked about, or any of the sectors that you’re looking at. You know we we covered a lot.

0:41:08 – Andrew Horowitz

I traded quantum a little bit here and there, but really it’s it’s talk about years out. It’s interesting how Jensen Wong came out and really blasted the segment, you know, talking 20 years out, and then decided, well, maybe that’s not, you know, after we took stocks down 40, 50, maybe he’s like, oh, maybe it’s a few years out. I think that was better for him as a company and that there was less, uh authentic of him. Yeah, um, tesla. I have a problem with tesla. Their cars, uh, sales stink.

Yeah, um, and there’s gonna be a lot of chinese cars between byd and andely and Xiaomi. They’re dumping those on the markets. They have to dump them. So we don’t buy them here, we don’t buy Chinese here, but Europe does, other countries around the world buy the Chinese EVs and they’re very good cars and a lot cheaper than Teslas. People are just sore at Elon. By the way, I have a new respect to Elon when he came out against that bill because I was like, wait a minute, that’s interesting. He was trying to be all this doge, because it was funny to call it doge. And then, when he’s out of it, he’s still trying to do what he can to save money, even at the expense of getting lambasted, yeah.

0:42:27 – Frank Curzio

Some people say it’s because of the tax credits that he receives for vehicles. But you know he’s saying, he’s making that clear. It’s not. But you know it’s. The world’s a better place with guys like that when you unleash them and let them go and innovate Right. We need that and I know that I don’t care what side you’re on, if you’re a Democrat or Republican, because I mean what that guy has built. I mean come on Rockets and catching them. I mean what’s going on. I mean holy cow. Oh, the cats and the rockets.

NASA’s been doing this for hundreds of years and they can’t do it right, they can’t come close to doing it. You know what this guy is capable of doing to unleash minds like that, because it’s great for the future generations. Right, just makes sense. Yeah, uh. So, coming to the end of the interview here, summer plans. I love talking to you about your summer plans because, man, you go everywhere, you’re always on your boat, you’re always fishing. You show me your cookout, cookouts and and and just the chili and stuff like that, and and going away all the time and I love it. You share those pictures and I get so jealous. Uh, you have any plans for the rest of summer? Just a couple. You want to know about them. Yes, I do because I’m jealous. Yeah, they’re good guys, trust me, they’re always good you’re going like you’re in india.

You’re in india not too long ago, right?

0:43:31 – Andrew Horowitz

I mean, come on, um, all work related of course, uh, I’m going to, which is great. That’s another thing. You know, with technology, you can pretty much go anywhere. These days, everything, everything is instant communication. I’m going to alaska, I’m taking my son, we’re going, uh, we’re arriving in juno. We’re going to be doing, um, helicopter glacier hopping and dog sledding, and then we’re going to be flying to an area, a little lodge, and doing alaskan king salmon and halibut fishing dog sledding I’m so glad I asked you, and then we’re going.

Then I’m going to capiocada, capiocada, capidokia, in turkey, hot air ballooning the next month, and then over to tuscany for some a wedding actually, um. And then no, no, excuse me, I’m sorry, my mistake, I’m not doing that for the month after. Next month I’m going to um cabas and luca took his fishing from a striped marlin and rooster fish, which is on my bucket list for a long time just to let you know, guys, I knew about one of those trips I and, but I knew it was going to be interesting.

0:44:27 – Frank Curzio

That’s why I asked the question like why do I want to know? That’s why you want to know. Yeah, it’s, you gotta do this kind of stuff. You gotta do this stuff.

0:44:32 – Andrew Horowitz

You know I don’t care what age you are, what your thing is. You had kids. You did this. You know you gotta go and do, because you know what. First of all, I’m not getting any younger. I’ve always dedicated a time of each year to go with my son somewhere. I was in Costa Rica. I was doing like rock climbing and belaying down these cliffs. I don’t know if I could do that kind of stuff forever. I don’t even know if I could do it today, by the way, but I don’t know if I could do it forever. I might as well do it when I was younger. I don’t know if I’m going to do these things until I can’t.

0:45:01 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, Otherwise I’m going to look back and it’s going to be too late.

0:45:05 – Andrew Horowitz

There is no reason to wait. There is no reason to say, well, I don’t have the money and all that. You know you’ll find the money and then you’ll be better, you’ll have an expansive view on things, you’ll understand things better. My travels to Vietnam, cambodia, myanmar, russia, india, it’s all opened my eyes to all sorts of things and it’s helped my clients. To be honest, yeah, I partied there, of course, but it helped my clients because I understood much more about what was going on around the world and people and business and everything. It opens your eyes to immense possibilities.

0:45:33 – Frank Curzio

You know so much after COVID too, you really face-to-face and going around and traveling now and going to conferences. It really I’m getting so much business done now. It really is incredible. So where in the world is andrew harwitz right? That’s what you want to just like where the world was the show with matt lauer, where?

0:45:50 – Andrew Horowitz

the world’s. You know what I really wish. I do wait, wait, wait.

0:45:52 – Frank Curzio

You compare no no, I remember the name, comparing the name, but yeah, I wouldn’t compare them, but it’s funny. Now I really like to know where that guy is. Jesus, that guy disappeared. But uh, no, really listen, I love having you on, man, everyone loves having you on because you have so many ideas. It’s always interesting, it’s always fun and you know I love you. Enjoy the family, enjoy the vacations and stuff like that. Have a lot of fun, because you deserve it. And hopefully, before we go, if anyone wants to learn more about you or your company, how can they do that?

0:46:17 – Andrew Horowitz

Simply go disciplineinvestorcom. Listen to the discipline investor podcast dh unplugged nine o’clock live tuesdays. My co-host, john c devorak. We have a lot of fun on that show. A lot of games, we have a lot of stock picks a lot of really cool stuff goes on there. Go over the discipline investor with that where we are now. Um and uh, you can uh check all the podcasts out. You could like type in like curzio, go, click on curzio there. There you go, yeah, but if you look at it, you will go. Look at that. It’s a good looking guy two good looking guys.

0:46:44 – Frank Curzio

Look at that page, look at that. Oh, not bad I like that.

0:46:47 – Andrew Horowitz

Um, you could do that, or you could just simply go to ask andrew. On the top see a little button. This is ask andrew there. Yeah, click that and it just goes right to a place. This comes right to us here and we’ll set up a time to to get together. No, so plenty of opportunities to to get in touch, and I’d love to do so.

0:47:03 – Frank Curzio

All right. Thanks for being on man. I really appreciate it. Frank, you’re the best Thanks.

0:47:09 – Daniel Creech

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.