Wall Street Unplugged
Episode: 726June 17, 2020

Wall Street is f**king you

Luke Downey

On today’s show, I’m joined once again by Luke Downey, Mapsignals cofounder and Curzio Research contributing editor…

With unprecedented volatility in today’s markets, Luke shares how he’s navigating these turbulent times, and why he believes there’s more pain ahead for the markets. But it’s not all bad news—according to Luke, this volatility will also become opportunity. [13:07]

Then in my educational segment, I break down the ugly truth on how Wall Street is ripping off the average investor—from pitching terrible ideas to inexperienced mom and pop investors… to charging excessive fees that eat away at earnings. Here’s how you can fight back… and protect yourself. [38:33]

Inside this episode:
  • Guest: Luke Downey, Mapsignals cofounder [13:07]
  • Educational: Wall Street is f**king you [38:33]
Transcript

Wall Street Unplugged | 726

Wall Street is f**king you

Announcer: 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.

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s June 17th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines, and tell you what’s really moving these markets. It’s a lot of fun when the market’s going up. I know most mom and pop investors are long, right. Most of you are not short. Your 401K is getting back to normal after a 35% crash you saw in February and March. You see the market’s going up, a lot of portfolios are doing better. It draws the attention of new investors, young investors. And everybody wants to be a day trader, which is not a terrible thing. Getting into the market at an early age is a great thing. I mean, you have to start somewhere. And the only way you can is by investing actual money into the markets, not by having a model portfolio, you’re not going to care about it, not by reading tons of investment books, which I can tell you right now, you should throw away every one of those books.

Frank Curzio: Just throw them in the garbage, because none of them, especially when it comes to value investing. They’re not factoring in 0% rates forever, they’re not factoring in a Fed that’s going to spend trillions to make sure any recession is short-lived. And you saw Powell testifying on the Hill, he says, “I’m not concerned about our balance sheet at all.” He actually said that, even though it just surpassed $7 trillion. I know, trillions mean nothing. Is it seven, eight, nine? No, really, if it’s seven trillion or I just would’ve said nine trillion, it wouldn’t have made a difference to you, right? Right, it’s trillions. But let’s put it in perspective. In 2004, the Fed’s balance sheet was less than $1 trillion. In 2010, after the credit crisis, it was $2.5 trillion. It was below $4 trillion in 2019. This year, it’s going over $10 trillion. That’s massive, massive.

Frank Curzio: But by investing your own money into this market, taking those chances as new investors, losing money, those are valuable lessons that can’t be taught. I mean, you have to learn them the hard way. You have to go through those periods of arrogance, which is what you’re probably seeing from a lot of day traders or whatever, I’m Robinhood and say, “Wow, look, I outperformed the market. I’m better than…” You’re supposed to be that way. I had 3X returns in a couple of months, and you’re telling everybody and your parents and everybody’s kind of pissed because we’re America. We don’t like to see anyone else doing good. We love to see ourselves doing good, which is weird. I’ve never felt that way in my life. I love to see people successful. But there’s a jealousy factor in there. I mean, you try telling people, “Yeah, I just made this much money,” and they’re like, “Oh, okay.” They don’t care. They want you to lose all your money. That’s the American way now, right? We want to see people suffer. Not suffer, but you get my point.

Frank Curzio: But you have to go through those periods of arrogance, and then the periods of humility, which you’re getting wrecked on a position you thought was a sure thing, and you’re telling your friends about it and you start buying more, and you just, you get caught up in the emotions. And I don’t care how great of an investor, how many experience, how many years, decades… There’s an emotional component to it. You’re always going to get emotional. I don’t care if you’re technical. Well, we just look at the data. I’m telling you, because there’s going to be times when that data is not accurate, unless you’re front running the market, which I’ll get to in a few, which we’re seeing high frequency firms do with algos and algo trading. But outside of those, you need to learn those valuable lessons. They can’t be taught, how you make money, how you lose money.

Frank Curzio: Now think about it. If you’re looking to be a great fighter, you’re not going to be a great fighter by reading books or sparring. You need to fight someone for real where you have something to lose. I mean, that’s the emotional journey, right? That’s something that’s going to get ingrained in our head. It’s the types of lessons that you never, ever forget, the real life experiences. If you weren’t in the market in 2008, 2009, you weren’t in the market during the tech bubble crash or 1987 when the market had one of the biggest crashes ever, one day crashes. And when you go through that as a seasoned investor or retiree, where 2008, you’re like, wow, everything’s great … Or 2007, I should say, everything’s great. The market’s okay, I’m retired. And all of a sudden, the value of your house falls by 40%, your portfolio falls by 50%, and you’re like, shit, I’m 60, 65. Am I going to have to work again? I thought I was set for the rest of my life. That emotional journey makes it very scary for you to get back into the stock market, which you see, even now.

Frank Curzio: But you need to go through that, and it’s better if you do it at an early age, because the end game for all of us, it should be about you retiring early, not making a fortune on one trade that’s a boom or a bust. Yes, you take those. You want to have risk. I don’t care how old you are. You want to have risk in your portfolio. If you’re older, very little risk. If you’re younger, more risk, because if you’re wrong, you have plenty of working power. You can get a job. You can make plenty of money. But you’ve got to realize it’s more about limiting your risk when you’re wrong, because you’re going to be wrong. Buffett has been wrong several times, you look at Icahn has been wrong, all … I mean, Acumen has been wrong. So many of these guys, Paulson invested in, what was it, Sino-Forest where it was a fraud and he didn’t even know it. I mean, and that guy probably has a research team of how many people? Still, he’s one of the greatest investors.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to get it wrong from time to time, no matter who you are. But those are the lessons you learn, because when you’re wrong, you want to limit your risk. But it’s diversify and all that crap. It’s true. You’ll understand how important it is because you’re going to feel very confident about one idea and put all your money into it, and you’re going to get wrecked. You’re going to get wrecked. And it’s funny, because as it’s going down, instead of you taking a loss and being like, okay, let me move on, and looking at… Say if the entire market crashes. Now you have the whole entire market to look at. You say, wow, I want to buy these stock, this stock, I have money. Okay, I limited my losses. You’re going to be focused in on that one thing that’s down 30, 40, 50, 60, 70%, and you’re not going to be looking at all the opportunities and opportunity cost. You’re just going to be focusing every single day on looking at that one stock.

Frank Curzio: But you need to go through that. And for me, I love to see more people investing in this market, especially for the first time, and especially if you’re young, again, when you have lots of working power. With that said, you need to understand something. You need to. When it comes to Wall Street, it’s like jumping into a ring against Mike Tyson, except there’s no bell. He will not stop hitting you when you’re down. Even when you’re not down, he’s going to keep hitting you. Wall Street will do anything in their power to take everything from you. In fact, their job is to make themselves richer while making everyone else poorer. I mean, there’s a reason why billionaires, they love to destroy other billionaires. It’s not about becoming more rich. It’s about power. It’s about ego. It’s cutthroat, it’s bloody, they take no prisoners. Believe me, I know. I’ve been doing this 25 years. And not only will they take all of your money, they’ll take the shirt off your back, your house, everything you own until you’re completely broke. That’s what you’re up against. It’s a lesson you probably haven’t learned yet.

Frank Curzio: You may have bought a cruise line in March that’s 150% in a few months, yes, they’re pulling back sharply now. Maybe you bought a small cap biotech company to expose you to COVID-19 or a vaccine, like Inovio. That went from, what, three to 14, 15, whatever it was in a few months despite having zero revenue and not even being on that list from the president, from the government of vaccines that they’re really going to support. But things still took off. You haven’t learned it yet, but you know what? Wall Street has been playing you all along. And for example, if you trade on Robinhood, which is a great company. Again, it’s a free platform. Guys, you can’t run a company for free. They have to generate revenue someplace. So, I get it. When you look under the hood, yeah, you’re buying and selling stocks for free.

Frank Curzio: What you don’t know is Robinhood makes its money by using third parties for trading, like Citadel, Two Sigma, Giant X Execution Services. Those three alone account for 90% of the trading that takes place on Robinhood through them. And those are high frequency firms. Those are the ones that use algos. And those guys front run the markets. They front run you. They see all the limit orders in there, they know how to trigger those limit orders. So, they’re basically buying before you and selling before you, locking in profits with no risk using their algos, which are capable of making hundreds of thousands of trades in milliseconds. You don’t know that because you’re getting free trading. And it’s not just Robinhood. How do you think the other brokerage firms, online discount brokerage firms, are operating? By giving away free trading now because of Robinhood. So they do. They’ve got to make up the spread, the difference.

Frank Curzio: I mean, you say, “Oh, big deal. A little here, a little there.” Well, tell me about millions, millions and millions of trades in seconds that these guys are able to do to lock in. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. And that’s just one small example. And again, I like Robinhood. I love what they’re doing. But, you need to be aware of that. That’s their third parties. Your trades are going in there. They’re getting to see all of your trades and execute them, and they know exactly what’s going to happen before it happens. You say, “How could that … What do you mean?” Well, if you’re putting in limit orders, you’re showing your hand in cards. You’re showing exactly, right? And say if you’re a financial newsletter writer in my industry and you have 100,000 people following you, and you’re like, “Okay, I want you to buy XYZ stock at 10, put a stop loss at nine.” Everyone’s going to put their limit order in at nine.

Frank Curzio: These guys see it. Their job is to trigger that. They could trigger that without even executing an order. They can put whatever, a million shares on the offer and just force a low. Look, because they know once that gets triggered, all of you are going to automatically sell and it’s going to go from nine to seven. They see all of this. But think about using advanced computer system that calculates this in milliseconds. There’s a reason why they’re setting up shop closer to Wall Street to save that extra few milliseconds and getting ahead of all the other high frequency firms. It’s a pretty crazy industry. Okay, one small example. In the educational segment, I’m going to break down other huge examples of how Wall Street is taking advantage of you. They’re going to take all your money, and they’re going to do it while pretending they care about you, and they’re pretending to hold your hand and saying, “Hey, we’ll guide you.” I mean, watch the hit show Billions on Showtime. That’s not made up. That’s real life examples of people in the hedge fund industry. And that’s not talked about in most circles what happens.

Frank Curzio: But please, if you’re a new investor, a mom and pop investor that works full time but likes to buy stocks on the side or even an experienced day trader, or a more experienced long term investor, please give this segment a listen. I worked on Wall Street, been doing it for 25 years. When I say I worked on Wall Street, I actually worked on Wall Street. I was working for Kramer right across from the New York Stock Exchange. I see shit that you would never believe over my career. I’m going to share these stories with you after my interview, and no, I promise, I won’t be holding back. So okay, I’ll break this down in a few minutes in my educational segment, right after this interview, which happens to be with Luke Downey. It’s a name you should be familiar with. I’ve had him on the podcast a couple of months ago, amazing trader. But more important for Curzio Research, he’s been contributing. He’s been writing for us on a weekly basis.

Frank Curzio: I don’t let a lot of people do this, guys, I really don’t, unless they can add tremendous value. And this guy has added a ton of value. So, he’s a co-founder of Mapsignals.com. It’s a quant-based stocks research and trading firm, works with the biggest institutions, has lots of experience. Cantor Fitzgerald, head of ETF sales at Jefferies. Also again, contributed to Curzio Research, and I hope you’ve been paying attention because he was one of the few telling you to buy stocks in the lows, and also, also, five days before it happened, before we saw that 1,800 point plunge in the Dow, he wrote on our site five days before, saying, “Listen, time to take profits. We’re going to see a pullback based on the indicators.” Two specific indicators that he was using. He’s going to share those indicators, show you how you can use them for your portfolio. It’s a person that’s been pretty right so far since he’s been writing for us over the past couple of months during one of the most volatile periods, someone I respect.

Frank Curzio: Hey, you know what? Let’s get to that interview with Luke Downey right now. Luke Downey, thanks so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged again.

Luke Downey: Good to speak with you, Frank. I appreciate it.

Frank Curzio: Well, last time we had you on a few months ago. And guys, Luke has been writing for Curzio Research for months now. It’s for free. You can look at it at the Curzio Research website. I love it because you can read his different perspective almost purely from the technical side, quant side, and I’m hoping that you’ve been paying attention, because Luke, you made some pretty remarkable calls on the way up and also a few days before the market came down. I want to talk a little bit about that, because our investors are always looking for an edge. I always tell them, “You have to be open to all kinds of strategies, fundamental, technical, quant, whatever it is.” But it seems like your system is working right now. Could you explain how you were able to see, especially recently, I think it was the 5th or so that your signals were saying, hey, you know what? This market is overvalued right now, and we’re expecting it to pull back. And a couple days later, less than five days later, we did see a meaningful pullback. Explain that system. What’s helping you look at the markets and be able to predict the markets like you have over the past few months?

Luke Downey: Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to just do a brief little overview of what we do, and it’s very simple. We follow the big money. That is our niche, and basically, what we try and do is we’re looking at all stocks that are exchanged, traded. We’re looking at ETS as well. And then we’re trying to track where the money is going. And every now and then, just like last time when we were speaking in March and the world was coming unglued, you’d see these extreme points. And so what you’re referring to is a piece of the rope for Curzio Research where we had saw this explosion in what looked like ETF buying. And what’s so cool about that is you can see that from a data perspective, forgetting the headlines, everything else. Just look at cold, hard data. We can then circle back to prior times that were similar.

Luke Downey: And so there were two prior times that we all can remember, and that was January of 2020. I mean, the world couldn’t get any more bullish in January of 2020. The same thing happened in January of 2018, and there was this huge flood of money that appeared to be going into all these equity ETFs. Usually, that’s mom and pop. Usually, they’re the last in and first out. And so, it made a very easy call based on data, not based on feel or anything like that to say, you know what? There’s a very high probability based on data that we’re going to have a pullback.

Frank Curzio: So, when you look at these signals, is it just ETF buying? You said mom and pop ETF buy, because I have access to a lot of this stuff that I pay a lot of money for, and Bank of America comes out with $4 trillion and it tracks, but they also break it down like retail investors, institutions, and hedge funds, where hedge funds have been steadily taking their money out of this market, less equities. Do you look at individual flow or is it just overall flow into ETFs, which again, that includes government buying ETFs, and everything going into there?

Luke Downey: Yeah, so it’s literally looking across the board, and we’re not looking at single names. I mean, obviously we get signals on the single names, but really, it’s trying to figure out is the narrative changing? So what you see in our research is that money continues to flow in a certain direction, kind of like a wave. And it stays that way for a while, and it’s pretty boring to be honest with you. I mean, when money’s going into the market, typically that can last for many weeks, many months, similarly to what happened in the tail end of March where we got really bullish based on data that was similar to this. Selling was just off the charts, right? Whenever there’s big selling in ETFs, it’s usually a good buy signal. And from that point, whenever we got that oversold signal, you started to see sellers start to evaporate, and then you had all this buying pressure meet all of that selling demand. And then all of a sudden we kind of took off for the races.

Luke Downey: And there was basically a foot on the gas pedal practically all the way up until June 5th or whenever we wrote that report, because there are these points that look like there’s forced buying. Now, can’t prove it. I can just use my analysis and our data to look at that. But forced buying could be FOMO. Sometimes FOMO is so strong that people have to go buy. The other thing could be that people are just wrong way on this market, and they’re wrong way in a big way. And so they have to cover, whether they get a tap on the shoulder from their risk manager that says, “Look, we’ve got to blow out by the end of the day,” whatever it is, whatever we’re looking at, whatever we’re measuring, it looks very similar and it is almost always days before we see this huge buying, this huge flood of money days before we have a beautiful pullback. And basically we had one on Thursday where markets on average I think fell about 6% in a day.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I mean, amazing, right? I mean, we talked about 6% market pullbacks being a big deal, but it didn’t even seem like it was that big of a… It just reminded everyone of the market conditions that we’re in, but it’s just funny how something like that would’ve been catastrophic if it was a different time period. Now, it’s with the volatility, it’s pretty crazy. And that’s going to lead to my next question were, you always want to pinpoint and get it close to someone that’s been following these gains for such a long time, most of your career. And you’ve done so much in the institutional world that you’re very familiar with the money flow coming in from big money, right, institutions. But how do you narrow it down? Because I was looking at gauges on a technical levels where, whatever it is, new highs outpacing new lows, put/call ratio, breadth in market, whatever you… But a lot of these were signaling that it was still a strong buy, the market.

Frank Curzio: So, how do you gauge to when you’re seeing investors come into the market, and you’re seeing this big… Because you’re using it as a contrarian indicator, right? So, the more buying you see, it gets to an extreme level, it’s ready to sell. How do you know when it gets to the extreme level? Because we’ve seen buy… I’ve felt like these were kind of at extremes weeks ago, but yet the market went up considerably before falling 6%. And that’s a tough question. I’m just curious if there’s a way to pinpoint it where you get more accurate from it.

Luke Downey: I get calls about this all the time, whether it’s an RAA that consumes or research or it’s a hedge fund that consumes our research. The way I like to think about it is, is when you think about the analogy of a wave. And waves are different, right? So if you’re going to surf a wave, you’re probably going to surf a little bit different if the wave is eight foot tall versus one that’s 40 foot tall. Now, the wave of buying that we’ve been seeing the past month is a 40 foot wave, right? And so what we try to do is follow that money, don’t predict exactly what day that it’s going to stop, but ultimately start to see when does the velocity of buying start to slow? And we’ve gotten better at that as times goes on because we now have captured so much data, and we’ve got data going back to 1990. And that’s really what it is.

Luke Downey: So, what you don’t want to do is get off mid-wave. That’s not going to feel good, because sometimes if you get off and you think it’s an eight foot wave, but the data is saying, money is coming in, coming in, coming in, to me, I think that’s the bonus level. You’ve got to stay with that. That’s where you rack up all the points. That’s where your account is growing. But whenever that gas pedal starts to release a little bit, and you can see it in the data. You can see the level of buying slow. When you start to see that, that’s when we come out with our narrative. And then, we write blog posts once a week on our website, and right about that time that we put out that piece about buyer beware, we put a piece out there where we talked about record breakers. And basically, all it is a duck test, right? The duck test is basically saying that if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

Luke Downey: But we can basically say that about the market, right? Because buying is off the charts in stocks. Buying is off the charts in ETFs. The velocity of buying is off the charts. So, all of those things are point to… I can’t find a bullish case. You can look in the data. I couldn’t find it. I mean, I’d sit there, I’d scratch my head. I just couldn’t come up with a narrative. And so at that point, you have to be reasonable, and you have to say, well, the data suggests we’re going to have a pullback. And we were days ahead of the selloff. And that’s how we do it. Hopefully that answers your question.

Frank Curzio: No, it definitely does, definitely does. I’m curious of your clients, because in our business, especially in newsletters, in all businesses and everything in life, people love a story. And if you look at the biggest followings, whether you’re way left or way right, whether you watch Fox Business, CNN, they always have a narrative. And even a good example would be Gold Bugs. No matter what market is, buy gold. You’ve got to buy gold no matter what, they don’t care. But the fact that you’re able to switch back and forth, right, is it hard to retain clients, or do people say, “Hey, you just told me I was bullish and now you’ve…” Do they understand this is trading and this is what you look at? There’s no feelings involved, this is a system that’s working for you. But I’ve got to think that’s kind of hard for mom and pop investors, who love a great story. Because it’s not about the story, it’s about the data.

Frank Curzio: And you do make it interesting with your charts too that you actually post on the site and you’ve been using for our site. But I’m just curious about that part where, do you get any heat from clients where you’re very bullish, and then it could be a couple weeks later, you’re very bearish, but they basically have to be really on top of everything that you’re saying?

Luke Downey: If I look at all the feedback, and I look at every comment that comes across, it’s overwhelmingly positive. So, I feel like people are getting our message. We stay with our message. And it’s not a lot of changing our positioning, because like I said earlier, our stance for bullishness usually lasts as long as the money’s going in. So, it’s not like you see a big huge spike of money going into stocks, and then it just dries up. It just doesn’t work that way. That’s the thing is whenever these big funds, these big firms, they’ve got to put money to work, it’s going to happen over weeks and weeks and weeks. And that, of course, is going to be lifting the market.

Luke Downey: So, it’s definitely not changing the narrative that often, but if you could say that we expected lower prices mid-February all the way down to mid-March, which was a month of bearishness, and obviously that was the pandemic, to flip bullish at that point, we got a lot of negative… I mean, that was the other thing is you’ve got a lot of people who are watching the news, they’re watching the depth, they’re watching reality. And what’s happening under the surface they can’t see, but we have a pretty good gauge of this, and we’re coming out saying, “Buy this market.” And it caught a lot of people off-guard, and we did get some negative feedback, but you know what? They eventually come around, because you can’t fight the money is basically the narrative.

Luke Downey: So, hopefully, that answers your question. Definitely, we got some negative feedback about flip and bullish at the tail end of March, the middle of March was right around our last call. But as of right now, shifting from being massively overbought, saying, “Hey, we see near term downside,” overwhelmingly it seems like whoever’s consuming our research, they’re kind of seeing the market the way we do.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, which is great, right? Because when you have a track record, they trust you. But even for me, I always say that whenever I recommend something, that thing that I hate, it was my subscribers will email me and say, “Wow, that’s a great idea. I love it.” I’m like, oh, no. I love the fact when it’s like, “You’re crazy. Don’t recommend it,” because the negativity for me, it really lets me feel like I’m being a contrarian and that most of the time, I’m going to be right on that when I get those negative emails, which I’m sure you could understand too, right?

Luke Downey: Well, how does the saying go? If the stock goes down, it’s your idea. If the stock goes up, it’s my idea.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, yeah, pretty much, yeah. But yeah, I just, for me when it comes to sentiment and your subscribers and the people that listen to you, for me, I love when I’m recommending something where people are like, “Are you crazy?” It usually means that I’m going to be right more times than wrong. But I want to get into really quick, how can average investors track some of this stuff? Because you have research that I know you pay a lot of money for. I do as well, and people subscribe to our stuff because of this data. But the big money stock signals, I know something to define on your Mapsignals website, the big money ETF buying gauge, those are two of the things that really showed you, or showed everyone, when you wrote on June 8th on our site. I mean, guys, again, you can read that on curzioresearch.com. It’s for free.

Frank Curzio: I’m just giving Luke a lot of credit here, because there’s a way you said, “Bottom line, the level of buying in stocks and ETFs is staggering. It also likely won’t last. Looking back, record breaking buying days like Friday,” which you were talking about June 5th, “tend to forecast lower market returns in the near term.” So, I’m quoting you right from what you wrote on our website. Five days later, the Dow fell 1,800 points. How could they track this gauge? Do they need a Mapsignals to do that, or could they… Again, it’s more detailed what you’re doing than just looking at a regular gauge that’s going to be for free, but I also like to see… Provide them alternatives that they could find on themselves also that they could track some of this stuff and learn.

Luke Downey: Yeah, definitely. I mean, right now, all of these signals are going to be found on mapsignals.com. They can definitely get some updates by following your site as well as we’ll publish a weekly piece or something. But they could sign up. There’s different subscription levels, and as it stands right now, we’ll basically be narrating what we’re seeing under the hood of the market, if you will. We’re basically narrating where the market’s going, where the money’s going, all of that. And what we expect to have by some point in this year, so in 2020, is having a log in functionality where people can actually go in and create their own experience, basically be able to manipulate the data, go in and start to create these charts themselves, whatever, if they’re looking for the big money index, if they’re looking for the big money ETF index, sector indexes, whatever, they basically would be able to get instant access and create some of the analysis that I’m doing every day.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, no, that’s great stuff. And let’s put this to the test too, because it’s not just the market you look at. I’m sure you’re looking at sectors as well, because when I see real estate industrials, especially industrials, the last six weeks there’s some massive outflows, very low buying. And real estate’s, same thing, but the last two weeks have been coming back, which makes sense, right? We have mortgage rates near record lows, and coupled with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan coming that’s likely going to pass through Congress. But would you look at something like industrials or different sectors or maybe share ideas that you like? Because it’s not just looking at the overall market, right? You can look at sectors really to figure out what you’re going to turn based on ETF buying, right?

Luke Downey: Yeah, so we have these sector charts that are pretty unique, and what they do is they measure the velocity of buying and also the velocity of selling. And so as you can imagine, whenever the markets are overbought, just about every sector is seeing this huge wave of buying. And so we basically smooth out all that noise, all that information, into a nice moving average, and basically, you can find this on our website, but essentially, we’re basically near peak levels, or historical peak levels. And what that basically says is that buying is so big right now that there’s only one way for it to go, and that it’s going to have to slow. And then that’s really the flow of money. It’s buying is huge, then it starts to flow. Selling starts to pick up, fear starts to pick up, and then all of a sudden, sellers get into control.

Luke Downey: But that’s what we’re doing. We’re looking at the stock level. That’s part of our research, and that’s really what we started to do as a firm is we wanted to be great stock pickers. We wanted to find where is the big money going for great stocks. And a great example would be in video, right? That one has had tons of big money that just keeps plowing into these stocks. And so over time as we started collecting more and more of this data, we started to see these patterns that not only is money going into these great stocks, it’s also going into these sectors. And if you can look at how all the sectors moving in basically in a flow and a stream, you start to see extreme points. And those extreme points basically tell you that it’s going to be really hard to keep this level of buying up. And so therefore, we’re probably going to pull back.

Frank Curzio: So, is that your forecast right now? Because I know my audience always loves ideas, but where do you think the market’s heading? Because you did have that 6% pullback, but we also saw positive news, if you could say positive news, on retail. Of course it’s going to be better than last month because the economy’s opening up. Of course you’re going to see better dealing with housing as well. The market is opening up, but also the possibility of a steroid helping out in terms of if you have severe cases of COVID-19, but how do you feel now with the markets? Is that enough of a selloff? Do you think it’s coming down? And maybe if you could share a couple of ideas with us on the short or long side.

Luke Downey: Yeah, definitely. Just to think about where we were in the stream of things, we are still extremely overbought by every measure that we have, right? So, I think that the market is going to have to pull back eventually. Could we keep going? Could we go to S&P 4,000? Anything’s possible, right? But based on the evidence, right, everything is pointing to a pullback in markets. And so if I had to pick a level, I don’t know where that’s going to be. That could be 2,900, it could be 2,800, whatever the case is. But one thing that’s certain is that the level of buying isn’t going to keep up like this forever. And so I know the Fed came out a couple of days ago, talked about some of the new access purchases. We got a lot of feedback from our subscribers asking, “Does this change?” Even a couple of people came and they said, “Will we always be overbought, Luke? Is the Fed just going to buy everything until infinity?” And I had to tell them, “No. No.”

Luke Downey: But people are new and they don’t know. They don’t know what to expect. And so they’re reading these headlines, and if it is was me based on the evidence, people coming in to buy the market right now after that 6% dip, it kind of reminds me of how Janet Jackson put it. It’s like a moth to a flame burned by desire. So, I think we’ve got some lower levels. It’s all based on data, all based on evidence, has nothing to do with fear mongering or anything like that. Any pullback, use that to buy these outlier stocks, phenomenal stocks. Because when the money comes back in, they’re going to raise these great stocks higher.

Frank Curzio: Okay. So, two things. One, I want to say that, you were saying, well, people don’t know. I don’t know either, because I never thought… I’ve been doing this for a long time that we’re at 13 times more in terms of stimulus and spending by the government compared to 2008 already, and more is coming, right? So, for me, I’m caught off guard where they’re even bailing out risky, right, risky companies now. So, you’re looking… They’re buying junk debt, right? So yeah, it is pretty crazy of how much it could happen. But like you said, it’s not going to be like that forever. And eventually, they’re going to stop, but that is an interesting question.

Frank Curzio: Are we always going to be overvalued, because it looks like… When a government that said, Powell just said, “Hey, you know what? We’re not worried about the balance sheet,” which I couldn’t believe he actually said that, which is over $7 billion now. So it is pretty crazy, but I can see that… I get that question asked to me as well. I’m like, I have to un-learn a few things here, because Shopify trading at five thousand times forward earnings, right? Yeah.

Luke Downey: And it wasn’t just retail people that were asking these questions. These are people who are professionals. And they ask these, and I believe they’re serious questions, but the pullback that I’m talking about is technical in nature. It’s basically just everybody’s on one side of the boat. And typically whenever they do, things tend to flip around really fast. And that’s what we’re talking about is, is this just going to take one piece of news… It’s going to take one piece of unexpected news, who knows what it is, that’s going to really trigger something. And that’s what this data is really indicating. It’s just saying that we’re at this place that if something negative were to transpire, people jumped on it. We could flip really fast into sellers taking control, and that’s really it.

Frank Curzio: So sellers control, I love that. Now, what would be the best way to play it where is it, you see the S&P 500. You know as well as I do, when markets come down, it’s usually the most risky names, which we’re actually seeing right now, right? A lot of the cruise lines and airlines are really starting to pull back off their highs of last week. But is the play to short Russell 2000, short the overall markets, or buy an ETF, a put? I mean, what would be the right play if your forecast comes to fruition and we see another seven, eight, nine percent pullback, whatever it is? What’s the best way to play it? Is it small caps or is just, hey, let me buy an inverse ETF on the S&P 500 or something?

Luke Downey: Well, first of all definitely nothing inverse or anything like that. I don’t believe in some of these levered products. But what I would do is I would be focused on getting your buy list ready. We’re about to hit the summer months here. Typically, a lot of traders go on vacation, liquidity dries up a little bit. That may not be the case here with the environment that we are. But start getting your list ready of what stocks do you want on? Which ones were you left out on, right? And those are the questions. And whenever that big money index, whenever it starts to fall, that’s exactly whenever you need to start making your bet. Because eventually it will fall, and then that’s whenever you can use it to your advantage, because when people have to sell due to fear, due to whatever, you’re going to be in a great position to pick up some great stocks that are going to bounce like fresh tennis balls.

Frank Curzio: That sounds good. Well Luke, I want to say thanks so much for writing for us. You’re one of the few. The only way I would do that is if someone could provide value that we’re not providing, because we have access to so many people. I’ve been doing this podcast for over 12 years now. And thank you so much for helping my subscribers, helping my base, and writing for us. And if someone wants to find out more information about you, how could they do that?

Luke Downey: Yeah, thanks for having me, Frank. I really like all the stuff that you’re doing. I really like this podcast. I enjoy the guests that you have. If people want to find out more about us, they can just go to mapsignals.com. We have subscriptions for any level of investor or trader, and also we have a free blog that they can follow. So, if they don’t want to spend money, just sign up for it. You’ll see some really unique insights.

Frank Curzio: All right, sounds good. And listen, thanks again for coming on, and hopefully… Well, now that you’re writing for us, you’ll definitely join us again soon. I’ll talk to you soon, buddy.

Luke Downey: Thanks, Frank. Bye.

Frank Curzio: Great stuff from Luke. The second time I’ve had him on. Please, view his stuff. It’s for free. It’s for free. Just go to curzioresearch.com. He’s writing once a week. Again, the contributors, I don’t take lightly. I don’t let anyone… I probably had hundreds of people that wanted to write for us. I’m only going to put people in front of you, and even on this podcast, that could help you be a better investor. And if it’s going to be a CEO like we had for Wrap Technologies on… The reason I had him on is the stock fell to four, and it pushed through eight. This was a couple of weeks ago. And having Frank Holmes on, talking about the airlines ETFs, where they surged. Yes, they pulled back. They’ve stalled tremendously since I’ve had him on. Again, that was only, what, seven weeks ago, six weeks ago? So, for me, when it comes… It’s my brand, and I’ve got to make sure I put great people in front of you, and Luke’s one of those guys. He’s doing a fantastic job. Definitely check out his research, and awesome analyst, and I’m glad he came on the podcast.

Frank Curzio: Now, questions or comments, let me know, frank@curzioresearch.com. I say it all the time, this podcast is about you, not about me, so let me know what you thought. I’ll answer you. Again, frank@curzioresearch.com. So, in my intro, I explained how Wall Street, always going to look for ways to take advantage of you. And there’s a lot of new people out there getting into the market, millennials. Talked about it, let’s dig even further in this educational segment. I have a couple more examples I’m going to share with you of how Wall Street is looking to you know what.

Frank Curzio: So, let’s take a look at Hertz, okay? Hertz is a pretty big story now. I’ve been reporting on it ever since they announced the stock went to five and then eventually went to six that they’re going to do an equity offering. The funny thing is, Hertz filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, so that gives them a chance to reorganize. They have to pay their creditors, and any money left over goes to the common shareholders, which is going to be nothing, right? Because they have $19 billion in debt, a billion in cash, and they don’t have enough assets in their fleet to cover the $19 billion in debt. So, huge speculation. You have millennials buying some of these things. That’s not the reason why they went up. They went up because of algos, because they see all of the millennials buying and they’re pushing it. And they know when they push it to a certain level, there’s a ton of people short, and they’re going to be forced to cover, which push it to three, four, five, six, right? Because the algos, again, they’re front-running everything.

Frank Curzio: So, what did Hertz do? They said, hey, you know what? We’re going to announce a secondary offering, it’s an equity offering to raise cash. So that’s selling common shares, most of the time they’ll do a discount to the current price, then the company raises money. And Hertz was looking to raise a billion dollars at the time. Now, here’s where things get interesting. Hertz knows the common stock is worthless. They know. So, they’re trying to sell you something that’s complete garbage. Because, yeah, when it comes to bankruptcy chapter 11, it’s going to allow you to pay off your creditors and reorganize. The credit holders are going to get paid first. And whatever’s left over goes to common stockholders, again, $19 billion in debt, $1 billion in cash. Maybe they raise another billion, still not going to make a big deal. But the common shareholders are going to get nothing.

Frank Curzio: Now, if you think me saying the word “worthless,” or say, “Frank, you know what? You’re full of shit. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The company’s actually telling you that their stock is worthless. I read through their filing with the SEC, they just filed for this to raise capital, which they need to do. And they say, specifically, I’m going to quote them, “We’re in the process of chapter 11 reorganization, which may cause our common stock to decrease in value or may render our common stock worthless. And any trading of our common stock during dependency of our chapter 11 case is highly speculative and poses substantial risks to purchases of our common stock.” And it says, “Recoveries in chapter 11 cases for holders of the common stock, if any, will depend upon our ability to negotiate and confirm a plan.” They don’t have a plan in place with their creditors. They don’t have a plan in place.

Frank Curzio: But if they do and are able to raise $1 billion, that money is going to go directly to the creditors. Even if they have enough money to pay the creditors, they’re going to keep it anyway and not give anything to common shareholders. They’re going to reorganize, come out with maybe a different symbol, who knows? But this is all in their filing. And they say, “Although we cannot predict how our common stock will be treated under the plan, we expect that common stockholders will not receive a recovery through any plan unless the holders of more senior claims and interests, such as unsecured debt,” which is trending at a significant discount, which is bad, “are paid in full.” So, they actually say “significant risks that holders of our common stock will receive no recovery under the chapter 11 cases, and that our common stock will be worthless.” I’m quoting from the company. They’re telling you it’s worthless. And again, they don’t have a plan in place or anything.

Frank Curzio: Now, this is coming from Hertz the company. Hertz the company. That’s just a small piece of this. This is what’s really great. This is why everyone hates Wall Street, because what’s worse is Jefferies, who is a very respectful investment bank, they’re the ones underwriting this deal, or acting as a sales agent. So, they’re getting this stock at a penny, and they’re going to sell it to their clients and anyone else who wants to own it, if it’s 50 cents, 75 cents, 25 cents, the stock is now 1.80, $1.80. It went down from $6 to $1.80. They’re going to make money no matter what. I mean, it’s a massive win for the company. In fact, they can’t lose, because every share they sell, they own it a penny, and they can sell for more than that.

Frank Curzio: So, Jefferies knows the Hertz common is worthless, right? That’s why they’re buying it for a penny, and they’re going to sell it to their clients even though they know that it’s worthless at, whatever, 50 cents, 75 cents. Because they’re going to make a massive spread on it. That’s an investment bank selling this to their clients. Even better, right? It gets better. So, that’s Hertz, Jefferies investment bank. Even better is the SEC who approved this deal, because in this wonderful industry of Wall Street that I work in, you can basically do anything you want, anything you want, as long as you disclose it. So, a company could say, “Hey Frank, I want you to pitch my company to all your clients.” Again, we’d never accept a dollar, we’re independent, ever. No one has ever paid for anything of the research. The only benefit is if it goes up, you’re going to pay for more subscriptions for my newsletter. That’s how I do business. We don’t do that.

Frank Curzio: But say if I did. I could disclose that hey, I’m getting paid for my research and I’m out $100,000, and another $100,000 stock at 10 cents. Even though it stopped trading at $2 a share, I could sell the stock immediately, even before you actually read this report, as long as I have that… I’m talking about my disclosure, if I would do this. Then of course, I’d say, “All my research is, while coming from reliable sources, should not be relied upon, and every investor should do their own homework before investing in any security.” Translation? I’m going to you know what right up your you know what. And I won’t curse there. I’m basically dumping all of my shares to all idiots who are going to buy this stock based on my BS promotion. I mean, you lose all your money, and I’m at my beach house about to go sailing on my yacht. Don’t call me because I don’t care. It has nothing to do about it, because I disclosed that I was going to freaking rob you. I disclosed it. It’s pretty amazing, our industry, right? So read those disclaimers at all times, because they do say.

Frank Curzio: And what they do, even the short sells. I mean, you’re looking at the short sells, it’s an amazing market. I have no idea how this is legal. So, what they do is they power position, they short the hell out of a stock, right, and they come out with a report saying it’s going to zero. Even if they think it’s going down 20%, they’re going to say it’s going down to zero. They’re going to take something in their risks, in a prospectus, that says one of the biggest risks and cite it, like whatever it is. We could lose money in this, we could do the right… And they’re going to just publish that and say, and try to find something bad about the management team, publish this whole entire bogus report, and they’re short. So, then they’re going to call a lot of services and places that you read. I mean, we’ve seen this happen with Seeking Alpha, we’ve seen it happen in lots of sites out there.

Frank Curzio: And they have connections, because they’ve given all these people shares and stock. They’ve said, “Hey, we’re shorting this, you’re in. Just once we go live with this, publish it.” Now, they’ve come out with a report. It publishes at the same time on all these sites, and they have an in with all these ambulance chasing lawyers, which you’re going to see launch, launch an investigation. They’re not suing them, they’re just launching an investigation. And that’s why you see on some stocks, you’ll see 20 different investigations. And what they do is they combine and whoever gets the most, and they’ll all combine and say, “Okay, let’s share this. We’ll have one big investigation.” And most of the time, they’ll settle or whatever. But it doesn’t even matter if it’s real or not. And if you read disclaimers, they’re telling you that “Hey, we’re short. We could be out of this position by the time you read this.” But they’re going to crash the stock, and as they’re crashing the stock, they’re covering their position.

Frank Curzio: And you need liquidity to do that, so when they send this out to everybody, then the lawyers get involved. And it’s great. If you ever see some of these companies that fall 20, 30%, you’ll see, like, five, 10 different cases from different lawyers. It’s all pre-meditated. It’s all set. So, these guys are making a fortune telling you the stock’s going to zero, even though they know it’s not. They don’t even care if it does. But they’re able to push, especially small cap names, down 20, 30%. I’ve seen it numerous times. And companies are forced to defend themselves and say, “This isn’t true. Nobody really cares.” But in the meantime, that whole process lasts for months. The stock gets killed, these guys are getting out the whole entire time. It’s a whole scheme. Nobody cares. I would think that’s fraudulent and illegal, but it’s not. This is Wall Street for you.

Frank Curzio: So, if you look at Hertz and what they’re doing, raising money through an equity offering while already filed for bankruptcy, and let’s talk about how rare this is. Because I pulled a couple posts from really, really smart people in this field. This is Jared Ellias, a law professor at the University of California. He told the Wall Street Journal he studied hundreds of bankruptcies, never before seen a company trying to fund a case with an equity offer that was in bankruptcy. Melanie Cyganowski, former bankruptcy judge for the Eastern District of New York, she can’t recall a company such as Hertz attempting to take such actions during her 14 years on the bench, right? Such actions where you’ve filed for chapter 11, basically the common’s going to be worthless, but you’re selling the common to investors? Steven Schwartz, a professor of law and business at Duke University, said he’d never heard of a company attempting to sell shares like this unless it’s part of a plan of reorganization under bankruptcy.

Frank Curzio: They don’t have a plan in place yet. They don’t have the creditors or anything. They haven’t announced a plan. They have no plan in place. They’re just going to take this money for themselves and split it up and say, “Hey, this goes to the creditors and go to us,” whatever it is. But Wall Street is going to try to sell you this deal, because apparently there are people who don’t know better who are going to buy it, because they don’t understand how finance works, how the system works, where hey, I’m buying a brand name, probably not going to go out of business. You may be right. The airlines, most of them went bankrupt and came out of bankruptcy, yet the common shareholders got crushed. But Hertz must pay off its creditors first, which they don’t have enough money to do. They’re not going to pay off the common shareholders, because they don’t have to. They don’t have to. They’re saying, “Well, if there’s money left over, you’ll get paid.” They don’t really want to have to. They’ll find a way to say, “Well, there wasn’t enough money left over.”

Frank Curzio: They’d rather keep that money to restructure, maybe coming out of bankruptcy, which will likely include a name change. That’s how it works. You want another example? Look at WeWork, right? Private leasing company. Tech startup, one of the biggest ever, limitless potential. It’s going to transform how people work and live. WeWork was valued at $47 billion. And this is, like, a month or two before its September IPO. $47 billion. And then, as it came closer to the September IPO, right, because they had to file prospectus, all this stuff, you had some pretty smart investors trying to take a closer look at the fundamentals, which happened to change drastically over a one month period, again, just for the IPO.

Frank Curzio: For example, how many new work stations did WeWork deliver in the first half of this year? The prospectus filed in August said 273,000. A month later, an amended version said, “Wait, whoa, whoa, it’s only 106,000.” What happened? And they asked what was the total gross of these work stations. Well, in August, WeWork said it was $1.3 billion. In September, they said, “No, no, no, wait. It’s $800 million.” Think about that. You’re changing your financials, which means it’s not $800 million, right? You’re not changing them higher, revising them higher, but right before. Those are massive red flags, massive, massive red flags, not to mentioned the prospectus mentioned nothing, nothing about the company purchasing a Gulfstream G650, your top of the line private jet, which they paid more than $60 million for. They didn’t even disclose that.

Frank Curzio: I mean, how does that conversation go? Wait, don’t you guys have a jet? Oh yeah, yeah, we do have a jet. We paid $60 million for it. Yeah, I forgot to put it in prospectus. Oh, okay. Well, let’s just throw it in there. Okay. They didn’t even have that in August or September before this is going to come out in IPO. $60 million jet for personal use. So what they realize is, WeWork was in a lot of trouble. They needed this IPO to happen because it was going to raise $9 billion for the company, and without it, these guys were in a lot of trouble. But it’s not just WeWork. I mean, the Wall Street firms that are trying to fuck you, and I’m sorry. I’m cursing on purpose. I used to have a priest that listened to my podcast that would make me say, he’s like… He used to get mad at me and make me say Our Fathers and Hail Marys and stuff. I’m using a curse word on purpose. This way, I ingrain this in your head, because you’re looking at soft bank. Huge. Helped inflate WeWork’s valuation as $47 billion.

Frank Curzio: J.P. Morgan was involved, other bankers from J.P. Morgan. The outside board of directors, these are guys with decades of experience in business and finance. And you should’ve seen by looking at this just the potential conflicts of interest and of partnerships working in and out. It was amazing how many different classes of shares. It was nuts, giving them more voting rights. And they were so complicated you couldn’t really understand it. DAG Ventures, another Silicon Valley venture capital shop, invested in WeWork at $440 million valuation. J.P. Morgan, their asset management arm, so not just research, but now their asset management. Their research is pitching this thing that it’s the greatest thing ever to its clients, and their asset management arm is in at a $1.5 billion valuation. T. Rowe Price, another one, jumped in at the $5 billion valuation in 2014. Fidelity, Benchmark Capital.

Frank Curzio: You have the founder, Adam Newman, again, so many partnerships they couldn’t even figure out how many shares he owned, not to mention that he was selling a lot of his stock early on. You usually don’t do that in a capital raise rounds. Maybe a little bit, but your interests should be aligned with everybody else, and he was selling at each capital round going at $40 million stock here in 2015, another $80 million a couple years later. WeWork today, again, that $47 billion valuation that Wall Street was dying to sell to you, that almost got that out to you, that people would’ve bought, especially millennials because they’re familiar with that company, right now it’s valued at less than $3 billion. Again, this is a deal they came close to selling you in September.

Frank Curzio: If you’re looking at the Uber, the Lyft, same thing. The total 2018 valuation for Lyft was $15 billion, right, for October 2018. Six months later, they came out in March with the IPO. It’s valued at $24 billion. What changed in six months, from $15 billion to $24 billion? That’s a massive change in six months. What happened? Well, they did a road show. If you’re looking at the fundamentals, it really didn’t make sense to me. I posted this on Twitter. One thing which I thought was amazing, they had a consulting firm who was invested in Lyft. They basically lied… They didn’t basically, they lied about Lyft’s market share, which they said, hey, was 39% market share and Uber basically controls almost the rest, like 1 or 2% difference, right, because those are the two main players in the ride hailing market.

Frank Curzio: As of April 2020, that market share is 29%. But these are guys that provide this data. When you had an independent person, it was much, much lower market share. But if you look at the financials and everything else, it was almost inflated, propping it up right ahead of the IPO where mom and pop investors could buy, and they got wrecked on it. They got wrecked on it. And remember, if you’re buying an IPO on the day of IPO, some of them work out great. That’s fine. But that means someone is selling if you’re buying, and who do you think is selling you those shares? It’s the management team who own the stock for pennies on the dollars of founders shares. IPO is a liquidation event. It gives those people, everybody that invested in the company finally that liquidity period to sell their stock.

Frank Curzio: Peter Thiel, the Facebook IPO. I mean, he sold… I don’t think he even has a position any more, unfortunate for him. I think it came in at probably a $500 million valuation, and when it go public, whatever billion, $30 billion, 40, whatever it was. And we know it’s, like, $500 billion plus now, I mean, going through the roof. I think it’s more like 700. I don’t even know the market caps on these stocks any more. But hey, he invested early and gets out of the stock. I mean, you don’t know if Facebook figured it out. And yeah, when they track all the data and everything like that and the stock’s gone through the roof. They’re making money now. But these are liquidation events. These are where the insiders get to sell, and they’re selling it at an extreme high price to you, which is why IPOs come out at extreme, extreme valuations.

Frank Curzio: And they’d better be growing, so they prop the financials and show tremendous growth heading in to the point where Lyft should have came out at a $15 billion market share. Instead, it came out around $24 billion, which is crazy. This is how Wall Street works. Why am I spending so much time on this? Maybe you’re like, “Eh, big deal, not…” Be interested, because this is what you’re up against if you want to learn. Don’t trust anybody. Don’t trust me. Read everything that I say, make sure I do the research. If you look at my newsletters now, we’re doing video newsletters where I share my screen and explain to you exactly the reasons why. It’s going to be different reasons all the time that I’m buying stocks. You know I’m doing the research behind it. Make sure you know the person that you have a newsletter to is actually writing it, that he’s involved in these stocks, that he’s updating you all the time, that he’s there for you when things are bad.

Frank Curzio: I was doing daily videos during the Coronavirus, during the heart of it when the market was coming down, saying, “Hey, this is what we think.” We were able to really predict that this market was going to come down, pretty hard. Helped a lot of people out. Didn’t think it’d come back so fast, but we still benefited. Went long loss positions in the newsletters. But always, oh, don’t listen to some guy on TV. Most of them have an agenda. We just saw Bill Ackman cry his eyes out about his dad and Hilton Hotels. What, he had a massive, massive position telling the Fed, “You have to bail out everybody,” crying his eyes out. Again, all BS. That’s what you’re dealing with, billionaires with high frequency systems, and a lot of shady, shady people. Because Wall Street, not everyone’s shady, but it’s one of the easiest industries to get away with shit.

Frank Curzio: Because even when you get fined, and you look at Merill Lynchs are getting fined. Henry Blodget, like hey, we fired Henry Blodget. He’s gone. He made freaking $25 million. Eh, we fined him $1 million. I think it was one of the biggest settlements, which they made… I forgot how much they sell… It was probably about 1/10th of the amount of money they made. On all the research reports are basically telling you Amazon’s going wherever back then, before all this crap crashed and the valuations and stuff like that. Amazon actually turned out to be pretty good 20 years later, but for Wall Street, it’s worth it. It’s worth it. It’s worth it to take on risks, because you’re going to be bailed out, especially in today’s market. But be careful, especially new investors, mom and pop investors. Always do your own homework, always ask as many questions as possible. Because in our industry, all you have to do is disclose it. And if you don’t read the disclosure, you don’t even know what’s happening.

Frank Curzio: You could be buying something that sounds exciting through a promotion that someone’s getting paid to write and that they got shares for and they’re dumping it. So, they need people to start buying it, and that’s why they send it out to the masses. Just do your homework and do your research. That’s one of the things I love to focus on with these podcasts and in my newsletters, where it’s not just recommending stocks, it’s teaching you. It’s the education behind it. Because you’ve got some very big, wealthy players against you, and they want to take everything you have. So, the smarter you are, the more prepared you are, the more difficult it is for them to do that. So, be very, very careful, again, up against these big gorillas. But, that’s why I’m here to help you. I’ve been through Wall Street, I’ve worked on Wall Street, I know all the main players. There’s a lot of shadiness out there, guys. And hopefully, we’re able to protect you from it, because you want to be in this game long-term. It’s not just about generating huge profits right away or day trading, things like that.

Frank Curzio: Again, this is for your future. This is to build your future. This is to try to retire early. This is to try to make sure that your kids might not have to work, even though you want them to work and have an education and all that. This is why we do this. Look at the bigger picture. Don’t look at the smaller picture. Look at the bigger picture, and I’ll make you a better investor. Okay guys, you want more Frank Curzio? I can give that to you through the Curzio Research YouTube page, lots of videos. We’re going to start taping these podcasts, video podcasts, soon, which is going to be really awesome. I just put a lot of the stuff on YouTube, and paid a lot of money for the studio here, and it’s just, it’s great. And you’ll have fantastic people working on this, but very excited to launch all this stuff. Again, the video portion, you can find all of our videos at Curzio Research YouTube page.

Frank Curzio: Also, feel free to tweet me, questions, comments, anything I say. I probably tweet about three or four times a day and also do live videos, which will be on both of those platforms, YouTube and Twitter. But you can tweet me @FrankCurzio and follow me. And some of those posts are entertaining, and some people will get a little heated and stuff, but it is pretty cool, and our social media following is really starting to take off. And yeah, it’s a lot of fun right now. So any questions or comments, guys, I’m here for you. Feel free to email me any time, frank@curzioresearch.com. Plus, to subscribe to any of our services, just go to curzioresearch.com and you can do so. But thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it, all the emails coming in. Love you guys, and I’ll see you in seven days. Take care.

Announcer: The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility. Wall Street Unplugged, produced by the Choose Yourself podcast network, the leader in podcasts produced to help you choose yourself.

Editor’s note: In unpredictable markets like Luke describes, a few hedges in the right sectors can be the difference between double-digit losses… and triple-digit gains. And that’s exactly the kind of performance subscribers are seeing in our Moneyflow Trader advisory.

Is your portfolio prepared for another pullback? If you’re not already using this strategy, you may be in for a shock

Frank Curzio
Frank Curzio, founder and CEO of Curzio Research, is one of America’s most respected stock experts. His research is regularly featured on media outlets like CNBC’s Kudlow Report, The Call, CNN Radio, ABC News, and Fox Business News. His Wall Street Unplugged podcast—ranked the No. 1 “most listened-to” financial podcast on iTunes—has been downloaded over 12 million times.
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