Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – 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.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

This is going to happen. It’s June 4th. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast. You’re watching the headlines and I’ll tell you what’s really moving these markets. Bring the hell, let’s end. Tell you what’s really moving these markets, Daniel Creech, what’s going on, man? How’s everything? Everything is wonderful, Frank. Happy Wednesday. Happy Wednesday Looking forward to the playoffs, the championship, hockey, Stanley Cup. You got Florida Edmonton again. It begins tonight. What are your thoughts?

0:00:44 – Daniel Creech

Frank. I got to say it’s crazy. We have an employee that is a huge Edmonton fan. He wants to bet his job on this series. I couldn’t take him up on that, but I’m kidding, yeah. Hey, I’m a Florida fan here. Just being a halfway local, I’m excited. I will say I would give game one to Edmonton. Did you see that, Conor McGregor? For all of you non-NHL fans, Conor McGregor is arguably the best player in the NHL and has been for some time. He got clocked, Frank, at like 32 miles an hour during a game skating.

0:01:19 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, he’s insane. It was funny when he scored a goal, I think the last game to close out. It took a weird bounce off the boards and he was able to get there and he was almost like there was a guy who was very, very fast on the other team that was just right behind and he blew by him and scored the goal. I mean it was like holy cow, they were like that guy’s fast, but Conor McGregor is a million times faster. But I can tell you I want Edmonton to win. I really do. I mean kind of hockey, conor McGregor and stuff like that. I mean, you know, I’d like to see it.

It doesn’t sound like I’m a Floridian, I’ve been here but Florida hockey is just weird that Florida is so great Hockey isn’t that weird. Yeah, third time in a row that Panthers are there. Yeah, so the Panthers right now, which is scary they’re a much better team than they were last year, uh, which is scary. So I know that you have Edmonton’s gonna be playing with a lot of fire and stuff and and it’s hard to beat teams over and over again, uh. But uh, Florida’s really, really good man, just everything offense, defense, everything and you know the goalie skinner for Edmonton. It will be interesting. He’s been red hot lately but sometimes when he gives up goals he just tends to give up lots of goals, so he should be. I’m hoping for a great series. I’m kind of rooting for Edmonton, but you know, I think Florida’s going to smoke him. I really do so. Hopefully I’m wrong on that.

0:02:33 – Daniel Creech

I want to see it in six. I want to see it in five.

0:02:39 – Frank Curzio

I want to see him lose game one and I want to see Florida just sweep him out. Yeah, I hope it’s close and you got the game six and seven. It’s. It’s kind of amazing. It really is to watch hockey.

It’s just, you know, hockey took a big leap day when, when the biggest thing was high definition, because you could look at back in the day they used to have this thing, that that circled the puck, that was hard, but when you look, now, because I was flipping through the knicks game and I’m flipping through um, I think it was Edmonton game back and forth, like a couple days ago, when they were both playing the same day, and what you see is like the hardwood floor and it’s a little dull and you know again, I grew up going to Madison Square Garden and stuff like that. And then you throw in hockey and you have this bright white ice and they are showing angles when they score goals through the net. Right, they’re showing like six or seven different angles. But I mean what you could see now in terms of how hockey and how fast paced it was, that you couldn’t see back then. I think that’s the biggest change over the past seven, eight years. Yes, penalty shots and they’ve done a great job.

But if you were looking at watching a game on TV and how come this sport has absolutely taking off in the past 10 years as you got more high definition, when you got more camera angles and technology got better, I mean seriously flip through that and another sport, if you can. When the NBA Finals goes off, Maybe they’re probably going to be playing the same night. Just go from one to the other. It feels like the crowd is on the ice. When I was watching that Dallas game, Like they were on the ice, Like it’s like holy cow, it was like amazing and the sound and everything. It’s incredible that you know, compared to other sports, it’s just remarkable. And playoff hockey is just another animal compared to every other sport. It really is pretty cool.

0:04:07 – Daniel Creech

I’m a big fan and have been a big fan so I know I’m not the norm, but the highlighting of the puck. The only thing dumber than that was when they tried to put the little toggle and they switch and tell you like a video game, when you’re playing and you throw it to the receiver and it lights up and the name comes up no-transcript, but it should be a good series tonight.

0:04:30 – Frank Curzio

Enjoy it. So, with that said and get to the markets here. Let’s start with a very simple question. Very simple for the answer Should we sell in May and go away? And before you answer that, let’s put in perspective May. We saw 6% growth. May is usually a good month, but 6% growth is insane. 6%, that’s how much the market grew right. So 6% and it’s the best May in 25 years. Going into June, which June is the worst performing month for stocks. And just to put in perspective, that worst performing month I think is 0.8%, because usually the market goes up. The market goes up constantly, right, usually by 10% annually if you go back to 1920s. So it’s not like every month is bad, but this is the worst month. So should you sell in May and go away? We’re going to see a steep pullback this month.

0:05:19 – Daniel Creech

Simple question no, you can’t sell in May and go away because Donald Trump is probably going to change the months of the year in the calendar. Like I said, he has full power, Frank, he can do whatever he wants he’s going to. No, I honestly think I’m glad you brought that up because I wanted to ask you this and this is funny, we didn’t even plan this. There are a lot of things that say you know, you do, just because people say, hey, that’s the way it’s been done, so you know 60-40 allocation because that’s the way it’s been done. Forget that it was done one time for one generation. I don’t know why everybody should do that forever. Frank, same thing Sell and may it go away.

This is going back to the days of why our lazy bastards in politics take August off for recess, back in the day when they didn’t have central air and all that kind of stuff. Now you got all the technology. Still don’t work. My point is, if you sell in May and go away, that’s because all those big fat cats took off, went to the rich Hamptons and all that. Right, am I correct? And that was kind of typically like hey, they take the summers off, so that’s why they do it Now in a 24-7, nothing stops. Wouldn’t you just throw that out? Isn’t that just an old saying?

0:06:18 – Frank Curzio

or is Daniel Creech way off here? I mean a lot of things. Well, you know, history often repeats itself or at least rhymes, and that’s total bullshit it is. It does rhyme With the markets over the past seven, eight years, even since the credit crisis. Okay, when the Fed decided and the government decided to bail everyone out after all those failures. Right. When the Fed decides to lower rates incredibly, where you’re no longer allowed to have a recession. Right. Where you say, oh, we use every recession every four to five years. No, not anymore. Right. So when you have COVID and you shut off the market.

And then I was looking at earnings, we’re going to go over earnings later. But if you look at the end of 2020, we had the stock market at record highs and earnings at record highs. People forget that. They’re like holy shit, 2020 was bad. No, early 2020 was horrible. And then, all of a sudden, we got the vaccines out, like November.

The market took off, so we injected trillions into the market, which I get. I think it was $5 trillion but then we injected another $7 trillion with every asset class at all-time highs other than gold Almost every single asset class, right. Houses were at all-time highs. Collectibles all-time highs. You look at stock market all-time highs, right, used car values, right, I mean what were higher than when you bought them, which is weird, right, supposed to be depreciating asset, but it changed the landscape because you have the fed this gorilla in a room that could change the dynamics, just like trump can change the dynamics in a second.

So when you look at history in the markets, you have to learn to adapt, because things are different now. It’s not a level playing field. There’s lots of things going on. Yes, you have 24, 7 markets and stuff and you have, you know, real-time stuff that you didn’t have and access to. You know setting news in one second from here to china, uh, and you know, be tradable in 30 seconds, right, so which you never had that before, maybe you know before. You know internet and stuff like that.

So, looking back, you could say, well, often this happens. But you know, for me, when I’m looking at the markets, I don’t really pay attention too much to that. So I wouldn’t say you know, for me, when I’m looking at the markets, I don’t really pay attention too much to that. So I wouldn’t say, you know, go away in June. I just I would look at it as May usually goes up. But it went up exceptionally much more than it usually does. So we might see a little bit of pullback in June. That’s fair. But just because you know, if May went up 2%, you’d be saying the same thing. Should we, you know, buy May and then go? So you’re right, like the dynamics are different, I don’t really pay attention to that. It’s kind of like the gold and silver ratio, which is kind of bullshit to me because it’s meaningless. It’s like what is it 101 or whatever in what they trade?

0:08:30 – Daniel Creech

It means nothing. It’s not meaningless if you want to get excited about silver prices.

0:08:33 – Frank Curzio

No, but okay, you guys, based on that metric, no-transcript stars align this way. This is what happens with stocks, so we should do that. What’s the guy’s name? Dent? Right, you talk about patterns and stuff like that and space and whatever.

Oh, so you know, when I look at stuff like this, I don’t really pay attention to it. And, like you said, I mean now you know with the markets and how busy and how crazy it is and just everything is so much like. It’s so much news every day. Even today, we talk about Trump dominating the headlines, right? So you said saying President Xi now has not held up his end of the bargain on tariffs, so will we see massive tariffs slapped on China again, which will be a complete disaster for many, many, many companies. And I got to tell you over the past two months, three months even I spoke to dozens and dozens of CEOs, companies of midsize, large cap, small cap companies the disaster that they have gone through because of tariffs that you don’t really realize.

Like, imagine your whole supply chain of a business runs through China and now it can no longer go through China. You have to upend it and say, okay, where are we going to go? Well, okay, let’s go to Vietnam. Holy shit, wait, we’re fighting with tariffs in Vietnam. Well, let’s go to Taiwan. Wait, we have tariff fights with them all at the same time.

So now they kind of said, okay, maybe they had 100% exposure to China and now they have 30, 40%. Okay, now all of a sudden, China’s back on everything’s good, right, according to a couple weeks ago and saying, hey, everything’s good, we’re going to come up with a trade deal. Fine, now you have the certainty. Now, all of a sudden, if you backtrack here what are and he’s trying to figure out what Trump is doing it’s creating uncertainty that could really push this market down 10%, 15%. If he goes and says, hey, you know what these tariffs are back on because China reneged, or whatever, I mean that’s one thing, but just being in the market and the tweets coming out and saying, what do you say? She is Very tough to make a deal with.

0:10:43 – Daniel Creech

That’s what he said.

0:10:46 – Frank Curzio

He’s very tough to make a deal with. That’s what he said. He’s very tough to make a deal with, which we always knew right. Because they always say they’re going to do a deal and they don’t. They say one thing and do another, right. And I’ve got to tell you something China better stop fucking around. Messing around Sorry, I don’t mean to curse.

If you look at the private gauge of it’s, called it’s the Purchasing Managers Index, it came out today or yesterday. It came out yesterday and showed contraction, right. So just know, below 50s contract, it showed contractions. That’s the weakest print since September 2022. I don’t know if you remember that time period, but the markets were crashing back then. So China’s worse right now than that big crash that we had. That’s China’s PMI. China’s PMI in 2022. And it’s directly linked to tariffs, right. So now the tariffs are off, the next gauge is probably going to be a little bit better, maybe. But if they go back on this, I mean she’s playing with fire here.

And, yes, another tariff fight with China is going to hurt the US equity market. It’s going to create uncertainty, I get it. It’s going to push China into a depression. You’re going to lose everyone that’s going in there. They need foreign capital to fuel that market and right now you see foreign capital continue to exit that market.

It was trying to get back into that market when you had a lot of hedge funds saying, hey, this massive stimulus plan They’ve been announcing these stimulus plans for how long and you know reserve requirement ratios, lowering them this way Banks lend more and provide better lending, and stuff like that hasn’t worked, because it doesn’t work when you have, you know, just this depressionary environment where you just they’re not dealing with inflation, they’re dealing with deflation, which is a big difference. So, no matter how much you stimulate the market, people just don’t want to spend and you could argue they’re already in a deep recession right now. I mean the property market and everything is still going to have horrible statistics. It’s really in the context that I have.

It’s horrible, it’s horrible. It’s horrible. I would think they’d do anything they can to do a deal, because their market went up once this was announced. Now, to go back, I think China’s really playing with fire. So let’s see what Trump does. If he comes out, like the next day or two, and says, hey, we’re going back with 140% tax, you’re going to see the market pull back probably 10%. You will, and I’d be careful with that.

0:12:41 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, oh, absolutely. I mean and that’s the scary thing, because you know this pause in the tariffs. And while this negotiating, Frank, by the way, did you see the White House sent out a memo about hey, give your best offer this Wednesday for trade deals to other ones? Nothing like knocking on your trading partner’s doors and be like, hey, get your crap together and send us your best deal. Yeah, I agree, I mean, stocks would pull back and unfortunately or not not, unfortunately I would use that as a massive buying opportunity, and I will look into Creech’s crystal ball here and be transparent. It makes me nervous to say that, which is probably why it’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately and I am not happy about this, I’m simply telling you the way I see the world, you’re always going to have fears and reasons not to invest. And yes, the tariff. If Trump says, hey, I’m bumping tariffs from 30 to 50, Frank’s right, you’re going to see a sell off.

0:13:28 – Frank Curzio

And probably will be met with a buying opportunity. I think it’s gonna be great.

0:13:31 – Daniel Creech

Well, because China is not the only thing going around, and I’m not putting that argument in Frank’s mouth or anybody else’s, I’m simply saying, just because the headlines are focusing on one thing, does not stop this train. Okay, you have to get a bill, the big, beautiful bill or whatever it is, through Congress and they’re going to be fighting and they’re going to be changes and all that. The point is, if you don’t get that through, Frank, the big tax increase goes through and a lot of negative stuff happens. I’m not happy about it, but we are essentially going down the exact same path that President Biden was going down, meaning it is a government spending like a drunken sailor fueled economy, and that is not stopping down, slowing down at all right now and until it does.

The toughest trade, which is often the right one to make, Frank, is to be buying stocks and all this face of uncertainty. And if you need and again, this isn’t because Daniel Kreish is right, but look at reality how far are we off of all-time highs, Frank? Yeah, very, almost there. Holy cow, came right back. And don’t get me wrong, I’m surprised about that. I, I’m surprised about that, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been buying into this market either. I’m not trying to take it, I’m just simply saying do not fight all the system and the tailwinds that are going and you know ray dalio’s out on cnbc and I I love him calling it out, except for the fact that he acts like the fed isn’t going to step in and do all the same BS People.

Let’s say the world changes. We are going through major changes. I’m not disputing that. Let’s say the United States loses the world’s reserve currency. Let’s say we lose the largest global economy. That does not happen overnight, that is not a quick process and the media makes you think like that could happen tomorrow or in June. And I’m just telling you, unless the military packs up and goes to the Florida home, we’re fine and I hate to admit that, but that’s what you need to hear because there’s value in that.

0:15:14 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and speaking of that and the Fed, I mean he’s going after Powell again, after the positive ADP report which, if you look at the numbers, it wasn’t that positive. It showed wage growth is slowing, depends on what side you’re on, yeah, and high and quit rates were at weak levels. It does show that inflation is pulling back still, but he calls them too late, powell, and he said he must lower now because Europe lowered nine times. And look, you know, trump does have a point. I mean inflation is trending lower, right, but when you look at GDP estimates I don’t know if you saw the revised Atlanta Fed, which has a great history of predicting GDP they now raise their Q2 GDP to 4.6% from 3.8%.

Now I don’t care if you’re an economist and you’re going to pick that number of points, it’s because of this. It’s 4.6%. You can pick it apart as much as you can, as much as you want. I mean 4.6% is insane, right, for when we were looking and staring down a barrel of maybe recession, two straight quarters of negative GDP we had negative GDP last quarter. I mean, just blow the doors off and you could say well, this is tariffs and you know, personal consumption, whatever it’s. Still, it’s massive growth that we’re seeing. Right, that’s a headline number that, even if you argue, you pick apart, it’s still very, very, it’s going to be very, very strong.

So, speaking of the Fed, someone else that’s pissed at them is someone who you know. I mean, they’re kind of on the same side with Elizabeth Warren, and she was in an interview today because this was after the Federal Reserve lifted a $2 trillion in asset cap placed on Wells Fargo in 2018. And so you can’t grow your assets more than this because of all the this restriction. It limited Wells Fargo’s ability to grow. It was imposed after the company just decided to create millions of fake accounts.

0:16:53 – Daniel Creech

Oh, yeah, that was bad.

0:16:54 – Frank Curzio

So this is like a seven year restriction. So they lifted it and she was on TV. She brought up Wells Fargo’s record and I got to tell you I’m not a fan of Elizabeth Warren, but she brought it today. And she brought it today. It wasn’t. You know. Again, I don’t like her. I’ve made that clear in the past. I think she’s a very angry person. I feel like she hates everything.

But she brought it today with Wells Fargo. She’s like you know the critical penalties around cheating on customers, investors, and they got caught and they’re supposed to change. And she said did they change? Because in January SEC tagged them for scamming old investors. Again December, six months ago, got tagged again for $800 million scam with Zelle. Last September got tagged by regulatory for money laundering charges. All this in the past nine months. So have they really changed? And CNBC you know the anchors are fighting back and saying yeah, but they have. He did a great job. The CEO of Wells Fargo saying how we had the great team.

But she came out with really good points and said look, I just want to see the Fed’s records on how it came to this decision, because you know, we need to know, because this is you know, did you just do this? Because whatever If Trump’s elected or whatever the banks, whatever, even though he doesn’t like the banks, and Wells Fargo is one of the ones who is debunking everybody, along with Bank of America, targeting the Fed, and remember the Fed and you have Powell is going to be there till May and he’s gone. And when you have a president that’s electing and their job is to elect the Fed chairman, trump is going to elect the chairman based on him, basically that he could control somebody and say you better cut and do everything. I freaking say you’re going to do. And you know that’s a huge catalyst because you know when you’re lowering rates, it’s going to stimulate the markets and he wants them to start lowering rates now, which you know.

You could argue back and forth. Yes, you should be doing it, because inflation is lower. However, we’re still seeing strong growth. So we’re seeing strong growth with higher interest rates. So maybe you should wait a little bit. He thinks that that growth is probably going to slow sharply in Q3, q4, the rest of this year, but I can tell you, if you’re looking at earnings, they’re not predicting that at all, because we’re supposed to see double-digit growth again, which gets in a minute, but I just want to bring that point up in terms of the Fed, because everyone’s ragging on the Fed and hating the Fed right now, when Powell has pretty much been doing a goddamn good job.

0:18:57 – Daniel Creech

That’s all I’m saying.

0:18:58 – Frank Curzio

Gosh darn so gosh Don good job no they should be raining on the Fed.

0:19:03 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, and he is. He’s doing a good job. He’s doing a good job right now. Yeah, that’s in context. You can’t just say he’s doing a good job without going down rabbit trails. However, I will say and we proved that we can be bipartisan here, because I didn’t I’ll have to go listen. You’re a dog lover did his time.

0:19:25 – Frank Curzio

Now he’s back on TV all over, but a lot of people still hate him, If that’s you.

0:19:29 – Daniel Creech

I get it, but hey, you do time move on.

0:19:31 – Frank Curzio

It’s a hundred million dollar contract Now. Wells Fargo did a lot of shady stuff. Hopefully they got penalized. I don’t know what kind of all the regulatory shit that you did and you could argue. Maybe the SEC went after them and they went after everybody. Whatever.

0:19:44 – Daniel Creech

Which is good. I’m simply saying it’s not enough.

0:19:46 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, it should stop. I’m saying yeah.

0:19:48 – Daniel Creech

But the whole revolving door of them screwing over customers, paying a fine, admitting no guilt, no problem, nobody loses jobs and all that. I agree with her. She should take the hammer to them, but no offense, the back of the little person sticking up for them and trying to break down. The big banks and all the biggest banks have gotten nothing but much, much bigger. They are more significant to the economy and the globe now than they were in 2008. It’s an utter Florida failure. Just remember that.

0:20:16 – Frank Curzio

Oh, I agree, Well, 100%, but I’m just saying that she brought it today and brought up some good points and said have you really changed?

Because we haven’t seen it and I like to see the records on how the Fed came to this decision and I think that’s fair, you know, and for me, looking at it, I always look at it Seriously. I look at the current environment. I don’t care what happened in the past, I don’t care who I hate, who I didn’t like, who I disagree with. Like, if you got to be able to change, it’s not that I like her, I’m not am I saying like she’s, you know. Again, I just think she’s an angry woman, I don’t like her policies and she’s anti-capitalism. This was. She brought in some good points, but she was on. I was like I’m gonna listen to this, I’m gonna hate it, and I was like, whoa, she’s kind of had some good points. Well, have they changed? No, they haven’t changed, but yet you know that’s okay because, no, you’re.

You’re not looking at the credit crisis, where all the banks did bad. Yes, they should have threw a ton of people in jail. You’re talking about Wells Fargo. That created fake accounts. One of the largest banks in the world created fake accounts and this was, after all, the stuff that happened during the credit crisis and they were the biggest in terms of home lending and stuff like that Biggest. So have they changed?

And she’s like they’re still getting tagged for a lot of stuff, and $800 million is probably a little scam with Zelle, but still this is a bank that needs to be squeaky clean, and they haven’t been. And yet you took those restrictions off, which is very good, and all the banks a lot of the banks have restrictions because of the amount of capital they have to keep in balance sheets, and that’s another catalyst going forward. If you look at the markets, where you’re reducing that, it’s going to be more. That’s what China is trying to do. Right, with the reserve requirement ratios and lowering them, you’re going to have banks be able to lend more money, and that that should feel the economy too, especially with lower interest rates, and yeah, yeah, if she thinks she’s mad.

Now wait till gotta do, they’re gonna bail them out. That’s the easiest fix in the world. Hey, do whatever you want, we all go broke you smartest guys in the room.

Yeah, and that’s why I love. That’s why you have to you. You wonder why crypto is so huge in terms of you know a lot of people crypto and meme stocks. Not talking about meme stocks, I’m talking about technologies and finance, of how it disrupts finance, because these guys have made absolute fortunes where they’re reporting the four largest banks over 100 billion in revenue each quarter.

0:22:33 – Daniel Creech

I think JP Morgan the best makes a billion a week Each quarter massive fees, mass amount of money and total control.

0:22:41 – Frank Curzio

And now you have All these technologies, transfer payments, wires, everything through DeFi. You know the current administration right, trump administration is pushing this and you know there’s going to be a lot of disruption in this space, because there should be, because when you have the four largest banks making that much money there should be. You should have competitors coming into the industry to disrupt them and the current laws never allowed that. They said here’s the four largest banks, you can’t get bigger. We saw at New York Community Bank that broke into the $100 billion market by getting assets from one of the closed banks and what happened is they got punished because they had to raise their capital ratios and the company almost went out of business For increasing their assets. They almost went out of business For doing their job and growing their company. They almost went under right Because the capital ratios that increased. I had to take that from the bottom line. It looked like there was a run in the bank and then New York community was one under. So you know it’s set up, the current laws are set up for those four banks to get bigger and bigger and bigger, even though they bullshit and said we shouldn’t have too big to fail. They are more too big to fail than they’ve ever been, and it’s crazy and again it’s all on these politicians watch that receive tons of money from the banks and it’s pretty.

So I want to go over some interesting notes that I’m seeing, and I want to have this be like a segment, maybe once a month, because we get a lot of interesting notes. Sometimes we don’t get to them and I want to do quick hits here, because we read a lot of stuff. We have access to a lot of stuff that people don’t have access to, that we pay a lot of money for, which is cool, and all the research notes and some of these guys are great research notes. I mean, everybody picks on the investment banks, but sometimes they come out with really good stuff and we’re seeing upticks in what In two sectors that haven’t been doing as well, which is biotech and regional banks.

Now, why is that important? They represent a huge part of the Russell 2000, which is down 6% year to date, while pretty much the overall markets are flat to up, and that’s a big disconnect. But the Russell is trading at the exact levels it was trading at january 2021, which is insane, which is insane, right. So there’s a lot of money to be made in these small caps that adjusted for higher interest rates, that cut their costs, that don’t have too much tariff exposure, because a lot of small companies usually have their operations more in the us, so not going to be impacted by supply chains and things like some of them not all of them, but most of them.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of notes being published on the russell, how undervalued it is. I wouldn’t say to go out and buy the Russell because of that you probably do well, but there’s a lot of individual names within these two sectors and lots of sectors that are offering value. That’s unbelievable. Daniel, I covered that, I think, last week with biotechs, and you’ve been on the trail with regional banks as well.

0:25:02 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, home bank shares. Homb is the ticker. If you want exposure to this regional banking system, I would do it for two reasons. Number one is the CEO family-owned bank or kind of a family-run big ownership, and they are looking for deals and if you listen to their conference calls, they are a very well-run bank, very disciplined bank, and I love how transparent he is, Frank. He says, hey, we’re not going to pay you the highest interest rate on your CDs, but you can always have your money. That’s not the way we run our bank, meaning you’re not going to get caught in the run on banks type deal, also excluding from the CEO, which I’m a big fan of.

I’ve talked about in the past. Secretary of Treasury, scott Besson, in previous interviews that we’ve talked about here and sprinkled in at different times, has talked about supplemental leverage ratios being lowered. That’s where the big banks don’t have to set capital aside to buy safe things quote like treasuries. But you’re not only going to see regulations and deregulations at the big bank level. Scott Bessett has hinted and even said he wants to focus on more regional banks. He wants them to get bigger and play a bigger role in our global or, excuse me, our American economy. You couple that with home bank shares.

Who is transparent and saying, listen, we are making. I mean, Frank, they did like a billion dollars in revenue. Four hundred million went to the bottom line, made revenue and profits. Ok, all they’re saying is, hey, we need more money. So I don’t know. My crystal ball is a bit fuzzy right now. It’s got a hangover, Frank. It’s a little bit blurry, but as the summer moves through and we get through the August recess, there has to be, as I expect, through the summer there’s going to be deregulations on the financial sector. That’s going to spur in the regional bank sections. Plus, we’ll come up on the next earnings season. But yeah, if you want the regionals exposure, I would buy HOMB immediately.

0:26:44 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I’m putting up a chart on them right now too. So it’s $27, $28, $32, $33 almost is the 52-week high. If you guys can see it’s on a YouTube channel Even if you go back five years, it’s trading at pretty strong levels, like this is a bank that is regional but is a really good bank and yeah, it’s a $5 billion market cap. So I don’t know if they’re in the Russell You’re going to. You know Russell is getting very high in terms of that. Remember the Russell rebalances.

0:27:08 – Daniel Creech

It says they are on Finviz, but I always take that for sold. Well, they might go into the mid cap.

0:27:11 – Frank Curzio

Now I don’t know what the limits are, but what happens is they just did the rebalancing. And one of the companies that we talk about a lot is US Gold Corp, and we’ve been talking about this company for a while. We had in the portfolio at a higher price, at like nine, and then it fell down. We added more and stuff like that, but it fell to levels and we were really pounding the table on it because all mining companies got hit. These guys actually got permitted, fully permitted, now Wyoming a great, great project that I went to go see, and now they just got selected into the Russell 2000, which is great, right. So they do the rebalancing, which I think was the end of April, and they had to have their market cap at a certain level, which we kind of knew. And I love the success of that. I love working with companies like that because these guys work their asses off. I know them very well, the management team, and to see like that’s huge, that’s like graduation of getting into the Russell of 2000,. You know over the counter and then you get a NASDAQ and now you’re in the rest of 2000, which is fantastic. But there is a rebalancing going on this company, I’m not too sure would move up or whatever, but you know, either way, this is one of the good names and you’re probably going to find lots of individual good names regional banks and especially in biotech Daniel I’ve been talking about because some of these companies are trading at valuations where it’s insane. It really is insane. I mean really really good companies that generate revenue, have more cash on the balance sheet than when the market cap is trading. It’s a big disconnect. It’s been like that for a couple of years, you could argue, but right now, just with AI and the technology and all the regulatory environment increasing where you’re going to put on labels of food that should not be consumed, which is going to take them out a schools and stuff like that, where you’re going to have to label kind of like similar like a tobacco label. Like you know, causes cancer and stuff tobacco and nicotine. That’s going to result in a lot of these companies seeing slower growth. The big pharmaceuticals. So what are they going to do? The M&A market’s really going to heat up. You’re starting to see that. We said that a few weeks ago to see a lot of these biotechs. A lot of these companies have proven technologies. Now they’re going to sign deals. If they’re not seeing the M&A and the whole takeover, you’re probably going to see a lot of these companies invest in their technology, which is going to push those stocks higher. That’s who we are, I think.

If I had to compare it, I would say right now it’s almost like investing in uranium companies when uranium was $25 a pound and it’s 70, over 70, went to 100, pulled back to 70. It’s kind of like investing in crypto, maybe three years ago, four years ago, when it was much, much lower, maybe at 20,000, and it’s over 100,000. That’s what the opportunity you’re seeing in biotech, especially small caps. You’re going to see a lot of those names make their way into our portfolio. But, uh, yeah, just wanted to bring up that note too, because you’re seeing a lot of positivity, a lot of positive notes.

On the Russell, finally and it’s been underperforming for a very long time Again, it’s at the same levels as 2021. Not talking about a Russell, I’m just saying someone who’s studied small caps for 30 years. That’s been what I love to do. I’m seeing valuations I’ve never seen before and it’s pretty crazy. So I want to talk about earnings. So earnings drive stocks right. I mean. That’s pretty evident when you’re seeing it. So earnings drive, especially now. There’s a time where you just had to see growth in sales and now it’s like earnings that’s the biggest driver of stocks.

I want to go over some things with you because I want to explain to you the difference between people’s opinion and data, because data tells the real story and it almost always tells a different story than opinions. Like the dollar’s going to lose its reserve currency status and, oh my God, the market’s going to crash. And yet there’s data that doesn’t support that at all. Okay, there’s data that you could say well, the deficit’s high. The deficit’s always been high. It’s the same argument I’ve been saying since 1970. We’re going to see that crack when it cracks, but it hasn’t cracked, you know.

So, when it comes to opinions, when looking at earnings, I wanted to show you some things, because we just finished reporting q1, the S&P500, and now it’s in the books s&p 500 grew 13.3 percent year over year. That’s an amazing number. And if you want to know why, because on march 31st the forecasts okay when you look at these numbers. So the forecast of all the investment banks are what they’re predicting, the earnings are. They call for earnings to grow at just 7.2 percent. That was March 31st and they grew at almost double that, which is incredible. Could you chalk it up to ai? Maybe could you talk it up to efficiencies, could you talk about the cost cutting, whatever but we’re also seeing pretty strong sales growth on that as well.

So for 2026, now we’re starting to see, because we’re in the mid year right, so we look at forward earnings, we’re looking at 2026, but remember, when you start off at 2025 in january and you want to look at end of the year 2026, that’s a long time, right. So you’re saying you know you’re trading at whatever time is forward earnings? Right, a lot of you’re taking full year 2026, but now we’re going to May, June, right, we’re into June now. Now you’re looking at 2026 estimates because they’re more relevant, right, we’re getting closer to that. So those a lot of the investment banks are printing that number and that number.

Right now, the consensus is for over 300 000 total earnings, that’s if you combine all the earnings together for the sp500 companies. We’ve never been that high. If we’re looking back, we broke 200 in 2021 and now in 2026, we expect to break through 300. So if you do the math, which I’ve done. It means that we grew earnings by double digits annually for the past five years. So lots of facts to consider, because we had lower rates for most of that period. Massive stimulus spending early on, right 2021, 2022, 2023.

Okay, fine, but I’m going to share this with you because I’m a data person and often people’s opinions tend to be much different from what the data shows. So, Frankcurzioresearchcom, feel free to email me because I’m going to blow you away with these numbers. So the opinion is stocks are super expensive, right, Daniel? You would say that. Right, the consensus is everyone’s saying well, the markets are really, really expensive right now. That’s what the tone from the media is. I mean even the media analysts. Everyone is saying that the markets are very expensive. They’re trading at 21 times forward earnings. If you look at the five-year average, it’s 20. And if you look at 10-year averages, like 18.5 or whatever Again, this is from FactSet. These are all you know. These are estimates. So they’re super expensive right now. How could we be trading at these levels? Okay, that’s the opinion.

Let’s go to the data. The average P of the past five years for the S&P 500 is actually 20. It’s 20. We’re trading at 21 times forward earnings. Yet if you look at that period, earnings grew 10% annually over that time, over the five years 10%. So now we’re trading at 21 times earnings. It’s a 5% premium to the five-year average. Okay, yeah, well, more expensive. But, like we’ve always said all the time, you have to factor in growth, because not only do earnings grow 13% year over year, they’re projected to grow 13.5% in 2026. So you’re looking at 10% growth over the past five years in earnings. Now you’re looking at 13.5% growth, which is 35% greater than the five-year average. We’re growing much, much, much faster, meaning that if you take it and say, and you factor in growth and look at the past five years, we’re trading today at a much cheaper valuation based on earnings in 2026.

And you may say well, Frank, who knows if we’re going to generate those earnings in 2026? I’m telling you right now I am O for a million trying to tell you that earnings are going to come down. I’ve said that throughout my career. I said it last time in 2022. I was like there’s no way they’re going to. I think it was like set for like $220, $230 in earnings and stuff, and it was you know from from two, 10 and 2022, I said there’s no way they’re going to meet that estimate. They blew it away.

A credit crisis and COVID like there’s no way they’re going to meet these estimates. They always consumers always spend. Companies find a way to beat those estimates every single time, 100%. It’s a fact. These companies they never unless you have, like a black swan event, like you know, 2020, or you have a credit crisis or something like that they almost always beat earnings. They find ways because it’s not difficult to beat earnings.

Looking at the hyperscales, they have like 80 different tiny divisions that they could, you know. You look at service revenue and saying, okay, service revenue got cut. For Apple, they can literally raise their prices by 10% and you can’t leave right, unless you don’t want your pictures anymore or anything. For cloud, they can raise their cloud prices and easily make their earnings. All contracts with defense companies they come in. It depends when they’re going to recognize that revenue. It’s a three-year contract. Well, this quarter’s not doing that good, let’s recognize more of it in this contract. This way they beat earnings. There’s so many ways to manipulate earnings. It’s insane. So, but just looking at the data and you’re factoring growth, the S&P 500 is much cheaper today than it was over the past five years. That’s based on the data.

I know opinion. You’re going to say you’re crazy. I’m just telling you, if you’re looking at the facts and we meet that estimate and you might say 13.5%, Frank, that’s crazy. We just grew 13.5% year over year. It’s not crazy, it’s almost the same. Though. We grew 13.3% over the past 12 months, the next 12,. They’re projecting 13.5% growth. And will AI be factored into that? Maybe, but we’re also going to see exceptional sales growth, which is projected I think it’s 6, 7% sales growth, which is much higher than industry average. So you know, do I think we’ll hit that 300 number? I think we’ll blow it away only because I’ve been wrong 100% of the time saying no way they’re not going to grow that fast.

These companies find a way to do it every single time. Consumers always seem to spend in America. They just love spending money, even money that they don’t have. They continue to do it. I know it’s going to blow up in their face. I’ve heard the same story since 1979, right, 80s, 90s. It’s going to blow up, going to blow up. Holy cow Dow’s going to lose reserve currency status. All depression. We hear it over and over again. Markets continue to go to all-time highs. Every single time they pull back.

It represents a buying opportunity to let changes, like Daniel said earlier, when it comes to China, if we announce higher tariffs on China, we’re going to see the market pull back considerably. Start buying a lot of names because that has to change. That’s not going to be the norm and she will definitely come to the table and trouble. Come to the table and say, okay, we got to figure this out again Again. So you know, when you’re looking at earnings which we do and we look at the numbers, you look at the data. I’m just telling you, based on the data of what I told you, you can email it Frank@curzioresearch.com. I know you’re going to say Frank, you hear that on TV all the time. Now you can tell those people, you know what, you’re full of it and here’s why they’re not expensive, based on the data, and that’s what you want to focus. You want to let the data make your decisions for you because it takes the guesswork out of it. So if you don’t want to invest in S&P expensive we were more expensive over the past five years and we’ve watched the market absolutely surge since COVID, absolutely take off since COVID. So not only that, what do we have down the line? Less regulation, more tariff announcements coming.

We had the playbook, where the Middle East was the greatest spectacle like we’ve almost ever seen when it comes to politics. They have the American flag on the buildings and stuff like that on the buildings and stuff like that. I don’t think so many people understand what happened in the Middle East, where Trump took the greatest companies that we have, especially the hyperscalers, and they’re building right now the biggest power plant the world has ever seen in Saudi Arabia, and we’re looking at five gigawatts, which is freaking insane, insane. Right, you have Microsoft going into nuclear and SMRs. They’re like, well, they’re going to generate like maybe 150, 200 megawatts, right? So megawatts, this is gigs, five gigs we’re talking about, right. So this is massive upon massive, like we’ve never seen anything like this. And now you have all hyperscalers all going to get this business. So if Europe follows suit, if all these now you have all hyperscalers all going to get this business. So if Europe follows suit, if all these, now you have Europe, you have China, this is what’s going to happen. If we all work together, we all use, you have companies, you have profits. Everyone’s working together. It’s good for corporate profits, it’s good for the companies, it’s good for each country, it’s good for GDP.

Again, we have the playbook for the Middle East. Banking regulations are going to reduce a lot of those requirements. There’s a lot of stuff. Also, a lot of the red tape is going to be removed from projects that we want to build, especially construction, mining projects and things like that, where they don’t have to take 15, 20 years anymore. There’s a lot of positives coming up with a market that’s not as expensive as one believes. I’m not saying it’s super cheap, I’m just saying, if you think it’s expensive, it was more expensive over the past five years and we saw the market ramp higher because the growth was there. We’re seeing massive growth. We’re expecting growth to continue over the next year. If it happens, the S&P 500 is going to continue to ramp higher.

0:38:55 – Daniel Creech

That is a good quote on. You should get some emails about that. That’s Frank’s email on the last five years. I get enough of those. But at this point to follow your data and such, you know I mean and again, we’re not glossing over the pain and the pullbacks and the fear there we took some lumps, but we were recommending and remember the diversification there is easy, it’s stocks, bitcoin and gold. That’s the simplest. I mean, we’ve been preaching that for as long as we have, so that’s, that’s the key takeaway there. That’s how you hedge against all the craziness that you’re going to read about 24-7. And that’s okay. Just don’t let it stop you from, just don’t let it make you sit on the sidelines and miss out on everything. Yeah, no, definitely true, definitely true.

0:39:32 – Frank Curzio

So a couple more headlines here. You know in the news and stuff to be able to talk about. Bank of America says Robinhood’s going to be the next company to get into the S&P 500. I thought it’s not like they do one rebalance every year. They can get companies in there all the time. It’s not like the Russell where rebalance is once a year. No matter if your market cap goes from $100 million to $25 billion, you’re going to stay in the Russell for a full year, until June, with S&P. Who do we see? Just go into the S&P. I won’t mention it. Who’s the last company that went into the S&P? Oh, hell, I don’t know Coinbase.

0:40:07 – Daniel Creech

Oh, because of that, yeah, I knew he was making fun of me, but I couldn’t figure out why so many emails that said I love Daniel. He’s so awesome.

0:40:15 – Frank Curzio

One of our good contacts at CryptoContacts did this guy Brett is a really good guy and he’s like oh man, he’s like I love Daniel.

0:40:32 – Daniel Creech

He’s like man freaking to insult. No, no, that was just, that’s fine.

0:40:33 – Frank Curzio

but I didn’t. I knew you were giving me a hard time. I was like, ah, what do you mean? So well, robin hoods, they say robin is probably going to be the next one to go in there. If you’re looking, it’s trading at 72 right now and you’re seeing massive buying of the June 75 calls now that because Bank of America came out with this report, it’s trading. It has a market cap of 63 billion and trading at an all-time high.

And credit to these guys. I mean you want to talk about how you disrupt the markets? I mean these guys were incredible in saying, hey, we’re giving all this stuff for free. You’re free trading and we know, we understand, like, you know, it’s Citadel and behind the scenes, you know they’re taking it in a lot of. You know almost every single token that you have that trades on Coinbase. Right, you’re not getting equity. People don’t care, you know. So you know if people really don’t care about that or what they don’t see, it’s fine, because I could tell you if I go to get an oil change and say, my oil, you know, for a truck, it’s like you know a hundred bucks, say 120 bucks, whatever it is, that’s I, extra fees and I’m like, what are these for? And they couldn’t. Even that pisses me off. So they did something that a customer really doesn’t care about. But they’re going to care about getting free trading, even though you know on the side they’re getting a little bit worse for price, which is, you know, at the end of the day it’s pennies On the scale. It results industry to change how they do business.

And then Robinhood said hey, we’re also offering crypto. Now you’re going to see Schwab off of crypto. You’ve seen everybody else off the crypto now. Now you’re going to be able to buy not just Bitcoin and Ethereum. You’re going to be able to buy lots of crypto names, which is why, in our crypto portfolio, the next 100 cryptos are going. That’s where you see the opportunity for 5X to 20X gains, and I’m not even kidding 20X. We’ve seen names that are up 50% over the past 30 days. Right, because it’s filtering down as Bitcoin goes higher. You’re seeing a lot of that money filter down to a lot of these great technologies.

Now, and the next hundred are real companies and they have amazing technology and good services. They have good token economics where they burn their tokens, and they have good communities where you constantly. Again, it’s only the value of the utility. That’s where the value of the utility that’s where the value of the tokens comes in of these cryptos. If you’re using the crypto for something like if you’re using it for trading opportunities on Binance, that’s where you see the biggest effects. These things are still down 80% plus. Now you’re seeing these things really take off. Just Robinhood credit to these guys. You want to talk about disrupting an entire market $63 billion market cap, all time high and according to Bank of America look, I don’t think they put out a note if they didn’t think that that was the company that’s going to go in. I’m sure somebody has a contact someplace, but if it does go in, you’re probably going to see this thing take off and a lot of people are playing it through option markets. But that came out today.

0:42:58 – Daniel Creech

I thought that was an interesting note. Yeah, this is a frustrating one for me. I’ve liked Frank. I’ve listened to Vlad the CEO, on a couple of recent interviews. He was at the Bitcoin conference and, I have to say, the more I listen to him, I don’t trust him. But I like him more from a business standpoint.

And the reason I say that is because, Frank, if you’re a redneck like me, there’s not much difference between prediction markets and betting markets. But old boy is there when you get down to the nitty gritty and loopholes, and I understand that and I’m OK with pressing the line and trying to figure out and get the best situation for your company. But I have to say, the way he pushes the line, I have to respect that. And at a quick glance, like I said, the breakdowns between betting and predictability, Frank, are for a lawyer’s wet dream and they can have fun with that and make a bunch of fees. I just think I’ve been wrong about this hood. I think it’s going to continue going up because I haven’t bought it and therefore it’s probably going to 100. Yeah, I know.

0:44:05 – Frank Curzio

Well, I mean the last company.

0:44:06 – Daniel Creech

That’s big fundamental analysis, I know, but that’s reality, people, yeah, and the last company.

0:44:09 – Frank Curzio

We said Daniel, it’s going to go. No kidding, that’s why Corweave, corweave, we’re like hey, it’s $60. This company should be $100,000, went to $100,000 five days, right. So you know, in terms of their market cap, where’s the market cap now? Um, it’s 73 billion. So you know, 20, 40 60.

0:44:29 – Daniel Creech

Is it up today again, or hopefully it’s down. Isn’t everything coming?

0:44:32 – Frank Curzio

back.

It’s up. It’s up two percent today. So here’s a chart. So it’s a trading at 154 again.

This is like two weeks ago we were saying listen, you know, buy this thing on that pullback and then hopefully a lot of you listened uh, look, we don’t always get it right. This one one we really got right. I mean you could be going well, we’re up, technologies, Frank is down. We held that one for a while and I still am a big owner of that. I think things are going to change completely for the rest of this year, where they’re going and they’re putting out some really good news and have finally got the team in place. But yeah, I like to bring up losers and winners. But CoreWeave again, if you want to buy me anything a house or anything or something like that that’s fine. I think if you say that on the air, they’re probably like what are you getting? Don’t ever buy me anything. I’m just kidding. This is a free podcast, Don’t, yeah? So just you know contact, send me information and stuff like that, because everyone that listens to this in so many different industries, no-transcript, not about. Oh well, I made money in this. Are you made money? I love to see everybody making money on this thing and core.

We’ve compare to a lot of other companies. If you’re seeing three times sales, some tree 10 times sales, three times sales is still kind of conservative. Uh, they have a 74 billion dollar market cap right now. That puts it at 90 billion. So you know, if you’re looking at doing the math, this thing could go to 200 pretty quickly too. So, and they’re signing more and more deals all the time.

These guys have technology, they have proprietary technology, they have access at scale to n’s best chips, which every single hyperscale. Who has hundreds of billions of dollars of spending on the balance sheet, and not only that. We just saw no, I mean, we look at spending. It’s not slowing. It’s not slowing. It’s not slowing at all. It never has slowed, it really hasn’t slowed. And just now, over the wires, I just saw let me see if it’s back up there that it Amazon is investing, I think, something like $10 billion in North Carolina or something like that. I think it just hit the headlines a little while ago. So, as we’re talking right now, so in for data centers and stuff in North Carolina, which is becoming a big hub for data centers as well. So I mean it’s not slowing down anytime soon from the hyperscalers.

They have to continue to spend, like we said, to compete against each other, Because if they don’t, you’re looking at companies losing trillion dollars in market value and that’s why their system continually needs to be updated. Continue to be the best and you’re seeing that. You’re seeing this fight If you look on the leaderboard list of the best systems, whether it’s Anthropic right or if it’s Lama, or if it’s ChatGPT. Now it’s Gemini right 2.5. They’re constantly changing. They’re getting better. They’re fighting each other, competing against each other.

It’s what you want as an investor to have the best systems to be able to use. These systems have the best efficiencies, which is going to result in productivity gains for your company, higher profits, higher numbers, less costs. And these guys are going to continue to fight to get the best system out there. They have to, or they could lose a ton of business, which is going to hurt their market caps, and you talk about four or five companies. Have trillion dollar market caps that are fighting for this market and that’s not slowing. Based on my context, If I see it slow, I’ll let you know it’s not slowing. You see more demand than ever and constantly this new slow core we’ve continued comes out. It’s pretty amazing. And now you know Amazon spending $10 billion in North Carolina it just came out over the headlines now the data centers in all Carolina. So it’s not slowing.

0:47:44 – Daniel Creech

It’s absolutely amazing. One quick comment on the spending not slowing down anytime soon, jamie Dimon, I’ll unpack this a lot more in future podcasts, but just had an excellent sit down at the Reagan Economic Forum or whatever it is, and he talked about the spending on AI and he said, you know, it’s not slowing down anytime soon. And he was like you know, 300 billion, 400 billion, whatever it is this year and he made a great point. He said, listen, technology is always deflationary, but AI isn’t going to be deflationary anytime soon. And the point is Jamie Dimon is my favorite bankster I mean that as a compliment and the point is he’s always calling it out as he sees it. And hey, I think inflation could still, you know, rear its ugly head and stagflation, all that, but the point that he’s saying that with AI, I would take a listen.

And just to your point on Corweave and being hands down the absolute player look at the momentum that they’re causing, Frank, did you see Applied Digital Corporation? Will you pull up APLD please? Not to put you on the spot, apld? If you look at this chart, you could probably notice in the recent days it’s really rallied because they signed a deal with CoreWeave, and it just shows you the idea on how powerful CoreWeave is in the sense of hey, these guys, if CoreWeave’s involved, since they’re the leader, they’re giving a lot of people some hell of a boost In.

0:49:03 – Frank Curzio

April, this stock was under $4, and it’s almost $13. If you’re looking at the chart, it’s up another 24% today. Yeah, not even a month. Wow, look at the five-day. The five-day you’re looking at I mean just since the second right. So what is this like? Two trading days ago You’re looking at, the stock was $7, and it’s $13, basically it’s up another 25. So you could have made money just off of the last day or two and and bought it after the news at 10 bucks, and now it’s 13, same with core weave.

Right, the news came out and you’re like, and I’m like, wow, this is a big disconnect here, should be trading higher and all of a sudden it started really ramping higher tremendously. And people like, wow, these guys have, you know, basically 30 billion in guaranteed deals that are in the pipeline and you, you’re trading at a market cap that was lower than that. And people are looking at the debt and the CEO came on TV and said listen, we only take on debt once we sign these contracts. So we sign a contract for $200,000, we’re taking on $100,000 in debt and then over the life of that contract, it takes a year, two years, to really get everything to them. Then we pay off the debt and then we have our profits. So now it eliminates that debt concern that people worry about, where, holy shit, you’ve taken on a lot of debt, where this debt is really short-term debt, which is really cool, and Sia did a great job explaining that.

Once that interview came out, that’s when I thought the stock was really going to freaking take off, because that was the only risk that people were concerned about. The stock went up like 6%, 7% after earnings and then fell for the day because people were concerned about debt. He got on TV, I think, the next day and said listen, this is why this isn’t a concern. So what’s the concern? Nothing. Now you have pure growth.

You basically took the risk off the table for this company, saying every single company in AI is trading at a massive premium, which 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 times sales. This company shouldn’t be trading below one time sales, especially since they have proprietary technology and access that really no other company is going to have access to, which is to scale NVIDIA’s best chips that are in massive freaking demand right, that people can’t get this company could get for some reason. So you know, if you think about it and you look at the numbers you look at again, looking at the data, it just made sense it’s going to go a lot higher. I wouldn’t have bet it was going to go to 150 in 10 days from 50. But I’m glad because you know people are doing very, very well in that stock and, yeah, it’s been a big winner for us. But yeah, applied Digital wow, look at that freaking chart. This is a five-day chart.

And that power, the power that they’re supplying will kick in at the end of this. You want to talk about the Circle deal, the Circle IPOs, to have price range. I think it’s price and tonight coming out tomorrow Expect a valuation around $7 billion $7.5 billion I think it is and offering 32 million shares expected to raise around $900 million. That’s if it’s priced at $27.50. And list on New York Stock Exchange symbol CRCL and that’s going to come out tomorrow.

Let’s see, because a lot of these IPOs we even saw eToro take off, come back down, newsback take off, come back down. We saw CoreWeave take off and come back down, but CoreWeave has taken off. That’s where you want to look at these IPOs. Like, is this different? I don’t know. It’s not really like an AI trend, it’s more banking, it’s like that and taking advantage of it.

But let’s see where this one goes, uh, and and where it opens. It’s gonna open at 30 or 40 because the past ipos I feel like people have missed where it’s come down and people like I’m gonna stay away from core weave or whatever, but it. I think I’m very interested to see how this trades after it opens over the next week. I’m really interested to see how it’s going to trade because I really have no freaking idea because some some have come down tremendously, you know it. Like Corweave has gone up after the IPO took a couple weeks after that or a couple months, but I’m interested to see how it opens. The strength of how it opens should be pretty positive, but what happens after it opens? Are you going to see a little bit of a sell-off or lots of buying? I’m curious.

0:52:38 – Daniel Creech

Well, I’ll tell you, I feel the same way as I did on Corweave, which I was very nervous about this. That means it’s going to go to the Florida moon, Frank, because I’m thinking, I was looking through this and I think I was telling you I mentioned on a podcast. It’s basically an interest rate play. They didn’t make any money because they’re disrupting it. They don’t charge high fees, but in 2022 is when their income really started to shoot through the roof, and that doesn’t that’s not a coincidence that that is when the Fed started raising rates and they basically are making interest off of all the money slushing around on their stable coins. However, that’s why I thought, man, that’s, that’s a great business, but it’s more one to watch, not invest in. I was dead wrong on the core weave situation because, essentially, I thought, man, if they don’t buy these GPUs, right, Frank? In my opinion, you’re betting on the management team and you’ve got to see how long these things are good for. Is the shelf life three years or six years, whatever? But my point is, I was dead wrong on that. Look at the stock, let it tell you what it’s doing, let the market dictate that. The same with Circle, Frank, I think and you know I could have egg on my face and we could be dead wrong on this thing if it tanks.

I think the stablecoin story is, and could be, so massive that it’s going to gather that momentum because it’s the first one. You know you got Tether, but that’s not public. I think there’s such an amazing story here, Frank, that if they get this thing out, if they’re decent at storytelling and I’m not saying making, I don’t mean storytelling, as in making anything up, I just mean sharing the impact that stable coins can have, the drive that could save the US dollar, in a sense, make a demand for treasuries, push yields lower. You get momentum like that, plus making deals. And I mean literally, Frank, you’re headlines away from hey, stablecoin is now issued on XYZ platform and XYZ is going to use stablecoins and blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t see how that’s not massive. So I think this thing’s going to. I think this is going to be an exciting thing to watch and I would bet higher than lower yeah, this, this is gonna, it says, coming out of seven billion, seven half billion dollar valuation.

0:54:31 – Frank Curzio

This has the the opportunity to become a hundred billion dollar company. Uh, just with the biggest banks in the world holding conferences and calls about stable coins and and how the growth in stable coins and these guys are are the issue of USDC, designed to maintain a one-to-one peg with the US dollar. But this is a play on DeFi payments lending. I mean just to see decentralized infrastructure, just everything coming together. So it’s like the fintech compliance and now that you have the administration that’s there and you have all these the biggest banks in the world talking about stable coins. This is almost like that pure play on this. So if you really believe that stable coins are going to, this is like the pure play here on it and that it seems like it’s going to be a massive market, because it’s rare that. You see, I wouldn’t say rare but and again I didn’t have time because I’ve been so busy and people who were on the call with the stable coins and Citi’s announcement of it and they just had a massive report on it it was a very, very big deal. Talk about how big, you know, trillions of dollars of how big this market’s going to be. You’ve seen that across the board and banks are very serious about this. So now you have the regulation in place and no one’s going to come after these guys just because they don’t like them or because they didn’t donate to the right party Now because they didn’t donate to the right party Now that you have a framework around it. That’s why they’re going IPO now. They didn’t go IPO a while ago Because if you don’t have the regulatory environment, who’s going to invest in this, when the government could turn around and just sue you just because, hey, you know what that guy has red hair.

Yeah, we’re going to just sue him. That’s the way the government operated. The SEC operated. Right, were going after it. That’s what it was right. And the banking industry paid them so much money that they just tried to shut down completely the the entire crypto industry, which is amazing, because all the crypto companies, even novograts uh, you’re looking at robin hood, you’re looking at all the coinbase they were all working with the sec and saying we just we want something. We gave you four years. Could you just tell us? Even if you’re not gonna, even if there’s tough regulations, just let us know what the regulations are. This way, we could structure our companies, because we’re seeing massive demand and people want this. And the SEC, out of nowhere, just said hey, we’re really going after these guys. They work with them. They did everything that the SEC said and then they went after them and tried to sue them and that’s why you saw some of these guys fight back and say this is bullshit.

The Winklevoss. That’s how come you saw this massive push from Democrat side and all these donors go all the way over to the Republican side, because we’re like this industry. Right now the Democrats are targeting this industry. They don’t want it to exist and now, with Trump in there, I mean this opens a door. That’s a big part of the circle IPO here, so it could really really take off. I mean, the growth in this industry is amazing and this is a pure play here and I’m interested to see where it comes out. Might be a good buy. I might even buy it myself, but let’s see. Let’s see how the IPO prices first. It could price at $60, could price $50, could price whatever. Let’s see what it prices at, because they are coming out and the pricing is supposed to be around $27.50. I’m going to bet it’s going to be a lot higher than that. I’d be surprised if it’s lower than that.

0:57:16 – Daniel Creech

In my opinion, the only headline you need to pay attention to is the big banksters JP Morgan, all those guys are looking to team up on a stable coin. If they, they would go at it alone. They do not like to use each other if they don’t have to, which is good for competition. My point is is that those bastards, god love them not join up if they didn’t see a major threat. So let’s see how circle goes, nah.

0:57:37 – Frank Curzio

All right, guys. So that’s it for us. We’re out of spreading right now and people just come to this podcast. We love providing you guys lots of ideas and stuff. And also, you know, the premium version includes Wall Street Unplugged Premium, which stay on light tape every Thursday, and it includes uh, you know recommendations. We have a portfolio around those recommendations. It’s only $10 a month. But we really dig into you know more than just talk about general themes. We really give a lot of stock ideas and stuff like that and you know it’s been worth it for a lot of people because we’ll share sometimes 10, 15 ideas and then we’ll even take one idea and throw it in our portfolio to trading idea, what we like, and that portfolio’s been doing very, very well. Thomas, we’re here for you. Frank@curzioresearch.com. Daniel email.

0:58:24 – Daniel Creech

Daniel@curzioresearch.com.

0:58:25 – Frank Curzio

All right, guys. We’ll see you tomorrow on Wall Street. Unplugged Premium Take care.

0:58:30 – Announcer

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.