Daniel Creech 00:01

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Wall Street Unplugged podcast for Thursday, November 5, 2026. I’m Daniel Creech, and I am solo, the one and only Frank Curzio. Mr. Frank Curzio is out of the office, and you know what that means. When I run the show, we’re going to talk about whatever the flying Florida I want to talk about. Let’s get started. Day 2. Following the midterm elections and blue wave, we are still swimming, floating around, but surviving. Did the blue wave fix the affordability crisis? Euler, crickets, somebody chime in on your Jeopardy! button. No is the correct answer. No is the correct answer there. Joe, if you would, pull up a post from Mr. Jeffrey—always butcher this—Gunlock, the new bond king. Brilliant guy. And he put this post up here that I thought just hit the bullseye right in the center. And you can see, if you’re following along, I’ll read it to you quickly here.

Daniel Creech 01:01

He says, “Affordability,” in quotes, “seems to be the mandate for the new Democratic majority.” So they need to either find a magic word to bring prices down quickly, or they need to give money to people as the high prices are made affordable yet again, only causing more inflation. Now, that is key here, and I want you guys to hear me out here. The Democrats ran an amazing campaign, and they latched onto this affordability crisis, which Trump took to bait President Trump and said it was a hoax, which is beyond laughable if you can laugh at that. Now, the good and the bad is they got the majority, and now they kind of take the reins. And as politics do, both sides, they’re going to immediately blame the other side. Okay, so when President Trump took office earlier during his second term, everybody was saying, “Hey, you know, egg prices were high,” and then it’s all of a sudden his fault. Well, whether or not they go up or down, he can then, if they went down, which they did a little bit, he can take credit.

Daniel Creech 01:59

But overall inflation is still going higher and higher, and it’s squeezing people, which is why this affordability issue rang so well. Now, now that they’re in control on the Dem side, I’m not—I don’t want you to pull your hair out. That’s why I’m giving you a heads-up on how to handle this. The Republicans are going to be blaming them right away and say, “Hey, you’ve been in the majority now for 24 hours, come January when they take office. Why aren’t prices lower?” And that is going to lead to some really silliness and chaos. And I want to tell you guys something. Do not think—so there’s some rumors out there, and we’re going to go one direction or the other, and there’s several options on the table here or on this map. President Trump could be Mr. Veto. He’s tweeted that out with a hat, you know, bragging about, “Hey, you can just sit there and veto for the next 2 years.” Do not be surprised if Trump signs either major legislation or multiple pieces of legislation over the next 2 years with the Democrats.

Daniel Creech 02:57

And here’s my theory on this. Number 1, you have to remember about this political game that we are stuck with and not a part in. We’re outsiders looking in. And I want to just give you one word here, and that’s present. Okay? The trick to being a politician on either side is you live in the present. Okay? You can say something today, and tomorrow you can say the exact opposite. You can go have fun, pull up old videos of both people on either side of the aisle saying one thing a few years ago or days ago, and then flip-flopping and saying the entire opposite thing. And they do that with a straight face. Why? Because they live in the present. It only matters in the present. And I know that that can drive normal people like you and I crazy. That’s the way it is, okay? Mr. Trump was already on record for wanting to give stimulus checks. Joe, do you remember getting promised 5,000 if Republicans held the Senate and House? Well, they didn’t. So there goes the stimulus. Not so fast. You show me a stimulus check Democrats have ever not liked.

Daniel Creech 04:00

And it’s a long shot. I’d like to see maybe Cauchy or those underinvestigated items. What’s the other one? Polymarket. Maybe Cauchy or Polymarket are already going to show odds on what are the odds of a new stimulus check of some version coming in next year. Joe, I can hear you looking that up to make me look good. I appreciate that. The perspective I want to share here with you is, do not think that this is just deadlock forever and veto for the next 2 years. Is that a possibility? Of course. I don’t think it’s the majority a possibility, and that’s what I want to talk about or kind of share with you on that. So politics live in the present. You can’t—you can’t try to get past statements or stances to stick with them, and that can be kind of crazy. On the affordability issue, I want to elaborate just a moment on this. If I were to ask you what the main driver of inflation is, and we’re back to this Jeopardy! game, you would probably buzz in and say, “The war in Iran, look what it did to energy prices,” or “the massive CapEx and buildout of AI and data centers because of the supply chain strain it’s causing,” and prices rise when you have demand just outpacing supply at any juncture.

Daniel Creech 05:16

And you guys would be dead Florida wrong. And I’m not saying that as an arrogant professor. I did spend a lot of time in college, probably more than some professors. I’m saying that because the real driver of inflation—and I’m going to continue to explain this to you guys because I don’t want this to fall on deaf ears, because you need to know the underlying currency here—has to do with 2 things, and that is money printing and the M2 supply, the money supply, and the Fed balance sheet. Joe, what do you have up there? There’s the M2 supply. Now, this is just taking all the money, and what I’m saying here is you have very educated people, very well-dressed, with a lot of letters behind their name and all kinds of achievements and awards and a bunch of other stuff. And they will argue with you that printing money and injecting it into the economy does not cause inflation, and they are absolutely dead wrong. And I’m trying to be as respectful as I can about that. If you look at this chart—now we switched—so M2, let me give you a stat here.

Daniel Creech 06:19

Before COVID, okay, let’s go all the way back to February of 2020. The money supply was about 15.5 trillion. I’m rounding. We’re looking at M2. In March of 2022, the pandemic peak, as you can say, in the money supply, went to 21.77 trillion. That is a 2-year increase of 40.5%. Okay? Now, here is why this is an easy, elementary lesson to understand. If you have an economy and it produces X amount of goods, and all the consumers in that have money, and you inject money to all the consumers without increasing the productivity of goods, you now have more money chasing the same amount of goods. And if you think prices are going to go down on that scenario, my former home state of Arizona has beautiful bridges with oceanfront property that are for sale. You guys, this is one of the craziest things about finance that drives me nuts, is that this continues to be a big argument.

Daniel Creech 07:27

Not for you guys. I just want to point that out. So we are increasing the money supply like crazy, and as you can see, it did dip. Okay? So you want to say peak 2022, you see it rolled over. Forget the numbers there for a moment. You can just see the blue line if you’re following along, dipped down. And then what happened? As always, it reversed higher. If you flip over to the Fed balance sheet, please. Up until the financial crisis, it was under a trillion dollars. It absolutely skyrocketed to around, and I’ll round again, about 9 trillion, and then it fell off a little bit, and now it’s kind of moving sideways. The reason I want to point this out is because the bigger underlying current here for markets, for momentum, and for higher asset prices is inflation is not going away. You cannot have these 2 charts between the M2 money supply and the federal balance sheet continue in the direction and the pace they’re going and also have inflation fall back to this 2% goal. That is not going to happen.

Daniel Creech 08:22

Minus a significant recession, which no politician wants, and those 2 charts that we just showed you would not look the same they do if we went into a big recession. What does all that mean? That means that as we drift towards the end of this year, in our task force that Fed Chair Warsh has put in place and out there collecting data with all their minions, that means that the Fed and Treasury are going to have to come up with something, pull levers, push buttons, and get the American people or the American people’s sentiment back into, “Hey, yes, this is a dire situation, but we’re still the cleanest dirty shirt in the world. Yeah, we have debt problems. Yeah, we have deficit problems. Yeah, we have spending problems, but we’re going to get that under control, and if we don’t, we’re going to minimize it to where we can continue on as normal.” That’s going to be a tough sell, but that’s what needs to happen in order for this kind of momentum and such to come back into it. Now, you have the market, depending on, you know, consumer staples and stuff holding up there okay, but AI is absolutely taking it on a chin because worries of the slowdown after a dim blue wave slowing the AI CapEx and buildout, which, as Larry Fink of BlackRock says, that could push us into a recession because clearly the AI train is pushing forward this economy.

Daniel Creech 09:42

Now, I want to touch quickly on this, and I’m not— I’m not putting my head in the sand here and ignoring potential headwinds or pitfalls. But there’s never—it’s never time to panic, so don’t panic. I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, whatever. There could be a silver lining in this blue wave and potential AI data center slowdown because what is one of the biggest worries that the market has right now? It is AI CapEx, the massive hundreds of billions going to a trillion, and then looking at different projections, even going higher than maybe 1.5 to 2 trillion dollars over the next several years from your big hyperscalers, your Googles, your Amazons, your Metas, and those guys. And that’s making the bond market worry. Frank has talked and hit the nail on the head about credit spreads and default swaps and all kinds of things. It’s getting people nervous. How are you going to pay for all this?

Daniel Creech 10:43

What’s your return on investment going to be? And we want answers now, not in 2 years, okay? If there is somewhat of a slowdown, the silver lining here is that you could see peak CapEx before what we’ve already thought. Okay? So let’s just pull a number out of the hat and say, “Ah, peak CapEx from hyperscalers isn’t going to happen until 2028, 2029, or 2030.” Well, what if it happens next year? Is that all bad? Maybe we don’t have as much power come connected to the grid. Maybe we don’t have as much compute capacity delivered as some projections you’re showing now. Okay, maybe that goes in the negative column. However, on the plus side, do you think the bond market would be happy or sad about that? They would be grinning, Joe. They would be cheersing one another. Why? Because it would slow down the pace of CapEx, and the bond market can take a sigh of relief, which means the equity market could take a sigh of relief. Now, I’m not saying that stocks are going to crash or rally on this. I’m trying to get you to think from a macro perspective on not everything is just one way, okay?

Daniel Creech 11:47

And if you do have a slowdown in CapEx and the bond market can kind of breathe a relief, then you can have this sideways situation where we’re not so fearful of defaults or credit spreads or what have you. And that will work perfectly with the timeline that the Fed needs through the end of the year with these task force and what the Fed and Treasury will decide to do. And yes, I get it. If you’re in, and I’ll talk about this in a little bit more detail just a little bit later. So yeah, data centers and AI trades or your cloud companies, your buildouts are taking it on the chin right now. They’re getting absolutely smacked. However. Do not let a day make an entire trend or even a couple of weeks. Yes, it’s painful, but again, this slowdown could be a very positive silver lining in the credit market, which is what is putting pressure on the bond, or excuse me, on the stock market right now. So just something to think about there now.

Daniel Creech 12:49

Okay. It wouldn’t be Thursday without Q&A Thursday. So let’s talk a little bit. Let’s take some of your questions. First question is from Alan. And Alan says, “The DIMs win big time.” Kind of like that phrase. “Even the Texas governor flipped.” And he says, “This breaks—does this break the data center trade? Does it impact it negatively? And will stocks—” Will stocks in the data center trade get hurt now? Yes. Overall, and Joe, if you would, pull up the Finviz chart of a lot of the neoclouds. We’re looking at CoreWeave and different ones. So this is great from Finviz. As I’ve talked about, you can sort these in all different ways. These are a lot of free tools. If you look at these, CoreWeave is the second going left to right at the top here. You got Iron Hut, etc. Pick your stock. They all look the same, and they are not good for investors. They are going from the top upper left to the bottom lower right.

Daniel Creech 13:53

That is the wrong direction. Now, the big takeaway here is the knee-jerk reaction is, “Hey, Democrats ran on slowing the AI spend and buildout of data centers.” And another silver lining of it, man, Joe, we are optimistic today, you know? We are just—our cup runneth over, people. The sun is out. The ocean is still within its boundaries. Life is good. When you look at the data center argument, fears and such, I have to say, I was going through some of the past statements from the now newly elected governor, Gina Henosa, I apologize, I butchered that, governor-elect and then the senator-elect, James Talarico. And I was talking to Joe about this earlier because I was a little, you know, going through and listening to campaign ads. You tune a lot of it out because it’s just so hard to listen to on either side. But I was trying to read through different things and cut out the noise.

Daniel Creech 14:56

And the reason you’re seeing this knee-jerk reaction is because the market is forward-looking and we’re emotional creatures. And us emotional creatures create algorithms that can also be emotional and look for headlines. So you’re going to see this wave of selling in pain to really hurt as many people as possible. I love that old saying. You know, markets cause the most amount of pain they can before reversing, and that’s typically true. If you think about the new rules, let’s say, from the senator and governor-elect, listen to what this craziness they’re talking about. They want to do a moratorium on new, keyword there, new data center approvals. Okay? So maybe you push the timeline, you kick the can down the road. Let’s put that on the negative side of the T chart. Keep the moratorium in place. Remember, going out the door, Governor Abbott had requested to the state legislature that they would pause, and they want to keep that in place until new protections are passed.

Daniel Creech 16:00

That could take some time, depending on what legislature that has to go through and what protections they’re talking about. But we can take a guess. Food, water, that kind of stuff. Require operators, think hyperscalers, data centers, etc., to protect local water supplies. That should not be a controversial statement. Require union labor. You can argue that if you want to. I don’t think that that’s a big deal because there should be plenty of both. End data center tax subsidies. Prevent data centers from increasing residential electricity rates. The main takeaway here, people, is these are not crazy Democrat socialist ideas. Telling the most successful. Amazing companies that gush free cash flow and have amazingly strong balance sheets. Now, I know they’re spending like crazy right now, but just rewind a couple of years ago. Telling these companies that you have to pay your own way, protect the environment around you, and do basically just do the right thing should not be an astronomical political argument.

Daniel Creech 17:03

And the idea that it is just shows you how silly both sides are. Okay? Now, can they add some craziness to all this and some really high hurdles or bars to clear? Yes, they can. But at ground level, anybody that’s against—I mean, I don’t think anybody in a residential area, and we’ve been saying this for months here or even longer than that, I’m okay if you don’t want a data center in your backyard. You can vote that. It doesn’t matter how you vote. You should also be in favor of protecting the water. We’ve talked about how the water issues are very blown out of control for political reasons and, you know, oh, they use too much water. Well, compared to what? The systems don’t get any more efficient. Yes, they do. I’m not even going to bother you or waste your time with that. The data center tax liabilities, some of these, again, I don’t understand why these are going to be such a negative reaction. Do you think that Meta is not going to invest in AI or a data center if their costs go up a little bit?

Daniel Creech 18:01

I would just agree to disagree on that. This is similar, Joe, to make this about sports to keep everybody tuned in for a moment. I’ll tell you one thing about the sports thing. You got these billion-dollar NFL franchises. I’ll pick on the NFL quickly. And they want subsidies and all these tax incentives and such to build new stadiums. And you could argue, well, everybody benefits. I’ve never understood that because if you bring in a lot of money to this city, okay, I get that. But what is that return and what is that timeline? So if you take 2 billion and give them all these breaks or whatever, what’s your payback period? I don’t know the answer, but it’s very simple to find out if you want to go down that rabbit hole. And it’s going to be that same way with AI. And again, nobody of any significance is going to pull—now, you might be thinking, “Ah, well, remember what AOC did when they ran off Amazon?” Okay, they ran off Amazon from one area and they went to another. But again, Amazon is going to look for the best incentives they can.

Daniel Creech 19:00

That’s their job. But if nobody was going to give them incentives, you think they’re just going to stop delivering packages? No, they’ll find a way. Do not panic. It’s never a time to panic. And the proposals that are— I don’t want to say that that way. The potential new, quote unquote new rules for data centers are not near as scary as what they sound. Now, the knee-jerk reaction, I’m not ignoring the pain. You’re getting kicked in the teeth on a lot of these stocks, and AI plays, other than hyperscalers had a bounce yesterday. But the silver lining again here to beat that horse to death is these aren’t that outlandish. This is not the Democratic Socialist Party that’s like, “Hey, get rid of all AI or AI is going to be owned and run by the government.” When that kind of stuff starts happening in greater volume and at louder volume, then we can start to— we can start to worry a little bit. Also, Joe, I don’t know if you can find it in time. I hate to put you on the spot, but a couple of these companies, CoreWeave and Iron specifically, the CEOs have gone out to social media, LinkedIn, whatever, and they’ve put out statements about the CoreWeave CEO was in the news today.

Daniel Creech 20:09

And he was explaining how he was congratulating the new elected officials. Of course, you got to do that. And then there was—it was a several-paragraph-long— yeah, that one. He put it on his LinkedIn. I don’t know if that’s—if you keep scrolling down, you’ll probably see it. Thank you. But one of the paragraphs he put in there to try to talk to investors and help soothe some of this panic was that, “Hey, we don’t see any change in our backlog anytime soon.” Okay? We’re not worried about financing. We’re not worried about customers. We’re not worried about our backlog. We’re not worried about power coming online. Now, you could say, “Well, he’s a CEO. He’s a cheerleader. That’s his job. He’s got to just be upbeat and as optimistic as Joe and I are here today.” That’s fine. But at the same time, he knows his company better. And when you look at the stock, it’s absolutely getting hammered. All those stocks are. But if you’re in this trade, manage your position size, understand your timeline.

Daniel Creech 21:04

We’ve taken half off of some of ours and gotten out of some of them, so we’re still feeling the pain, just not as much as we would be, thank goodness. But you have to just hold their feet to the fire on execution. See what happens when they give updates and reports about their pipeline and backlogs and such. But I got to give it to CoreWeave and Iron because at least they’re putting out statements, communicating with their shareholders and also communicating with the market in general about what they see in their— through their lens or their perspective, their binoculars, etc. So I thought that was pretty good. And again, just lastly here, the idea is that hyperscalers are going to pack up and go home. Frank could be right in saying, “Listen, if you go too extreme, you’re just going to move them somewhere else. That’s fine.” But these, you know, making sure you’re not ruining the environment, water issues, paying your own way, I don’t think that that’s extreme lefty craziness. I think there’s a lot of common sense there, but we’ll see how that unfolds and plays out.

Daniel Creech 22:05

Moving along to John’s question. Now, John wrote me this back a few weeks ago in October, and he was referring to a couple of upgrades around Galaxy Digital. So GLXY is the ticker here. This is one of my big ones because I’ve been in this name for quite a while. I’ve pounded the table on this at different times. I have not done a great job managing this position. That’s on me. We are taking it on the chin in the portfolio. The only— the recent good decision that we made here was we did get out a half earlier before the initial pain down here. So blame me, daniel@curzioresearch.com. I can take it. I feel your pain there. John says, “Galaxy Digital don’t want to catch a falling knife, but after a recent upgrade, is it time to start nibbling at shares?” What he’s referring to here is on October 13th, Citigroup came out and upgraded it to a buy from neutral. I’m talking about Galaxy.

Daniel Creech 23:05

But then on the 17th of October, right between John’s email, BTIG lowered their price target from 45 to 35, but reiterated their buy rating on it. Okay? Now, the BTIG was more about the boost they got from Bitcoin rallying from, say, 55, 60,000 to 80,000 in volumes spiking, which helped the digital asset side of the business and staking, etc. But the real hang-up here is the Helios data center campus that they have in West Texas, which Texas just went blue. So here we go. Let’s get political for a moment. Talarico, who just got elected as senator, is pretty big liberal. Okay? You can look at his statements. He’s kind of tied the whole—well, I don’t even go there. I’m going to show you how optimistic I’m being today. Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, big limousine liberal. I’ve always said that. Not a big deal. You can be whatever you want to be. He was donating to—there was a great article out of Texas yesterday, and I believe it doesn’t matter what political action committee he donated to.

Daniel Creech 24:12

He gave about 250,000. Okay? Guy’s a billionaire. You can argue that’s a lot or not a lot. Doesn’t matter. The idea here is, will Galaxy be hurt by the upcoming headwinds as well? Now, I want to be clear because, as I tried to address here a little earlier, if you’re looking to play or have exposure to the AI data center trend, you want to focus on companies that already have approved power under construction and in delivery. Now, you have to hold them accountable. They need to execute. But in Galaxy Digital’s defense, they have delivered the first tranche of power to CoreWeave, their tenant at the Helios data center, on time, on budget. They already have another 800-plus megawatts approved, so they don’t need—that’s not caught up in the moratorium. That’s not caught up in anything, politically speaking. That’s not going to change because of the blue wave. They are on pace, on budget, on time to continue building that phase one and deliver that in the Q1, Q2 of next year. And then they’re going to go to the debt markets and talk about its next 800 build-out because they’re still building out the first tranche of 800-plus megawatts.

Daniel Creech 25:18

The key there is, and I can say all this, and this can all be true. You know what else can be true at the same time? The Florida stock’s down another 10%. Okay? So I’m not ignoring that pain. Just wanted to point that out. Yes, if you’re not in this stock, is it time to start nibbling? Well, I’ve been a shareholder for a long time. I’ve bought recently. Yes. So I would say it’s time to start nibbling. Just manage your position size, your emotions, and your timeline. If you’re buying this for a short-term trade, good luck. Get one of these. Okay? Crystal ball. Lights up and everything. It’s awesome. Joe got me this. Wonderful. It’s accurate. What would you say? 55, 60% of the time? Maybe? Give or take. Odds are always changing. If your timeline is a year or so more, yeah, I think the odds are in your favor to make money. But management has to execute, and we’ll see if this— We’ll see if this plays off because the interesting thing, and I’m not beating politics to death here. You guys should hopefully enjoy listening to this because it’s important.

Daniel Creech 26:23

Novogratz was not, to my knowledge, Novogratz and his Galaxy team was not at any of the big tech meetings with— Big tech and digital asset meetings at the White House with the Trump administration. And here’s what is puzzling me still. You go back to the last administration. That group wanted to kill crypto for the most part. And remember, Galaxy Digital couldn’t even get from the pink sheets over to NASDAQ. Okay? Trump administration gets elected, obviously, because of crypto and a lot of the voting base. Does a complete 180 from the Biden administration on crypto, whether it be rules, regulations. The SEC, communications, approvals, all kinds of things. Galaxy gets uplisted to a major exchange, gets off and running. But Novogratz wasn’t part of any of those White House meetings, which got me a little nervous. Now, with the blue wave taking over and him donating and knowing this new elected senator, maybe that helps Galaxy.

Daniel Creech 27:26

Maybe it doesn’t, but I would like to think that that’s more in the favor of us than not. We’ll see how that plays out. So, John, yes, I would start nibbling if you don’t have a position. If you already have, you shouldn’t have a full position if you’re following us. There’s no race here or the hourglass is not running out too much to go buy more because, again, we’re in this waiting part now. The new elected people don’t take office until early next year. So we’ll see. We’re going to have a lot of volatility and just heartache until through the end of the year unless we get some major announcement from the Fed or something kind of unexpected there is my feeling on that. Again, if you’re going to go start fishing into the AI plays, just focus on who already has approved power, who already has that in line. Yes, if you’re going to sign a deal for 2028 or 2029 power right now and go through the legislation or the political gauntlet of getting approved for everything, that, in my opinion, is far more risky than anything else in the trade.

Daniel Creech 28:36

So just be aware of that. Okay. Next question is from Larry. Don’t call me sir. That’s a good inside joke. Larry writes in quite a bit. He’s a one-member fun guy. He says, “I wish people were more aware that the actual price of gas per mile traveled.” Now, wording is important here, people. I’m going to read that again to pay attention. “I wish people were more aware that the actual price of gas per mile traveled is less than it was in 1968. It’s less today than it was in 1968.” Larry, you’re dating yourself, my friend. He’s saying that’s when he started to drive. Allowing for inflation and improved mileage efficiency. Now, Joe is going to the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-seeking AI. And you can see this is the breakdown that Larry is referring to. And it’s pretty impressive because it’s talking about efficiencies and engines and how that, despite the price of gasoline going back from the late ’60s to today, skyrocketing, it’s actually less traveled when you do all this.

Daniel Creech 29:44

Now, I wanted to take this question because I think this is a great teachable moment because both things can be true. Okay? I’m not even arguing that ChatGPT is wrong. I’ll say this is absolutely correct. And Joe’s highlighted this. What does this mean? Let’s cut through the stuff here. What does this mean over 100,000 miles traveled? And how they come up with this, and they say, “Well, in 1968, inflation-adjusted cost was 23,530. Today, you’re looking at 17,748.” I’m almost done with numbers. Hang on there with me. Savings of approximately 5,782. Who cares? Joe, do you feel better about that when you go fill up at the gasoline price? Now, I’m not picking on Larry. I’m not picking on him. He makes a great point. The perspective I want to share with you is that both things can be true. And what trumps everything is sentiment. And Frank continues to be right about this and Marquez, as he warned about the earnings season because, hey, earnings are so good.

Daniel Creech 30:49

Everything is so good on paper from a GDP perspective, etc. What are you going to say as a CEO of a company to keep that momentum going on? “Hey, we just grew 30% this year.” Yeah, what are you going to do next year? “Well, we might grow 27%.” Holy hell, we’re slowing down. Okay. The idea here is I love this stat because this is—let’s just say this is true for a moment. It doesn’t matter because people do not feel like it’s cheaper. People feel like the gas, gasoline, diesel, energy cost is absolutely squeezing them, and they’re right in many cases. Now, some people, it doesn’t matter if gasoline and diesel go to 10 and 25 dollars a gallon. It’s not going to interrupt their lifestyle. Congratulations. That’s awesome. That is not the majority. And politics are run—well, politics are run by the minority, but they’re voted a lot in the majority. And it just goes to show you how powerful sentiment is and how emotional we are. And that’s something that I love to talk about from a macro standpoint, and I hope that that gets you guys to think.

Daniel Creech 31:53

I genuinely, genuinely believe that that’s the value we provide here. Some of the value we provide here is to get you to think about different circumstances. So the other thing this makes me think of is this explanation on AI about how your cost savings on 100,000 miles are 57.82. It reminds me of both political parties because if you rewind to the Biden administration, when they got beat in the midterms and then Trump gets elected, what were they trying to do? They were trying to tell you, while energy prices were sky-high, a lot of that was Ukraine and Russia—Russia, Ukraine, however you want to say that. I’m sorry. Russia invaded Ukraine. A lot of that was policies. A lot of that was spending on green energy versus oil and gas. That’s fine. The crazy thing was people were hurting. The average Joe was hurting, and the Biden administration was out there telling you how good everything was and how much stimulus you’ve had and how much healthcare you have and all this kind of stuff.

Daniel Creech 32:56

And people weren’t buying it. Okay? That’s the ChatGPT. “Hey, you should be happy. Let them eat cake. You’re saving 57.82 over 100,000 miles traveled.” Fast forward to just recently, the Trump administration did the same Florida thing. Gas prices are over 4 dollars, 5 dollars, 6 dollars in some states. Diesel prices are skyrocketing. But President Trump got on there with all of his minions and said, “Listen, you guys are doing great. Look at all this money coming into the country. The GDP is growing like crazy.” Okay. That could all be true. But sentiment trumps everything. And when people went to the grocery store or not went, when they go, when they go to the fueling station, when they go to the grocery store, they are absolutely screaming and wanting to pull their hair out because it is impacting their lifestyles. Okay? That is key. So I picked this question because, A, I thought it was good in general, but it shows you more than one thing can be true. It can be accurate. It’s not going to help you.

Daniel Creech 33:51

It’s not going to help sentiment. It’s not going to help any voters. That’s just kind of the craziest thing. Lastly here, I want to end up on this—I want to end with politics here because politics is like a giant game of Red Rover, Red Rover. You remember playing that as a kid? Joe, you ever play that? You know what I’m talking about? You guys link up in a chain and you link up in a chain, hold arms, and then you have the other guy run through and try to break it. Yeah. I wonder if they probably outlawed that. Probably not allowed to do that anymore. However, we still play that in politics. Okay? Go back to the first Trump president. See what happened. Social media literally kicked off a sitting president from all their platforms. He was not allowed to go on their platform and tweet. Now, you can say that’s right, wrong. I’m not arguing that. We’re not talking about that. That’s an off-ramp from our conversation highway we’re on right now. Fast forward a couple of years, Joe. Who was just partying at the White House recently with President Trump?

Daniel Creech 34:50

Zuckerberg was up there. Google’s executives were up there. Amazon’s guys were there. Musk is there. The issue is now Democrats are batting power. They’re going to go after all the Trump supporters and everybody. Do not think for one moment that those guys will not just simply hear Red Rover, Red Rover, send Meta right over, and Zuckerberg will go right back to the blue side. Okay? That’s just the way it is. Do not panic is what I’m trying to say. There is going to be a lot of changes. We’ll navigate that. Markets are sniffing that out, being very forward-looking right now. Again, inflation is a big concern. It’s not going lower. Put that in your back pocket. Do not fear that the AI trade is over. It may slow down. It may peak earlier than what was originally anticipated. That’s okay. You can manage through all that. Just stick to your proper position sizes. Keep your timeline in focus. If you need money in the next year, I would be very cautious. I would sit on the sidelines and click coupons and earn a decent interest rate on your money market.

Daniel Creech 35:53

But do not think that the blue wave is going to solve all the problems, and don’t think that it won’t create some new uncertainties and headaches. Okay? So keeping with the optimistic side and momentum of this show here, just be aware that there’s going to be more volatility. Things are going to get more chaotic before they get more clear. And that’s okay. You can navigate that. Nobody cares about your money more than you do. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it should be. So stay tuned. We’re all wisdom and opinions coming from us in the near future. Frank will be back next week. Have no fear. Until then, email me. Love me, hate me, don’t ignore me. Daniel@curzioresearch.com. That’s Daniel@curzioresearch.com. Have a great, wonderful, safe weekend. Cheers.

Announcer 36:48

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.