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

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s February 8th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged Podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets.

Frank Curzio: So, we just came back from Daytona, where my daughter had a gymnastic competition. And, the last one was a couple weeks ago, she didn’t perform that well. She blamed everything under the sun, except for herself. And being her dad and competitive, I said, “Nope, you could do better than that.” She’s like, “What are you saying, I did bad?” I said, “Hey, I’m your dad. I’m going to tell you the truth because I know you’re better than this.” If she really sucked, I’d be like, “Wow, you did great, honey. You’re awesome.” But I’m like, “You’re so much better than this. Come on. You can do better.” And, I really pumped her up and she was relaxed for this competition, and she did much better.

Frank Curzio: She was leading her entire team after the first two events, which was the floor and the beam. And the floor was amazing, her performance. She really stuck one of the landings. Everyone was like, “Whoa,” went crazy. And then she did decent on the vault, because it’s kind of like the Olympics, four events. And then came the bars, and she slipped off. Not fell or anything, but she came off the bars, landed on her feet. And she got a bad mark, which lowered her score. But I was really proud of her. I love the confidence. She’s really good. It’s hard to do good in every single event. Usually, people have one or two good events. If she really got a good score in that, she probably would’ve finished fourth place. This was like a premiere event though. I mean, people take this serious. They take pictures of their kids, and they make pants out of them and, “I’m a gymnastics mom and dad.” It’s over the top.

Frank Curzio: I mean, it’s like kids’ beauty pageant things, where they make movies on them, and reality shows. It’s kind of like that. I mean, parents are just over the top, insane, and they know every single thing that’s going on, and I’m just like, “Hey, just all right.” Just learning. But yeah, I’m proud of her. She’s only been doing it for two years. She’s really, really good. And she’s got confidence, and it was just, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And, this place in Daytona, it wasn’t just like a regular gym. It was a stadium. I mean, you had to sit up the second level, right? You couldn’t sit on the floor. You had to sit on a top level, second level. And the competition took place on Sunday. Right? So her group started around 11:45.

Frank Curzio: So, the place is about two hours away from my house. But the day before, my wife, and this was the day before. But, we left the day before on Saturday and got a hotel in Jacksonville, because a few weeks ago my wife joined a Facebook group from Jacksonville. And all Jacksonville moms wanted to hang out, and new moms and stuff like that. I was just hoping that, that wasn’t like a future divorce mom club or whatever. Whatever. But anyway, it was like 30 girls that were like, “Hey, we’re all going to go out and have a good time,” because we’re moving to Jacksonville, we’re building a house there. So, yeah. She’s like, “Hey, you know I like to hang out.” I said, “Listen, why don’t we drive there? I’ll get a hotel. I’ll take the kids, hang out with the kids. You go out, and I’ll pick you up. What a great husband I am. Awesome.”

Frank Curzio: I got that hotel. She went out drinking and partying. I took the kids to one of those jumping trampoline parks. Eh, maybe not the best idea since my daughter, a few hours later, the next morning, had to go to the gymnastics competition, but she’s young, right? She’s young. Got home like 10:00 PM. And then, she was on stage at 11:45. But again, she could handle it. Nice being young. But anyway, I picked up my wife who had a great time, got a little drunk, lots of fun. And, you guys know, happy wife equals happy life. Right? That’s the way it goes, and give and take. And she’s done a lot for me. And, just been crazy at the company as you know, but again, that happy wife and happy life is a good thing. At least, when you do something good, that’s for a few days, right? That lasts. So, you get good vibes for a few days until stuff goes back to normal.

Frank Curzio: And it’s always crazy, since we’re driving the kids everywhere and I’m running the business and stuff. But, it was a really good weekend in all seriousness, just spending time with the family, which was needed. Working so hard, because it’s nice to just step away. Because, Monday was a really big day for us in our company, Curzio Research. Curzio Equity Owners token went live in the tZERO platform yesterday. It was a big event for our company and it was a huge success, since we did more volume on tZERO and tZERO is an alternative trading platform. They don’t call them exchanges here in the US, the regulation, whatever. But we did more volume in one day than our token did in almost a full year on the foreign exchange that we traded on. And not to say anything bad about the foreign exchange. It’s just, we just didn’t get any volume on it. Right?

Frank Curzio: And, liquidity for the security token market is huge. It’s the last missing component for an industry that’s bigger than anything I’ve ever analyzed in my 30-year career. And actually, I could say, it’s probably bigger than anything I’ve ever analyzed combined in my 30-year career, since there’s literally hundreds of trillions of assets that could become tokenized. Where you sell off a piece of that asset to investors in a tradable token or shares. Advise you to own commercial real estate. Again, I covered this over the past few weeks. Bonds have, bond managers, one bond manager saying, “This is a great idea because, look at fixed income and the prices, and in a liquid market,” and you’re wondering why. It’s usually the highest margin, best performing business, when it comes to investment banking, is their fixed income division. Take a look when they report earnings.

Frank Curzio: So, looking at the size of this market, it’s huge and exciting. But anyway, look, this is an endorsement for our Curzio Equity Owners token. If you want to buy it, buy it. If not, don’t buy it. I’m not allowed to talk about the price, just like Microsoft’s not allowed to talk about their price. That’s up to you. I can only control what I can control, and working hard. Get my team, constantly building this company, make it bigger and bigger. This gives you a direct equity stake, just like it would as if you were a shareholder, and allows you to trade as a retail investor. And hopefully, that’ll be reflected in the price if we continue to grow.

Frank Curzio: But what I can say is this, try to learn everything you can about this industry. I think I might have said that term a few times in the past three, four weeks. And you could do so by going to Curzio Owners site, or looking at The Token Tracker we created. You can go to tZERO. You could just go to Google and research security tokens, and you’re going to be fascinated. It’s just a fantastic concept that really levels the playing field between Wall Street and main street. And I think, every single one of you listening to this podcast right now, which is a lot of you, talk about that later. It’s a lot of you now. It’s something we all want. We all want to make money without being taken advantage of from asshole elites, with fancy lawyers that don’t give a shit about you, just give a shit about themselves.

Frank Curzio: Of what we’ve seen with the BS SPACS in the marketplace, like how much those got crushed. Those guys were at long time before you, and at a much better price, over at the over-hyped inflated IPOs the past two years. I mean, how many of they, trading well, well, well under that first day trading price? But those of you have been following me for a long time, for a really long time. Been doing the podcast for close to 15 years now. But in 2010, I said, “Learn everything you can about fracking.” Had great contacts in the industry. I traveled, went on rigs, went to over 20 counties in the Eagle Ford, went to the Permian basin, went to the Bakken in North Dakota. And I was just talking to people, learning, and not just the people in the oil industry. And this was back in man, 2011. I think, when I went to the Bakken. And the Walmart employees, were paying 20, $25 an hour.

Frank Curzio: And that’s how much you were making, just people working in hotels. And was a booming, booming, booming economy, is when oil was well over a hundred dollars. I was just fascinated saying, “Wow, this technology is here.” It’s amazing. It’s not BS. They’re trying to put it down. The climate value manipulators, they’re trying to say that it creates water contamination, which is impossible to do unless you physically take out all the chemicals and dump them in an ocean, or a water, or a pond or something like that. That’s different, but they frack thousands of feet below any fresh water that could possibly… So unless, somehow, magically, we change the laws of physics and these chemicals goes upward through rock, thousands of feet into water. Again, for me, when I went through, I thought there was going to be dead animals everywhere. Right? We just, I forgot the name of that movie that came out. It was on HBO.

Frank Curzio: I was like, “Holy shit, this is crazy tech. Now I want to learn more about it,” and realized, “Holy shit, this is great.” They have a hundred percent success rate of drilling. And they do that, because especially in the Permian, because it’s been drilled for decades, and decades, and decades. So, they know the roadmap, they almost know exactly where they’re going to drill and they hit almost every time, drilling down, vertical, horizontally. It’s just, it’s unbelievable technology. And look what happened to the oil industry with the US became the largest oil producer in the world. Unheard of, not even on the radar, just a few years before that. In 2012, coming back from the Consumer Electronics Show, I said learn everything you can about the Internet of Things. Said Chambers from Cisco. Said, “Everything can be connected, will be connected.” And he was right.

Frank Curzio: Talked about 5G many, many years ago, before you saw 50 promotions in our industry on the last, what? Three years, two years. Even though, 5G is still really not here. It’s still not here. I mean, you can look on your phone, again, I own a phone rescue place. We call it Curzio Rescue, but it’s where we fix phones. And again, I’m hands off on that job. It’s something that I owned. I had 30% stake. I wanted to take it over the whole company. But you’ll see, just go to your phone. You not going to have 5G coverage. There’s a few areas, some major cities. Still not really here. Anyway, everybody talks how great, how much money, but again, talked about 5G a very, very long time ago, how 5G improves everything. Those algorithms, data analytics.

Frank Curzio: Data analytics. I think it was 2011, I wrote an issue and I was working at Stansberry at the time. I was talking about Target, how they targeted a young 16 year old girl, right? So she, Target was sending this girl or sending this family coupons, and just targeted them. And they were about pregnancy, and they just kept sending, and sending, and sending. Then the dad went over to the manager at Target and said, “Hey, you know what? My daughter’s 16 years old. Why the hell are you sending these?” And he apologized. And a week later the manager called the dad back and said, “Hey, I just want to apologize again.” And the manager was like, “Listen, really, really sorry.” Dad was like, “No, no, no, I should be sorry, because my daughter is pregnant.” Not only did they know she was pregnant, I’m not talking about for her buying pregnancy tests or anything. They knew to the exact day of when she was going to have that baby.

Frank Curzio: That was 2011. That was 4G. That was when algorithms were really, really fast. Think how fast they are now. With 5G, faster internet, how far advanced? That was 2011. I worked for Jim Kramer. When I worked for Kramer, he used to come out with his recommendations. When he came out with his recommendations, we had to send it to all these lists at the same exact time. Within seconds, not even seconds before, the alert would hit. Before you could open that alert, the stock would jump three, four, 5% immediately. That’s how fast algorithms were. That was 2010 when I was working there. You wonder now, you want to why Facebook’s down 14% and then down 20%, five minutes later. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I mean, you have the main, the Bridgewaters, right? The big guys, Six Sigmas, and then you have 30 other hedge funds, which are a billion here, a billion there, piling on top of this same system.

Frank Curzio: So, it’s like the Azurian brothers, we’re looking for unusual option activity. Now, there’s like 30 newsletters that do the same, right? It’s very easy to just manipulate it, so there is some kind of movement where you take the other side, create that liquidity event, and then go to the opposite and wreck people. That’s why you’re seeing these massive movements. I don’t get it, it’s too technical. This stuff’s taking place a long time ago. Again, the stuff that we were talking about.

Frank Curzio: But you look back at different industries telling you everything you should learn about crypto, right, Bitcoin four years ago. And when some of you subscribed to my Crypto Intelligence letter, was it three months ago, got a lot of subscribers in when Bitcoin was at 50,000 plus, and then went up a lot more. But it’s fallen hard since then. We did take some small positions in those last three or four picks, added to those positions on the way down. Now look where crypto is bouncing back. I have no doubt. Like I said, “I don’t know where it’s going to be in the next few months. I know a hundred thousand is definitely in the future.” Bitcoin is here, but all the innovations are coming out from that.

Frank Curzio: But that’s exciting times. If you’re a subscriber to Crypto Intelligence, I’m talking to metaverse companies in the early stages, NFT royalty companies that I’m meeting with. Going to get some serious backing, these guys. Other security tokens being launched. Everything I have access to, you will have access to. That’s a newsletter. Now, the next stage is security tokens. I mean, it’s huge. It’s awesome. It’s a great industry. I’m putting my money where my mouth is. We’re trading. I’m not saying this is going to go up. I’m not telling you to do something, which I’m not really doing myself, which is what you see throughout our industry. Everyone tells you, “You got to buy. It’s going to go 50X on this date, on this exact date.” “How many shares you own?” “Well, I can’t own it, because I’m writing about it.” “Then why the hell would you write about it, if you think it’s going up 50X. Wouldn’t you buy it yourself?” “No, I need subscribers.” We happen to live in a fucked-up world, a crazy industry and that’s why I started this company, to change the bullshit out there, because it needs to be changed.

Frank Curzio: But getting back to the point here, security tokens is it. Guys, start learning about it. It has nothing to do with our token, but start learning about it. It’s a concept that makes sense, checks off all the boxes, it’s good for everybody. Because of the issuers, and retail investors, the costs are cheaper. Makes sense. Is the reason why so many people are reaching out. Whenever I talk about this story, especially if I’m doing, if I’m a speaking at an event. I mean, the amount of questions I get, like holy shit, right? Every company is looking to raise money. They’re looking to bring awareness to their company. They need money to spend. If they really have that good idea, and they’re not big enough where they’re generating 10, 20, 30 million plus in sales, where you want to go on the NASDAQ or something, this is the alternative. And it’s awesome. We’re a great example of this.

Frank Curzio: But if you’re looking at security tokens, crypto in general, guys, I mean, this is where the next wave of innovation is going to come from. Where the DeFi, NFT, security tokens, the metaverse, that’s where all this is coming from. It’s all flows through crypto. Because, if I go to the Consumer Electronics Show every freaking year forever, and I can tell you there’s no new innovations. It’s smart homes creating this alliance, where all these components can talk now, no matter who the manufacturer is, but again, it’s smart homes. This trend, it’s building these existing trends like AI. How do we make AI better? Data analytics, the Snowflakes. How do we get better data? How do we make it easier, because there’s so much crappy data. Most of it is crap. How do we take that small percentage, learn from it, and make money off of it, and target the right people?

Frank Curzio: But they’re all advances off existing trends where crypto and DeFi, all this stuff is brand new, NFT, security tokens. Why don’t you get involved? And, these industries are massive. Hundreds of trillions of dollars. Hundreds of trillions of dollars in liquid assets, that could become tokenized. And not all of it, not 50%, maybe not 20%, but just 5% makes it a market. That’s probably five, 10X the size of the cancer treatment market, which is enormous. That’s the potential here. Start learning about it, because this is one of the only ways where you could get in ahead of Wall Street. Where the SPACS, forget it. They’re getting it at a dollar. You think you’re getting a bargain at 10 when it goes to 12. Now those things are trading at six and five. They’re like, “Shit, I’m down 50%.” These guys own it at a dollar.

Frank Curzio: The IPO process with Robinhood, boy, they sold a great story there. Coinbase, you can go on and on with some of these crazy IPOs. Rivian, I mean, retail investors could buy them when? When all these guys are getting out for their liquidity event. Crypto’s different, security tokens is different. You could buy near the ground floor. You could buy ahead of Wall Street. That’s why it’s a massive, massive market. It’s going to be big. It’s going to catch on. It’s going to scale. It’s going to be liquid. And we are in the very early stages. So look, start learning about it. I have a pretty good track record for stuff like this. That’s why I’ve been doing this for so long. It’s why that, I think a lot of you continue to listen, which I think is crazy. But hey, as long as you listen, I’ll keep doing this podcast. With that said, getting out of the crypto market, getting out of like our big event for Curzio Equity Owners, listen, the overall market, getting a lot of questions, is on shaky ground.

Frank Curzio: And, some are talking six to seven rate hikes. That’s what I saw in CNBC, six to seven rate hikes, including a 50 basis point hike when the Fed meets next. And I’m not too sure if that’s priced into the markets. I’m not sure if a two and a half percent Fed funds rate in 12 months, I don’t think that’s factored in. 3% in the 10-year? It’s basically got 2% right now. I don’t think that’s factored in. 2.25 might be factored in, maybe a little higher. 5% plus mortgage rates? Not priced in. I have to tell you, those are likely scenarios right now. We have inflation going wild. Look at energy prices. Look at wages. They have to raise rates. They have no choice, but doesn’t mean you have to sell every single stock. You just need to understand the macro backdrop. And it’s not that easy, right?

Frank Curzio: I mean, you’re looking at climate change for example. And I don’t care if you believe in climate change or not, I don’t care. This is about your money, right? So, just hear me out before I get all the crazy emails, which I love, frank@curzioresearch.com. Fire away, I have thick skin, and I kind of like it. Those tend to be the funniest emails. But the fact is, there is a massive initiative to curb carbon emissions by corporations, by countries, everywhere. And it’s resulting in less drilling in the US. It’s resulting in a massive increase in energy prices, which we’re all feeling, including oil and natural gas. And it’s not going to slow anytime soon.

Frank Curzio: What’s going to slow this trend? EVs? EVs ain’t coming out for a while. What, are you crazy? Hey, with part supplies, just did supply chain issues, no way. And finally, after not saying they had supply chain issues, now Tesla’s like, “We do, we’re not coming out with any new models this year,” which is amazing. And all these other companies are like, I think there’s 50-something new EVs that are supposed to hit the market. When I say hit the market, I mean, not one or two, but, “Hey, I got delivery,” and we deliver like 20 or… I’m talking about seeing them on the road when you’re on a highway. You’re two years away. You’re two years away. At least. There’s no way. Supply chains aren’t there. Technology isn’t even there.

Frank Curzio: So, Ford spending $30 billion plus. “Why you have to spend so much on new technology? You don’t have it yet?” “Nope.” Maybe you shouldn’t have just partnered with Rivian, or partnered with Rivian, and not just invested in them. But, how do you play this with rising energy prices? Well, you can purchase oil and gas companies. Done, okay. Service providers. Get the drillers, get the producers, seismic data companies. Which is kind of ironic buying them, right? Since we’re supposed to make oil companies, or the climate change crazies, supposed to make them weaker, less dependent, not stronger. These companies are more stronger than they have ever been. But go further, go beyond that, right? Because that energy trade, wow, it’s up and some missed it. Even I missed it in some of the newsletters and stuff.

Frank Curzio: But, what else is going to be impacted, because there’s another sector, which is even more ironic, is coal, right? I mean, we did everything we can to destroy the entire coal industry. Well, what’s used to power electricity? Natural gas. Not sure if you saw prices lately, which have doubled in a year, even after the pullback. Pullback’s up, it’s $6, whatever, it’s $4.50. But look at the UK, holy cow, crisis, crises, crisis levels in the UK. But 40% of electricity generation in the US comes from natural gas. That’s followed by nuclear, renewables, both at 20% and then coal, which is at 19%. Still, 19%. And you look at the global electricity landscape, and hear me out really quick here. This is interesting. So, natural gas accounts for 23% percent of all electricity, right, global. Renewables are 26%. Again, this is according to the IEA. Nuclear at 10%. Know what coal’s at? So, natural gas is at 23%, renewables at 26, nuclear 10. Coal’s at 38%. 38%. How crazy is that?

Frank Curzio: Despite China, and India, and Germany swearing they’re significantly going to lower their coal usage, because we must save the planet. Guys, money trumps everything. We even learned that during COVID, it even trumps the safety of your own children, right? They don’t even care about your children, with the shit and the statistics we had, over a year ago, that we couldn’t talk about of how colds cause more deaths, or the flu caused more deaths than kids with COVID, in groups that are 12 years old and under. Doesn’t matter, you’re still seeing kids wear masks. We’re learning about the facts, John Hopkins University said everything, right? So, just when you take COVID alone, when it comes to politics, you could see how money trumps everything. It even trumps the lives of kids, just to get your agenda. Do you really think where coal prices are, and where natural gas prices are, that electricity companies in China, India, and Germany are going to say, “Oh, no. We shouldn’t use coal.” Are you crazy? Look where coal prices are. They’re surging.

Frank Curzio: You want to hear something funny? All those companies that were supposed to be put out of business, a couple of them came out of bankruptcy. Of course, they changed their name, so you probably don’t even know them. I looked at some analyst coverage on them. No analysts. None of the big analysts cover them at all. I thought there was something wrong with my computer. I’m like, “Wait a minute.” And then, I put in just a Dow component and all the research came up. I’m like, “Wait a minute. Are you kidding?” They’re not even allowed to cover them. Then you go to these websites, you’ve got to try to find their presentation, and you barely can. They’re not allowed to talk about their financials. They’re not really allowed to talk about anything. Yeah. It is all like buried. And I’m looking at this, start studying this. And I’m like, “Holy cow.” I mean, not only are coal prices soaring, and they’re not going to stop. Right? I mean, now that the initiatives are in place, but this is providing an opportunity to own coal companies. Which again, yes, there’s still a few around.

Frank Curzio: And when I started doing research on these, guys, I mean, they can’t talk positively about themselves, which is crazy. That’s how hated they are. They can’t even put like… When’s the last time you saw anything positive on coal? Nobody really writes it. You’re not allowed. These companies can’t do it. They can’t acquire other companies, but you know what? They’re generating more cashflow than they have in the history of their companies. And when I’m talking about generating more cashflow, they’re going to generate, two of them that I looked at, they’re going to generate more cashflow in the next 12 months, hear this out, please, because I’ve never seen this for my life, more cashflow in the next 12 months than what their market caps are trading at. Again, I’ve never seen that in my life. That’s how cheap the coal companies are.

Frank Curzio: But these are the types of disconnects you find in a crazy market like this, where the climate change crazies, whose purpose is to save the planet, reduce exposure to fossil fuels, oil, gas, coal. I mean, these idiots are actually making these companies in the industry much, much stronger than they’ve ever been, than they’ve ever been. I mean, they’re more stronger today than they were, dating back a hundred years for some of them. That’s how old some of these companies are. It’s an oil industry. It’s defeated the whole purpose, but that’s how you have to look at analyzing companies. How do I find the best ideas? That’s how you find them.

Frank Curzio: You can say, “Oh, well I missed oil, and maybe natural gas plays.” And, holy cow, I never thought we go to 90 again. Maybe we go to a hundred, 120 and you feel like you missed it. You don’t want to buy it up here. There’s other plays that you could look at you. If you’re a Curzio Research Advisory subscriber, you’re going to learn a lot about the coal industry tomorrow, Wednesday. That’s our February issue. Also, present you with a great opportunity. But guys, make no mistake. This is a crazy freaking market, where you have Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple have gone up in tandem for the past 12 years, the past 12 years. Look at the charts, 12 years, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And, back and forth, back and forth percentage wise for the past 12 years. Moved up together. Yet in the past week, Facebook lost 25% of its value in a day, while Amazon gained 17% in a day.

Frank Curzio: We’re talking about $250 billion plus market cap losses and gains in a day for these stocks. And if you want to put that in perspective, just to understand how big a move that was, and how crazy and insane those moves were for those two companies, an Amazon stock has been underperforming. So okay, get it, with the 17, 18% rise. But Facebook falling that much in a day, losing over $250 billion in market cap, there’s only 24 companies in the S&P 500 that have bigger market caps than 250 billion. You would think it’s more, but it’s not. That’s how much they lost in one day.

Frank Curzio: Welcome to the new markets. We’re going to see massive volatility. Interest rates are going to surge. The Fed is well behind the curve, and it’s going to be ugly for a lot, a lot of companies. And it’s been ugly. It’s going to get uglier, but not all companies. And you can see the difference in technology. Everyone’s like, “Technology’s getting nailed.” Not, well Amazon’s closing in as an all-time high again. I’ve done Amazon, but Apple, then Amazon’s starting to run up. You can compare that to Facebook and PayPal. Wow. What a difference. Seeing separation in healthcare, even biotech now. Lot of those names that got destroyed, some of them are coming back, including one of those names in our CRA portfolio, which we bought at a 60% discount to where its high was, and it fell, I think 20%. Now, it bounced back a ton, but holy cow. And just volatility, craziness. All in, financials should continue to do well with inflation. Gold, what a day on Monday, a great day. And Bitcoin went surging off its lows.

Frank Curzio: I mean, you knew we were going to hit the bottom at 32, 33, when Peter Schiff says it’s going to zero again. I was waiting for that. Waiting for that. Everybody is, and then boom, right back to 43, 44. Well above 40 again. I’m poking fun. Sorry, I had to poke fun, because he pokes fun at everybody else. But you’re looking at a different market with these expensive stocks, these super expensive names, companies without earnings, companies with weak balance sheets, you’re going to have to avoid. These are names that are going to be out of favor for a while, as long as the Fed is raising rates, tightening, which could be well into next year.

Frank Curzio: So, position yourself accordingly and hold on tight, because inflation, they’re pounding this down your throat, guys. Inflation for nine months. It’s the one problem that the government can’t throw money at to fix. It has to do the opposite. They can throw money during a credit crisis. You can throw money at immigrant. If you’re China, things go bad, throw money at it, pay off people’s debt, whatever. Inflation is the opposite. You have to take money out of the system, which means less leverage. It means borrowing costs go up, and you borrow money to help grow your companies. That cost’s gone up significantly, significantly, which results in much slower returns, which kind of should be expected after we had three years. You know what the returns were for the last three years? So, you’re looking from 2019 to 2021. We’re looking at 28% returns, 2019, 18% returns and 31% returns on the S&P 500. Where in an index dating back to the fifties, goes up around 8% average, total returns with dividends, annually.

Frank Curzio: Those are returns. What do you expect? What did you expect? Well, you saw 2005, six and seven or four, five, six, and seven where home prices, which usually go up one and a half, 2% annually, went up 20% annually for four straight years. What happened? Credit crisis. You’re going to get that pull back. When you get too far ahead, that rubber band stretches, you’re going to pull back. It happens in both directions. We saw it in COVID, when the market’s really, really, really tanked. Yeah. They go down 20%, but 30, 33%, holy cow. Right? You stretch it. And then they bounce back. We need to come back a little bit here. You need to be protective. You need to play defense a little. Not crazy defense, just owning stocks that have good balance sheets, that are cyclical in the right areas. That are going to benefit from a rising inflationary environment. Companies with high margins, great business models, good management teams. Not a crazy amount of debt with no earnings.

Frank Curzio: This is going to be a difficult market to make money for those of you who are not in the right names, which is asset allocation. Got to be very, very careful in this market. It’s going to be a theme that we’re going to be talking about for months, and months, and months as we see this crazy volatility, especially during earning season, which we still got a ways to go, especially in terms of small caps and a lot of big names reporting later in the week, and tomorrow. And Daniel and I are going to break down some of these names and earnings, share some interesting new ideas with you. So, definitely stay tuned. Love doing that with Daniel, getting some positive, positive feedback with Daniel. Love having him on and covering my ass for a while since I’ve been traveling a lot in business. Did a great job with the podcast and loves it.

Frank Curzio: But before I go, I wanted to say this. I wanted to say, thank you. And of course, for the security token, and things like that. But when we’re looking at the podcast, which really helped build this company, this is the key, right? Building a podcast, people getting to know you through the podcast, it’s more personal. It’s not just an email. They know you’re a real figure, and you know a little bit about what you’re talking about, and you give a shit. It’s a lot better listening to someone than just, getting a random email from someone when you have no idea who’s writing. But when it comes to downloads, we reported a record amount of downloads for Wall Street Unplugged last month. Not sure why. Apparently, a lot of you out there like what we’re talking about, like what we’re saying, which is really cool. And those that don’t, apparently also like to listen, but we really, really killed it last month. Blew out the numbers, blew out expectations. And I just want to say, thank you. I really, really appreciate it.

Frank Curzio: Either way, if you like us, or you’re one of those people that hate us, and just have to listen to send us to trolls, and send us negative emails, which is okay either way, my promise is you just, with this podcast, with Curzio Research is doing everything we can to help you become better investors. That’s the goal, no matter what. That is the goal, okay. Everything that we could do. And we try to do that. We try to get in trends early. We’re going to be wrong sometimes. The first thing I do is come in here, admit when we’re wrong. I wish we took advantage of oil. I was very bearish on the market coming in. I wish, I didn’t know it was going to come down that much. And we saw a couple portfolio holdings come down longer than we wanted, which is a little frustrating. We had a magnificent performance though, in the years before that.

Frank Curzio: But again, we can always do better. We want to do better. I think you learn more from your mistakes. That’s why I like bringing them up, even though in our industry, it’s like the ultimate, no-no. And never, never bring up your mistakes. You’re always, it’s like politics, right? No matter what, you’re never, ever, ever wrong, ever. No, we’re going to be wrong sometimes. It’s going to be right more times than we’re wrong, I promise. I’ll hang the microphone up. I won’t do this anymore. And I’ll retire, which I could retire if I wanted to. But I really love what I do. I love helping individual investors, and I promise that’s never going to stop as long as I’m doing this stuff. And I just want to say, thank you. Thank you so much for all the support. If you have any questions at all, I’m here for you, frank@curzioresearch.com, feel free to email me any time. Again, really appreciate all the support. I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Take care.

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.