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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

Let’s go out there to August 14th. I’m Frank Curtis. This is the Wall Street Unplugged. Let’s go back to the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. So the one and only Daniel Creech joining me today, what’s going?

0:00:33 – Daniel Creech

on, man. How’s it going? Everything’s going good. Frank, got my haircut. I’m taking a page out of your book. I’m hitting the road, manana, are you again? Again, listen to that. Yes, I’m going up to the great state of Ohio. I’m going to go talk to JD Vance’s and his team from Ohio, going to visit my family. That’s where I’m from, of course, so excited about that.

0:00:53 – Frank Curzio

Yes, yeah, that’s cool. And visiting what specifically?

0:00:55 – Daniel Creech

I have a new niece. That’s awesome. Got to go get to play the new uncle role, so that’s cool. I’m very good at that role.

0:01:00 – Frank Curzio

It’s always be uncle grandparents the best thing, right, you always get to get the kids back.

0:01:04 – Daniel Creech

I have an eight-year-old nephew and a six-year-old niece and now this newborn. So it’s hilarious because as soon as she gets upset it’s like, all right, pass that one off, and then I can take the older kids and we can go play and have fun.

0:01:13 – Frank Curzio

So yeah, it’s great. Yeah, and guys, if you don’t know, Daniel, Daniel’s like seven feet tall. So even when my kids, when they were young, they’re like Daniel’s gigantic. How does he fit through the doorway? How tall are you About?

0:01:26 – Daniel Creech

6’6″. The best thing was you were out in public and one of your daughters was like is that guy big as Daniel? You think yeah.

0:01:32 – Frank Curzio

Everything was compared to me. He’s like Daniel’s so big. Is he bigger than Daniel? Yeah, so yeah, they love you, but no, that Delta.

0:01:40 – Daniel Creech

so I’ll report back to you and see if that whole crowd strike fiasco.

0:01:43 – Frank Curzio

I heard Delta’s been a disaster. I heard it is too, but they should be over it.

0:01:46 – Daniel Creech

They might be lying through their teeth, but they say they’re over it and everything’s back to normal. But I talked to a guy that flew last week on Delta. Wasn’t a good situation. Yeah, we’ll see.

0:01:55 – Frank Curzio

UA as well In Aruba. I had someone go to Aruba. They said it. They got things up and running. There’s a strike over there. But yeah, the airlines it doesn’t seem like they’re as busy as they were and I understand Delta was going through a whole bunch of stuff with CrowdStrike and everything getting the systems back up and running. But just, yeah, it’s interesting to see that. I don’t think demand is that strong and yet you’re still seeing delays. And my wife just came back from New York. Same thing Delays, delays. Flight home was way there. They had to go a day later. It’s like normal now. It’s like okay, you’re definitely going to get delayed.

0:02:25 – Daniel Creech

It’s crazy, but I did wait for a good weekend, frank. Everything is fixed. The recent economic data markets are back in rally mood, so that’s the only reason I’m leaving is because everything, I fixed everything and now we can do a piece. It was a Jeremy.

0:02:36 – Frank Curzio

Siegel right 75, right the carry trade on one 75 bases cut.

0:02:40 – Daniel Creech

today we need it today we need it today With his glasses on.

0:02:43 – Frank Curzio

It’s funny and he’s pretty cool. I kind of like the guy. And then he’s like. I got another one at the September, right away, right away, and then everything’s okay. Now Are they going to hike? Are they going to hike now? I don’t know, two weeks gone by, they’re not hiking. I’m just kidding. Yeah, it increased.

Inflation is still increasing, which is insane, since it’s been up 30% since COVID over four years and it’s still increasing. However, when you look deeper into the numbers, that’s where you see that inflation is clearly slowing. It was going to slow, just a matter of time. It just wasn’t transitory, as the Fed and Powell originally thought. But just for the numbers, which kind of mean nothing to anyone, but I will go over them really quick. It’s the increase 0.2% in July to 2.9%. That was lower than 3% expected. The core came in at 0.2%, also a good number.

But when you look under the hood, what we do is there was a massive increase in shelter costs, right, so rentals. So that was responsible for 90% of the gain and we’re seeing the shelter parts starting to roll over. Finally, right, where it’s rentals, and even in my phone store I had a couple of employees. Actually, their rent went up and they’re like, look, we just can’t afford it. And they actually were like we’re going to take off. I had a little bit of a crisis at my phone store. Now I have another employee that’s working full-time. It’s great. I hired them, but the point is that they were looking for rentals and they’re still incredibly, incredibly high.

But we are seeing the housing market really pull back now. I mean applications down 8% year V. Even though interest rates have come down, you’re starting to see prices fall in many of the markets. A lot of that has to do with your area of the market that you have experience in is with the insurance. Insurance is freaking insane. It’s unbelievable. It is insane right now. I mean, there’s people that are leaving Florida because the insurance is so freaking high and that they can’t even get house insurance, not to mention auto insurance, which I just dealt with because I just got my daughter We’ll talk about that a little bit later A new car not a new car, used car because she’s getting a license in a week from now, so now she can drive to school, which is cool, but holy cow, I mean, the insurance for her is more than than two cars for me and my wife and we were getting quoted.

We went to four different people. They’re like, well, this is what it’s going to be. And then when they went through the checks and everything, it was a thousand dollars higher from what they said. A thousand dollars higher we weren’t talking about. I mean, it’s basically like 30% of the freaking 40% of the car. It’s nuts, it’s absolutely nuts. So just the insurance premiums and that’s going to happen.

I think the airlines figured it out and said look, we’re a necessity and people need us, so we have pricing power. Damn, maybe you’d be better off telling me why. Why is insurance going up so much every single place? Are they paying more for claims? But it’s across the board. Where we see healthcare is a bunch of nonsense. Now, it’s absolutely nonsense. We switch healthcare providers. We try to to lower our prices for our company and when we did, for the first time ever, they required that we get information from all of our employees, which is a pain in the ass, right, it makes me look like an idiot and asking a lot of shit like what were your prescriptions, that you took the dosage over the last four years? It’s a lot, you know. It took a while to fill out the forms. When I got the forms they refused us. I said what the what was that about?

0:05:53 – Daniel Creech

I was probably to blame for that one because of my cigar habit.

0:05:56 – Frank Curzio

It’s yeah, but it’s just the insurance. What’s going? The crisis is insurance right now. I don’t think it’s being talked about enough because it’s impacting the housing market. It’s impacting people tremendously and, holy cow, I mean, you know, going through it right now. It’s pretty, pretty insane. Again, if you guys have any stories, let us know. Frank@curzioresearchcom. Daniel@curzioresearch.com no-transcript.

0:06:33 – Daniel Creech

Did you have? You had a crash and used in truck car prices and then a spike because everybody wanted them, deals going everywhere, so there was some insurance losses on claims there. However, what I think and what is is, I think is very clear is you have the government with its greedy little hands in the pot, so you have lack of competition across state lines and different things. I had the nicest, I mean, as far as insurance agents go, and I know most people look at it as a necessary evil, and I get that. Isn’t it great to sell a product that you legally have to have? That’s kind of wonderful. Guy out in Arizona was fantastic. He said oh, bummer, you’re moving to Florida, I can’t insure you there, we don’t have enough business and blah, blah, blah. And he’s like plus some other rules and regulations. So that’s fine, I go to somebody else.

Prices get jacked up. Why? Because in Florida you’re allowed to well, that’s how you negotiate, raise prices and such over that. But then you get to blame things like global warming and take on all these risks, but forget the fact that everybody still lives on the coast, that has rich and is the wisest people. But that’s just a good excuse to say, well, crazy weather and all these patterns. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Never challenge worse the idea that you have to pay that for your daughter. I get it, she’s young, she’s 16. That sucks, but that’s ridiculous. But a guy like me I’ve complained about this before Knock on wood, perfect driving record. Don’t drive a very nice, you know, drive a reliable truck and I’m paying around 10 to 15% of the total cost of the vehicle per year. That’s absolutely insulting that you pay that high of a premium on your percentage on a depreciating asset. So yeah, there’s no insight. I look ridiculous for selling progressive insurance. Is it progressive? That’s one of the best ones, but I mean well-.

0:08:10 – Frank Curzio

So this is what we call progressive and they had the best price. This is what happened yesterday. So my wife’s on the phone, she’s in the car with me and I’m listening. I’m trying not to get involved. So they quote her for my daughter. And then they go and look and say, okay, let me check your license, any tickets or whatever. I said no, I don’t think we had any tickets last five years.

0:08:24 – Daniel Creech

I had a ticket like four years ago four years ago four years ago, frank, that’s a liar in their book, right? So I’m like, yeah, totally forgot about it.

0:08:32 – Frank Curzio

Right, obviously it’s easy to track right Something. You shouldn’t lie. But you know, I just I thought it was longer than five years, that’s fine. And all of a sudden for my daughter they raised hers by $350. I said well, why’d you raise hers by 350?

So I talked to one lady. She’s like I don’t know, they put us on hold. We go to another lady. I said could you bring this up? So now I get involved because I’m pissed and I say all right, so why is she going up when nothing changed with her? So we get on with the next lady. Okay, let me pull it up. She pulls it up. It’s $100 more now for the policy HUS goes up $445. I said why? I said first of all it went up $345 for no reason. Could you tell me? She’s like well, we can’t tell you. I said well, why did it just go up $100 on this transfer? She’s like well, I don’t know I could trade. I said nothing is. And you know what they told me? They said we don’t know. We just look at the computer and what we put it. I said, really, it’s the algorithm, frank, it’s just fitting it out. The algorithm changed, for it had nothing to do with her right, because she’s getting a license.

0:09:31 – Daniel Creech

This was us and I understand we got raised and I said the fact that you can’t know, I mean really, but it’s I’m sure, there’s a lot of stories, like the breakfast club, where the president, the principal’s like you want another one, all right, more detention, you want a higher premium, more higher, hundred dollars. Don’t transfer me anymore.

0:09:52 – Frank Curzio

Don’t transfer anymore I can’t afford it, but holy cow. But other than that, you know you see insurance stuff like that and housing we’re looking at at even with housing, you know you’re seeing that the mortgage refinancing will get that, that into a Obviously that’s up right, people tapping equity in their homes.

0:10:07 – Daniel Creech

Because rates have come down a little bit in anticipation of the Fed cutting. Yes, you have seen that dip.

0:10:11 – Frank Curzio

And now with this positive PPI and also the positive PPI yesterday and now the CPI today. But mortgage rates are now lower, right, but you have to realize, even if you’re looking at where housing is, it’s still down 8% when it comes to the applications. And why is that? Because even though rates are down at 6.5%, which is I think they were 7.5% not too long ago, but remember, if you’re moving to sideways, so say the same house, say if you have whatever, it’s a simple math. You have a million dollar house and you want to move to a million dollar house someplace else. You’re going to sell your house at less than a 4.5% mortgage likely, and now you’re going to go to a 6%. It’s a much, much higher payment. And then you throw in the insurance payments, you’re talking about a much, much higher payment and that’s really starting to impact where that’s coming down. We’re seeing energy prices coming down. You saw cereal bakeries, the category down 5%. Dairy a lot of categories have fallen and I got to tell you, Daniel, core inflation year over year is about to come down tremendously in the next two months. And I want to tell you guys why. This is important to understand, because this is about numbers and I try to make this as interesting as possible, but year over year, numbers are important when it comes to companies. For example, intel is horrible. They’re crashing. They lowered their estimates Next year. This time they’re going to have a comparison to this year that is much, much lower. So you’re going to see sales come. The sales are going to be down for seven, eight months in a row compared to the previous year. Right, because they lowered their sales tremendously and they’re going to be comparable to last year. It’s a big deal in Wall Street terms and this is what moves stocks Now, year over year. When we get to August, next August, for Intel, they’re going to have it’s called a very easy comparison and now you’re going to look and you’re going to say, well, intel’s growing again. They’re growing sales by 8%. Right, they’re growing it off of a low base. It’s a big deal because that moves stocks.

When it comes to inflation number, I want to bring this up if you guys are watching on YouTube. Okay, so this is a consumer price index and this is broken down by month. This is stupid stuff that I look at. Okay, so when you’re looking at this data, let me see if I can make it a little bit bigger. I’m going to go over it in case most of you listen to this through iTunes and you’re not watching. So this is a Bureau of Labor Statistics and it’s broken down by month, right? So when you’re looking at this month right now, that was reported was last month, right?

So August, today, august 14th, CPI is for the full month of July over year comparisons. Last year, if you’re looking at June and July, those are the two lowest months of inflation that we saw since 2021, last year it was 3% 3.2%. To put in that perspective, to start 2023, inflation was growing 6.4%, 6%, 5%. Those are two easy numbers. Then they started going up again. My point is that the comparison to this month it was flat year over year from June. So last June it was 3% inflation growing and this June is 3%, so now it’s flat. That’s what you want to see.

Last year it was 3.2%, one of the lowest numbers in 2023. And then now this year, this month, for July, is 2.9%. The next two months are extremely high. It’s 3.7% 3.7%. What does that mean? We’re going to get a two handle. It could be 2.9, 2.8, 2.7. It’s going to show that inflation is coming down tremendously. The headlines are going to show that and we’re going to see that coming down Now, the next month. Why is this a big deal? Because when we report next month’s inflation, which is going to be around September, say 14th, 15th, 13th, around there which is close to the next Fed meeting.

Right, it’s going to be just before the next Fed meeting and we’re going to get a number that’s going to be so good, no matter why, because last year’s number was so high year over year that you talked about expectations offline of how much. What is the Fed rate cut for? 25 basis point cut? Is what 100%? What’s 50% basis cut?

0:13:43 – Daniel Creech

next quarter. Yeah, september, the 25 basis point is 100%, and then there is a 50 basis point. The expectations for a 50 basis point cut in September is now 54%. That’s up from 50. But then 25, again in 25, 100% for November and December at 25 basis points each. That’s 75 baked in 100%. That crazy.

0:14:05 – Frank Curzio

So what was it? 50 chance of uh, 50 basis cut a 54.

0:14:09 – Daniel Creech

Chance of a 50 basis point cut in september. But the 25 is baked in. 100, yes, and then 25. Excuse me, is 100 baked in for both november and december?

0:14:19 – Frank Curzio

yeah. So, based on the data that I just gave you, even though if it might have been tough to follow because the number is going to be much, much lower than the year over year right, there’s going to be 3.7. We’ll probably get a point at 2.9, 2.8 handle, and that’s going to happen right before the Fed meeting and the Fed meeting takes place on the 17th. This is going to happen just before. It’s going to give them the green light where I say there’s a 90% that moves the markets. Okay, cause that’s not really. It’s 50% chance, 55, 54%, whatever it is.

To me, I think it’s more than 90% that they’re going to cut by 50 basis points because they’re going to get such a favorable report Year over year. There’s going to be headlines everywhere how much inflation has come down Again. You’re going to get that report next month and the month after, but it’s going to happen right before September Fed meeting and I don’t know if that’s going to be great for stocks or not. People think when they cut, that’s automatically great. Careful what you wish for, because the Fed cuts. This is why the market Listen we had wild inflation for how long, Daniel? I mean since pretty much 2022, into 2023 and into 2024, right, and what happened? Equities surged from basically November 2022 through 2023. Inflation was super freaking high. I mean I could bring it up again. I mean inflation was super high, right. I mean everybody wants inflation to come down.

0:15:33 – Daniel Creech

We did have a washout a little bit in 2022, you’re right, yeah, so right before 2022, but right when the market started taking off, we had inflation rate.

0:15:41 – Frank Curzio

This is late 2022 in November, 7.1%, 6.5%. In December, then it was 6, 6, 2023, you know we were above. You know 4% through January, february, march, april, may. So I mean very high prints right To 2023 and into 2024, still high inflation. What happened with stocks? In case you don’t remember, stocks hit all time highs. They ramped higher while inflation was still very, very high.

Now what do we have? And we’re looking at this chart here again Again, look at 2023. Jesus, just look at it. Even 2022, man, 7%, 8%, 9%. But now what do we have?

We have a Fed where we’re going to see inflation coming down tremendously and they’re cutting rates and right away people think, okay, that’s going to be great for markets. Listen, we have rates high, inflation high and the market took off because the economy is growing faster. You have pricing power, everybody has money. The Fed’s trying to pull back. Now the Fed cuts because they want to try to stimulate the economy. They think that they see a slowdown coming and it’s not necessarily the best thing for equities when you see that and it means they see a slowdown, which we’re seeing in home prices.

We’re seeing a slowdown in so many different areas. We’ve seen almost every single company during this earnings season. I think it’s a little more than 90% reported now S&P 500, that doesn’t mean everybody reported. We have a lot of small caps that are going to report over the next two weeks and mid-caps, but I mean we’re talking about tons of companies saying that we’re seeing a slowdown in consumer and even with Home Depot, right just came out and said the same thing. We saw McDonald’s. We see everyone who’s come out and said it right. So we’re seeing this slowdown.

Be careful what you wish for, because while you do have that, refinancing activity is great, where the 10 years now 3.8, three weeks ago it was 4.3. So we’re seeing rates come down tremendously, especially for mortgages. We saw mortgage refinancing surge 35% up 108% year over year, which is huge. But again we looked at a rate that was 7.6% for the mortgage rates and that was a couple of months ago and it’s 6.5%. But we’re going to see the economy slow down. It’s not necessarily like the greatest thing ever when we see these big rate cuts, but I’m telling you it’s going to be 50 basis point and I’d give it a 90% chance.

0:17:51 – Daniel Creech

That’s wild. We’ve been right on the melt up till the rate cut. Markets got scared over the Japanese yen carry trade. We’ve basically earned all that back. If you look at a chart, s&p is give or take within 5% of its all-time highs. Yet, like you said, frank, the consumer is clearly hurting. We’ve seen it from Airbnb, Nike, Walmart, Target, like you said, cutting prices, which I actually think that’ll be interesting to watch with the back to school trade, because I have seen more commercials and marketing about lowering prices across different consumer wants. Now Airbnb warned of forward looking travel, less bookings. All right, we’ll see.

About the airlines, home Depot put up numbers that were not very good. They lowered comps. Same stores, just as you were talking with the easy comps coming up on the inflation data, they lowered their comps going forward. They cut their earnings per share and they said, hey, consumers are pulling back on bigger ticket items like remodeling kitchens and stuff like that. Now, the trend isn’t dead, don’t get me wrong. But when you put everything together, the consumer is clearly pulling back and or weakening.

And what’s wild here is Home Depot really didn’t move a whole lot on that news. But if consumers are pulling back on everything, frank, the only thing that stood out. They said they’re cutting back on remodeling and kitchens and things like that, but they’re seeing strong performance in outdoor power equipment, outdoor power tools. So I don’t know what people are doing outside, but evidently it’s not enough to get them back in the store and raise their comps. But when you see Home Depot and Lowe’s that have been a great success benefactor from the COVID and the indoor remodeling and stuff, when they start to warn in addition with the travel trade, starting to warn in addition with your lower I mean we’ve even seen Louis Vuitton and the high-end market.

0:19:29 – Frank Curzio

We’ve seen high-end market warn too.

0:19:31 – Daniel Creech

yes, We’ve seen them warn a little bit. We’ve seen the low-end, your favorite store, five Below that sells nothing of importance that you say.

Anything that you buy in that store is probably going to be broken, has tanked and listen, I’m not saying, but it’s clear consumers are hurting because, per the New York Fed and I spoke about this on my Curzio Research Advisory Monthly newsletter, a little bit Frank when you combine auto debt and credit card debt, it’s over $2.7 trillion. The amount in delinquency 90 days late, which I understand, things happen. You can get behind a couple of weeks. When you’re 90 days behind payments on cars and or credit cards, what are you worried about? You’re worried about your car not being there eventually.

0:20:10 – Frank Curzio

That’s why people always say, like even the subprime market and cars, and oh, it’s going to hit the market, it’s over a trillion dollars and it’s going to Did not, because actually they can’t take your house from you. There’s lots that you could actually be in a year and there’s almost nothing that they could do. There’s almost nothing they could do to kick you out, unless they grab you and throw you out of the house and then they’re going to sue you. But it’s much different for a house than it is for a car, because they’ll just come and they’ll take it from you and then they have the asset and they could sell it someplace else. So it’s definitely different. But yeah, you bring up a good point. I mean, you’re worried about losing apart tomorrow.

0:20:42 – Daniel Creech

But when you start getting to the amount of that debt, roughly 10% of all that. So let’s just round and say $270 billion. That’s a significant amount. There’s less than 50 companies that have market caps over that and that’s what’s. 90 days late on credit card and auto debt. Now you have credit card rates at near or at all-time highs, consumers are hurting and you’re going to have to pull back. So it’s going to be very selective going forward. They can continue to push water uphill Again. Deficits matter, deficits the pumping of money into the economy matters. But I’m happy with our call on melt up to the rate cut. But once they start cutting, expect a pullback and then be surprised and throw eggs at me and email me, daniel@curzioresearch.com, for saying to lighten up, but you want to just press that metal until September, when they start cutting, and then reevaluate and make sure you know what you own. So when things just dip all of a sudden, you don’t panic and sell like a lot of people did two weeks ago.

0:21:34 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and before we go to this, I just want to say things. I’m going to say I wouldn’t sell yet because the election’s coming and you’re going to see a lot of things. We’ll go for some of those catalysts. But I just looked at Home Depot. When you said it, I don’t know who the hell would buy Home Depot here. I mean Home Depot. Listen to me, home Depot, I’m putting this up. It’s down 10% off, like it’s all-time highs, less than 10% off its all-time highs right now. So you’re looking at Home Depot and one thing you’ll look at is they’ll have and I’m doing this on a free site which is CNBC. This way everybody can follow along If you look at the PE, ttm means trailing 12 months and the forward PE is the next 12 months.

I focus more on the next 12 months. It’s nice to look the next six months, last 12 months, really. I mean you look at Nvidia and where it is today, just from 12 months ago, and the amount of revenue. You want to see the future. That’s what companies trade on. But when you see the PE at the same, it’s 23 and 23,. That means that they’re not growing earnings. It’s 23 and 23. That means that they’re not growing earnings. So you’re looking at a company that’s trading Where’s S&P 500 trading? It’s trading about 20 times forward earnings. So this is trading at a market premium. It’s a premium to the market, a decent premium to the market, whatever. It’s 15% premium to the market. Yet I could see if you earn that premium, if you’re growing earnings or sales fast in the overall market, which they’re not. They’re not growing earnings faster.

And you’re looking at this company saying, okay, in the home industry, where you’re not going to see, it’s tough to refinance right now You’ve seen some people refinance who still have much higher rates. Maybe you’re going to get those HELOCs which are on fire. Helocs are on fire because it’s a way to extract money and if you have credit card debt at 22% to 25%, even if these assholes are charging you 30% because that’s what they do, which is insane if they’re charging you that much, I mean you could probably take out home equity loan. Don’t quote me on this, I didn’t look at the rates but maybe 10%, 11%, pay off your credit card debt. That makes sense with a HELOC right. And again, they used to be really bad because they were giving HELOCs away to people.

Oh yeah, and this is one of the things I want to focus on, because Home Depot here I just don’t get. I don’t see the growth. I don’t know why you pay premium for it. If you’re looking at the dividend, the dividend is 2.5%. Why would you buy the stock and say, well, they pay a 2.5% dividend? You could put your money right now into that with brokers. I think you might need a balance of 100 stock trading at a 15, 20% premium to the market in the wrong industry right now, which is housing, which is not doing that good they’re saying they’re wanting it there’s a slowdown. I’d rather take that money, if you’re looking for the dividend purposes, and put it in someplace that’s risk-free, where you could earn that right. So I just when I look at Home Depot but with that said, when I look at the statistics here Daniel’s right, I mean we talked about this.

If you look in the past, when we see the tightening begin, that’s when we see markets really pull back. That’s when we see you know it’s a sign that things are slowing down. It’s usually a sign we could be heading for a recession. But yet we’re supposed to be in a recession for the last three years, with inverted yield curve and all matter, because you’re throwing trillions into the market, which is why every economist has no idea what’s going on and why every economist says the economy is really strong. And there was a report from CNBC saying, I think it’s 60% of Americans believe we’re in a recession and we’re not. They’re confused. It’s the sentiment, it’s how they feel. I mean F the recession word, I mean we don’t have to be. We talked about this last week where it doesn’t have to be.

You know negative GDP growth of 0.1% and 0.1% doesn’t mean that everything is great. If we saw, you know, 0.1% growth right, because that means it’s not inflation. But you’re feeling it, you’re seeing it, you’re getting squeezed, your costs are up tremendously, wages are not growing as fast. But, with that said, there’s a lot of bullish notes before you go and sell this market and I think these bullish things are going to exist at least through this year. You’re looking at $300,000. I’ll say it again $300,000 average homeowner has in equity in their homes that total home equity. Nobody wants to talk about it. We talk about debt all the time. It’s over $30 trillion of equity. Home prices could come down 10% from here. That’s fine. It’s over $30 trillion of equity Home prices could come down 10% from here. That’s fine. It’s still 27 trillion in equity. It was 15 trillion in 2017, which is insane. You’re looking at credit cards right 22% you could refinance through HELOCs, which are on fire.

If you’re looking at it, before these last two weeks, it was eight straight weeks of outflows. Goldman Sachs report on this. They did good research. Money market funds from money market funds alone, over $6 trillion at all time highs a week and a half ago. So, and that’s cash that was pushed on the sidelines that’s still waiting to be deployed again after eight straight weeks, and it’s starting to get deployed. And that’s why you saw the market. Really, you know, start going back up again. $6 trillion, $6 trillion. You’re looking at $2.5 trillion just on the balance sheets now Forget about the money market funds but $2.5 trillion on some of these S&P 500 companies where the window to open that it was closed. So buybacks so a lot of these companies are going to announce a massive amount of buybacks and when you see the buyback, the buyback window is closed. It was being closed because it’s closed for like two and a half weeks ago, I think it was like 15% of companies had the ability to announce buybacks.

0:26:30 – Daniel Creech

You mean it was closed during the earnings it was closed during the earnings.

0:26:33 – Frank Curzio

It was closed for like a good five, six weeks, I think it is. I think it’s like five, six weeks that it’s closed. Now, 90% of those companies again $2.5 trillion, and a lot of that is from the top 10 companies, and I get it, but those are companies that have S&P 500. From the top 10 companies and I get it, but those are companies that have S&P 500. Now you’re looking at companies that could announce buybacks and if your company comes out, even if a Home Depot like I said, I don’t know why we buy Home Depot If Home Depot comes out and says, hey, we’re buying back like 10% of the float, that stock’s going higher, so that could be a callous that could blow up in your face. The carry trade no longer an issue. I know JP Morgan says we know about it, just like commercial real estate. When you know about it, you see the damage, you understand what’s coming.

Nobody understood that was coming. They didn’t know the Bank of Japan was just going to go crazy and say they talked about it. They talked about it for a long time. Okay, we’re going to raise rates, but they never said they’re going to stop buying and everything. And that caught everyone by surprise. That’s why you saw that anomaly of a massive sell-off and the leveraging. And now that we know it’s there and it’s prepared, I’m not worried about it. And plus you have. What did the Bank of Japan, BOJ, do? Did you hear that they actually walked back their hawkish, tightening stance? They’re like okay.

0:27:36 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, they’re not going to hike while we have unstable markets yeah, so they’re not going to do that again. Unstable markets is like hate speech. You can define that any way you want.

0:27:43 – Frank Curzio

You use those silly words, they don’t want that to happen again, regardless if it resulted in the market crashing and then coming back. They don’t want something like that to happen again. So they walk that back, which is a positive. So, if you like the carry trade and JP Morgan’s reporting, you’re not all of it’s unwound. You see it coming, they know what to do and again, you don’t have to worry about things that you could see. It’s the things that you can’t see. That’s why the credit crisis happened leveraging and crazy stuff like that.

Also, it’s an election year. I mean, if I were you and I was young, I wouldn’t be paying off my credit cards, because who knows that could be next. And they’re going to say, hey, we’re going to eliminate all the credit card debt for everyone it’s under 30. Who the hell knows where they just handed out money? I mean, seriously, I’m going to take out loans for my daughter when she goes to college, especially if the current administration wins and they stay and Harris wins. I would do that because there’s a chance that a year or two from now, or three years from now or whatever the reelection comes, they’re going to announce hey, we’re going to take care of what. I mean. I feel like an idiot saying that, but holy shit, I mean, what about the person? I don’t know if you saw. Did you see that video, Daniel, with Elizabeth?

0:28:41 – Daniel Creech

Warren, yeah, where the guy confronts her, yeah, and how pissed off, and she didn’t even know what to say. He’s like I paid off. How come I’m not getting that money back? I’m in the same boat. I mean I took about a very small loan after I broke my ankle, yeah, but nobody gets anything of that back. But nobody feels sorry for you. So that’s okay. But yeah, unfortunately that’s the world we live in. It is literally divide and conquer, so you pick the most social to pit society against one another like that. I mean, nobody in their right mind would say you should be okay with us treating this group better than new group. That’s not allowed on any other basis, with race or anything like that. That’s why they ignite it with all that kind of stuff. It’s crazy. But you’re right, that is a big part of the momentum, because even with I don’t know if you caught any of Donald Trump and Musk’s talk I was listening to some of it.

0:29:29 – Frank Curzio

Did you see all the places that came out and just like immediately, like all oh, of course, yeah, like every single one of them destroyed it and it was like, did it get like a billion hits or something between everybody-. That’s what Musk says. Yeah, stuff like that and-.

0:29:39 – Daniel Creech

But the wild thing is and I credit Musk for saying and I’m not all the way through it yet, but he said most people don’t understand inflation is caused by excess government spending, and they were talking about that. Trump seemed to agree on all that. Don’t get me wrong. I think his policies are better for the economy than his opponent. However, just like Reagan is arguably the best and most popular Republican for the last, pick your time frame. They’re all terrible. When it comes to debt, Reagan blew up the deficit and debt. Trump did too. That’s what causes inflation. That’s not going down. And what’s scary is that during your periods of inflation, you need asset prices and that’s why you want to remain in stocks, even when you have these scary pullbacks and situations, because you have all this money chasing the same amount or less amount of goods, and it’s just inflationary. And I get what Trump is trying to say, but you know we’re not just Trump is the greatest here. I mean, we think independently.

0:30:31 – Frank Curzio

But you can’t lower the deficit and say, hey, we’re not going to tax you know tips and we’re not going to.

0:30:35 – Daniel Creech

So that’s the point.

0:30:36 – Frank Curzio

We’re going to lower interest rates and stuff like that.

0:30:38 – Daniel Creech

They’re making your point. I’m saying they’re just going to make promises and promises, and promises and, hey, deficits don’t matter, until there’s World War III and we lose, deficits don’t matter.

0:30:52 – Frank Curzio

And I hate that, but that’s the reality we live in. Yeah, as long as the dollar is the reserve currency, which it is, and it will be through our lifetimes, because if it’s not, you got bigger problems.

Much, much much, much, much, much, much bigger problems. But listen, I think, Daniel and I and I don’t mean to speak for you, Daniel, but I feel the same way you do is I’m concerned. I still think the market has a lot of momentum going into the end of the year. I think there’s great companies that are doing fantastic. They’re using AI. There’s a clear advantage. You could see some of the companies that are doing very, very good and some of the ones that aren’t. It’s clear, like McDonald’s and Nike, that haven’t done well Yet.

You look at some of these big technology companies and you see a separation among the big technology companies, where Amazon pulled back, but you see a lot of momentum. Even you know they’re starting to really get momentum with the chips that they’re developing with Amazon. You’re looking at Meta really kicking ass, which is not an expensive stock at all, but yet Tesla’s really starting to fall again. So you know, you’ve seen that separation. It’s going to be I say this a lot and I feel like we say it and it doesn’t happen but it is going to be a stock picker’s market. There’s names and we saw during this earnings season this is the most volatile earnings season I’ve seen in a very, very long time. I mean I can’t tell you how many companies I looked at. I said, holy shit, they’re down 30%. Good companies I don’t talk about small caps that could be volatile, that were up 200% and then fall 30% and weaker earnings, or they warned really, a lot of big names, full 10%, 15%. And even the ones that beat you didn’t see this massive move. You saw like a 3%, 5%, 7% move and then a little bit of a pullback, which shows that we’re valued pretty high here. But this year going into the election, it still looks pretty strong based on the numbers and we evaluate all the time. Again, that could change in a week from now or two weeks from now If they come out and say we’re not touching rates.

I mean again, you want to reevaluate. You have to be able to change your mind. It’s some politics so you can change your mind. I mean you got to adapt to the markets. You can’t just be like I’m buying gold, no matter what, I’m buying gold no matter what. You did that for 15 years. I got your ass handed to you, yeah, but now it’s at an all-time high. Yeah, it’s at an all in a minute, but still, you know.

But going into next year. You know you’re going to have to be very, very careful, but you know there’s still a lot of momentum in stocks, a lot of cash on the sidelines that come into this market. So you know, just just be careful. We’ll try to navigate through our portfolio. But it is interesting and in one company we talked about that has been hammered, that went up 20% with Starbucks, Starbucks at 20%. This is amazing news. Okay, this is after the CEO new CEO, which is Chipotle CEO, Brian Nicol decided to leave Chipotle and that stock got hammered while Starbucks went through the roof. And I’ve been bearish on Chipotle and this is last quarter and I’m just going to play something because we always talk about our losers, but listen to this I think Chipotle’s going to be short.

0:33:38 – Daniel Creech

So you can track me.

0:33:40 – Frank Curzio

Whatever. I wouldn’t short directly. You know these things would go through the roof and crush you. But maybe buying some puts on it going out like three, six months. I think the next quarter they’re going to have a bad quarter on this thing. I think this thing is going to top out around here. So we’ll see.

0:33:51 – Daniel Creech

Well, Frank, they’re listening to you. Markets are coming back. Chipotle’s up 5% now, so you get a fresh high to short it from it.

0:33:58 – Frank Curzio

That was right at the earnings right and they announced a big buyback and everything. And just to go into a little bit more of the thesis there is, I saw a quarter that wasn’t as good as everybody said and everyone’s like, wow, they’re going up tremendously and this looks good. And I was like it wasn’t as good as I thought. When I look at this company, this company is raising prices tremendously. They just raised it again. They don’t have the pricing power. If you look at some of the stores, they’re not as crowded as they used to be and the service has not been good. You can go online and track that stuff right. Not only that, when they said they’re going to open up 300 new stores this year, it was a red flag to me 300 new stores they’re opening up on average, 150 store openings like the last four years. Why so many? This is what almost every company does. In a retail industry that has a growing business. When you get to the top of the trend, it’s the easiest way to increase sales, but it winds up kicking your ass. Why? Because Chipotle already mapped out the best places to open up their stores. They have a great return on investment. Now they’re going to locations that are like secondary locations, just to open up these stores. Again, this happens with Macy’s, this happens with Lowe’s, it happens with almost every single retail. They start opening up stores and then they’re going to wind up closing them.

To be that aggressive tells me that growth is going to slow. It’s a company trading at 50 times forward earnings again from someone who loves this place that actually doesn’t eat there as much because it’s more expensive now. But I can tell you what happens is people might say, well, frank, you’re lucky, and this is about $62 a share. $63 a share. That was when they last reported in April, when we came out with that and whatever it is now 50-51, whatever it is. The bigger point here is when I look at Nickel leaving and he’s one of the greatest CEOs ever he made $22.5 million last year. Nice, right, great. But 95% of that was tied to stock awards and bonuses. Okay, those are triggered when the stock goes higher, which happens when the company grows.

Leaving Chipotle, tells me. Nickels believes that that company, that massive growth trend, is about to slow, just like every company in the world goes through. Eventually. Microsoft went through 10 years after growing tremendously and then they got into cloud and hired the right CEO and then, holy shit, this thing went through the roof. Why else would you leave to go to Starbucks, which is not going to be the best job. You went from selling pretty much the best fast food that people loved to coffee, which is the most competitive industry in food and beverage ever. Everybody has coffee. You could walk down a block and four different places serve coffee. McDonald’s serve coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts all these places serve coffee.

It’s going to be very, very hard to win back those customers, because I go to Starbucks, people love their coffee and they really fucked up Starbucks because their online system wasn’t working. People go there and say, okay, I ordered through the online system. Here it is. I want to pick up my coffee and it wasn’t ready and you would have a 1050, you’re late to work. You don’t mess with people’s coffee in the morning. It’s people go crazy. They’re grumpy, it’s already. They’re stressed out because they wake up. They got to get to work and now you’re adding more time. They got to rush to work, now what did those people do? They went and left and now they’re happy getting their coffee someplace else. You know how difficult it is going to be to win that customer back to say Starbucks is back, it’s back and now you can pay a little bit more money for your coffee again.

It’s an incredibly hard thing to do to get customers that were pissed off, that have a new product that they went to, that they like now, that they’re used to because you messed up as a business, to go back there. And I just went to Starbucks this morning because my kids started school today. Same thing it was jammed, it was packed, it wasn’t fast. He’s got a lot to fix up. He’s a great CEO. To me, this is a sell Chipotle event. It’s down 20% since then. I think they’re going to have more trouble. However, Starbucks, I understand the upgrades. I wouldn’t be buying up 20% here because it’s not a quick fix. I agree. I think he does deserve a 20% premium. I think he missed that, but I don’t know. Daniel, what do you think? I know you have some information about that guy too that you hear about.

0:37:42 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I’m excited just to start following Starbucks. What I want to see is if they do a kind of a kitchen sink quarter. If you’re a new CEO, you come in a lot of times and you say, hey, man, this is terrible. And you just lower guidance, lower expectations, clean house, essentially.

0:37:57 – Frank Curzio

Remember Musk walking in with that beautiful?

0:38:00 – Daniel Creech

Yeah it is, but Musk did it best when he walked in with the literal kitchen sink in the Twitter.

0:38:05 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, but a new CEO hire after the restructuring, right After the other CEO has done terrible it’s. You know, rightly so. Put all the crap into the quarter. It’s not going to be seen as your fault. Get out of the way. Now your expectations are much lower, Analysts are going to lower. It just makes sense to do that, like next quarter, to come out with a very, very crappy quarter because it’s not under you and they call out the kitchen sink because you’re throwing everything out there and saying, okay, that’s it, and now the growth starts and you could see, maybe you’ll see Starbucks pull back on that announcement. I don’t know where it is today, right now, but up 20% on that news when this is a yearly, at least a 12 month, before you see anything happening off the bat. But again, I understand why it’s up, but I don’t know if I’d buy it here.

0:38:45 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I’m not buying it yet I am. If I bought it right now, I would buy a half a position or I would plan on buying more. If you’re going to buy it now, you have to buy it. In my opinion, you have to be willing to buy more at a higher or lower price. And here’s why I was talking to a gentleman who used to be a big wig for KFC menu development stuff like that. He’s got a PhD in food and all kinds of stuff. He’s a very, very intelligent guy and a great guy to talk to, and he was talking to me last night about this change between Starbucks and Chipotle and he said that this CEO is like a god in the food industry and his track record at turning around Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and then Chipotle Separating the China business, yep.

Yeah, he is absolutely like hands down the best. And this is coming from a company insider or industry insider. And I said hey, if you dumb it down to my level, I said would you bet on this guy? Because essentially when we’re looking for good investments, we’re betting on good management teams or good products or whatever you know, bet the jockey, not the horse type deal anything. And he told me he said oh, absolutely. He says I would, I would absolutely back that guy. He is that good.

And what was interesting is my contact was telling me and he said you know, if you go into Starbucks, it’s shit. He said the food is absolutely terrible and these guys are foodies and I say foodie meaning they’re always looking at quality and he’s a hilarious guy. He’s impossible to go out to eat with because he nitpicks everything and he tells you oh, you can’t eat here because of their processes and you can’t do this. And he starts telling you all these stories and it disgusts you. You don’t even want to hear it. But what he was saying is he thinks that he will go in and because, like you said, everybody sells coffee. It’s one of the most competitive markets there is and they’re a high price coffee. He said he thinks they’re going to come up with some kind of a food not ingredients, excuse me, but uh, a sandwich or a croissant or a breakfast but some go-to to where people will say, hey, I’ll go to Starbucks for that, and it won’t be a coffee, coffee will be. And he said he’s going to. He’s going to improve the quality and improve the supply chains.

Like I said, if you buy it now, I think it’s too early Cause, like I said, you missed the initial pop. But I can’t wait to actually listen to this guy on conference calls, knowing I’m one person away from somebody that just thinks the world of him. He’s an industry mover and shaker, so I definitely think this is worth everybody’s time. But yeah, I wouldn’t just buy it blindly here because you could have all kinds of you know what if he makes one wrong hire and that takes six months to replace, like you said. But no doubt with the stock beaten up guarantee he’s got a sweet option package and he’s looking just like Chipotle.

0:41:14 – Frank Curzio

Oh yeah, and a lot’s going to be. And again that 20%, who was trying that invested in and said activist investor and said, okay, hey, we’re happy about this, nelson Peltz. And they sold it immediately on a 20% move. Okay, right. So they sold it immediately, quick 20. So that was a quick 20%. Again, it’s priced in and I get it. I think this guy’s fantastic. But I don’t think I’ve, I can’t say that I remember. I don’t, almost I won’t say any time I don’t remember a CEO and I’m not going to say a great CEO, because most CEOs are great when the stock’s all the time high, when what this guy has done. I think they said he’s only, I think he’s ranked eighth in terms of since he’s taken over Chipotle, there’s only eight stocks in a whole NCP 500 that had bigger moves higher moves.

0:41:57 – Daniel Creech

Well, didn’t it? I think the stock went up like 700%, 800%, I think. Yeah, something like that.

0:42:01 – Frank Curzio

And there’s only like seven stocks that outperformed that. But when have you seen the CEO leave when their company was at the top of their game? It’s got to tell you something that’s going on underneath the hood with Chipotle Again. His salary, which is massive, is tied to performance.

0:42:20 – Daniel Creech

You know again I just the last quarter he’s bored, frank, he conquered, he wants to go do another, he wants another challenge.

0:42:23 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, yeah, I know I mean he could have left this so many other times, just right now, in the timing of this. And then you know, and also be careful with the stock splits, right? Because, look, we talk about losers all the time. We really do, because you’re going to learn a lot more from your losers than you do for your winners. And I got a lot of emails saying well, frank, the stock split is there and again, this is after the quarter. I think it went to like 67 or something, after 62, before coming down to 50. But be careful, because stock splits were automatic over the past six months. It was an automatic, right. Every company Now you have also Supermicro, who came out and announced a big stock split and their stock got crushed, right. So it’s not the automatic where, oh, these guys are going to have stocks, but when it does, it’s great.

Again, nothing happens fundamentally, but the stock does normally go higher. That’s all you should care about. It doesn’t matter what people explain. I’m a fundamental analyst. I could tell you nothing changes. Nothing changes. It’s the same exact value. You’re increasing shares, or if you’re lowering the stock price, you increase stock, you reverse stock. It’s the same exact value. But when you’re lowering a stock price, more people get into it. Again, it makes it more marketing. But when you have $1,000 stock price compared to it’s $50 or $100, you can get more people in it whatever.

But for whatever reason, when you announce those splits, usually stocks go higher. But the last year they announced you haven’t seen that, so don’t make it a given where every stock that’s reporting if they’re over $1,000 or whatever and they’re going to add stock split. It was almost like the guarantee that it was going to go a lot higher on that news. But we’ve seen two stocks now going lower on that news. So that was interesting to me.

But overall, look, I think I wouldn’t be buying Chipotle here. I don’t know why he would leave that company unless he thought it was slower growth and I think he deserves a 20% premium. But I wouldn’t be buying it more than that. I just don’t think it’s. It’s very expensive here. It’s trading. It’s very expensive and what he’s going to do is not going to be easy to win back customers. It’s not going to be easy and it’s not as easy as oh, he’s going to spin off China. Any idiot could come in and spin off China. Any idiot could do that. You don’t need a great CEO to do that. He’s like look what everyone’s. That’s very easy to do. The other CEO could do that and I know you know, whatever the owner’s name is. I mean, gold’s a new high. You saw Bitcoin go higher. It’s back over 60,000. Again, we were really-.

0:44:48 – Daniel Creech

Well it was I think it’s 59 now, because the damn thing moves all the time. You can never be accurate with.

0:44:52 – Frank Curzio

Bitcoin. Oh yeah, I mean it was six down when we saw it. I think the market was pulling back a little bit as we were doing this. I don’t know where the market is now so I could look, but it is amazing that you just see these fluctuations, not in the market but also in Bitcoin. So the market’s actually holding in a little bit. They’re all up a little bit, the Russell’s down a little, but with Bitcoin, again very, very positive.

We talked about the catalyst going forward. I just think it’s a steal at these levels. I think it’s going to be a hundred grand by the end of the year and go a lot higher in 2025. There’s just so many secular catalysts that are coming that and I think it’s going to result in so many more names of those top 100 cryptos that are real, really good names have gotten crushed. We saw Solana get crushed. We actually bought that in a poll back in our newsletter. It’s going to open up the opportunity to a lot of more money flowing into the next tier, the next good tier, not meme stocks and stuff like that.

You can go crazy if you want. I would never tell you not to buy them, because I’ve seen some of them go up 100,000%, literally 100,000% within six months. I’m not going to tell you not to buy them. It’s crazy. Just assume the money you’re putting in you’re absolutely going to lose. But these are good cryptos, which are software companies that are really really good and really strong, and I think you’re a good buy here as well. So it’s very, very bullish on crypto. It’s going to be volatile, but overall, the secular catalyst, the money coming in from institutions, trillions going to have easy access for the first time, the halving where you reduce supply growth just everything’s really really lining up for this thing to go higher, much, much higher over the next six to 12 months. And now we’re seeing really gold hit new highs as well.

0:46:31 – Daniel Creech

Right, yeah, and the cool thing about gold is it’s like stealth, I mean, it’s not getting a whole lot of attention and I don’t think you’ve been throwing out the $3,000 mark for a while per ounce, and I just think that that’s going to happen. And then I don’t know if it takes 3,000, but at some point headlines, twitter or, excuse me, x social media will get on this gold bandwagon, just like you see the crypto headlines and all that kind of thing, and I think that that’s absolutely great. I definitely, like I said, not to reiterate this too much, but the world is plenty big enough for both you have. Up until recently I don’t know about the last month, but you’ve had basically record or near record amount of gold buying by central banks. That’s not a coincidence, as debts run out of control.

Bitcoin has bounced back amazingly from over 60 to under 50. You know why it did that. It’s because I recommended it in Dollar Stock Club. So we went from up 10% to down 20% to now basically down 5%, but the rebound effect that it’s been in. Did you see two quick things here? Number one Marathon Digital Mining Company, publicly traded Bitcoin mining company. They’re going to stamp, or they have begun to stamp their Bitcoin mines with Made in the USA.

0:47:42 – Frank Curzio

I thought that was kind of funny.

0:47:44 – Daniel Creech

And then BlackRock. I don’t remember if it was. Is it Eric Balchunas? I always butcher his name but he’s a great ETF contact analyst for Bloomberg. But he put up a great chart on social media showing BlackRock is on pace to become the largest Bitcoin holder relatively soon I think it’s throughout the end of the year or whatever because when you look at the inflows no outflows, no outflows. When it crashed, not any meaningful outflows. Yeah, it was point-.

0:48:11 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, very, very little. It was a rounding error, yeah, so it’s incredible. Which is impressive?

0:48:14 – Daniel Creech

The overall totals. When you’re looking at how much money has flown into Bitcoin ETFs, it’s over 20 billion. To put that into perspective, the next largest ETF inflows of new ones are like a billion. I mean, it’s not even close. So to your point. And it does seem a little f-ckery here, Frank, that Bitcoin sells off every single morning when the market opens. It seems like no matter what it’s trading for. As soon as the market’s open at 9.30 Eastern, bitcoin goes down for a little bit and then is rallied in the past. I don’t have a tinfoil hat on, but it’s pretty funny to notice that, frank.

0:48:42 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and I have the actual stats up here. Because one is I’m going to tell you something about Bitcoin, because you said no one’s near a billion, which said no one’s near a billion, which if you go past the second one, then you’re right. But when you look at, blackrock is at 20 billion. Okay, Grayscale is minus 18 billion because they transferred that money out into the ETF, right. So when you look at the inflow, outflows and stuff like that, but you’re looking at 20 billion for BlackRock, you know what Fidelity is Almost 10 billion.

0:49:09 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I meant other ETFs launched. Yeah, so you have all this money going into Bitcoin ETFs and not like the other ETFs they don’t have any near the money.

0:49:18 – Frank Curzio

Oh yeah, I’m sorry if I’m good, no, but you’re right. But if you look at it, because, yeah, there’s a few of them, you have ARK, you have Bitwise, you have Galaxy.

0:49:27 – Daniel Creech

And did you see the headline on? Saylor of MicroStrategy said he has personally a billion in bitcoin does he? I read that headline guy, the conviction that he has when he speaks and what he’s done.

0:49:38 – Frank Curzio

Forget the company holdings, his company, his personal, and not only that, the the amount that he is up and that so many people. I don’t know why the gold bugs shit on that guy. Because you look like an asshole when you do, because you’ve been telling us to recommend gold, gold, gold, gold. The dollar’s going to disappear. All this shit, gold for freaking 25, 30 years. You can go back in the 70s and take something from these guys and it’s saying the same thing today and I know gold’s at an all-time high, but you should not be attacking a guy. Since 2020, that is up, holy shit. I mean tremendous, tremendous amount with Bitcoin. The guy has been right, as could be, and he’s not wavering. I mean, this was the message from day one, from after one year, after three years this is August 2020, when he started doing this the same exact thing that he’s been doing and how he’s benefited, and I don’t know what.

Listen, you could attack him, just like you attack. Who’s the girl from ARK, Cathie Wood? When things you attack? Who’s the girl from ARK, Cathie Wood? Remember they were comparing Buffett and her performance was a million times better than Buffett, and then everything crashed and everyone said, oh, you ripped her apart when it crashed. When do you get the chance to rip this guy apart? I mean, even at 60,000, even at 50,000, even at 45,000, he’s right. So you know, choose someone else. I don’t understand why you have to attack him and why you just don’t go after him Again. You could own both of these, which we do in our portfolios.

And speaking of that, I’m looking at Newmont. Newmont hit a 52-week high and it’s just off of it. But if you look at Newmont which is surprising when you go back five years it’s not an all-time high, even though gold is at an all-time high and a lot of that is because inflation is absolutely through the roof and this is a stock that was $80 not long ago. So when you go to the all-time high here, we just take a little second to load here on my computer, but it was around $80 for the all-time high. And even when you look at a company like Barrick has come down. Now people are like okay, frank, I’m in junior minors and we haven’t recommended junior minors for a very long time. We used to help out a lot of financings and stuff because we got good deals, because we have great contacts. I’m making a trip to Vancouver in October. I’m going to meet with a lot of people who haven’t been there since before COVID.

I think there’s a tremendous, tremendous opportunity in Junior Miners. You have to do a lot of research on these, the companies I follow for over 10 years. I know who’s bullshitting and who’s not. I know who’s for real. I know who’s busting their ass during tough times where they were adding assets to dirt cheap. The next $500 move in gold, which is a 3000, which is inevitable that’s where you’re going to see a lot of junior miners go higher. You’re going to see a lot of stocks start going higher because now you’re going to see the margins go higher.

What happened with gold is, yes, it went to 2,500, but the inflation in that industry was insane. And when you’re linked to the commodity, you don’t have pricing power. So if you’re Chipotle and your costs go up, you could pass them on to the consumer and charge more. I used to charge six and change for a bowl, and now by the time you leave, it’s like $15 and change if you get a soda or a drink. So you could raise prices. You’re linked to the commodity and although the commodity price went up over 2,500, all-time high. Still the margins are not insanely great where they were producing. What was it, Dan? You know these numbers. $800, $900 were the production costs for these guys. So at 1,700, you’re like holy shit. But when we went 2,500, that cost a lot. They went up more than the price of the commodity. So the next 500% now it’s kind of like the scalability it’s like here are your costs, but once you get to that cost, everything else is going to be gravy. So you have these fixed costs. I feel like their costs are fixed. Inflation is coming down.

Now the next 500% move I think you’re going to see a lot of these companies, especially the new monster, and the producers are going to generate money. As they generate more money, what are they going to do? They’re going to want to produce more gold and to do that they significantly, significantly underdeveloped. Over the past 15 years it’s been like maybe one or two major discoveries when it comes to gold. Now they’re going to look at the junior miners who basically put a stake in it. They have hey, this is really great, but it takes a lot of money to actually develop these things and it’s been tough in the finance market. Now you’re starting to see it open up a little bit.

The companies with high-grade gold projects, the companies that have a lot of gold in terms of the ground, the balance sheet, as the new months are going higher, as the majors are going higher you have Barrick going higher now, as they go higher, that’s what they’re going to do. They purchase the junior miners. They’re going to have purchasing power, they’re going to have access to the capital markets. They’re doing great. A lot of these are paying dividends and then they’re going to be able to dictate the prices, because the junior miners were struggling Again. It’s expensive for them to drill right To develop this asset. And now you’re going to see a lot. I think we just saw I think it was Goldfields or something just acquired another company for over a billion dollars. You’re going to see a lot of M&A activity.

You’re going to see a lot of recommendations in the junior mining space coming out in our newsletters. I don’t even think I’m starting a newsletter like that. I might get somebody else to do it, because I think there’s an opportunity over the next two to three years. But you’re going to generate money over the next six months in junior mining stocks, even in silver, covering all kinds of energy, even uranium and stuff like that, because this is their time. Right now I just can’t see prices not going higher and that next 500% moving goal I think that’s when you’re going to see the juniors $500 move no-transcript. A lot of money come into this market with everything else really expensive right now, it’s going to provide a good opportunity and you haven.

Bitcoin yeah, it really is a good opportunity for gold and Bitcoin, and that’s two areas. And again, just be careful here. You know it is a crazy market it’s really nuts but there are lots of opportunities that we’re finding. Some names have gotten absolutely killed. Tomorrow’s podcast again, Daniel is going to be on vacation again and that’s so cool. You’re going to see, yeah, the lease and stuff. That’s awesome. But I’m going to break down China.

Things are really, really, really bad. I know that’s what you think, but wait till you hear the stats. I’ve been doing a lot of research on this and that’s one of the only negatives I see for gold, because it could be a possibility that China starts selling their gold. They have a funding crisis going on. They purchased a ton of gold. Central banks Again, everyone’s shouting central banks are buying, china’s buying, everybody’s buying. Here’s the facts. They bought for 18 straight months. They haven’t bought for the last three months. They stopped buying. Okay, why is that? They have a funding crisis. Things are not going good, and wait till you hear the stats that I’m going to show you and a lot of this stuff you’re not going to see.

In a lot of places it’s very difficult to find. We’ve got good people, you know boots on the ground in China. That sends a lot of great information. Again, it’s hard to get information sometimes from there, because if you’re from China and you report it, you can go to jail. Wait till you hear some of this shit.

I mean, no one even knows China’s one of even a headline. It’s 18,000 workers, 20 billion annual sales. Just now, just past a couple of days, filed for bankruptcy. Nobody knows that. This is a company that’s been on a top 500 enterprise in China that lists for the past 19 years. It’s much more than just real estate. It’s really, really bad there and how to play it. But that’s my only negative, possibly on gold Going forward, if they decide to sell, it’ll be a very negative headline.

But overall, how do you play the negativity in China, because we still have a lot of companies that have exposure there. But be very, very careful and that’s why I say it’s going to be a stock picker’s market going forward, because there’s just a lot going on around the world. I mean, even inflation is starting to come down. You see the surprise inflation in the UK came down too. So you’re going to have to follow a lot of this stuff and you’ll definitely have an edge in buying the right companies, because during bear markets everything sells off and when you have this pullback it creates a nice buying opportunity, like it just did, especially in NVIDIA. I mean, how much has NVIDIA come down and come back tremendously right.

0:57:03 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, it was down. It had to be down around or a little more than 20% from its highs. Yeah, it did fall After it split. It was over a buck 20, I feel like, and then it went under $100, and now it’s rallying back.

0:57:14 – Frank Curzio

Well, I don’t know what it is today, but yeah, wow, I don’t know if it’s just CNBC, but yeah, it’s coming up a little bit slow, but it was $140, and now it’s $116. Oh wow, $140. So it’s still down off week ago, right. So just a nice 16, 17% move off of its high. Sometimes a company like this just gives you an opportunity to really buy it at a discount.

But again, there’s a lot of names out there that shouldn’t be selling off. They reported good earnings that have managed their companies well, they already cut their expenses, they’re seeing margins stable, and that’s another thing. PPI came in lighter than expected, which is good for inflation. But that also means that companies are losing their pricing power, so that could hurt margins, and that’s what you want to try to avoid, because that’s what happened with Supermicro. I mean their numbers. Did you see their numbers, super micro? Their numbers are really good. Their revenue numbers, their margins, were atrocious, and that’s why Dell has crashed too, because they’re afraid I don’t know if they reported yet. Did Dell report yet? I think they report soon, but numbers have been coming down. But I mean Dell has got annihilated. Annihilated, I mean, that was a stock everyone’s like 179, it was, it’s a hundred bucks.

Dell, right, it’s a hundred bucks. And that pullback has been what? A couple months it was 175, briefly, but still it was. A month ago it was 145, it fell to a hundred. So margins are a big deal.

And that PPI report again, although it’s great for inflation, we say, well, yeah, everything’s good, be careful, because it’s not really great for equities. When you see that, okay, and we want to be there for you guys If the market does come down, how to participate, what to stay out of, how to protect your assets, because the greatest investors in the world love when the market comes down. Okay, they love market crashes. It allows you to buy a lot of assets at dirt cheap prices. But you have to have money on the sidelines and you can’t be stupid and just get into the wild stuff. And that’s what we’re trying to say. Listen, it’s going to be pretty bullish for the rest of this year, but going into next year it’s going to be difficult and you want to be able to pick and choose and it’s going to give you a lot of opportunities. If you leaving tomorrow, Daniel, yep, tomorrow morning.

0:59:26 – Daniel Creech

So I will miss the best thursday, the best day of the week on thursdays, for wall street all right, since you take care of that portfolio, I’m gonna recommend like 25 stocks tomorrow.

0:59:40 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, there you go. We’ll see a lot of research. I don’t know if I recommend anytime that’s wall street unplug premium guys, that’s a premium service. We recommend stocks and, uh, they go into a dollar stock club portfolio and and, yeah, we, we love that portfolio. It’s been doing pretty good, volatile lately, but it’s been doing pretty good. So, guys, questions, comments, feel free to email me frank@curzioresearch.com. Daniel.

0:59:58 – Daniel Creech

Daniel@curzioresearch.com All right, guys.

1:00:00 – Frank Curzio

That’s it for us and I will be seeing you tomorrow. Wall Street Unplugged Premium. Take care, love this episode of. I think you’ll really love Wall Street Unplugged Premium. The Wall Street Unplugged Premium is my members-only podcast where I dive even deeper into this week’s events. Well, I’ll do even more than tell you what’s moving these markets. I’ll tell you specifically what moves you can make today. So this is going to be about trading. Put big money in your pocket right away.

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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.