Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines Heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

What’s going on out there? It’s February 12th. Hello, I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street, Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. They’re bringing in Daniel Creech. What’s going on, Daniel? How’s everything?

0:00:35 – Daniel Creech

Oh, Frank, let’s get it out of the way.

What a boring Super Bowl. I did tell you that was the best Super Bowl to watch. As a Philly fan, I mean, you were never in doubt, loved it. Dominance you. That was the best Super Bowl to watch as a Philly fan, I mean, you were never in doubt, loved it. Dominance, largest audience ever which I’m an idiot. I didn’t realize that basically the Super Bowl was the largest viewed spectacle all the time when I looked at the list because I was like oh, 100 and whatever, 27 million, whatever. But the whole list is just Super Bowl, whatever. Super Bowl, yeah, last year, last year. So go ahead, take your Eagles lap, you deserve it, it’s wonderful.

0:01:07 – Frank Curzio

Dominant. One thing I’m going to say is I mean, the Eagles play great, right, they play great. We said it last week. If they both play their best game, the Eagles are much, much better more than 10 points better. But you never know right. And one thing I don’t like that I’m seeing right now is a ripping apart of mahomes, who’s the greatest quarterback and maybe the greatest quarterback ever. He’s not now. It might take time, whatever. I could tell you. You know the whole gold argument. I was like you know who cares? I mean the guy, what he did with the chiefs. I mean they’re ripping this guy apart and it’s like oh, he’s not tom brady or whatever.

I could tell you one thing with the goat argument. I’m saying this before the Eagles, if I had one quarterback for one drive and they had the same team whatever that team is right the same talent, if they had the same team, I’m taking Mahomes for that one drive over Montana, over Brady, and that’s arguable. You might take someone else or whatever. I don’t know if that means you’re the goat or not. I know he’s got seven Super Bowls. I know he never lost as bad, but just they’re ripping apart of this guy because his offensive line didn’t give more than one second, you know, and tearing him apart with how great he is, I mean come on, I mean give me a break. It was even though it’s eagles fan. I mean I was happy to see it, believe me. Just, you know, I was like put it on them because you never know when they’re gonna come back. You know, ripping kelsey both of those guys after the game took responsibility. Congratulate the Eagles, very professional about it.

But the biggest part of the game that everyone’s talking about something that we mentioned last week is the blitz. And watching the Eagles all the time I knew that they don’t blitz and that’s huge, because Mahomes, Peyton Manning, Brady are amazing against the blitz. They see it coming and they exploit it and they didn’t have the blitz. I knew they weren’t going to have to blitz. I didn’t know they weren’t going to blitz once the whole game, which is crazy. But when you’re getting there with the front four, it’s the same way that the Giants beat Brady in the past.

I think everyone’s very surprised at the score. It was an absolute. Yeah, everybody’s worried about him. Two best games he’s ever played have been the Super Bowls. Last two games he played unbelievable right and he didn’t say look at me or whatever. He was very humble about it. But I can tell you something about this team which is incredible, because everyone knows Daniel Hertz. You know Barkley, right. Aj Brown, Devontae Smith, their offensive line. You look at their D like Jalen Carter’s great, and for watching the eagles I’m like waiting for them to play like their best game. And maybe you know Braun too. Who’s who’s now an all pro? Nobody knows any of those people.

0:03:27 – Daniel Creech

Frank, you know, Jaylen car is a little bit.

0:03:29 – Frank Curzio

most people. Jaylen coffee, a football fan, how great he is. But. But this is how deep this team is, because if you watch the super bowl, who are the guys making huge plays? Cooper de Jean, which, by the way, amazing, great, great kid. You gotta see him as basketball highlights guy like throws on, gets a freak when it comes to athletic, had that interception. Josh Sweat two and a half sacks. Quinion Mitchell tons of taxels. Jalix Hunt he had a sack. Jordan Davis sack. Milton Williams two sacks, fumble recovery. Nolan Smith tons of quarterback hits. I mean these are the guys. These are the outside guys, outside the talent that you hear of. You don’t even know Maddox, who’s one of the. You know Maddox is actually sitting down, he’s great coming off the bench, but you have Mitchell, who’s, you know, one of the best cornerbacks. They just have a great team and you know just to see them on display and how confident they were.

Yes, it was great, it was really great to see. I know, if you watch Super Bowl and you have no interest in you If you’re not an Eagles fan, it was boring. For me, it was super exciting, it was great. I’m just really happy for them. I love the team. I love the unselfishness, good guys and man, they’re going to be really good next year too, because most of the team is going to be intact, especially on offense, but on defense, they just really need to sign two people, which is Braun and Josh Sweat, and they signed those two intact. So, uh, it was amazing. It was awesome, um, very happy for them and um, I’ve just, you know, just seeing everyone rip my homes when I’d say 75.

0:04:52 – Daniel Creech

You ought to take a victory lap and you’re defending the homes here I’m never a guy that I don’t like to get. Hey, you won. You knocked him out of the park. It was a great showing, yeah, but come on, that’s the biggest story than the eagles, though, if you watch all the programs the biggest story is hurts.

0:05:06 – Frank Curzio

When you watch espn, you watch steven a smith, you’re watching all these programs on fox or whatever. They’re all talking about my homes and they go like they don’t even talk about how great the eagles played and how you know a little bit about it. But just you know, god, the media man, they freaking like cupid, the gene, enjoy it. I mean. He came out hugging his girlfriend, who’s beautiful. He just got the interception. Young kid, I mean. Is it ever going to get better than that? Right there, until you sign your next contract’s gonna get really good, but just be careful, because a year ago mahomes is sitting on top of the world and this year he sucks and he’s terrible and everybody hates the freaking guy right and they’re booing, freaking you know. They’re booing everyone now, and the chiefs, including, uh, you know. Uh, what’s her name? The superstar. So you? So you know. Oh, they’ve always booed her, don’t get me wrong. Oh, not like that though. Did you see her face? Holy shit, she’s getting cheers. But yeah, I’m ecstatic about it, happy about it. Got my Eagle shirt on if you watch on YouTube, which is cool. Congratulations to them. They deserve it and that parade should be freaking awesome. So really cool stuff.

Now I’m going to say this, Daniel, because before we get to the CPI, I wanted to say something. In a few weeks I’m going to be presenting a new deal to my Curzio One members. It’s an exclusive private placement deal and I put this up front because a lot of people have been asking me about it and the only way you could invest in NYC Exclusive is by being a member. This is a private company generating 40 million in sales that I’m projecting is going to go public within nine 12 months. After talking to management, the people behind this deal, which I got to meet and I mentioned this a little bit last week, but it’s coming out in about three weeks and the people behind this deal have a history of doing roll-up strategies. So they’re buying lots of smaller companies to create one giant industry-leading player and a lot of people mess up with this strategy because they’re using high leverage and debt and stuff like that. So for me, I wanted to meet with this management team and talk to them and I did that for the last two months and met them tons of times all over the country.

These guys did in the hotel industry in the 90s. I’m talking about Marriott, creating one of the largest hotel chains in the world. They did in the gaming industry in the early 2000s when it spun off Hilton Gaming from its hotel division and Hilton said, holy shit, we’re going to hire the guy that just did this for Marriott because we’re falling behind. And this guy came over and did the same thing. So when they spun off that hotel division the gaming part of it it was generating $500 million in sales at the time After $12 billion. Right, this is different level shit. 12 billion M&A buying up casinos, caesars, bally’s, hilton Gaming, the Garden Park casinos it turned the Hilton Gaming brand from 500 million in revenue that’s how much they were generating to five and a half billion dollars in sales.

Okay, the investors made an absolute fortune on these deals. They just did it again with another small company, symbols, prop. This company, they took public and usually when you take public, if you’re used to mining industry, again, this is different level shit. I’ve learned a lot in the past two months from these people and I’m really excited I’m going to put more money in this deal than I’ve ever put in any of the dozens and dozens of deals that I gave the Curzio One members with PROP. Take a look at it. So you know, when you see the mining industry, they have these deals that go on and you know, okay, they go public or whatever. These guys aren’t just happy going public, right, they don’t sell their shares after they go public. They continue to build these companies and they just did a $600 million deal. This company PROP check it out. It’s Prairie Operating and I think that company is going to do fantastic as well.

This is what these guys do. They just took over a small company. It took over in 2019. They were on their way, and then you had COVID, which they took a step back right. Now they’re ready with this company. So this company is $40 million in sales. We’re going to be coming at an $80 million valuation, which is very, very good two-time sales and it’s a lot higher than the 40 million sales. I’ll tell you why because he just took over two companies. But this deal has some of those favorable terms that I’ve seen, where it’s going to pay a 6% dividend. It’s going to give you five year warrants.

Okay, I’ve been in this management team again like crazy and when I met with them, the first thing they told me is look, this is what we’re doing in the role of strategy. I asked. All I said that was two months ago. They already taken over two companies and have another one that they identified. So again, this is just two months later. Both of the companies that took over are immediately accretive, meaning they’ve got to make money from them immediately. And I’m like, okay, how do you do this? Because one of these companies did 17 million in sales two years ago and they bought it for less than a million.

You might be saying, well, how could that happen? There’s dozens of small to mid-tier companies in consumer foods, consumer staples, and they’re sitting on the balance sheets of private equity companies, and these companies like to leverage stuff, right. So they try to leverage these companies that had little success and now their debt has to be rolled over, and when it’s being rolled over, it’s being rolled over at sky high rates. So they’re going to get fucked, and they’re going to get fucked pretty bad. So it’s better for these guys to sell these companies at 10 cents on the dollar makes a lot more sense than losing a lot of money. So they want to get it off the balance sheet, so they have dry powder. They could put them to whatever they want, but now they’re selling these.

So how do you get access to this? Well, when you’re one of these players that has access to pretty much 10 of the largest private equity funds that he knows that he has the backing and the capital because they’ve been doing this for 30 years. They’re picking and choosing which names they want to buy and they know the details and they know that these guys got to get them off their balance sheets and they’re getting them for like 10 cents on the dollar. Now they’re rolling them up into this company. They’ve done this time and time again. This is a company that’s generating 80 million sales without these two deals going to be well over a hundred million. We’re going to be coming in at 80 million valuation doing 40 million in sales. I’m sorry we’re coming at 80 million valuation.

I could see this company, within three to five years, doing over a billion in sales based on the acquisitions. If that happens and they have a proven track record of doing this, I mean we’re talking about massive, massive gains. We talk about 15x, 20x, whatever it is, with a company that’s scheduled to go public in 9 and 12 months. So you’re not holding on to a private company, even if it takes a little bit longer than that, which, again, they say 9 months. I’m telling you 12 months. You’re getting a 6% dividend. You have 5-year warrants, even if it takes’ve done.

I’m really proud of this one. I’m proud of the quality of people. I’ve never worked on a level like this with these types of people that know billionaires and things like that, and you know just. You know they were very honest with me, they were very open with me. I asked them questions. They had the right answers. I learned a lot. It was really, really cool. So they’re not looking to just get this IPO and sell out. If you look at PROP, they still have a big stake in it. They’re looking to build this into a mid-cap level. Right, that’s where they make an absolute fortune, because now what they just did with PROP Prairie is they have Citigroup. Right, they’re talking to Piper Sandler. They have all these companies. Now you’re going to get all this coverage, not from Roth and not from these smaller firms, but from these bigger banks that they have coverage because of these are the contacts that they have. So I’m opening up the one membership to new members over the next few weeks.

We’ve always offered lifetime to this product, so it was, like you know, one big payment and then a small annual maintenance fee. But starting next month, lifetime is gone. It’s going to be gone for every one of our products. We’re not offering lifetime for any of our products, ever again. We don’t do that. We realize that our competitors need to do that because they want to get your money up front because their product isn’t going to live up to those expectations. We don’t have that product because our products, they live up to our expectations because Daniel and I do our products. You see some videos. We’re doing the work right and we always provide more value. We’re opening up for new members to get in.

If If you’re interested in learning more about Curzio One, you can email me Frank@curzioresearch.com. Once you email me, within a couple days or so, you’re going to get access to my calendar. I talk to everyone before they come in to make sure if the membership is right for you. It’s going to be offered at a very fair price Again. Last time that you could pay this and it’s a small maintenance fee forever. That’s it. You don’t have to pay again.

But I to members because I’ve turned people down when they say well, I can only invest, maybe a one deal I might not be able to. And again, this deal and most of the deals are only available to credit investors and when you subscribe to this membership, you get access to all of our products and services for free, forever and everything that we launch. It’s a really good membership. It’s exclusive. We don’t open it a lot, but I talk to members and make sure that it’s right for them, because I don’t want it doesn’t make sense for me, it doesn’t make sense for you if you can’t take advantage of this membership and get into several of these deals, because I know all of them are going to work, but if you get one or two to work. That’s how I made the most wealth in my life that and crypto.

So Curzio One is going to be open If you’re interested in your credit investor, you want to hear the terms of deals and you want to talk to me. So don’t use that up. This is going out to everyone. You’re going to have access to my phone number and access to talk to me and, again, ask questions that you want. I’ll tell you what the deal is and stuff like that, but you get the one-on-one with me just because that’s how you get into this membership. This way I get to know everyone within this membership. And also, for the first time ever, you’re going to have a nice, really cool conference at the end of the year and we’re going to have great speakers and guests and companies and stuff like that present these. It’ll be the first time we’ve ever done that in our history, right? So it’s just a lot of fun. So, again, if you’re interested, you’re a credit investor.

This deal is exclusive to us. You can’t get in unless maybe you know the CEO personally or whatever, but it’s pretty and you could learn more about that Frankcurzioresearchcom. Now, enough of that. Enough of that. And full disclosure before I go, before we talk about the CPI I’m not getting paid by the company for this deal. You got to get in the exact terms and price that I’m getting in. You could come into Curzio and you don’t have to invest in this deal.

If you say, yeah, you know I don’t like it or whatever, that’s fine, that’s fine, but my goal is to present deals that I vet, and I vet a lot of these deals, a lot of them, and most of them don’t make the cut. This is one that I’ve been working on for a really, really long time and I think it’s going to really identify us as a company and put us really on the next level, because this is one of those deals I feel like it’s like an early Facebook-type thing which I’m really excited about. And again, there’s all risks to all deals and things like that. But you know, we’re following a great, great management team and if it doesn’t work, these guys are going to lose a lot, a lot of more money than probably all of us that are putting in, because they got a lot in this company and they go all in when they do these deals, which is exciting, but I’m not getting paid by PI.

What’d you think? Hit that off my chest.

0:15:04 – Daniel Creech

Coming in hot, Frank, I wanted to do my Christopher Walken there coming in hot. I like the market’s reaction leg down, but now everything is kind of stabilizing, or at least as we speak right now. I wanted to talk to you about this because the initial reaction of hotter inflation we’ve been talking about investors should expect inflation to remain sticky, if not reverse higher and continue higher. But all I hear about through the media is well, you got to take January with a pound of salt, because there’s all these I don’t even know what word it is adjusted, unadjusted. There’s all kinds of things I’m reading articles about well, it was because the Biden administration printed more money. And then you hear well, it’s because Trump’s tariff policies and you know, prices are going higher.

The main takeaway here is this shouldn’t shock anybody. If you’re really expecting inflation to just continue trending lower, I don’t know what you’re paying attention to and you’re not paying attention to anything at all, so this shouldn’t surprise everybody. I still think that this is a buying opportunity in pockets for me personally, but I can’t believe that there is that. I’ll show my ignorance here, Frank. I’m a little surprised that there’s that much noise about this, that people act surprised that inflation is going higher. And let me just comment on this.

Remember I am trying to be humble here, but I watched Jerome Powell, fed Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony yesterday. He’s in front of the House and Services Committee. I believe he was in front of the Senate yesterday and I’m telling you, leave this to Frank and I, because this will drive you Florida insane. This is not for the faint of heart. You cannot be a normal person to do this. And he took a question.

The Fed Chair Powell took a question about money printing and injecting that to the economy and causing inflation. And with a straight face, powell said you know, just because we printed trillions of dollars and inject them to the economy, I don’t know if that causes inflation. You know there are some studies out there and that that that that the point is is that the people are asleep at the wheel. They are shooting from the hip. And just keep your common sense. Common sense is being thrown around a lot in the Trump administration. It’s getting attacked by the media everywhere. I don’t know if we’ll get into that. That’s more humorous. But the point is, if you think inflation is going to continue trending lower from here, then you literally have your head in your sand. At best it’s going to go sideways and it’s going to go higher, because you can’t have inflationary policies in place and not have inflation.

0:17:32 – Frank Curzio

I mean, the psychological thing is 3%, right, and we hit that. And that’s what the surprise is, because you’ve seen small caps really sell off pretty hard here, right, the market sold off originally. They come back a little bit. We’re doing this podcast in the middle of the day. It was much worse than expected. I use the word worse loosely, because it doesn’t mean worse for everything. It means worse for the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to how much income you generate in America.

Inflation is a great thing for stocks, as long as it’s not that we’re seeing what we saw in 2022 or in the early 80s and late 70s. But inflation this is factual. If you look back stocks, it’s not even gold, not even close. Gold doesn’t perform well, it’s it’s stocks perform great inflationary environments, and it makes sense because if there’s inflationary environment, it means that companies are able to raise prices, so the stocks are going to do better. It means that your job market’s pretty good, right, and that shit’s not good. The fed’s going to cut, but we came in at three percent, right, you can say the core is 3.3, which is crazy. But when you look at just the cpi, okay, let’s not look at the core, let’s look at the regular cpi. Go to both of them, but this isn’t a one-off. Okay, in september we were at 2.4 percent. That was the bottom every month since then. Now it’s four months of data. Right, this is february, reporting january. Every month since then we’ve been higher. This is a trend, it’s not a one-time. Oh wait, shelter was higher. Weather impact, the results, all this bullshit that you hear. No, you’re wrong. Okay, this is a trend. It’s four straight months and it’s going higher.

Daniel brought up a good point. You’re surprised with the market reaction here. The VIX popped right and you’re saying, like you know why was this a surprise? I don’t get it either, because the writing was on the wall. When it comes to big money has been rotating into banks, bank of America, okay, maybe you don’t know that as much. We have details to that. It’s rolling into big banks. Where is it coming from? It’s coming from big tech. I mean, have you seen Tesla? Tesla’s a lot Like. Where is Tesla trading? Like three, whatever, 34, whatever it is, it was four high 400s, right?

I mean, this thing keeps selling off 337 open AI and just you know he’s in like 5 billion things right now. People are like how could you focus on Tesla? It kind of makes sense, but you know it’s the big money rotating into banks. Why banks? Because this is the best sector to own when interest rates are going to stay high for longer, right, and these guys are in the perfect Goldilocks environment where M&A is kicking ass. Now you got a favorable administration with Trump and you have these interest rates that these freaking CEOs, the big CEOs of these companies, were telling you hey, the net interest margins are going to go down. They’ve been saying it’s 2023, 2024, and they’ve held steady and they’re doing well because interest rates have been higher for longer.

If that didn’t tip you off Daniel’s right, powell, basically, was more hawkish than he’s been. I mean, this is like you know this week, right, he knew the CPI number. He knows that number coming out. He can’t say anything, but he knows it. So you know it’s obviously why he was hawkish. But he said things like the labor market is very, very strong. Hey, that’s hawkish. Current policy is quoting significantly less restrictive right than it was. So we’re not lowering rates, guys. All right, we’re not lowering rates. That’s off the table. But, more importantly, what Daniel and I have been talking about is the conference calls for earning seasons and about 350, a little over 350, 500 companies in the S&P already reported. I’m usually naming the companies that raise prices. Now I don’t know a company who is not raising prices. They’re all raising prices and they’re raising prices insanely. And get ready for a rant here, Daniel. Get ready for a rant, okay, and if you have your kids listening and I’m probably going to curse because-.

0:20:53 – Daniel Creech

All right, send the munchkins away.

0:20:56 – Frank Curzio

These companies right now are all coming out on their calls and they’re saying that they’re going to raise prices because of tariffs, because of tariffs. Right, these companies are saying that are pieces of shit, they’re garbage. And I’ll tell you why because they’re going to raise prices anyway. They’re using that as an excuse. Okay, did you see Coke’s numbers? You see Coke came out Great numbers. Stock went higher, much better than expectations. And when you look under the hood, what happened with Coca-Cola?

0:21:22 – Daniel Creech

I saw your tweet where they raised prices each quarter Frank.

0:21:25 – Frank Curzio

Listen to me, they raised prices by 9% for the quarter, not year over year rear for the quarter. So I was like you know what? Let me do a little research on this, okay. And then I went back. I posted on twitter @FrankCurzio. You know, give him, do this podcast twice, you want to hear a lot of stuff. You’re building up that, that twitter following now, so, which is really cool.

Uh, coke has raised prices every single quarter since the pandemic, since the pandemic. And it makes sense, right, because we have the pandemic Since the pandemic. And it makes sense, right, because we have the assholes on the other end, like all these restaurants we go to, they’re charging $4 for, like, a medium fountain soda, right, and coffee and coffee right Through the roof, coffee prices going higher, right. So you have these companies charging. The margins that they make are incredible. And Coke’s, like you know what, we’ll let these guys deal with it and we’ll just raise prices. I mean they’re making 300% margins on this freaking thing, right? I mean it’s 300% on this shit anyway. So I mean, how much does that really cost to really get it? I mean you can get it for what? 79 cents. How much do you get if it’s at Publix Like a fountain soda, it’s under a dollar. Right is under a dollar. They’ve jacked it up. What?

0:22:27 – Daniel Creech

is it?

0:22:28 – Frank Curzio

Oh yeah, you can get a soda, because you’re a fountain, you love fountain soda.

0:22:30 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I know it’s damn near two for a medium.

0:22:33 – Frank Curzio

Is it two, because they charge them four.

0:22:35 – Daniel Creech

Don’t get me started on the sizes too. You talk about pissing me off.

0:22:38 – Frank Curzio

Anyway, move back on Besides that right. So I 2024. Okay, and here’s where my rant’s going to come in. Okay, in Q1, 2024, this is 2024. They raised by 9%. Q2, they raised by 13%. Q3, they raised by 10% and Q4, they raised by 9%. So they raised prices by over 40 fucking percent. This is just one company. Pharmaceutical companies raised prices on over 250 drugs. It was also confirmed by CVS. That number came out today. They said our numbers were good. The stock popped originally. I think it’s still up like 6-7% or whatever. It was up like 15%. They highlighted that we reported these results despite the massive increase in drug prices.

Health insurance and all insurance companies forget about it, holy cow. If you have a house, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s insane. Schools raising tuition prices, starbucks, chipotle, netflix you saw YouTube TV come out $10 a month extra. Disney raised prices on everything, not just streaming On Parks. Again you have Elf announcing you. Look at most cosmetic companies raising prices AutoZone, Walmart, costco, hershey you know all these companies. I mean your electric company. Did you see a bill that you just paid? Are you kidding me? Seriously, look at the bill that you just paid and compare it to every other fucking month, holy cow, and compare it to every other fucking month, holy cow. You say, well, the weather might not be that good or whatever. I’m telling you it’s insane and it’s funny how these guys are using tariffs as an excuse.

But what was the excuse, Daniel, for these assholes to raise prices by this much in 2024? What was the excuse? Because it wasn’t inflation. Okay, inflation came down to its lowest level in four years. I told you it was like 2.6%. It was in September. I mean, if you’re looking at massive rise in inflation and Coke to raise prices by 40%, chipotle to increase prices what? Four times in the past year, but inflation went nuts. When I mean, we forget, it wasn’t that long. It’s 2021 and 2022. So in 2021, we had inflation on CPI at 7%. 2022 was 6.5%. I get it. Raise prices, costs are higher. 2023, we went down to 3.4%. All right, I get it a little bit. Okay, it’s above 2%. Okay, we’re seeing costs high. 2024, we were below 3%. September was 2.4%.

And you have a company like fucking Coca-Cola raising their prices by 40%. Insurance companies raising eggs, all this shit. These companies are going absolutely nuts. Now you’re telling me oh, if we see tariffs, they’re going to raise prices again. Are you fucking kidding me? So how does this end? I mean, eventually, you’re not going to be able to raise prices. Where you’re seeing companies like McDonald’s, where Coca-Cola doesn’t have a lot of competition because their competition is Pepsi, you have to have Pepsi or Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s raising prices and Coke’s like okay, we’re following you, right, so you don’t have a lot of competition. Other places you do have competition, where there’s choices, but those who have pricing power like the YouTube TV and you have the NFL package and things like that if you have the ability to raise prices, those are the companies that are gonna excel. So, just for these companies, stop fucking bullshitting people. Stop issuing these press releases about tariffs. You’re all raising prices in 2025 anyway, regardless of tariffs. Just be real with the people. Just be real.

And the biggest takeaway for me is the rate cut cycle is dead. Forget about interest rate cuts. It’s dead. This year, unless we see like a recession or a massive crash, inflation is going to go higher, but inflation as long as it’s not insane, like I said earlier, like in the 80s and we saw this more recently in 2022 when inflation just blew the doors off. Where it was transitory. It’s supposed to be transitory by the smartest guy in the world? Right, it’s going to be transitory, we’re going to be fine, we’re going to be fine. It’s not going to go high, it’s not going to be fine. Okay, dead wrong, right, as long as we don’t see that kind of inflation. Stocks by far are the best performing asset during inflationary times. Again, it’s not even gold, it’s not even close. They do well during inflationary times because you have companies like Coke that could raise prices. These companies will raise prices.

The labor market, everyone we’re talking about from the stock and earnings perspective. And from the earnings perspective, Daniel, earnings are growing about 13%. They were projected to grow this quarter at 7.5%. Okay, so at 13.5%, we’re still trading at about 22 times forward earnings. So people saying we’re wildly expensive, more expensive than ever, they’re fucking lying, because we were a lot more expensive nine months ago. Okay, because we were trading nearly at the same multiple, at 21 times forward earnings, but earnings were growing at like five, 6%. Okay, they’re growing almost three times that rate right now and you have to account for that.

So if you’re saying, well, stocks are so expensive, some of them are, some of them are very expensive, and you’ve seen a lot of those names get hit. They’re not all expensive and we saw what happened in Nvidia. Nvidia is not an expensive stock compared to the growth and that’s why, every single time that name gets hit, we’ve been trading it almost perfectly right, Daniel, back and forth in this newsletter. Every time it gets hit it’s a buying opportunity. You’re seeing money come out of Tesla Probably a buying opportunity. If it gets down to the $300 level, you’re going to have these buying opportunities of these sell-offs and the money sloshing around.

The banks are outperforming the S&P 500 by two to one. They were up 6% before today, with the market up 3%. Why? Because interest rates are going to stay higher. These guys are in a perfect environment and they’re not really trading at super expensive multiples compared to a lot of areas of the market, like you’re seeing in some of these technology companies, like Apple. Apple is very, very expensive considering it’s a company that’s not growing that fast, considering the company’s not growing that fast. So you want to be careful in this environment.

I wouldn’t expect a crash, but this CPI should not be surprising. Maybe that’s why the market’s coming back. I mean, the writing was on the wall. There were several ways you saw this. Even the big money saw this. That’s why they’re rotating into banks from big tech. But the rate cycle if you think rates are coming down, if we go above 5% in the 10-year, look out, watch out.

History shows us stocks don’t perform that well. But if we stay below 5% and stay in this area of 4.4 to 4.8, you’re going to have a lot of ideas and a lot of good stocks, especially some that are selling off on this news, because inflation is not the worst thing in the world as long as it’s not really really crazy. But make no mistake, inflation, the trend is higher. This isn’t a one-off. A shelter was higher. All the bullshit with the economists start overthinking fucking everything. No, stop overthinking it. It’s four straight months that we’ve gone up and we’ve gone up significantly. Okay, the trend is here. So hopefully we don’t go to 4%. But if we stay below 3.5% and stay in this area, we should be okay and, like the same Goldilocks economy, is going to present a lot of ideas for people who are really doing their homework, especially during earnings season, like that.

0:28:45 – Daniel Creech

Rant over. Especially I like that.

0:28:47 – Frank Curzio

Rent all of them.

0:28:47 – Daniel Creech

Especially earnings season, rent all of them. So with earnings I will follow that up. Frank with a big high flyer and very expensive stock. Not that it can’t continue to go expensive, but if you have a chart over there, Frank, upst, upstart. This is a high flyer. I’ve talked about it a couple times here and there, I’ve talked about it as a trading opportunity at different times, but they came out. This is one of those stocks that either goes very high or gets sold off like crazy after earnings. Frank likes to joke about Skechers. Is it Skechers, right? That either goes up 20% or down 20%.

0:29:19 – Frank Curzio

It feels like every quarter right, Every quarter Up starts no difference.

0:29:21 – Daniel Creech

This thing was up 30%. It popped over 20%. After hours it was actually up higher when the market opened, about 30%.

0:29:27 – Frank Curzio

It’s up 30% now.

0:29:31 – Daniel Creech

Is it still up 30%? It’s up 30% now. Okay, now this is still well off its highs after it went gangbusters and during the COVID era. But check this out. They reported earnings per share. They absolutely smashed expectations. Earnings per share came in 30 cents better than expected. They were expected to report a loss of four cents. They came in at 26 positive. Revenue jumped 56% year over year to $219 million. Remember that. Looking ahead, upside guidance, q1 sees revenue of $200 million. That’s higher than $185 expected for the fiscal year 25, Frank. They’re going to see $1 billion in revenue. That’s amazing. That’s a lot higher than the $823 million in consensus. So this is a heavily shorted stock. There was over 25% short interest in the stock.

What really stood out to me in the filings? Frank and I guess I should say Upstart uses AI. Now they’ve in their defense. They’ve been in the AI gravy train since AI has been a thing and what these guys do is they look at personal loans, kind of intermittent loans, auto loans and home equity line of credit loans and they use AI to just have a better mousetrap, Frank. They put people like me that need loans with loaners et cetera, fast, efficient, all that kind of stuff. What is cool is they’re using AI to say they’re getting better and all this. One fact that I heard one stat that stood out to me, Frank, was in 2024, their HELOC loan originations went up, say, 50 to 60%, and they didn’t have one default. Now, that’s what you want to see. You want to see more loans originated and less default rates, obviously. And they’re saying, hey, the power of AI, our technology, our infrastructure can do all that. And then pair.

0:31:05 – Frank Curzio

It’s not like a really special thing with a HELOC loan, because a HELOC loan is a home equity line of credit, so you’re taking out based on collateral in your house. You basically have to-.

0:31:12 – Daniel Creech

Frank, you’re raining on their parade. You can’t do that.

0:31:15 – Frank Curzio

I wouldn’t use that as a stat to be like oh, we have no underperforming HELOCs.

0:31:18 – Daniel Creech

And it’s only one year, and the point is delinquencies. This is the better mousetrap. They want to originate more loans and they’s too rich for my blood. And the only reason it’s up today, Frank, is because I didn’t buy it yesterday when I was looking at the stock and options, but you have been mentioning it a lot.

Well, yeah, I mean it’s just a fun thing to follow because you want to see the demand they’re getting. These guys are nobodies in the sense of and I don’t mean that rudely, I just mean this is a $6.5 billion market cap trading at a high valuation. That’s okay in and of itself because there are pockets like that, but these guys are up against your visas, master cards, hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars in market cap. Excuse me, so fun stock for me to follow because I like to see the origination, the use of technology and it’s a high flyer. This thing just soars or tanks and it’s definitely got some momentum in a down market, so that’s good to see.

0:32:14 – Frank Curzio

You know I have to say that with a company like this, Daniel, I look at and it has a $7 billion, $8 billion market cap and when I look at this and you see the margins and stuff, I just scroll through it. Really silly, if you’re on the YouTube page, you can just do it on CNBC. They provide a few details. They’re going to show a company not making money. I mean, if you look at this company, you’re going to be like it’s wildly expensive. But I’m going to tell you I’m not saying it’s a Palantir, because I did a video on Palantir and it got a ton of hits because I said look, you got to value Palantir a lot differently than it’s being valued right now, because every single company that has a P500 is their client. They could have a trillion dollar market opportunity, right, and everyone’s like it’s crazy.

It’s paying times, 100 times sales, and the P ratio is crazy. A P ratio is crazy at 20, 30, 50, 70. We told you to buy. We even told you to buy after 100. It’s probably going 150 to 115.

When you’re able to perform a service for companies that no one could actually do, it opens up the whole market. And I gave a netflix example again, it’s the only reason why I’ve done that is because I’ve made mistakes, looking at p ratios and price of sales and been like there’s no way I can invest in this company and watch that company go up a thousand percent over a year or two, and sometimes it takes three or four years and I’m like, okay, for me it’s not like an ego thing. When I’m like, well, I’m still never gonna invest in it to me, I ask myself why the did I miss it? How do I help myself investing in these companies? How do I not miss it? And that’s when you know we nail Palantir right, we got that in the portfolio and we nail a lot of these growth stocks. We have them in the portfolio by learning, like what you should always ask yourself.

So what Jalen Hurts said is like there’s always ways to get better. You should never, ever be happy and be like I’m the greatest investor ever. You should feel I’m getting to here is if you look at the loan market, Daniel, I mean holy shit. I mean, banks are assholes. Banks are all these people. I mean the credit cards, the credit card companies, I mean the interest rates that they’re charging. They’re charging more than 27, 28, 28%, because interest rates are high. It doesn’t matter if you have good credit or not. You make even insurance companies. If you look, if you look how many industries are broken Just like taxis were broken and Uber came in and Lyft came in right and they blew up that freaking industry just like you see that that’s what Amazon does. You know if those margins, you know that’s what we want to try to capture.

And when I look at all the stuff that’s broken with the credit cards and how much money they make, and the banks and the interest rates that they charge and the fees that they charge, that’s where crypto comes into play. But a company like Upstart, all right, maybe it’s not 28%, maybe it’s 20%, which is an amazing interest rate, right? Why do I have to pay 7% on a mortgage when you know my credit is outstanding? You see that you know somebody could have enough money to purchase the whole house, but you know you want to take out a mortgage. Why wouldn’t you give them a favor of mortgage rates? Why the home builders did a lot better? Because they were offering their own services in that industry. When you’re like, interest rates are higher, how come the home builders took off? Because they were offering special deals to the best clients.

So when I look at this market, which is trillions of lending going on and the rates that they charge, and if you’re able to really use AI to manage the customer, you have proof of this data showing that, hey, our delinquencies are much lower than everything else out there because of what we’re using in our system determining the risk profile. I mean, you know how much money you would get if you said, hey, right now, if you found a way that you could take all the loans off the balance sheets of Fannie and Freddie or whatever, and say we’re going to charge 5% interest rates for anyone who wants to buy a house right now. I mean it’s trillion dollars. That goes right into that fund. Trillions, right, but they won’t do it because it’s what? Seven and a half, whatever it is Seven, seven and a half. So does it have to be seven, seven and a half?

And I was worried. I was like, wow, tokenization. Imagine if people could token of their homes, of that equity to people, and that trade’s almost like a stock. But if you sell your house it’s like selling a stock or it’s like getting taken over or whatever, and then you earn that appreciation and you pay a dividend on it. That’s why I always thought tokenization is amazing. But just the system is broken, the way they lend money. All I’m saying is Upstart, you may look at it as an expensive stock, but their market, if they get this right, is trillions and that means this stock at 7 billion could be 70 billion three, four years from now. Remember I said that.

You might be like holy shit, why is this company so much higher, so expensive? I’m just saying this is how I’m thinking of looking at companies like this, because why are they trading at these valuations? Well, I can just tell you you don’t want to short them because the shorts just got annihilated today. That’s why the stock’s up 30%. It’ll probably be up like 15, 17% today. But always look at something and be like okay, instead of being like this is so expensive, this is bullshit, and saying it like we have.

Peter Schiff says Bitcoin, since they traded at like $100 and now it’s 100,000, saying it sucks, it, sucks, it, sucks, it sucks all the way up. Just put your ego aside and look at this shit and be like okay, what am I getting wrong? What am I not seeing? Talk to people. See the negative, see the positive, what am I not seeing? And that’s how you learn more about it. And sometimes you’ll be able to uncover something and say people just don’t understand this. And I can tell you I don’t know if people understand this stuff, because where it is right now, I wouldn’t have bought it. I wouldn’t have bought it at probably 30, 40. If it does pull back, I may say wait a minute, I’m not understanding this story. It’s a lot bigger than I think it is, Because if they’re able to capture the loans off of banks, the loans off of credit cards, the loans off of this, and provide a little bit of less interest rate and not seeing delinquencies, holy shit, I mean, you say it all the time, Dan, with your car, right?

I mean, how pissed off are you that the insurance rates on our car not only are they going higher, why do you have to pay the same insurance rate on your car every year for a depreciating asset? I can see for a house, your home value goes up and your tax is going to go up and whatever gets reassessed. You’re talking about a depreciating asset that you’re still paying this fucking price, and then when you get a new car, it’s going to be even fucking higher, right? So yeah, that’s a broken system. That doesn’t make sense, right? So that really could be innovative and do. I’m just saying you might want to look at this company a little bit differently because, man, this thing is on fire right now and I don’t know it could go a lot higher. It could go a lot higher from here.

0:37:52 – Daniel Creech

Oh, absolutely and really the big key is I mentioned the earnings and such and again. It is expensive, but that isn’t room enough to just quit listening. Frank’s already touched on that. What’s wild here is, if you look at the guidance and we use Capital, iq and management even noted this on the conference call, saying we were a sliver away I think is the term they use from profitability on a gap, general accepted accounting principles. What’s wild is when you look at the guidance, Frank, they’re going from that notion of losing money to making money on a gap. If memory serves me correct, when I was looking at the guidance yesterday, into 2025, they were actually expecting or projecting to be gap profitable. And I say all that because, when I do different screens of all kinds of things, that is one way I found Palantir.

Palantir was in the process of losing money every single year, like many do, and then they were making that transition to go to positive earnings. And the reason that was important at the timing it was and Frank and I talked about this is because the market was punishing those companies that didn’t earn profits because why Interest rates were going higher. Nobody gives a flying Florida as much about profits when interest rates are at zero and you can borrow money and grow and scale when interest rates move up, as they did because the Fed Reserve hiked rates. And now you have to show me something for my money. If you don’t have earnings and you can’t sustain on yourself, that’s a big drag. Palantir was doing that. There’s a lot of that.

So I was actually looking at companies that were turning that corner from losing money to making money on a gap profitability standpoint. This company is looking to do that and that’s why another leg higher could be. It’s going to be expensive forever. That’s fine. Look through that. And, as Frank said, there’s plenty of optionality and margin opportunity to go in. And look at the payment system and the fraud there. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but it’s the world we live in. So you want me to move on. I’m going to change gears completely about a earnings update, Frank. Where are you going? I’m going to go to MicroStrategy, because MicroStrategy is not even called MicroStrategy anymore. It’s called Strategy. Yeah, and the only thing I want to point out here, Frank, because earnings doesn’t matter, this is a what does micro strategy even do they provide, I think, cloud software to businesses or something like that?

0:39:58 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and AI and stuff. They’re more of a software company. They do generate decent money, not for the way the market cap is, but yeah.

0:40:01 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, well, here’s what they did.

0:40:03 – Frank Curzio

That’s pretty cool, which is very important really quick because that’s where they get the collateral off of that division and off the money that they make is a collateral that they will secure to really take out a lot of their loans. Because now, with the laws changing, you could take loans off your Bitcoin. It’s going to be monitored like now with the FASB changes and stuff like that, of how it’s accounted for as a real asset, not just a tangible asset and stuff like that. But now that business has helped them tremendously in terms of securing the loans to actually buy Bitcoin but go ahead.

0:40:29 – Daniel Creech

Yeah. So they came out with strategycom, which is a website, and it’s actually pretty cool. They have a lot of. They have the MSTR, their stock price, they have Bitcoin’s price, they have all kinds of different metrics and yield and all this kind of stuff. Frank, the other thing they came out, that was ground shaking. They actually have a merchandise store now. So are we going to buy strategy t-shirts or strategy hats? And I have to admit, whenever I see somebody go the merchandise, by the way, when are we doing Curzio Research hats and t-shirts? Anytime you go to do the merchandise, it just cracks me up. Tesla did this with the flamethrower and different things. You’re seeing this kind of trend, Frank. That’s caught my eye and I wanted to ask you if you’re going to buy a strategy ball cap. You’re a ball cap.

0:41:13 – Frank Curzio

I would have told you six months ago the strategy of Trump selling his stuff. Actually, I would have said a little bit longer than that, because when I went to a local carnival big fair that they have here, they had like three or four of these tents and it was like a line of like 30 people to buy trump gear then I stayed at a trump hotel and, oh my god, it’s like people at the door.

So I don’t know. I mean that, and not only that. When I went to a drake concert with my daughter people buying 200 sweatshirts, I’m not kidding you, and they ran out of them there was lines of hundreds and hundreds of people. So the merch thing is pretty cool, so I’m not going to make fun of it. I mean people.

0:41:42 – Daniel Creech

He’s a he’s, he’s an icon for oh, it’s brilliant, but I’ll make fun of it. It’s hilarious.

0:41:45 – Frank Curzio

Maybe I’ll buy one to have fun really like, like, worship that guy, like they worship that guy absolutely and you know what I like him because he’s he’s not a talker, he’s just this is what I’m gonna fucking do, and I did it. Could he get crushed? Absolutely. But there’s so many people out there, especially in our line of work, that say they’re gonna do something and they really don’t do it. Like has everyone who told you about Bitcoin said Bitcoin’s going to zero? Has any of those motherfuckers shorted Zero, zero, because they wouldn’t be around right now. They’d be in park benches. They tell you don’t get out of Bitcoin. None of them shorted it. None of them had the balls shorted it. Right?

This is a guy that said, hey, I’m buying it on this guy since 2000 to 2020. When he started this thing in august, even I was like dude, this guy. This is a little fucking crazy right now. And good for him, man, good for him. I mean, he followed through and you know what you’re gonna get and that’s cool, because that, to me, character is a big thing. You know exactly what you’re getting with this guy and I think that’s why he has this. Yeah, this massive cult following. That loves him. But yeah, the merchandise thing, I’m listen, I’m make fun of it too, but I don’t know how much money it’ll generate, but I bet you there’s got a lot of people that are going to buy your shit.

0:42:47 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, Like I said, I’ll even look at it. But on a more important thing, they just bought more, even Bitcoin. This is from a tweet on February 10th, two whole days ago, Frank. They acquired another strategy. Excuse me 7,633 Bitcoin for 742.4 million. They bought it at $97,255, a little bit higher. They now have $478,740 Bitcoin 2% right. What Over 2% of the float.

0:43:13 – Frank Curzio

I think they have now oh.

0:43:14 – Daniel Creech

I don’t know that. Off the top of my head, you’re right, but their cost basis is $65,033 per Bitcoin. Continue to do that. This is a great trading stock as well. I wouldn’t buy this here. I would wait to trade this for another month or so, and the reason I’m doing that is because this crystal ball, Frank, that I’m shaking, is showing me, but we’re waiting on Paul Adkins to be confirmed as SEC chair. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes there, and I read yesterday, Frank, that usually the SEC chair doesn’t get approved until April or May, and so that’s why I’m pushing that out, because your big cabinet nominees- I didn’t know that.

0:43:59 – Frank Curzio

Is that true? I had no idea. Yeah, In fact I read that’s a big deal because you’re looking at crypto. I mean people want to see this within crypto and really you know what I mean.

0:44:06 – Daniel Creech

Yes, let me pull up this. I need to find this tweet here, so let’s stall for a moment. I just started following this reporter and I was impressed because I want to give her credit. She pointed out when the last couple of SE chairs went into effect, and again, it wasn’t until March or April or maybe even June.

0:44:25 – Frank Curzio

That is interesting. I didn’t know that.

0:44:28 – Daniel Creech

I say all that because we’ve seen recent news where Binance, the crypto exchange, and the SEC agreed. I don’t want to butcher this. I believe I read this right to where they’re delaying whatever they’re fighting about in court. They’re delaying for 30 or 60 days and they’re doing that because they want to wait for the new SEC chair and how they’re going to approach that Binance is a really good company.

0:44:46 – Frank Curzio

Binance is a good company and they have the best technology. Those guys look. You know, I mean, if they get back into the US and all those regulations prove I mean that is massive for them. That’s one of the tokens that really has the greatest utility feature ever. I mean these guys burn tokens.

There was a big hack there and then CZ came in and said we’re replenishing all the accounts for the hack. I mean it was like the realest of realest companies in if you’re looking from 2017 to 2020, there’s a lot of real companies in there. But those guys were just like everyone else, did a lot of fraudulent shit and did whatever they could do. To me, binance is a great company. We generated huge returns on Binance because we got into that token very, very, very, very early and we did very well in our newsletter and sold it. But you know, if they get back into the US, look out, I mean, and I think it might impact Coinbase as well, because those guys are, I mean, they’re huge, they’re great, they’re smart, they got great products and again, there was A lot going on with them. But yeah, they made it smart for them to delay that. I didn’t see that news. That’s pretty cool, you brought that up.

0:45:47 – Daniel Creech

Last thing, this is Eleanor Tarrant. I hope I’m saying that correctly, but this is on X when I was searching for this different material and she has. For reference. Gensler was not confirmed by the Senate until April of 2021, even though he was nominated by President Biden in January. John Clayton was not confirmed until May of 2017, even though Trump, during his first term, nominated him in January as well. So you got some April, you got some May. It honestly wouldn’t shock me, just because everything that President Trump does is bad from the mainstream and typical status quo. So maybe that’s even pushed back further, but you need to be aware of that. If you’re investing in crypto, like I am, I bought more Galaxy Digital yesterday and today. I’m going to buy more next week. You know it takes four, one, two, three, four Florida days for your money to be able to be used when you transfer it.

if you’re buying an over-the-counter stock, no, I didn’t know that so if you move money from your bank account, you can’t use it for four full business days. If you’re buying a stock over the counter on the peak sheets, which right now Galaxy, is Just a fun fact for how amazingly inefficient the global dominant superpower is in moving money.

0:46:52 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, well, you know that because you have like $2 million in Galaxy. I wish I wish your best position. I feel like it. I want to move on because I saw some news which was interesting, because 13Fs are when all these companies report their holdings, what they own, what they sold out of, what they increased, they decreased their holdings right, all the biggest fund managers. They have to do that every quarter and they do it around the same time. But David Tepper came out and he’s the only one that came out. It came out like a week ago. Usually they all come out around the same time.

I don’t know why his came out early, which I found interesting, but it did show that he is. I mean, the headlines are he’s doubling down on China, which is not true. He’s not doubling down. When you look at what he’s did and I’m going to you know again, I love the headlines because they make a lot of sense and stuff and this way it opens the door like you’re crazy about China. No, it opens up the door and I get it, but when you look and I put this side by side and I’m going to do this right here, so this is his last two 13Fs which I’m able to do and this is briefingcom. Again, this came out the 10th the 10th, which is weird because this is the only one you’re going to see right now. They’re going to come out pretty soon. These will come out right when earnings season ends and he shows new possessions and corning and stuff like that.

But I want to talk about the positions, because JD is clear. That’s a China stock that he actually increased his position. It says Alibaba as well. What else have you got here from China? There’s PDD. You have Baidu as well. Right, increased and JD was the biggest one 10 million shares from 7.3 million. But if you look at the month before November because before that he was saying he was getting into a lot of these stakes in Baba, but even the last two quarters he was lowering his stake in Alibaba. And then the last quarter he did that again and lowered his stake again it says decreased positions, if you’re following me here and if you look at Alibaba went from 10.5 to 10 million, so he lowered his position in Alibaba from $10.5 to $10 million, so he lowered his position in Alibaba. What else did he lower his position in? I think JD was one of the ones that he increased his position. So it was $4 to $7 million and then he just went from $7 to $10 million.

But what I’m saying is last quarter, even FXI, which is the China ETF, he lowered his position last quarter, but this time it’s he lowered his position last quarter, but this time it’s JD, he increased his position. Ali Baba increased a little bit by like 11%, but it’s not like he’s going all in, but he did increase his positions and sell the China stock. So the headline is like he’s doubling down on China. He’s not doubling down on China because if he was, he would have done that. Last quarter as well, he lowered his stake. My that last quarter as well, he lowered his stake. My point is, more importantly, is he is betting more on China and he is more bullish on China.

And I got to tell you I think he’s nuts. I really do. I think he’s insane. I think this is going to be one of the worst trades that he has in a very, very long time. Because if you look at the rest of his trades and I love Tepper because he’s my favorite guy, so I follow him religiously I just think he’s one of the most brilliant hedge fund guys in terms of looking at the macro and the micro and looking at the macro and being able to determine micro, like what individual stocks he’s going to buy. But he closed positions in UPS last quarter Great job. He has positions I mean he’s been lowest position AMD good job. Amd has been a nightmare. When I look at what he does and how he trades stocks, it really is amazing. But when I see this China trade, I think he’s crazy.

If you look at I mean data came out of China. If you’re looking at exports, exports surge and why did they surge for right? I mean you got potential tariffs coming. If you look at when Trump got when Trump became the frontrunner right before the election last time he was elected, got when Trump became the front runner right before the election last time he was elected. If you see the amount of freaking steel that they just they increased dramatically and then, as soon as he took office, 2016, it dropped tremendously right. So it’s normal for them to just front run the tariffs that are coming and get everything into US before all this shit happens.

Their economy is not getting better, it’s getting a lot worse. The massive debt they still have no answer for. You’re still seeing the one in the shitter. I mean, the property market is getting worse, not better, and now the funds are being diverted from schools and hospitals to service their debt Before, and this is an issue for teachers, nurses not being paid for months to years. Now, entire hospitals and schools are being shut down.

Okay, and thank you so much for the person that sent me that. That’s one of my best contacts in China. I can’t mention him, but he’s the one that sends me a lot of this information and he sends me the YouTube videos and stuff that usually get before they get pulled down and I’m able to watch these. And that’s how we determine with Deep Seek and stuff like that and up, thanks to all of you, and Hot Kids gets bigger and bigger and we get more listeners and just everyone’s really brilliant at something, and all of you send me so much great information and stuff. But China is getting worse. It’s not getting better. There’s no signs that it’s getting better, and you’re trying to bottom tick this freaking market of economy, where these guys are a bunch of liars, and things are really, really, really, really bad there. So I just don’t see it. I think there’s other areas that offer much better opportunity. If you’re looking, did you see the global markets in general? I mean, if you look at the global markets, they’re all outperforming the US right now.

You know, but China is just like holy shit. You know everything else was really bad, but you see a little bit of growth here in economic growth. You know you can go. Europe haven’t solved their problems of debt Not even close right. So what are they going to do? They just announced what two years, two and a half years of massive stimulus that he’s saying, oh, they have a bazooka. They already came with the fucking bazooka. And look at the yuan, look at everything else. I mean what is the debt? Look at this property. I mean holy shit, real estate is a the biggest source of wealth. When it comes to China, that’s the biggest source of wealth and it’s absolutely crashing. Now you’re taking money. You’re going after people with back taxes, saying they have back taxes, they’re out of their mind and things are horrible. When you can’t stimulate the economy and you’re a government, holy shit, look out, look out. If you can’t do that.

When I look at China, I don’t get it. Maybe he’s got a couple of companies there. Those are the bigger names and the JDs and a benefit from cloud and AI and stuff like that and Alibaba. But man, to say China’s back and going all in, he’s not going all in. He owns other things. But man, I just don’t agree with this thesis. I don’t see it yet, but Tepper is the greatest investor. I could be wrong and I’ll say I’m wrong, but so far I think, since we said that we’ve been right. But let’s see, let’s see if he’s right, but these positions he’s going to probably have to hold for a long, long time, because I just don’t see it. I think there’s so many better areas to invest in than China, because they haven’t found the bottom yet.

0:53:14 – Daniel Creech

It will be interesting. Biggest thing one of the ways I found Vistra Energy or Vistra, the independent power company, is because I saw through the different filings, one of which was Mr Tepper. He added to that position from 1.3 million to 2.7. I’m sure he’s trimmed that at different times, but I’m just saying the most recent filing. He has added to that position. Also, nrg Energy that has been a beautiful stock, moving to all-time highs or recent highs, maybe look into that. He added from 1 million to 1.82 million. So almost 100% increase there. But use these to your advantage. These are amazing. Look into the smartest guys. Oh, by the way, one last thing on communists. They’re Florida communists for criminy. They’re communists. Trade them, do not believe them. They’re communist people. That’s the easiest investing lesson in the Florida world. Yeah, it’s hard to keep those, but if you’re in bed with them then they can make you money. So Tepper can get into any circle with that kind of. Imagine the suits those guys wear. What kind of suits are you guys wearing these days, Frank?

0:54:15 – Frank Curzio

These guys? No, I’m in Florida, I’m wearing suits.

0:54:17 – Daniel Creech

I was having fun with you.

0:54:18 – Frank Curzio

I wear nice Philadelphia Eagles jerseys forever and shirts forever. That’s what I’m going to be wearing. But yeah, florida, there’s no suits here. You learn that right away. Nobody wears suits so, which is really cool, and I love that man coming from Wall Street suit every day. Oh, what a nightmare. Leaving at 530 in the morning to get to work and then getting home at like seven o’clock, oh man you’re crazy Good old days.

Holy shit, a young person’s game for me, young person’s game, so that’s it for us. This will be covered a lot Tomorrow. Daniel and I are going to be really digging into more earnings and have a new idea for you and, like we always do in Wall Street, unplugged Premium. So you can find out more information on how to subscribe to that on our website. Also, the Curzio One membership is open. And send me an email Frank@curzioresearch.com. Not only this deal. We have another deal that’s coming out. That’s really amazing.

Through one of my best contacts in the biotech space and this is a really really crazy deal that I just learned about and I said, okay, that’s going to come out, probably later half of March, which I’m excited about as well. But the deals that we’re getting into it took me a long time to build up the contact list because everybody wants money. Right, you could get money, get it to any deal you want. Pretty much, it’s really looking at the details, making sure the terms are in your favor, lowering the risk as much as possible, because you’re going to be wrong on some of these early stage sometimes, but the ones that you’re right on and getting in early, think about it. I mean, you know, peter Thiel, or whatever you’re getting into, like the Facebooks, early. You’re getting into some of these AI companies, early technology companies. We just did a financing for an AI company which we got a small piece of, and some of my investors are in who already have a lot of money on it. So and that was when I invested in it as well. So, if you’re interested in that membership and I would say, if you’re a credit investor, it’d be a lot better, even though if you’re not a credit, you get access to all products and services, but the accredited part is where you really get into these deals. Also, if you’re in that group, you’re still going to be invited to the conferences going forward which we tend to have annually. But um, email me Frank@curzioresearch.com and Daniel.

One last note for today. I have to give a shout out to my oldest daughter, who turned 17 today. So I love you, you’re amazing. I’m proud of you and don’t go too crazy. Please don’t do the things I did at 17. I’m begging man, but holy shit, does that time go fast? Everybody says that, but I know it really goes fast. I’m just really proud of her. It’s 17 today. We’re going to take her out to a nice dinner at one of her favorite restaurants. It should be really cool. So, happy birthday, baby. I love you and, Daniel, I will see you guys tomorrow. Take care, 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, due to the inconsistencies I see daily in the market.

I’m talking about specific investment ideas. I’m recommending and tracking each week that I believe will be impacted directly by everything I just talked about today. Plus, you’re going to get the chance to go even further down the rabbit hole with me and my co-host, who’s Daniel Creech, as we discuss which of these week’s trends could turn into massive windfalls. Could the big trends that we see lurk in horizon? Also, the news we’re picking up from our network of insiders, which has gotten bigger and bigger thanks to you and so many people listening to this podcast in over 100 countries, and you’ll get a chance to talk to me directly in my special Ask Me Anything Q&A session. All that and a lot more like premium interviews with world leaders in finance, technology, industry and politics. This is all part of Wall Street Unplugged Premium and becoming a member is super simple and super cheap, so head on over to WSUoffer.com to check it all out. Sign up today and you won’t miss a thing. That’s WSUoffercom. You won’t miss a thing. That’s WSUoffercom.

0:58:05 – 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.