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

Frank Curzio: How is it going out there? It’s April 1st. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, while breakdown the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. It’s really interesting in the change in sentiment that I’m seeing over the past week. Not just from financial media, but also from many of you, who I’m encouraging you to email in, let me know what’s going on. I’m getting hundreds and hundreds if not over a thousand emails, unbelievable guys, and try to answer all of you. I know you just know how busy I am, the research end, but just letting me know what’s going on in different areas. It helps tremendously when it comes to our research where people aren’t seeing. This is real time data guys. People who run businesses, let me hear from you.

Frank Curzio: Let me hear what’s coming on in your neck of the woods where, yeah well, here, what’s going on in New York and California and now Louisiana and certain places. But it’s important to keep track of everything because now Louisiana is becoming New York. And who knows if another state is going to become that especially, pretty big deal, if we’re looking to open up the markets after this month, right? After April. It’d be hard to do if you see other States start getting infected like New York, like California, which would have seen in Louisiana now.

Frank Curzio: But the sentiment that I’m seeing. Okay. And again from not just the media, listeners, subscribers, where the fear is not the market is going to come down even more. Well, what are we going to do if the market comes down? What’s unemployed… That’s not it. That’s not the emails I’m getting. That’s not the fear. Okay. It’s not the nervousness of how much more this market come down. Yeah. That was maybe the first two weeks of March. I got tons of those, but now the sentiment has turned to FOMO, which is fear of missing out. I can’t tell you how many emails I got saying, “Hey Frank. Thank you.” You know, “We listened to you early on in February. You were one of the few people that tell us that to sell an early February.” Some fantastic emails.

Frank Curzio: People tell me the amount of money that they saved. Really it just… If I had to put a number on, it’s one in $10 million in terms of our whole entire subscriber list, just from the emails that I’ve got. I’m hoping that it’s even more than that, but awesome. Really, really awesome. You guys are well positioned. I’ve always said bear markets are great for people who are prepared or you’re prepared. But now, the emails are turning to, “Hey Frank. This is great, but I’m a little worried about missing out.”

Frank Curzio: You wanted that global recession. We have it now. The U.S. can have more cases in China. Which we do, we’re going to blow that number away, especially over the… We’re already higher than China, but wait, I mean we could be two, three times size of China, when it all said and done, it’s crazy. But it’s just funny how when I’m watching the financial media, how much this has changed. It’s all like, “When do we get back in?” And then get a, “Frank, I trust you. I trust… I just want to know when to get back in. I don’t want to miss out in.” Look, I get it. I get it. Many of you have cash on the sidelines. You’re seeing names you thought about buying maybe in January or late last year, they’re now 25%, 30% lower. You’re seeing tons of stimulus coming into the market. It’s backstopping certain sectors, industries, even some stocks like the airlines.

Frank Curzio: We also saw an amazing, unbelievable 20% move higher in three days. I mean insane. Pretty close to 20% and that was before the last two days where stocks have sold off. Am doing this on Wednesday. Trying to get these things as close to real time as possible. If you’re a subscriber, I’m doing video updates now for my newsletters, because writing 10, 12, 15 page reports, by the time I write this, so much has changed. It changes in two, three days. It’s crazy. I’m getting used to the 1,000 point swings in the market on a daily basis. Am going to have one today. And right now I’m looking at it, and we’re down around 700 right now. Going back and forth, then 200, 700, but it’s got to be another 1,000%, very difficult, right? To really get information out to you as soon as possible. So that’s why, again, I’m doing this on Wednesday, seeing the markets pull back the last few days.

Frank Curzio: But getting back to the point here is, I get it. I get that you’re anxious. I get that you’re watching TV and hearing things like; near record inflows of cash poured into stocks last week, record insider buying, how in May things are going to start getting much better. When in effect, cases is going to peak, start coming down. How the second half of the year we’re going to see incredible, incredible, incredible growth. The economy gets turned back on. Everybody starts working and spending money again.

Frank Curzio: It is what I felt three weeks ago, four weeks ago until… Again, this is something where you have to be able to change your mind in a day. You could be along in stock you think is fantastic and data comes out. You have to be willing to change. You have to. Don’t let your ego get in the way and say, “Oh. It’s all right. I’m going to be right.” No. Things change. And they change on a daily basis. So, you can’t have an investment and try to say, “No, I’m looking to go all in.” And then realize that three… reaction that nobody knew about, like an AIG situation, when nobody knew that they would showing everything during the 2008 crisis. GE, commercial paper, they couldn’t pay their employees. The whole market froze. We thought we were doing a good deal letting Lehman fail, that lasted for a couple of hours before the entire market crash and everything was linked to each other.

Frank Curzio: But looking at TV and listening to this, I get the optimism out there. I do, I really do. Right? I think it’s crazy that so many people listening to those so-called analysts and great people that didn’t tell you this was coming. And so many of the people that I know, and a lot of my friends that I’ve been doing a podcast, and that’s how they felt and it’s fine. But just buying on the way down in certain sectors are going to do good. And this is a great… How many times have we heard this is the greatest buying opportunity over the last three weeks? Over the last three weeks.

Frank Curzio: It’s crazy. And this is before, if you take into account the 20% move up, this is before, you’re still down. Am not talking about from the top of the market, but as it was coming down, it just, “Oh. It’s a great buying opportunity.” It’s also, it’s what we keep hearing that. So, I get it. I get the optimism out there. I understand the questions. But the research I’ve been doing in this particular subject, and it’s coronavirus, the health impact, the economic impact of domestic and globally, the political response, the stimulus, the numbers, interviewing doctors, experts.

Frank Curzio: We’ve been ahead, way ahead from most of the people out there and most of the firms out there, much, much ahead. If someone’s been more ahead than us, let me know. I’d like to know because I want to follow them. I haven’t seen it, I’m not saying that to pat myself on the back at all. What I’m saying is, I want you to listen to my message right now, especially for those from the FOMO crowd. The fear of missing out. Worried about, “Oh. I’m not going to be able to buy these stocks at cheap levels.” Okay. Hear me out. Again, I don’t have a crystal ball. I could be totally wrong on this. Just like when I told you to take profits in February. Hey guys, the risk reward is favorable because if this Corona virus is bad as it’s showing up on my research, you’re going to thank me tremendously. And there’s a lot of names that are going to fall for 30% plus.

Frank Curzio: I said, but if I’m wrong, the market goes up a little bit and we’ll know it. The virus got contained, it just was limited to China and everything’s okay. Trading at 19 times forward earnings from a risk reward standpoint, I thought it was a great idea. Right now, again, we’re down 25% as a lot of this stuff factored in. I don’t know. But, at the end of the day we really can’t predict the future. We just look at all the data, all of our sources, and I feel like we got the best sources around in terms of doctors and people. Just you guys emailing me all the time and around the country that helped us understand what the impact of this, when it was in China early on. But this message I’m going to say, I want you to listen to because I am almost certain, almost certain that we haven’t hit a bottom yet. Okay. It might sound crazy, we’re down 25%. Just hear me out.

Frank Curzio: When we look at almost every past recession, you got 74, 91, 2002, 2008, we always retest the lows, always. Doesn’t come straight down and everything’s okay. Throw stimulus at it and everything goes higher and we’re okay and we’re out of it a couple of years later, everything’s fine. Now let’s take 2008 and follow me here. Okay? It’s that you follow me because am going to throw some numbers out, but you’re going to see why this makes so much sense.

Frank Curzio: So, in 2008 people believe that the market crashed, in 2008. It was terrible. And then went up a little bit towards the end of the year in January, then crushed again another 30% into March before we hit our March lows. But here’s what really happened. From January through March, the S&P 500 fell from 1400 to 1280. Then, from March to May, it actually went back up to 1400. Incredible move, 1280 to 1400. From May to June, we retested the lows. Falling from 1400 to 1280, broke through those lows. And by November, the S&P was trading at 750. But then we had a strong move from November to January, from 750 to 825 and then as I just said, from January through March, we had a final collapse from 825 to 666 which was the absolute low.

Frank Curzio: Why am I throwing all these numbers at you? If you looking at the actual price movements, if you’re looking at the events that took place. Okay. This is why I’m wasting so much time going over the details here. Every one of these moves was based on significant news. Okay? We thought in 2008 that, “Hey. We have a quick move to the downside early on. This is limited to mortgage companies, the housing market would take a hit.” Okay. Fine. That’s what everybody thought most people did. Yeah. You could read about a couple of traders, again, Big Short and everything, a couple of traders got it right. Then we realized by mid-August… And by the way, those guys in Big Short, it was mostly like into 2008, well in 2008, when they really start on the say in the market, but realize by mid-August that the entire investment banking community was invested in these shitty loans that were leveraged, 30, 40 times, synthetic CDOs and all this crazy stuff. You have the subprime debt. No. We’re like, “Whoa.” A Lot of companies have exposures, so we went down again. Right? Which was a surprise.

Frank Curzio: In September, we let Lehman fail, and we also pass tarp around the same time. We thought, “Hey, the government’s in here, 700 billion package. Finally, politicians agreed after night of the market crash,” similar to this event. And we thought that could be a bottom. Then we find out the entire financial system was frozen after we let Lehman fail. And then companies like AIG, GE had tons of exposure. GE have commercial paper, it couldn’t pay employees. So, money market funds fall, break that dollar, PEG. We had AIG insuring the whole industry, and just that they I had no idea what’s going on. They were just like, “Wow. Why is everyone giving us free money? We’re insuring all this stuff.” So all the bankers, they knew the shit was hitting the fan. They insured themselves to AIG. They didn’t realize AIG was insuring the whole entire world and that they wouldn’t be able to pay out. And that’s why the whole financial system was collapsed.

Frank Curzio: But people forget that time. The news flow was insane. The emotional roller coaster was insane. And the experts, the analysts, they thought they had everything under control, even the Fed, even the treasury. Before they realize, they would go, “AIG, what’s going on? What the hell? Oh. We let Lehman fell. Wow. That’s good right now. Wait, the whole market’s frozen?”

Frank Curzio: And then more and more problems just kept popping up. Now, why am I bringing up this event? Because it’s very significant. This was a black swan event in 2008, just like it is today. We’ve seen a 35% market crash followed by a nice move to the upside, but we’re still down around 25% in total right now. We’ve seen the government throw trillions at the problem, three different phases, but basically trying to backstop as much as they can, especially small businesses. But my question to you before you want to jump in and you have all this fear of missing out, simple question, do you really think this problem, a problem that’s never happened in the history of mankind? And when I say the history of mankind, yes, we had pandemics that’s… We’ve never had total countries shutting down for months, ever, ever. We don’t know the effect of that. We’re still not going to know the effect of that. But do you really believe that this problem, which is still not even close to being under control, could be solved in one month? You really believe that?

Frank Curzio: Do you think we’re not going to see things like we saw in 2008, just pockets in the market that are significantly impacted that we don’t know about yet. And we know that companies like Cheesecake Factory, Subway, H&M, they already said, “Look, we can’t pay rent.” And the government’s like, “Hey. No problem. We got you back. And make sure you don’t fire our employees because we got their back too.” Again, all these trillions of dollars being spent that the government’s not going to make back. Right? The worst thing here is the government made, and I said this numerous times, a worst thing that happened during the credit crisis is the government made money on everything they invested in. So, what do you think was going to happen when we had the next crisis? They’re going to just invest blindly and throw as much money in.

Frank Curzio: It’s different. They’re not taking equity stakes in banks, they’re not backstopping AIG, they’re not putting Fannie and Freddie conservatorship and taking every single housing loan in America under one umbrella. Once this market came back, which it came back a couple of years later, these entities are producing billions in profits for the government right now. So, now they’re throwing everything at it. But there is not throwing it at consumers who don’t have jobs, throwing it at these companies that can’t pay their rent in terms of… Well, they’re going to be fine by next month once everything reopens. That’s the plan, right? Even though they’ve run through all the working capital, even though there’s no way they’re going to see the same demand today or next month and a month after, even six months from now that they saw or pre-coronavirus, there’s no way.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. The government’s there and they’re backstopping everything, but I have to tell you something, all these companies that aren’t paying rent, what do you think is going to happen to the wreets? What do you think is going to have to Simon properties? There’s a reason why that stock’s getting destroyed, Tangier Outlets. Today alone, the real estate index is down 7% by itself, by itself. Why? Because these companies are not getting bailouts. They’re super leveraged. Maybe Simon Properties I haven’t looked yet, but Tundra… Some of these may not have investment great credit ratings, which is the debt that the government is investing in. Even if they do, it’s not AAA, right? It’s lower than that. It’s getting downgraded across the board. Its stocks are getting crushed. People aren’t paying their rent. You’re seeing hundreds of downgrades of credit, which you’re not really seeing publicly.

Frank Curzio: Disney got downgraded their credit rating. GE, Ford. Am talking about smaller companies, major companies. What about the CLO market? I talked to you about this. Credit on loan obligations. This is a high yielding market not getting bailed out. You pull these loans together and you got nice ratings on these things and you try to make them safe because there’s a reason why you pulling them together, right? Because the more you pulled together, the more safe of that investment traunches and this way you can leverage the hell out of it. Right? So these guys are super leveraged. Now they’re like, “Whoa. We got to back up.” And it’s just erupting this market. I always talk about it as a major market, a huge market.

Frank Curzio: What about Europe? You’re all going to exist at a couple of years from now. This is an economy that was basically in recession pre-coronavirus. I mean they still haven’t recovered from the credit crisis. Their banks are not recapitalized. And now you shut down total economies. When we started, Lombardy in Italy, when they announced the lockdown, it was February 22nd. It’s April 1st, there’s still a lockdown.

Frank Curzio: Total countries on lockdown. Are you going to see that demand? There was a 30, 35% profits come from overseas for the S&P 500. Well, you have India completely shut down now, you have Europe completely shut down now, you have China. Who knows what’s going in China. If you want to believe those numbers, I don’t. Nobody in Wuhan the past week has gotten the coronavirus. We are seeing over 150 cases of people who got it that got it again, and they said those aren’t that bad. That’s really scary to me. But just from that data alone should tell you in Wuhan, maybe you shouldn’t be going back to work, and they tried it.

Frank Curzio: They tried to go back to work, and they’re saying a lot of stores are open. Nike announced that their stores are open. I mean who’s going to these stores and how many people you have working in them? And it probably operating at 20% capacity right now. And saying the stores are open, and we’re getting 100% of what we got pre-coronavirus compared to saying they’re open and we’re not really getting anything, that’s a big difference. I don’t know if I get too excited on that news. But you’re looking at Europe, it’s just a complete disaster. You look at China is… China’s saying that, “Most of the cases are in Wuhan.” And then, “There’re not growing cases anymore.”

Frank Curzio: If you looked at the numbers, it’s statistically impossible that you could tell us whatever it’s 80,000 people got infected. Just look at the numbers at Wuhan. How many people work there, have any people work next to each other, how many people are in that economy? So, if it’s that good and everything’s okay, then why you canceling conferences and major conferences, again, political conferences, things they have every year and Beijing? Which they just canceled. Why? Why are you postponing that for if things were okay?

Frank Curzio: You can’t really believe it’s coming out of China, but you’re looking at the rest of the economies on lockdown right now. But forget about those problems. Forget about those. And by the way, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t want you guys to just jump off a roof if they listen to this.

Frank Curzio: All I’m saying is for those of you who have fear of missing out, just understand there’s just not enough information out there. Because the biggest problem of all by far, and please, if anyone could answer this, email me, frank@curzioresearch.com. What’s going to happen when we open up the markets in May? Do you know? I don’t know. I have no idea. What’s the plan? Is the lockdown over for every state, I find that hard to believe. Yes. It should be over for maybe in New York and California, they were early on locking their economies down. Louisiana is going to be locked down. And hell, I live in Florida. People on the border of Georgia, Florida and East Coast and they’re blocking New Yorkers from coming in. Saying once they come in, they have to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Frank Curzio: So, even if you’re coming in and you’re visiting someone, you have to self-quarantine in a room, there no basements in Florida. Like we saw it, Chris Cuomo was in his basement. Who just… I like Chris, I think he’s really good and he has the coronavirus now. So, he’s reporting on CNN from that point of view. But, anyone who has New York plates in Florida people are calling the cops on it. It’s crazy. I have Florida plates. I’ve been here for 10 years.

Frank Curzio: But seriously, could you answer that question for me? I have no idea. Can everyone go back to work? Well you start up sports again. Say you spun a baseball and it’s August, whatever. What happens if one person gets a coronavirus? It’s highly likely. And not just eradicating this disease and it’s totally gone. It’s not, it’s still spreading and it’s still going to spread for months. It’s not going to end in Ap… Like you’re putting a date on when a virus is going to start spreading. How crazy is that as it is? Maybe it’s just a guessing game. But seriously, if that, how you’re going to completely shut down baseball, shut down sports again. And maybe until we have a vaccine, which isn’t going to happen until most likely next year, but hoping, were praying November, December, but a lot of these companies said they’re going to start their testing, start their testing in September.

Frank Curzio: If you put that through the FDA process, which again, it’s going to be a rush, but you got to be careful if you’re rushing something like that. Because, you might find out it’s great for the Corona virus, but it’s not great for someone who has diabetes. I don’t know. You have to go through the safety process. That’s what phase one, phase two, phase three are about. Phase one, let’s see if this thing works. Okay. We have a small sample size now. The phase two is much, much bigger. And then phase three is this massive study.

Frank Curzio: Placebos, the percentage, how much is it better? This whole entire massive study which you go through, which takes eight years to go through for these biotech companies. You’re going to rush that? I mean, just put in perspective of if anyone thinks we’re going to have a vaccine in a couple of weeks. You might, but you’d be crazy to take it if it’s not tested. I’m not taking it. I mean, you’re asking people to take a vaccine to prevent a disease that they may not get that has no safety measures and you don’t know how it’s going to impact you? Man, I don’t know. Good luck. You may want to take it, not me.

Frank Curzio: It’s serious. What is the plan here? What is the plan? Do we all go back to work and we practice social distancing? Have all people stay on lockdown? Oh, we’re going to extend it. Extend a lockdown, which again, it’s not a real lockdown. It’s not like an Italy lockdown. I’ve interviewed plenty of people. Go to Curzio Research YouTube page. Interviewed people who are locked down in Italy, two of them. Talking to people in South Korea, talking to people in China. Yeah, we are not really on lockdown. It’s not really a lockdown when you can go into restaurants and just pick up your out, that’s not really locked down.

Frank Curzio: Another problem. What are companies expected to report this year in terms of sales and earnings? They have no idea. They have no idea. So there’s a reason why sell side analysts are not updating their estimates on individual names. I mean, they don’t have any data for the companies or any guidance to go by. You look at Apple, it still has 27 buy ratings. That’s what it had in February. It has the same now. And how many downgrades have we seen in large cap stocks during this 35% collapse? Again, it’s not 25%. We haven’t seen that many. I mean, give me a break. And why am I bringing this up? It’s the uncertainties. I mean, you have so many uncertainties as analysts, we want to have some kind of base.

Frank Curzio: Yes, we have to forecast and it’s tough, but when companies are saying, we have no idea. We don’t even know if we’re getting our products from supply chains. We don’t even know how many are people working in supply chains right now. Sometimes it’s a lot, sometimes it’s not. Maybe someone got infected, they pulled everything for a day. You’re not getting updates. We’re not getting anything, and we’re not supposed to… Go into the market and say fear of missing out, you may be right. Maybe we find a cure for the virus in a month. I mean, the vaccines, we’ll talk about vaccine, maybe we find some crazy plant that cures it. I don’t know. Magic bullet, everything is great and the economy comes roaring back and stocks go a lot higher.

Frank Curzio: Could that happen? Maybe. Highly unlikely. But the uncertainties, I mean, just some of the ones that I mentioned there, and there’s tons of risks out there that nobody is seeing right now. Just like we have at every black swan event. And you can’t tell me that this whole entire problem, the first time in history when countries are locking down due to pandemic that we’re going to solve this problem in one month. In one month. That is insane. Because I’d tell you, the markets that are going to be bailed out, we’re going to see a phase four, a phase five, phase six stimulus plan. Expect those.

Frank Curzio: And even when it comes to testing, to me it’s incredible that only 750,000 tests have been administered so far, been conducted. How crazy is that? How crazy is that? Yeah, we saw it was past the five or 10 minute tests you could do from home or less than 15 minutes, whatever it is. Let’s get them out into the market right away. But still you’re not even seeing as many people tested right now. Is the reason why Dr. Fauci, president’s right hand man, the person who everybody’s listening to here, I think he’s fantastic. I love that he loves being in the media at all times, which is really cool. But he said two days ago that 2 million people in the US may die without proper measures.

Frank Curzio: I mean, holy cow, you want to scare the shit out of everybody, there it is. Now you’re forcing people and saying, “You need to stay home. You need to stay home.” We can’t stay home much longer. We cannot have this economy closed for another two, three months. But when you’re throwing out 2 million people in the US may die if they’re not going to stay home, I mean, the fear that you’re putting in people of something, when you’re looking at the statistics, and again, I know everything about this disease. I understand it. My mom, four and a half months in the hospital from a botched hernia surgery. Diabetes and COPD. She’s in the hospital right now.

Frank Curzio: She was in a hospital. She just got home six, seven weeks ago. Thank God. But I know she’s at significant risk of this and I get it, but keeping the economy closed for several months, how could we survive this? This is going to be incredible. You have 34,000 or so that sadly passed away. And what about the oil market? Oil down 50% this month. How long before these companies filed bankruptcy? Is that factored in? I mean, there’s millions and millions of people that work in this industry. Is this industry getting bailed out as of now? No. And guys, I’m going to give you some statistics here.

Frank Curzio: Again, I like throwing numbers at you because this is the type of research that I’m doing. I’m not really hearing this too much, but the US was not in great shape in early February from an economic standpoint. We were okay. Low interest rates were better than everybody else. We have an election year coming, talking about what tax reforms with president Trump. We weren’t in great shape though. I mean, you were seeing sales decline and this is pre-coronavirus. I mean, hotels and motels were down over 3%, motor vehicles were down 1%, clothing down 1%, this is pre-coronavirus. Transportation services were down, delivery service.

Frank Curzio: Casinos were down 1.3% before this happened. Now, you’ve seen some of these industries travel down 70%. I mean, restaurant traffic’s down 70%, auto sales are down close to 40%, port activity is down 30%. These numbers are happening now. The air traffic when you include foreign is down 90%. Are you kidding me? Who the hell can model for that? You’re looking at unemployment, is unemployment factored? I don’t know. There’s 30 million small business that employs 60 million people. Most of these places are shut down, they’re offering takeout. And you look at 30, 40 million people unemployed, is not just possible, but very likely, which will put us at a 20, 25% unemployment rate.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know if that’s factored in. But the fact that we don’t know, it could be 40, 45 million, even more, that you promoting companies that have employees that make less than 45 grand to lay them off for four months because the government’s going to cover the costs. You can have these people work from home, rehire them four months from now and then give them a small bonus. I’m not doing that, but there’s a lot of companies that are going to do that. They’re going to use the government and their money to help their businesses and help businesses that are doing okay that really don’t need it. That’s the nature of these bailouts. That’s the fallout.

Frank Curzio: I mean, it’s 30% of the Russell 2000 has zero profits. 30% reporting zero profits. They never reported profits. This was pre-coronavirus. Most of these names are leveraged. They have high yielding debt, which is not being backstopped. Is that factored in? I don’t know. Small business loans. Is that going to cover all this? All the people getting laid off, is it going to cover it? Maybe not, but will probably going to announce another stimulus plan. So I’m throwing these things at you. Okay? I’m not trying to scare the hell out of you. What I’m trying to tell you is the uncertainty is unbelievable. There’s nothing out there. There’s not even a plan that we have.

Frank Curzio: We don’t even know how long we’re going to be on lockdown. Companies don’t know what the profits revenues are going to generate and for people that just say, “Second half of the year is going to be great.” Come on. How do you determine that? And what, you just woke up and had a good dream? Because it’s not based on the data. This is why I remain cautious, why I’m telling you to be patient. And it’s just a month, it’s just a month. It’s not like, oh, you’re getting that itch to trade it. If you are, then trade a little bit, have some fun in the markets, knock yourself out. Instead of being Bank of America who just put Apple on their best ideas list.

Frank Curzio: Just today, Apple who completely removed their guidance for this year, they have no idea what they’re going to earn, but B of A put them on the best ideas list. Apple who is really a hardware company that had trouble producing tens of millions of phones when China was on lockdown for 10 weeks, and now China’s open, everything’s fine according to China, which it’s not, but the rest of the world’s on lockdown and they’re going to stay on lockdown for at least another 30 days, likely more closer to 60. How many people are going to be buying iPhones? But BoA just put Apple on their best ideas list and that was a company that doesn’t know if it’s new iPhone will get launched this year.

Frank Curzio: They already said that pushing out, it’s supposed to get launched every September and here’s a company that didn’t tell us if people are canceling orders for the 11 because you weren’t able to produce them, because the 12 is going to come out. And that’s big data. That’s very important to understand. All of these uncertainties, yet Bank of America, “Apple’s on our best ideas list, even though we have no clue what the hell is going on.” That’s crazy. As an analyst, that’s crazy. If you’re an investor and you believe that, it’s fine. Maybe you have a feeling, maybe you think, hey, look at that cash, balance, 100 billion.

Frank Curzio: They’re going to be much better shape. They’re not going to spend their dividend. But you don’t have the data. I mean, that’s why we pay people. That’s why you pay me. That’s why I have subscribers here, to try to tell you this stuff based on the research and my experience. There’s no research here, and Bank of America is saying, “Hey, Apple’s on our best ideas list.” Remember, it’s in their best interest to make sure all their clients are invested. If they’re not, they don’t have to pay fees on that. And these guys are bleeding cash. But on their best ideas list, I mean what the… I won’t curse, but come on.

Frank Curzio: So these are the uncertainties. Will it open up the door to great opportunities? Yes, it will. It might take six months. It might take a year, year and a half. Maybe we get more clarity. Yeah, it’s going to open up. Yes, you’ve going to have an amazing buying opportunity, but don’t jump in ahead of all this. I mean, there’s too much uncertainty out there. Say that we fixed this problem in one month, that we’ve never had before, there’s no playbook for, we don’t know what we’re doing here, which is fine. You could point fingers as much as you want, no matter who’s in office or whatever, again, this is all new. I mean, people getting pissed off that we don’t have more masks and more ventilators in stock.

Frank Curzio: Are you kidding me? I mean, so for 20 years we use, whatever, 50,000 ventilators. We were supposed to just magically produce like 6 million of them because we might have a problem one day? It doesn’t work like that. Businesses don’t work like that. You can point the fingers as much as you want, but this is daily, day by day. We go by and try to figure this out. And really, we don’t have a plan in place. But once it does, once we go back to work, once people look at this more like the flu and not a plague that you’re going to die immediately if you get it, which is what a lot of people believe right now because we’re scaring the hell out of them.

Frank Curzio: I mean, people don’t get nervous around the flu. Yes, I get pissed if someone has the flu in one of my kids’ classes and they let them go to school, I get pissed off. I’m like, come on, keep them home. But that’s what we should do. Keep people home who have the coronavirus. Yes, it spreads a lot faster. Again, I know the statistics, but let’s get a plan in place. And once we see more certainty, then I’ll start picking away at. I am going to start picking away. There’s companies out there that makes sense that you going to see their profits, you’re going to see their earnings. Not many, but there’s a few. Doing a lot of research of running screens to my subscribers and I present them with these screens.

Frank Curzio: But just be careful out there, it’s not a rush. This is your money. This isn’t a game. This isn’t like I got the itch to trade, fear of missing out. I mean, be careful. I mean, the fear should be of you losing your job. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are going to lose their job. There’s a lot of people that can’t afford these. Most businesses have a three months’ supply of cash to withstand something like this and that’s based on models of the revenue declining 25, 30%, not 100%, 90%. Just be careful out there guys. Trust me, I’m doing a lot of research for you.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to let you know when to get back in, stop picking away, but for now there’s still too much risk and I’d be very, very, very surprised if we do not retest those lows just like we did every other time because there’s just so much uncertainty out there. There’s problems out there we haven’t identified. Real estate getting crushed today because no one’s paying their rent. Everyone’s saying, oh well, Cheesecake Factory and the Subways, they are going to be okay. Their employees are going to be okay. It filters down. What about the Rits? What about their employees?

Frank Curzio: Now, they’re going to have to lay off people. They’re leveraged. Their bonds are going to get downgraded. They can’t get any capital from the government. It’s the whole infrastructure that you have to support here. It can’t be certain businesses and just travel, it’s a whole infrastructure and that’s what we’re going to see, phase four, phase five, phase six come out in the stimulus. And we’re probably going to see a little bit through this month. Anyway, just doing a lot of work for you. I want to present some of those ideas for all of you… The fear of missing out and you want to jump back in, I just explained at least 10 uncertainties that are pretty crazy that scare me that again, is that factored in?

Frank Curzio: I’m not too sure down 25%, but we’re likely going to retest the lows here, so be very, very, very careful. Now, I have a great interview today. It’s with Genia Turanova, who’s the editor of Curzio Research Moneyflow Trader newsletter. It’s a newsletter I use as a safe option strategy to bet against stocks and sectors, Genia has been absolutely killing it and just locking in huge, huge gains. Tons of triple digit winners. Again, the markets in the favor, but even pre-cash, she was doing incredible. She’s just taken over this product. We’re seeing a lot of demand for this newsletter right now because I’ve been aggressively marketing it.

Frank Curzio: And why am I aggressively marketing it? Because I want you to be in the right areas. I want you to learn how to hedge yourself. I want you to be able to make money when stocks go down. There’s a market that’s going to be like this for a very long time, for a very long time. Where’s it going to be pockets that do good and other pockets that do bad. And this is a newsletter that helps you out. I’m not trying to sell a growth newsletter to you right now. I’m not trying to sell a crypto newsletter to you right now. I mean, this is something that’s going to help you and we’ve been sending out special offers on this product and a lot of people are coming in and asking me questions and we’re answering it.

Frank Curzio: Might not be right for everyone, but again, it’s conservative option strategies. Genia is going to break this down. She’s going to talk about some of the past positions that did well. She’s also going to talk about what she thinks about the current markets and it’s not all bearish. I mean, this is a newsletter that doesn’t only focus on bearish. I never want to handcuff anyone. Analysts that I bring on, so if she sees opportunities from some of her good sauces on the long side, she’s going to put them in a newsletter.

Frank Curzio: So it has that focus of options and betting against stocks and sectors, but it’s not 100% focused where she can’t go long here or buy calls and things like that for certain stocks, but she breaks that all down. The interview is going to be really, really fantastic. And so, she’s been doing an unbelievable job. One amazing hire and we’re very lucky to have her, but you’re going to hear from her directly in a few minutes. And in my educational segment, I’m going to share a strategy with you that’s likely going to make you a lot of money. It’s one that you’re not going to hear any place else. It’s one that you need to do now because earning season is coming.

Frank Curzio: A lot of companies are going to start reporting this month, later this month. Something that we’ve never used before because we could use it in these extreme times. And to me it’s like a lamp. It’s like a lamp. So I’m going to give you lots of ideas, how to play this trend, how to make money off it. Again, it’s going to be a fantastic… I don’t want to build it up too much, but trust me, it’s going to be a fantastic educational segment where I’m going to teach you how you could stay ahead of the sell side analysts because a lot of them aren’t reporting anything right now.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to show you exactly what I mean and showcase one technology company that everyone loves that I think is an incredible short right now. So that’s coming up a little while. But first, let’s get to my interview with the one and only Genia Turanova. Genia Turanova, thanks so much for joining us again on Wall Street Unplugged.

Genia Turanova: Hi, glad to be here.

Frank Curzio: Well, let’s start with the markets because when we were speaking in mid-February, I remember you saying investors finally have a legit reason to sell stocks. Now, the market is down around 25% or so, was down 35% and came back. What are your thoughts here? I mean, nobody cares about the past anymore, right? They want to know when to get in, should they be buying stocks? I mean, do you see more pain ahead? Is the pain limited to some sectors in stocks or maybe are you seeing names to buy but there’s so much going on and we’re hearing so much information on TV. Let’s get the scoop. What do you think? What are you doing with your portfolio and in the markets?

Genia Turanova: Yes, I agree back in February, the market did have a legitimate reason to sell and unfortunately, the reason was much more than just a random reason and it did accelerate. And again, unfortunately they have even more reasons to sell now than they did back in February. So I’m not sure that it’s completely over. And again, we have a few factors to watch. I think I’ll go over that in a minute, but I just wanted to say that there is a positive factor that so much liquidity is being thrown, pretty much no holding back in terms of for the stimulus and the Fed.

Genia Turanova: So we may not see as much of a sell off as we did this past quarter, but the markets still needs to find its footings and it will be looking for a few very concrete and legitimate reasons to stop selling and finally get some buying, real buying going on and not just short covering. I think they need to see stimulus, actually materialize and maybe the next wave of stimulus, they need to see liquidity and the Fed has been good in providing liquidity but they need to keep doing this and they need to see the slowdown in the rate of spread and actually the legitimate reasons to believe that it’s not going to re-return in the near term at least.

Genia Turanova: And maybe not all three must be 100% there, not all three factors, but they should be there. Until we see all these powers coming together, the government, the Fed and the health community, we will probably be in the precarious situation.

Frank Curzio: Now, Genia, you said something that’s really important here because you used the words concrete and you and you said evidence. So you are very familiar with the sell side analyst. You’re very familiar with again, the Goldman Sachs, the research behind JP Morgan’s the Morgan Stanley, right? Those are the sell side analysts. You’re very familiar with that part of the business. What I’m seeing on this end is that they haven’t updated a lot of their numbers, especially on particular stocks. And why is that? Because the companies aren’t giving them any information because they don’t know.

Frank Curzio: They completely removed guidance. When do you see this because on the health side, look, we’re all looking for evidence that we’re going to see a slowdown? We get it, all right? We’re going to see a slowdown in cases and hopefully New York gets better first and California, and we know it’s spreading in Louisiana. I mean, we’re watching TV all the time. Most people, everybody’s home. What are some of the things that you said, like from a liquidity from, because what I’m worried about here is the things I can’t see. And that’s usually what happens in black swan events, where if you can’t tell me that this problem has been solved in one month, throwing 2 trillion on a fiscal and backstopping these other industries.

Frank Curzio: I mean, we’re doing this interview on Wednesday, we’re seeing real estate fall by 7% probably because that’s not being backstop and everyone’s saying that they can’t pay their rent. I mean, you mentioned some of the things that you have to see concrete-wise, but even from the earning side, are you seeing names that… We do have the Walmarts, maybe the Costcos, but most of these companies as you know because you follow this industry, they’re not putting out any reports. Companies are not putting out guidance. And to me, it’s pretty scary that people just want to jump in blindly into companies that aren’t reporting anything.

Genia Turanova: Mm-hm. Yeah. In fact, they’re pulling their guidance and let’s say, Domino’s Pizza today, they pulled their guidance despite the relatively benign environment for the takeout.

Genia Turanova: I mean, they kind of benefited from the need to… Not to go into the restaurant, but to take out the food, and they both build guidance. Why? Because they don’t know. And they’re in fact, even if they have some understanding of what’s going on, they’re not going to say it out loud because that may change, and they’re responsible for every word thereafter. So, I think what will happen again, from the concrete point of view, when companies start giving guidance, as bad as it is, I would rate it as a positive factor.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, that is interesting. Because we did see Micron offer a little bit of guidance, which I think they’re pretty crazy because yeah, that sock went up and pushed a lot of data center stocks up. But they also… You got to listen to the whole thing, read the whole transcript of the conference call, because they said they are having trouble from their suppliers getting deliveries. So if they don’t get deliveries, they can’t sell their products.

Frank Curzio: But it’s just a good example of a company that said, “Hey, here’s what we expect. Here’s the impact.” And that stock has outperformed the market. But when I look at your newsletter and say, you know, you’re editor of Moneyflow Trader, you’ve done incredibly well. You have mark conditions behind you. But even before that, since you’ve taken over this product, what you do is use conservative option strategy to bet against stocks and sectors.

Frank Curzio: I know most people, most people out there, most investors, they don’t understand options. Some of them are scared of them. They think they could lose everything. Again, there’s just that misconception out there that if you don’t understand it, you’ll never do it. But how can you explain some of the things you’re doing? Because you do tell a mom and pop investors, and it is a conservative option strategy where you’re only going to lose as much money as you put in. Again, this is one of your strategies.

Frank Curzio: But you know, it’s not like you’re going short and you have unlimited risk, right? Stock keep going higher and higher, you get blown out. Explain maybe some of these strategies that you’re using, because you are starting to get lots of subscribers to your newsletter, you are performing good, and I see these market conditions staying around much, much, much, much longer than everybody else. Not to the point where the market’s going to, you know, completely crash and stay there for three years. But you’re going to see sectors, I mean this is consumer behavior that’s being impacted, whether it’s travel industry. There’s going to be so many opportunities where people will have to learn how to hedge their portfolios. Right? So why don’t you go with some of those maybe strategies that you use to get everybody in tune with it?

Genia Turanova: Well, thanks for the kind words. I’m doing my best, and I think the methods that I use, they work in pretty much any environment. What I start with, before I go out with a recommendation, I look at the macro picture. And the macro picture is easier, in a sense, to assess. Because it’s really what we all live in, and it’s the news and it’s the trends that are, again, easy to see if you look from more again the high output. And then, and once you look at the macro picture, you’re trying to determine, as you just said, which sectors, industries, and maybe later on companies, will benefit all those in this changing macro environment. This method applies, even if for a sell side analyst to stay quiet, because let’s say the GDP will decline. It will decline by double digits.

Genia Turanova: Nobody’s questioning this and the, the only difference is by how much. But it’s not going to be declining uniformly. So we’re going to see some pockets of relatively steady business, and a lot of businesses that are going to decline. But nothing’s really changed in my analysis compared to what I did, let’s say in October, November, December. Because I looked at the macro picture, I looked at sectors that are not going to do well, and then I drill down to specific companies. And the method that I use to capitalize on this temporary or long term dislocations and discrepancies is a to trade options.

Genia Turanova: And options are not, as you said, they’re not that scary as many people think. You need to know what you’re doing, and I’ll help you with that as much as I can, and you need to know your limits, which is relatively easy with options. Because as long as you understand that you cannot lose more than you invest, you just set the amount that you can afford to lose, and then you place a few trades. The payout can be very significant. It’s not going to be at five, ten percent most of the time. It’s more often than not. If you do it right, it should be well into double digits, often in triple digits. And yes, you can lose 100% of your investment. Absolutely. But you limit your risk by not putting your grocery money or your rent money into this.

Frank Curzio: Now you brought up a lot of good points there because it’s not just with the option strategies that you’re using. It’s also in your newsletter you’ll see a few long positions, you might see a little bit of a call buying. You throw a lot of things in there for the… I mean it’s mostly has a focus where you’re betting against stocks, but you have other things to, right? I mean throughout the newsletter where if you do see ideas because you’re so in tune with the market that you can go long at and buy calls. Right?

Genia Turanova: Right. Absolutely. Again, this market wasn’t very receptive to calls over the past three months, quarter, but in January we closed a call trade. The market was slowing down. It wasn’t the biggest trial ever, we made money on the call trade. And yes, you can buy stocks. I’ll try it. If you think that their timeline is uncertain because options have expiration. So you need to be mindful of that. You can buy stocks. I’ll try it for let’s say if it’s a small or micro-cap, and options either don’t trade or not like fit enough. And you know, this is an investment service where I can pretty much go anywhere the market tells me to. And again, thanks for the way it’s set up. I think we can do good things here.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Being in this industry for so long it’s… I realize that, because this is what happened to me, guys, really quick story. When I was in charge of a stock under 10 newsletter and it was one of the biggest newsletters at the street.com at the time. And It was just stocks under 10. I was limited to stocks under 10. I saw amazing ideas, small cap ideas, but I had to make sure the price was under 10, I was limited. And then we tried to get into, you know, even when I went to Stansberry, it was a small stock specialist and companies under $1 billion. And again, I mean you’re someone who’s in tune with the market and was trained to know every sector, every stock and just, you know, totally been in this 25 years. So many ideas I couldn’t share.

Frank Curzio: So now, taking it over to this, I never want to put handcuffs on great analysts. The newsletter has a focus and yes, that’s working, but also if you’re seeing different ideas you should be… You know, and I said it to all my analysts. You should be able to go where you want a little bit, where you have the theme of the newsletter. But that was always important to me and I’m glad you brought that up because there’s a short news, like if you see a great idea, you talk to your contacts. I mean not to share that idea with subscribers simply because you know that the newsletters is strictly options or something like that. Just to me that this didn’t make sense. You’re not doing what’s in the best interest of the clients, I think, and subscribers. So I’m glad you brought that up.

Frank Curzio: Now I’m going to bring up something else because you have been an income analyst for a very, very long time. It’s something I know that you’re passionate about. In fact, we’re launching a new product, temporarily called Income Intelligence. We have beta versions going out for our Curzio One members and we’re going to try to launch this over the next few weeks or so. Talk about… For me, as a publisher, income newsletters usually don’t do that good. But when I spoke to you, and I always wanted an income newsletter like this, because when you hear income newsletters, what do you hear all the time? Okay. Buy good quality names that pay above average dividends, right?

Frank Curzio: What’s different from your methodology that’s going to change this where people aren’t going to feel like they’re getting the normal income newsletter where you got to tell me to buy J and J like I don’t know that. What are some of the things that you’re doing in this newsletter that are going to be different, that are going to… Some strategies in terms of what’s going to be different. It’s not going to be a status quo for this newsletter, and express that to everybody out there.

Genia Turanova: Well, let me start with the simple statement that everything is different. So my methods are applicable to, I think, applicable to most markets or if not any market. But today’s market is very different from what it was a few months ago because income stocks are becoming rare. Income stocks have becoming more concentrated into a few areas of the market, and many income stocks that traditionally have been reliable payers, they’re either drastically declined in value, which means that we’ll probably near terrible start cutting dividends, like mortgage rates for instance, or some other rates. Retail investment trust, as you know, is a traditional income stock, income growth, for most, if not every, income investor to get their reliable, steady income. And I’ve been doing this over the years. Again, dangerous group. Really need to be either extremely selective and avoid some specific areas and names.

Genia Turanova: Banks are not, I don’t know whether they’re going to be raised in their dividends anytime soon. Cruise lines used to be a dividend payer. What do you think happens now? So the dividend investment is really, really different. What I think will happen now is that they’re invested in income stocks. We’ll need to be much more found that in reality you don’t just buy for the yield. And I would never tell the person or subscriber or any of my friends to buy for the yield. But it’s true today more than it was before. You have to be in a very good research based portfolio, and then you have a chance for not only for having income on it but also for growing income. And to create that, you know, combination of stocks I actually compare them to each other and not just to the market and to their industries. I look at portfolios, I want to see how stocks move together over time and to correlate the past returns. And to correlate the expectations, you can actually create a safer portfolio.

Frank Curzio: And you brought up something good there Genia too. Because a lot of people when they look at, you know where PE is or the forward PE, which again this is different times, nobody knows what the forward PE is because companies aren’t telling you what they’re going to, you know, what have they pulled their guidance. But when you’re looking at a company that’s trading at 25 times forward earnings and say pays a 2% yield, people may look at it and say, that’s really expensive because the market was trading at whatever, 1718 times forward earnings. However, you just mentioned something important, maybe you could just go into it a little bit more. That stock may be expensive for the market, but maybe it’s a cloud company. Maybe it’s a growth company and deserves that multiple. And also, even though it’s expensive relative to the rest of the market, which isn’t growing as fast, but when you compare it to individual companies within its sector, it may be the cheapest among those. And one of the fastest growing. Right?

Genia Turanova: Right. It does happen. Not too often, but again that’s why you need to be on the lookout for pockets of value. And what you really need as an income investor today, every day, in the past and in the future, you will need income growth. And as you mentioned, some textiles don’t yield 2% and they fall off the radar of many income investors. It’s completely wrong. These companies will be able to maintain and increase their dividends. You need to be able to say, 1% yield today is going to be 2% yield tomorrow and the stock price is likely to go up, why not buy it today? Even though that yield might not be as much as you are really looking for. It’s what you look for in relative to the business, in relative to the sector, and in combination of for future expectation.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it definitely makes sense. Definitely makes sense. So, I want to… Before we go any further too, I know that people love this. They love ideas. Of course. We always make sure we don’t give away stocks that are in our newsletters that people pay for. What are some individual ideas, because you know, you hinted that hey, you know we could see more downside ahead but there are little pockets here and there that seems like, you know, you got excited about. Is there a way to play this where you see some plays that are going to continue to see more downside here even though they are down a lot. And also are you seeing any opportunities pop up that you could see these earnings, you could see what’s going on, they’re in great markets right now where they’re not being impacted or affected from the coronavirus?

Genia Turanova: Mm-hm. Okay. I think the difficult sectors are the obvious ones, but that doesn’t mean it is any less true. So I’ll just have to say because you need to stay away, continue to stay away from more travel stocks at least in near term. From cruise lines, from the near to medium term. Even if they survive. Airlines going to be very difficult, although they are backstopped, but then there’s the U.S. government, so again, something to keep on your radar.

Genia Turanova: Restaurant stocks are going to have a hell of a time coming back, except for the largest and the strongest. So some areas that will continue to be under pressure and I’m just scratching the surface here, but most of these are true. People know that it is true. And doesn’t mean it’s any less true. Similar situation is for upside. Even though you need to trail down every single company that you like, there are still sectors in which you have to concentrate your efforts and today it’s stock, it’s a consumer staples, and it’s the best of healthcare. For me, these are the three sectors that I would look at first. And of course there are more. But again, I don’t want to push any ideas before they’re fully developed.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I know we’ve got to get a lot of research behind these ideas. And again, so let’s finish the interview this way. Because you’re in Staten Island, right? So you’re on the basically lockdown. Talk about that experience, because you see it better than most, New Yorkers, you’ve seen the restaurants. I mean it also helps out in your analysis where someone in Kansas might not be seeing it or someone else in… And you know, again that’s an extreme example and totally opposite. But you know, being in that market and seeing places close that were actually booming a month and a half ago. I mean talk about that experience because a lot of people are from New York, yes, I have a lot of listeners from New York, but you know, most of the base is from outside New York. And they really don’t understand what a lockdown actually is because not every state is on complete lockdown.

Genia Turanova: Well, the buses are empty, subways are empty, and not that I saw it with my own eyes because I’m locked in my house, and I don’t really want to venture outside just because I was asked not to. And it’s a reasonable thing to do. But everything that from my friends, from my colleagues, from my contacts and from pictures that I see, it’s eerie, it’s scary, and it’s really the complete shutdown of the city. New York you can never complete shut shutdown because you know we have garbage pickup and the public transportation is running, but it’s not really the New York, the feel and the sense of New York.

Genia Turanova: Subway, I don’t know if you can ever, even in the midnight hour, you could see subway stations that empty or subway trains without any people. But the public transportation is running because it’s needed for people who must go out. Streets are empty. I haven’t seen any traffic in the last two to three weeks, which is quite unusual for New York. And you know, we all just need to understand what we can do on our part to bring the economy back faster. And our part is not to spread the thing around.

Frank Curzio: No, I know, I know, it’s tough because it’s just amazing how some states are on lockdown. Some states aren’t. We’re not really on locked down in Florida too much. That’s why you saw everybody on the beaches, and you know, you see places like New York, California, that are on serious lockdown. I mean from a common sense point of view, because we’re numbers, we do the data, we do all this, you know, all the research. But from a common sense point of view, we’re planning on opening up our economy, if you would say, I mean this is right now as the plan is after April.

Genia Turanova: Mm-hm.

Frank Curzio: I mean the common sense, even from what you’re seeing, I mean the problem’s not going to be solved, right? I mean people are still going to have the virus. It’s still going to be spreading.

Frank Curzio: Are you going to open up the economy? Are you going to put… It just seems like, you know, for me I’m trying to get something that makes sense in place. Like either lock down everybody for three months, this way we don’t have it. Or you know, let people go back to work and put, you know… Everyone distancing, six feet away, old people at home, you know, we get it, we know the risks and everything, but just the plan right now just doesn’t make sense to me. I wanted to get your thoughts on that, maybe for the final thing. Because again you are in New York, you’re on lockdown, but it just seems to me like the plan in place just doesn’t make sense. I mean this isn’t going to magically go away next month and everyone’s going to just run and go back to work.

Genia Turanova: Honestly, I don’t think we really have a plan in place. I think the plan not to be outside as much as you can is more or less working. I don’t think you can restart economy and then pause it again. If this gets out of control. And again, I can’t predict what will happen, but I think that sometimes you just need to go see what the numbers are. In this case, it’s the number of tests and the hospitalization. And maybe, just maybe, if this is slowed and being you can see that it’s not spreading as much as it did. You start letting people out. I think the very important part in this might be if we do develop a cure. Which I know many companies are working on and it will be faster than the vaccinations because the vaccine, nobody’s promising the vaccine before 2021.

Genia Turanova: And they’re testing people for antibodies. Many people are immune, but we don’t have enough capacity or any, I don’t think to tell who are immune who can actually go out and run this economy. We can definitely restart it when we know that it’s at least relatively safe and we will not going to roll all the openness back again. I think really, it’s a very fluid situation. I agree with you. It’s not sustainable the way it is, but what’s the alternative?

Frank Curzio: Yep, exactly. And that’s the thing, you don’t want to criticize everything without having another option, but it just seems like the two options is letting people go back to work or and again, keeping your social distancing and making sure people are safe or lock down the economy for a lot longer than April because this is still going to be spreading. But I’m with you as an analyst, it was just nice to see certainty. Even if it’s bad news as long as you have something to base it on. But right now I just feel like, well up in the air which it makes me really nervous.

Genia Turanova: I agree with that. But I also believe in science and I think that any indication that we have tests for immunity, we’ll be greatness for this economy.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, absolutely. That would be really, really huge. So hopefully you get that sooner rather than later. But Genia, I just want to say listen, I’m proud to have you on our team. The gains that you showed our subscribers Curzio Research, especially during this downturn when people were losing a lot of money. You talking about gains of 5X, huge gains in some of these positions. And for me, I’m trying to put the right newsletter in front of people where they’re learning how to hedge, they’re learning how to make money in down markets and also be able to protect themselves. But I appreciate all the work you’re doing and I know everyone’s looking forward to the launch of your income newsletter. So I just want to say thanks.

Genia Turanova: Thank you very much. It’s my pleasure. And I also definitely look forward to the income newsletter. I think that would be very important.

Frank Curzio: Okay, great. So, all right, so I’ll talk to you soon. Like we do, we always talk and thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Genia Turanova: Thank you.

Frank Curzio: All right, great stuff from Genia. I love her. She comes on, she’s always like, all right, I’m not too sure if I want to come on. She has a heavy accent and things like that. She’s always worried about doing media and I love that because she really cares. She is an incredible analyst. She’s not someone that’s going to go out and say, “Hey, I’m great. This is what I do.” But just working side by side with her, just seeing what she’s done for this product beforehand, the amount of alerts she sends out, the educational component, which is what financial newsletters are all about.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to have your winners, you’re going to have some losers. You have to have more winners and losers or find a new job. But the most important point of this, and the reason why I think being in this for 25 years, just describe it, is you want to educate these people. You want to tell them why you’re buying these stocks. What are you doing? A simple form of, like Genia is doing what options, strategies of why we’re doing this, how much you can lose. If you put $1,000 to trade, you can lose $1,000. So she’s going to make sure that if that risk is 100% you want to make sure that those gains are three, four, or 500% which she has been doing.

Frank Curzio: Some of the gains in the newsletter, again, this is past, it’s not an indication of future performance, but just to show you in a market that’s crashing and a market is going to have so much uncertainty where you’re going to see a lot of stocks on an earnings front, some of getting it to be more impacted than others from coronavirus that we don’t even know about yet. It was a Starbucks position. She goes out one half for a 195% gains and in the second for 508% gains, Teva 125% gains in two months, Bed, Bath & Beyond. She calls that one early, but there’s some she got into November before this stuff happened, but she was doing well on his position.

Frank Curzio: 150% the semiconductor index, which she bought puts against 137%. These are amazing gains, but it’s not something that you take your whole portfolio and go into it here. Okay, that’s not what you do. You have to be very, very careful. You have to understand your risk. But the reward is incredible and it’s a way to hedge your portfolios. It’s the way to hedge if, Hey, I got some really long positions and not out of the market, but in case the mark comes down short-term, this is a way that you can make money while maybe some of your long positions, it’s got to go down in the short-term but be great two, three years from now. So this is all explained in detail, which she does a fantastic job.

Frank Curzio: So Moneyflow Trader, we sell this product for $3,000 a year. Okay, I’m probably going to raise that price. It’s a perfect newsletter for this environment and it’s going to be for the next few years. But we are selling for $1,500 annually. So we lowered that price. Again, we understand the situation, we understand a lot of you have done well and probably in cash right now, but there’s others that new subscribers that are coming in and this price point might not be for you. And that’s fine. We have low price products but not just for the $1,500 walls. So, we’re going to give away her Income Intelligence product for free if you sign up for that, which is an unbelievable deal. So I mean we can’t do better than that.

Frank Curzio: We plan to launch that in a few weeks, but we’re sending out beta issues every month to get feedback from our best subscribers and you’ll have access to those beta issues right away which is a good deal. So it’s really great stuff. You’re not going to see that offer on our website though. You’re only going to see it if you’re on an email list. If you’re not an email list, you can go to a website at curzioresearch.com and just put your email there. Again, we’re not going to bless you with 500 emails a day. We just when we have good offers and when we publish great material and stuff like that. But again, we’re not putting on our website because we don’t want this price to get out to anyone to outside the Curzio Research umbrella to get this price.

Frank Curzio: Because this is a great newsletter that we could sell for a lot more. But again, we want to do the right thing for our subscribers because people are interested. They want to know what to invest in. This is it. This is a product that makes sense in this environment and she’s even going to have long positions in there. So perfectly set up for this. This is the reason why I created this product. Very happy with the work that Genia is doing. And again, someone that’s brilliant, you’re going to know that. Just go to the archives and once you start follow, you’re going to see how brilliant she is and how lucky we got to have her on staff.

Frank Curzio: So again, go to our mailing list. Just go to curzioresearch.com and you will get that offer. Don’t forward it to anybody. It’s just for people under the Curzio Research umbrella. Now, let’s get to my educational segment. I just did a live videos today about my favorite tech stock to short and it was AMD. So when I look at AMD, this is a company that outperformed the market. It’s doing fantastic. Micron came out and said data centers are really strong and things are awesome. I mentioned that in our interview with Genia and AMD who is in this industry just took off. It was pushing towards $50 a share, which is high. 57 was high. It was only there for like a week or two. But I think it only trade over 50 for like a month or two it’s all-time highs.

Frank Curzio: Now when I look at Goldman, who covers them, so they had a sell side analyst along with however many, if it’s 15 to 20 that cover AMD, they haven’t updated their estimates. For example, when Goldman was talking about this crisis at the beginning and this was late February, this is the V-shape recovery, we’re going to be fine. GDP is going to go down a little bit, not in the recession. Then as a week went by, they started doing a 180, and they was saying, okay, we may go into recession, the market come down, but we’re going to bounce back really quick in a second half.

Frank Curzio: So again, they didn’t update AMD. Goldman’s updating their market forecast. Yesterday again, I get all these from every single sell-side research firm. Okay. Looking at all their forecast, what they’re updating, what they’re doing right now. Goldman just came out with their most updated forecast yesterday. They’re expecting real GDP growth of negative 9% in Q1 and negative 34% in Q2. Okay. They were expecting like a rebound in Q2 three weeks ago. I’m not picking on them, I’m just thinking of the point here. Okay. They see the unemployment rate rising to 15% by mid-year and a lot of this is conservative. Maybe that 34% down in Q2 on real GDP. That’s one of the lowest numbers I’ve seen.

Frank Curzio: But they say, however, we upgrade our expectations for the coverage after mid-year with a 19% quarter of a quarter annualized GDP gain in Q3, which is a very big number in verse 12% previously. So again, there’s still predicting like that they keep pushing out. That’s what these analysts keep doing. They keep pushing out their estimates and saying, okay, it’s going to be one month. No it’s going to be two months going to be four months going to be two quarters second and it’s going to, and they keep pushing it out. Now you’re going to see them push out the 2021 because there’s so much uncertainty.

Frank Curzio: If you’re looking at their employment rate, they’re saying now it’s going to be 14% unemployment. So they’re looking at all this data, but they haven’t update their estimates on AMD, which is very surprising. Because they were extremely positive on this stock. They believe that this stock was going to continue. They’re expecting record margins. This is like a month ago. It was one of the last reports, record margins, record revenue, record earnings. And they have AMD trading at 40 times forward earnings. So their advice is still, if you’re reading their advice on AMD, they’re like things are pretty good. Things are okay.

Frank Curzio: Not necessarily the case. Look at their market forecast change. So where am I getting to here? What’s the strategy? The fact that these guys are so behind the curve. You’re seeing estimates. They have yet to come down for a lot of these stocks. I do really think AMD does it is deserve to be trading at 40 times forward earnings? Any company deserve to be trading at that? And you could say AMD released all these great products to take a market share from Intel. I know I go to consumer electronics show every year. I was there when they announced it. Believe me, I know. I know they’re going into more software. I know they’re into AI. I know the gaming community, I see it. I see the demand, I get it. The data centers have with micron said is pretty good.

Frank Curzio: Let me tell you something. This company is not going to report record revenues and you think they’re going to report record margins because I don’t know whether imaginably going to have pricing power in an environment where there’s little demand? Where your competitors are Nvidia and Intel really? You’re going to be able to command much higher prices? 30% of your revenue comes from that data center market. Yeah, it looks pretty good right now. More people are going online. I get it, but at the end of the day, AMD is a hardware company. It’s a hardware company that has supplies and their supply chain and companies that they use in China, Beijing, Malaysia, Taiwan, and you look at their list of suppliers in these places where there’s been disruptions in supply. You’re pricing this for perfection.

Frank Curzio: AMD it’s priced for perfection and it’s crazy because is that really going to happen with everything shut down or you’re going to see that much demand? Yeah, more people buying laptops and you’re saying, well, the gaming community, these people are going to pay tons of money for these graphic cards processors, when the parents are the ones that buy a lot of these computers and they’re worried about being laid off right now? You’re assuming that everything’s going to be absolutely perfect with this thing pushing up to 50. But there’s a lot of hardware companies. These are a lot different than the Microsoft and the Oracles and the Adobes, they’re software companies.

Frank Curzio: And the apples, the semiconductors guys, the hardware players, and some of these companies are bouncing back and I’ve seen even Skyworks say, “Hey, we’re not going to see that much of an impact.” Are you out of you mind? The supply chains had been disrupted everywhere. Now that they’re coming back online, maybe just China demand has been significantly disrupted given the shutdown of India now, the shutdown of Europe, total lockdown, the lockdown of the US where it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Frank Curzio: Think about chip companies, one of the biggest growth markets for them is the auto industry. All the bells and whistles you see everything. That was a booming industry. Not so much where auto sales were booming industry, but auto parts that go into this and chip makers are making a fortune on this booming market. Auto companies are completely shut down. Supply chains are shut down they’re not selling cars. What about IOT and other gray market for them? People buying appliances like crazy and they’re worried about their jobs and not working. You’re delighting the smart home devices. Few people are spending right now it’s a dangerous market.

Frank Curzio: You’re seeing chip companies surge to where they’re only down slightly from their 50 day moving averages. To me, that’s crazy. That’s insane. These are hardware companies. They have to make these products. Then they got to sell them to companies where a lot of these companies are. Some of them aren’t even open. Demand is going to fall off even if it falls off a little bit when you’re looking at a couple of like AMD trading of 40 times forward earnings. So here’s what I’m saying, it’s not as easy to find out what the analyst estimates are. You can go on Google and you can figure out a little bit and there’s different plays.

Frank Curzio: I always said briefing.com is a good site. Again, I don’t pay me or anything, but you could punch up AMD. They’ll tell you when they’re reporting earnings, they’ll tell you the quarterly earnings that the annual earnings are expected and things like that. But you’ll see that they haven’t come down that much. And if you look at earnings in general for all the companies for the S&P 500 I think they’ve only come down about 10, 12% right now. 10, 12% really? Are you kidding me? That’s all it’s come down. That’s pretty crazy because I’m seeing it come down at least 25% to 30% which means the P ratio that everybody believes on these companies, it’s not even close.

Frank Curzio: And you think, wow, we’re trading at 19 times forward earning, we’re trading more like 22, 23, 24 times forward earnings because these turns are going to drop tremendously and they haven’t been updated by the sell-side analysts. So it’s going to give you an opportunity that they’re not updating these numbers. The expectations are really freaking high going into next earning season. So I will look at all the companies, especially hardware companies on a tech side because tech has been good, but look at companies have outperformed the market in March, see where they are. Do they deserve that premium? Yeah, Walmart does, Amazon does, yeah.

Frank Curzio: But do chip makers, I don’t know, hardware companies supply disruptions? They haven’t really reported anything. For AMD to come out and say, “Hey would you seen a minor disruption, but second hand is going to be great.” That’s all I said. Then you get Micron report, great on data centers and now the stock shot up tremendously. I’m like Whoa. At 40 times forward earnings in a market where almost every country is closed. Are you kidding me?

Frank Curzio: So, you’re going to find opportunities, especially through Moneyflow Trader that you could short. And also know on the long side you’re going to find opportunities as well. But you have to wait until these, not wait, but I would start shorting. Some of these companies have outperform that have operation, you can go on their websites and see what the operations are. If they have supply chain outside of the U.S. or whatever especially in Asia it’s been disrupted, but these guys have not updated their estimates or anything since a couple months ago pre-coronavirus. So the next quarter it’s going to be insane. Well, we’re listening to what these companies are saying because I’m not going to have any guidance and there’s no one’s going to say… Very few people are going to say biz has never been this great.

Frank Curzio: We have companies that provide internet infrastructure and again, more people are home. Maybe laptops gaming, I get it. But 85% of the industries of world here, listen to these conference calls, they’re going to be like, we have no idea what’s going on. Demand is not here. We’re all working. They’re going to be talking about their credit facilities. That’s what they’re going to be talking about. They’re not going to be talking about business and how it’s going to come back in 2021 they’re going to say how much capital we have to withstand this for another three months, six months. That’s going to be the conversation. That’s pretty scary. Yet we’re not seeing any updates from the sell-side, from these earnings and not updating these companies.

Frank Curzio: So you’re going to see these things miss by a mile when they report next quarter, it’s got to be a good opportunity for you to go short, especially now at least some of these names. AMD I think is one of them. So it’s a strategy no one’s really talking about people don’t follow the sell side as much as is as others. I do, Genia does, Kramer falls a sell side a lot. That’s a consensus estimate. If you can find something wrong with that, you’ll make money on stocks because that’s what everybody believes. That’s a consensus. When you put all these numbers together from the sell side, if you think they’re conservative, you can make money. If you think they’re aggressive, it’s too aggressive. You can make money on short side.

Frank Curzio: So that’s how you look at it. That’s how you play this market. Again, it’s not easy to find out those estimates, but most of these companies have not updated. I would look at the names, the S&P 500 that have outperformed the market in March and start there. Maybe you find a good 50, 60, 70 companies. A lot of technology. The software leave them alone, they should do fine. The cloud, they should do fine AI focus, they should do fine, but if you’re a hardware company, semiconductor company, a lot of these names I moved up the same as the Adobes, the same as the Microsoft’s and they should not. You go in and see a lot of supply disruptions still and demand has fallen off a cliff and these guys are not reporting. And the analysts are not updating their estimates.

Frank Curzio: You see, we talk about a lot more about this in my live videos, the Curzio Research YouTube page. So guys, that’s it for me. Again, go to our Curzio Research site. If you want to add that offer for Genia’s product, which Moneyflow Trader, again, she’s killing it right now and the market conditions are actually perfect for something like that. We’re also marketing my Curzio Research Advisory newsletter, which we have a couple of positions and we’re going to start building some of those positions. Again, sticking to things that we could see, but being very, very cautious and just going to start picking away pretty soon.

Frank Curzio: Setting up a perfect portfolio for you for three to five years. Also, on Genia’s, you’re going to get access to the income product, which I think is going to be one of our biggest selling products as well. Get interest rates to zero every place people are dying for yield, and she’s going to comb through names and let you know which ones are going to spend their dividend, which ones are canceling altogether and which ones are stable and the companies that you should be buying. So that’s a fantastic product in itself. Again, want that information go to curzioresearch.com and just put your name in the box and you’ll get on an email list and you’ll see that offer.

Frank Curzio: So guys, lots today, longer podcasts and expected. Again, I just want to explain to you the research that I’m doing here for you, trying to stay ahead of this. I feel like we’re still ahead of this. Just be careful about the fear of missing out. If you really fear about missing out then buy a couple stocks here. I could be wrong. Because again, I don’t have a magic eight ball that I shake and say, hey, everything’s good and is what’s going to happen. But based on the uncertainties, it’s pretty crazy out there. And I could tell you, common sense point of view, I can’t imagine that this entire problem that’s never happened before, that is so confusing that nobody really knows what’s going to happen and there’s no plan for, we’re throwing trillions at is going to be solved in a month.

Frank Curzio: And that’s what you have to really believe if you’re buying socks here because it’s pretty crazy. So guys, that’s it for me. Questions, comments, frank@curzioresearch.com, thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate all your support. Love you guys. And I’ll see you in seven days. Take care.

Announcer: The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility. Wall Street Unplugged produced by the Choose Yourself Podcast Network. The leader in podcasts produced to help you choose yourself.