Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:00 – Daniel Creech

How’s it going out there? It’s Wednesday, April 2nd, and you’re listening to the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, normally hosted by Frank Curzio, where he breaks down and tells you what’s moving markets. I can’t do it like Frank can, of course. Greetings and welcome.

I’m Daniel Creech, research analyst here at Curzio Research, and I’m behind the mic today. Frank will be back tomorrow. He is tidying things up on the road as business owners do. That means we are going to talk about whatever the flying Florida I want to talk about today. I’m only in charge for about a half an hour, don’t worry you. Subscribers and listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Today we’re going to talk about tariffs, Liberation Day coming a little bit later as President Trump announces tariffs and trade policies at 4 pm Eastern Time.

We’re also going to talk Larry Fink’s CEO letter for 2025, opine a little bit about that. Some good things in there from old Larry. And then we’re going to talk about Newsmax quickly and what I believe mainstream media is getting wrong. I think there’s a lot more than just being a conservative media meme stock here and I’ll give you my thoughts on that. Let’s get into it today. Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, everybody. Liberation Day. What say you? Now we can check here. This is just FinViz. It’s just before 11 o’clock on Liberation Day.

Markets for two days in a row now Something interesting. One or two days doesn’t make a trend, but something to take note of. Yesterday and today, markets have really opened lower and then kind of rallied back higher this week or on Monday as well. And you know, what I think this proves is hey, there’s a lot of unknowns. I think this is a great learning experience and don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking down to anybody. I’m saying this for me too, because you know, if you transition from the last administration to the new administration, there’s going to be some pain there, and no politician wants to talk about pain. But the market has really sold off on all this unknown and hopefully today we get a little bit more clarity.

But what this teaches is things can be out of whack. Valuations be damned. Emotions really runs markets, especially in the short term, and I hope that that resonates with you guys, and you get probably tired of me and roll your eyes at times or yell at your computer or listening device. Don’t do that. Take it out on me, daniel@curzioresearch.com. Hopefully the idea, this emotional aspect is kicking in, though, because you don’t have a gun to your head.

You can always lighten up your allocations. You can earn competitive interest rates in different money market accounts and such, and you can avoid some of the volatility if you need to. Other than that, you want to continue focused on what is happening and take advantage of great sell-offs when they happen, as long as your thesis is intact. So this is a great macro moment for markets here and I don’t want to lose sight of that. I know and I’m not running from performance We’ve gotten closed out of some stops. Our positions are getting hit as well. We have a few that are doing okay, but my point is is that focus on your allocations, know what you own and why, and focus on quality, as this, what I call accumulation phase for investors is unwinding.

Now that’s number one about just macro and how markets are selling off and the end of the world is coming and markets hate uncertainty and then, for whatever reason, they’re rallying back, and now today markets are like I said, these are going to change on a whim, but now markets are actually positive across the board. Later today we’ll see about the big tariff announcement and, from what CNBC and Fox Business and different mainstream media is reporting. It might sound like a long event and, of course, president Trump is a huge marketer, so it wouldn’t shock me if it is. We’ll see the reaction. Now I’ve been Googling and using different AI models and OpenAI and Grok and different things and you want to try to figure out, hey, what is expected from all this tariffs and tit for tat stuff. Now some of the searches that come back and we’ve heard all the rhetoric about hey, the US has some of the lowest tariffs in the world. Trading policies we’re getting taken advantage of.

A lot of other countries have much higher tariffs and if they don’t have tariffs, they have VAT or VAT taxes, value added taxes. They have all kinds of different words and usages. Now, if this is according to Grok and OpenAI and just some different data research reports, if Trump comes out and basically just mirrors or does this reciprocal thing, hey, you charge me X, I’m going to charge you X type deal on different products. Those tariffs could range between two and a half and 6%. I know that’s a big, wide gap. Okay, I’m the messenger here. So two and a half to 6% could be what they move up to if that’s just on the tariff side. And again, that’s this stack of papers. If you want to talk the macro, you got to include all these loose leaf papers and everything like value added taxes and stuff. If you view value added taxes the same as tariffs or just kind of common sense dumb it down to my level then the US would need to raise its taxes tariffs when I say taxes I mean value added taxes and such to somewhere around between 12.5% and 30%. Now that’s a massive amount and that would definitely have some sticker shock and some volatility attached to it. If Trump comes out later on today and says, listen, we’re going to match everybody tit for tat, we’ll wait to remain seen. The other side of that is you’re already going to have. Whatever happens.

Today does not end today, and I hope we get some clarity and we’ll see about that. Nothing is going to be concluded today around trade policies or tariffs, but hopefully we get some clarity. But don’t think that today is the end meaning there’s going to be more negotiations. You got to just understand how President Trump love him, hate him, it doesn’t matter. That’s the world we’re stuck in right now, so just don’t take that by itself. And tariffs are again one piece of plan. I’m not trying to carry water for the Trump administration, but I’m carrying water for all investors here, because if you’re viewing tariffs as a negative or a positive, that’s up to you, but if you’re viewing them by themselves or a solo idea, that’s wrong in my opinion, because you have to take tariffs along with legislation, tax policy and all that kind of stuff coming down the road. We’ll see how all that unfolds, but I want you guys to keep thinking through this process and understanding hey, today hopefully we get some clarification, but today isn’t the end, it’s not the end of negotiation, it’s not the end of trade policies or what have you. So take that with some salt.

Now there’s already some reports coming out. Earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, there was tweets about Secretary Scott Bessett saying to whoever I’m not exactly sure, and again, take this all with some salt business leaders that whatever is announced later today will more than likely be the top end of the tariff range or value added taxes or whatever Meaning. If he comes out, whatever number he says let’s say it’s 20 across the board, just to use an example then at least you know a little bit. That removes some unknown. We know what it is. Okay, it’s 20% across the table and if you know if Bessett is actually saying this, according to the Wall Street Journal, take it with a pound of salt a wheelbarrow of salt, if you will that if that’s the high watermark, then tariffs are only going to go down from there.

It’s kind of like how the market is comfortable knowing and listening to the Fed. Hey, we want the Fed to cut sooner than later on interest rates. However, the market is very complacent, knowing or believing the Fed’s next move is going to be lower rates, not hiking rates. I hope that makes sense. Same can be said about tariffs, because money is emotional, investors are emotional. That, I think, if to be true, could help investors and we could kind of get this sideways market continuing sideways and not just keep kind of plunging lower in a lot of situations. That’s number one Now, how markets are going to react.

What I like about this is and let’s just quickly you can see here on FinViz what I want to talk about too is we’re just going to check some crypto prices, because Bitcoin’s about 85, almost 86. And again, one or two days doesn’t make a trend. But if you look at all the volatility, fear and uncertainty in markets and you see Bitcoin opening down and Bitcoin related stocks opening down and then kind of clawing their way back. I’m impressed Bitcoin is hanging out in the mid 80s, I think, and unless something changes policy, legislation etc around Bitcoin and cryptos, I’m surprised Bitcoin hasn’t gone into the mid to low 70s just to kind of shake everybody out and get really headlines and everything going around and see about the nervousness and the investor sentiment. I don’t necessarily want that, Don’t misunderstand. I’m just simply saying looking at charts, volatility, all the uncertainty, I think it’s amazing and very solid for the asset class that Bitcoin is holding in there because that kind of supports the whole industry and I think that’s very important. So 85, 86, we’ll see how that reacts.

Again, all of this can change in a moment’s notice come around four o’clock, depending on that. So how to take that going forward? We’ve talked about what industries and such to look at. Obviously, everybody’s looking at autos and stuff. But honestly, the truth and transparency here is nobody knows exactly what for sure is going to happen, and that’s okay. If I were to put myself in your guys’ shoes in the audience, I would assume or get frustrated in your shoes trying to listen to everybody say, hey, here’s what’s going to happen. I understand you want confidence and we need to be confident in this job. I totally get that, but I do think that there is humility and transparency and simply saying listen, there’s a lot of volatility. Maybe you don’t like that answer, but that’s the way it is right now and I’m just trying to be as honest and transparent as I can. Going from the last administration and a government public funded economy to a privatized, less government economy is going to take some pain. We’ll see how that plays out. But understand and know what you own, why you own and the quality behind it. Stick to your theses and trailing stops. That’s how you get through this, because the world is not ending. The sun will continue to come up and hopefully there’s some macro takeaways there for you. Now I want to get to Larry Fink’s letter. So Liberation Day is behind us. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow on Wall Street Unplugged Premium, when Frank Curzio is back. Be sure and tune in to that Switching gears for a moment here.

Larry Fink always puts out a annual letter to CEOs. You can go to BlackRock’s website. Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. It’s got, I don’t know, 11, 12, 13 trillion-ish under management. He puts out these lengthy letters at times. I have to give credit where credit is due, because I’m a critic of Mr Larry Fink when I feel like he deserves it, but I have to give him some credit here. On the democratization of investing, as he titled his 2025 annual chairman’s letter, the good takeaways here are he talks about democratizing finance, and what he means by that is opening up the avenues, alleyways, removing the gatekeepers, opening up the door and letting retail or smaller or, for lack of a better word poor people into this idea of investing in capitalism, and I have to give him credit. I have to give him a pat on the back for that.

Now let’s go over a few things here, because he challenges the 60-40 model, and what I mean by that is your typical financial advisor will tell you listen, you want to have 60% of your money in stocks and 40% of your money in bonds, and as you get older, you can kind of mesh that allocation a little bit more even. And the idea there is when you’re younger and you have more working years, you can afford to take more risk because you have working years ahead of you. You’re working, saving, investing Plus if you have market losses or investment losses, you have time on your side to recover and compound your wealth. The reason you have 60-40 is because you always don’t want to go all in this 40% of bonds, that slow and steady turtle mindset, compounding money over time and then as you get older and you have less life left, meaning you’re going to die. I understand that. I don’t mean that in a negative way we’re all dying. My point is is that when you have less time, you have less time to recover from market dips, recessions, et cetera, which is why allocation would shift more out of stocks and into more stable securities, typically like bonds, et cetera. Now that all sounds good on paper and in theory, but reality can be much different.

And what Larry Fink says and I got to give him credit here to a certain extent tongue in cheek, of course, because he wants the new allocation to be more like 50, 30, 20. And 50 is to assets and stocks, 20, or, excuse me, 30, down from 40 to bonds, and then this new 20 asset class would be for private assets. Thanks, um, infrastructure, bridges, airports, tolls, ports for shipping, all kinds of things, mega projects, big dog, daddy stuff and I say tongue-in-cheek because he is talking his book. They recently acquired Global Infrastructure Partners. Blackrock is a global titan, just a massive juggernaut, and I don’t mean that negative. You can talk your book, we do it, everybody does it.

It’s part of life to think, and you know I’m a big thinker. I encourage everybody to think. You have to think to listen to this podcast. Most people don’t. That’s why it’s so astounding when somebody actually thinks and says something out loud to most people. And what I appreciate about this is because anytime you challenge the old norm, you’re going to get a lot of pushback. Oh, you can’t change the 60-40 allocation. Look, it’s done so well over the past 25 to 40 years and it has. We’ve seen one of the greatest wealth accumulation periods ever, thanks to capitalism and capital markets. Now I think this is great because bond yields have been so suppressed. The reason I like this allocation change is because it gets the conversation started about well, why would you lower your exposure to bonds and then you get into the screwy fuckery that the Federal Reserve has done with interest rate yields and such, especially following the Great Recession up until 2022, when they started raising rates? That’s a different rant and rabbit trail, but it needs to be noted that that’s a conversation that it starts. Number two is it starts this conversation about private assets.

Again, I got to give Larry Fink some credit here, because he calls out world governments, including the US, and he says, listen, you’re not going to be able to fund all of the infrastructure needed, from electricity demand, data centers, airports, bridges, roads, interstates, ports, shipping, any kind of thing on just governments between banks, companies and governments. Because, as he lays out in your letter, banks are where people park money, companies are earning money getting more invested capital, and then governments bring in taxes and then do infrastructure projects. But Mr Fink calls out the fact that everybody is broke, printing money out of thin air with a gun to everybody’s head to make sure they keep it as currency. And that is not good long-term because you can print and cover up and kick the can down the road until and we’re going to continue to do it, so don’t fear and get upset, but we’re going to continue to do it as interest rate payments start to get unavoidable for a conversation. That’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room when interest on your debt starts getting more than defense and all these other proprietary spending programs. You can’t hide from that anymore and you got to do alternatives or else bond yields are going to spike. You’re going to have a lot of volatility in markets.

I like the fact that Mr Fink calls out the silliness in government debts and government deficits. Now he’s talking in his own, because we’ve only and we traded BlackRock and I was wrong on this we only took like a 2% gain in the Dollar Stock Club. But investors need to continue following this company for a couple of reasons. One, it’s got a ton of weight in asset manager. Number two, I do think that they are on a brilliant path with this privatizing of assets, are on a brilliant path with this privatizing of assets and infrastructure blending of investing, and so Larry Fink shares a couple of great stats on infrastructure spend and how they BlackRock. Their goal is to democratize investing and in a way that you can now buy the S&P 500 or an index through a very low cost, easy to buy ETF. Blackrock is going down the road of offering the same exposure to private assets which was once locked to accredited investors isn’t even an option for most Americans or retail investors, and to that I have to say that’s amazing. The more exposure the retail investor can get to all different kinds of assets and sectors I’m a big part of. You always have to look at fees and all that kind of stuff. But again, the initiation, the conversation, the starting process, that is very good and that is a very positive. And there’s some cool stats here and again, here’s the letter here that you can scroll through and read on your own time if you want.

Frank and I will talk about this more, but I want to point out some interesting stats. Mr Fink, you know I’m a fan of history, so Fink got me going on the capital markets and he talks about Amsterdam opening the first exchange in 1602 and the change alley in England and all this kind of stuff. Here’s some fun stacks 60% of Americans, American families, own stocks. That’s up significantly over the past 20 years. That is a good thing. Everybody should I’m going to get on my little perch here and preach Everybody should have exposure to capitalism. I don’t care what age you are, I don’t care who you are. I think capitalism, the way it’s proven, its returns over time, are amazing and I want everybody to have exposure to that. That is one of the things I reason I do this job is because I want to brag and expose everybody to capital markets Because if you’ve got the chance to invest in capitalism, do it.

Until that changes, the odds are in our favor. 60% of American families own stocks. Compared to Europe we’ve heard a lot about Europe and overseas stock markets doing very well this year. Europe only about 33% of people own stocks. That’s impressive. Now we keep talking about money on the sidelines and interest and stuff like that. Fink points out there’s $25 trillion two, five, $25 trillion in money markets and banks alone in the US. Not saying that’s going to be put all into the market. I’m simply saying that’s a hell of a data point you want to continue to keep in mind when you think of or hear. The sky is falling by different news organizations and all kinds of stuff. That is absolutely crazy and the cool thing here is some of these stats, as you can see just scrolling through here if you’re following along on YouTube, but you can see this idea of how he highlights certain things.

He doesn’t shy away from eating his own cooking, which I respect. The infrastructure and the opportunity ahead is pretty incredible because he talks about the $68 trillion needed in infrastructure from now till 2040. That’s only 15 years. I mean that’s crazy Because the way he breaks it down and I have to respect this is he talks about how the entire interstate highway system and transcontinental railroad that’s the equivalent of R68 trillion needed is the same as the entire interstate highway and transcontinental railroad being built every six weeks for 15 years. That’s the analogy he makes and I got to say that’s pretty impressive. That’s pretty neat to think about in just the terms of how massive that’s going to be. What does that mean for investors? Well, that means over time, if you have exposure to these massive projects, you are going to earn unbelievable returns through dividends and all that kind of stuff on these different assets, and that is a very big window of opportunity for all kinds of investors and that doesn’t need to be overshadowed. Yes, I understand that’s not going to make you rich tomorrow, but we are looking for the big term here.

A couple other things quickly that I want to give him credit for. He points out and he calls out social security and the trouble there and about how, yes, technically it keeps millions of Americans out of poverty. And this is a conversation I want your guys’ opinions on it to start. Danielcurzioresearchcom, I’m going to have this with Frank more over on podcast, the reason I’m giving him credit for bringing this to it is because we have to have a conversation about it and you’re going to have to cut people or lower some social security, and I don’t mean anybody right now, that. But my point is why aren’t we having a conversation right now to say, hey, everybody, that’s my age, so let’s just say 39 and less. We know there’s drastic changes going to be, so start talking about that. And at least Larry Fink calls out some bullet points about social security.

And I think the bigger point there is the mindset. And yes, it’s good that you’re keeping people out of poverty, but is the goal to just keep it’s good that you’re keeping people out of poverty, but is the goal to just keep people one rung on the ladder above poverty a good idea from a macro standpoint? I don’t think so. Then you get into the conversation of well, you can’t change anything. Hell, if you argue to change anything in government, you see what happens. People throw food like two-year-olds and scream and yell and roll around on the floor and act like you’re ending the world. We’ll see how all this plays out. The point is is that it’s a great conversation to start having and then look at your options because it can be fixed. Don’t get into the mindset that the way it is is the only way it is. Obviously it’s not working. It’s bankrupt. Being Social Security or whatever else you want to talk about in government, but to think that you can’t change or even have the conversation about it changing, is just lazy and don’t go there because it’s not beneficial to you. So the Social Security is a good idea.

Another big bullet point he makes subtly, in my opinion, is about the permitting process, and he talks about how California is failing to build this high-speed train in the same time that they have built not even 500 miles because of permitting and regulations and all this kind of stuff. He talks about how California has yet to build 500 miles while China, on the other hand, has already built 20,000 miles of rail and stuff. Now, of course, that is not apples to apples, because China doesn’t do things the similar way that we do regarding anything regarding climate, regarding people, regarding wages, regarding nothing. So that’s not exactly an apples to apples. But I think the takeaway there is when you have the largest asset manager calling out social security issues, calling out permitting issues, at the same time you have an administration in charge now that is pedal to the metal on trying to get permitting and different programs much faster and cutting red tape. We’ll see if that plays out. Politicians can promise anything. We’ll see the actual results. But less regulation and stuff like that is good for everybody. That’s the team I’m on.

I’m on for the individual investor and, as bad as I hate to say it because you can’t trust these elitists like Larry Fink any further than you can throw them, and you can’t throw him very far because he says a lot of great things in this letter. He calls out Social Security, calls out permitting process, calls out the slow infrastructure process and the huge demand that we’re seeing across there. But don’t get too excited, because this is the same elitist that would sell you for less than a dollar the first chance he can no-transcript to make the decision of what the proper disclosure is. That is a scary situation, people, and it shows you just how fast the quicksand and how deep it can get, because in 2020, this guy was going to use all the leverage he could and remember we even made a great trade on ExxonMobil, making over 100% because it jerks like this, and I do mean that.

The reason I use that language is because when you screw with somebody’s money for your own good or your own beliefs and you’re lying to them and you can’t prove it, that pisses me off. When you tell the average Joe, who thinks they’re investing to make money, that you’re looking out for them and what you’re really doing is funneling their money to your causes, which you cannot prove and is not settled, so you have to have faith in your beliefs on that. If you think man-made climate change is ruining the world, I hope you’re pissed off at them cutting down the Amazon to have a party later this year. I can’t wait to talk about that more. As you know, frank, when he leaves office, usually markets dip, so I’m glad they’re not. And then I have to piss everybody off just a little bit. Daniel@CurzioResearch.com, Daniel@CurzioResearch.com, Daniel@CurzioResearch.com. Off that rant.

I appreciate Fink calling this stuff out, but again, take it with a grain of salt. Last thing quickly here before I switch on to Newsmax. He talked about the data center demand and what’s really impressive here is that right now the market is very nervous on AI and AI-related stocks after DeepSeek made its interest earlier this year and then comments from Alibaba executives about possible, a short-term bubble in AI or overcapacity in data centers. Now Mr Fink points out that a single data center of one gigawatt or, excuse me, a single data center could cost up to $40 to $50 billion to build. It could use about one gigawatt of electricity and that is equivalent, in how he gives this example, to power. This One gigawatt is enough to power the city of Honolulu on the hottest day of the year.

He goes on to say that Utah, Ohio and Texas warn of grid capacity, meaning they can’t really absorb a whole lot more onto the grid, and Silicon Valley has even stopped taking or stopped accepting data center requests. Now that’s out of Mr Fink’s letter and I don’t know if they’ve gone on record. I haven’t dug down into that rabbit hole anymore. But that is very contrary and opposite of hey, we have overbilled too much, we have too much power, too much data center room and it’s a bubble, and so I don’t know the exact answer right now, but I do know that a lot of AI stocks have sold off significantly, and there are several that I have my eyes on. We’ve talked about them a lot. We’ll talk about a couple tomorrow, I’m sure on Wall Street, unplugged Premium, but this is great information from Larry Fink, talking about demand for electricity, data centers et cetera.

And then you have to take that as an investor and balance that against the fears and stuff like that you’re seeing right now. Time will tell, but you want to pay attention to both sides and make that decision for yourself. If you think the AI is overdone, limit or get out of those sectors and exposure to that, that’s fine. There’s more than one way to make money in markets. And if you think that this sell-off is overdone and you believe the momentum, like Larry Fink is saying, and you’re not putting as much weight towards some of the other fear mongering or bubble talk, then you want to look to be adding your exposure to this Again, this accumulation phase as the market’s moving sideways to lower around uncertainty. Okay, last thing he says this will transition.

He talks a little bit about tokenization and the momentum in tokenization, how that is really the democratizing of finance and how everything will be tokenized. It can be. You can do bonds, you can do stocks, you can do real estate, you can do funds and it’s all about a better mousetrap, it’s cheaper, faster, better, it’s secure and all that kind of stuff. And that is amazing and Frank has talked about that tokenizing Curzio Research trading on the TZERO platform. We’ll talk about more of that in discussion as well. But that leads me into a great example of kind of this tokenization idea and I want you to stay with me here because we’re going to talk about Newsmax for just a moment.

And Newsmax, as you can tell from this chart, this is FinViz here and this is a terrible chart because it’s only been trading for a few days now. You can see this bar. So this green bar on your far left is day one, day two is the second massive green bar and then you have this huge down red candle and this is a terrible. I’ve used this as tongue in cheek and kind of having fun. It’s down 44% today to $128.98 as I am recording this. If you go over to Yahoo Finance, it doesn’t even pull up a day chart or an intraday chart yet. Maybe that’s just because of my signal, but the point is is this thing has been absolutely incredibly on fire. It opened its IPO, was priced at $10 a share, I think it opened a little higher, 12 or 14, just absolutely went. Gangbusters was up over uh trading at evaluation of over 2 000 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Ebda 2000.

All right, this company lost money. I think it lost around 70 million last year, according according to its SEC filings. But that’s not the important thing. Here’s what I want to talk to you guys about. This is a great segue and snapshot of tokenization and the power in retail investors. Because from what I’ve seen so far on the coverage of Newsmax is Newsmax is spiking. It’s the new meme stock. It’s a conservative media group and a bunch of redneck right-wingers, far-right people, and they’re just supporting their own and meme stocking it. Okay, well, maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. What I haven’t heard as much discussion about is the deal and the way about Newsmax went public, and this is what’s key. So look past the volatility and I’m not arguing valuation here. Of course the damn thing is overvalued. Okay, the company doesn’t make any money yet and it’s trading at 18 to $20 billion valuation for a news company. If you like that, buy it. It’s down 40%. You’ll love that.

The bigger point here is the route it took, the power in retail and how you can make money going forward as new opportunities are approached or come to fruition. Paul Adkins is going to make a big splash in regulatory issues and open up. If he follows through with what he says, it’s going to be amazing several years ahead for individual, more likely retail investors an opportunity because he can break down the gates and barriers to retail investors. And one way to do that is the way Newsmax did it and that’s a reg A offering to go public. And I’m balancing this and I know it’s not apples to apples, but I want you to think of why this is very similar and it’s powerful as a tokenization thing and the momentum behind it. So quickly here.

Newsmax didn’t go public via the typical Wall Street route, which is you go hire investment bankers, you disclose everything, you pay a lot of fees to these investment bankers to then run the circuit, go cheerlead for you, build the book, do the roadshow, take you public. I get it, I’m not knocking it, I’m just pointing it out how it happens. So you pay a couple million bucks in fees. You have to give away a certain percentage, typically of your stock, to the big banks. So you’re looking at millions and millions and millions in fees if you go that route via Wall Street. And I’m not saying that’s bad, that’s good for the biggest and best companies who that kind of money isn’t a big deal to them. It doesn’t move the needle. So Wall Street is looking for your big deals your $100 million and plus your billions of dollars and whatever but there’s a huge gap between your small deals and your big deals your hundred million and plus your billions of dollars and whatever, but there’s a huge gap between your small deals and your big deals, as Frank has talked about in the closing of the Sugarfina deal. Hey, why did Curzio Research get that deal? Well, because there’s a need to fill a smaller gap. And then you go tap into who has access to those markets private accredited investors, et cetera.

What’s wild here is that Newsmax went the Reg A route. Now what does that mean? That means it’s capped at raising $75 million. That’s the most you can raise in a Reg A, plus that was increased from 50 million. It used to be back in 2021, the way I understand it, you can only raise 50 million. So it’s good to see our elitist allow us regular retail folks a little bit of wiggle room there so you can raise $75 million.

That’s what Newsmax did. They hit the max. They offered 7.5, 7.5, 7.5 million shares at $10 a share. Now why would you do that. If you’re Newsmax, well, it’s a lot cheaper. You probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, or a couple hundreds of thousands of dollars, versus your several million, to go Wall Street route. Newsmax can also sell it to whoever they want to. You don’t have to be an accredited investor, meaning you don’t have to make X per year or be worth X to check that box and say you’re accredited investor. Newsmax can sell it to friends, families, anybody, investors.

And what they did was they went to their base. They went to their customer base and said listen, we’re going to go public, do you want in on this? And boom, there you go. Now it’s faster to the market, it’s less expensive. Is this ringing a bell? This should sound a lot like tokenization. This is just what Frank Curzio did with Curzio Research. We’re a small company. We can’t go public on Wall Street, so we needed and we’re not trying to get around anything, but we want fast, cheap, secure listening and listing, excuse me and to get out to our customer base. And the other thing that Newsmax did was they limited their number of shares. So there’s only seven and a half million trading in shares out of the total 90-some million shares outstanding for Newsmax. That is going to lead to incredible volatility, and that’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing the absolute craziness in the stock.

The idea here, though, forget about valuations and earnings. Again, this isn’t about buying Newsmax. The key here is how Newsmax went public, how it was able to go to its customer base and say, listen, if you believe in us, here’s what we’re doing, here’s a piece for you, or here’s a chance to get in on this opportunity. I’m ecstatic for all these people, and I don’t I don’t forget the business. I don’t care that it’s news media, I don’t care that it’s conservative, whatever. Forget the business for a moment. The idea to go and say, listen, you’re our customers, here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we’re thinking, here’s what we’re trying. Do you want in on this? The idea and the ability to have that option, to go to a customer base, to have that customer think for themselves, make a decision to put money in here Now, with the small share float seven and a half million and any increase in demand, you get algorithms kicking in, you get any buying interest.

You can see this absolute, just silliness happen. The stock ran up. What 1,000, 2,000, whatever percent it did? It went from basically $10, $14 a share to $200 and change. Hopefully, I’m happy for everybody making money, but the big takeaway is not how crazy the valuations are or this meme stock. Forget all that. Those people are wasting your time and probably just bitter. What they did here was they took a better route to Wall Street for them, and this is a massive opportunity and going forward.

Just as Larry Fink talks about tokenization, I encourage you to read that. We’ll talk about it more, but going forward when you have more regulation and more clarity and you see platforms like TZero and different tokenization of assets that’s already happening in the treasury world and the bond markets. This is going to have a lot of impact on companies that want to go public with clearer and less regulation, and it’s going to open up opportunities for individual investors. One great comment from Larry Fink’s letter that I forgot to mention was you have the desire for opportunity in the future for individual investors. Think about this 81% of the companies in the United States with $100 million in revenue or more are not publicly traded. 81% of the US companies that generate $100 million or more in revenue are private.

If we have less regulation and more clarity and easier, better, secure ways to go public, for those investors to cash out, to grow, to want to get other investors. They can do that through similar situations like Reg A, but they can do it through tokenization and using the blockchain, using tokens. The biggest hurdle there is getting people to the platform. Getting you to go sign up on T-Zero is difficult. Getting you to go up on Robinhood or Coinbase or anything else when something is new, when you see the big dogs like Interactive Brokers, coinbase, fidelity, all those guys, I believe they will accept and take tokenization and I think that’s going to be an absolute boom and you’re going to have a lot of opportunities for more companies to go public, which means more appetite for investors, which gets the pie in the hamster wheel of capitalism churning and revving up and going higher.

Let’s get those RPMs revving people. Time to redline this in a good way. Love me, hate me, don’t ignore me. Daniel@CurzioResearch.com. Daniel@CurzioResearch.com. Thank you, pleasure to fill in for Frank. He’ll be back. See you guys tomorrow on Wall Street. Unplugged Premium Cheers.

0:37:51 – Ad

Love this episode of Wall Street Unplugged. 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, where 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 WSUoffer.com.

0:39:19 – 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.