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: What’s going on here? It’s December 30th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of The Wall Street Unplugged Podcast where I breakdown the headlines, and say what’s really moving these markets. I wish everyone Merry Christmas, happy holidays, I hope you enjoyed it. A lot of people had the week off. I gave the week off to my staff. I got to force them not to work sometimes, which is pretty cool. A lot of dedication there. But I want to do some special today, really go over how you should position your portfolio heading into the new year. What the Georgia election could mean if the Democrats win or Republicans win, which kind of like status quo, but there’s going to be lots of changes if Democrats win. We’ll get too hardcore into politics because I know that’s where we get the most emails and most fun emails.

Frank Curzio: Then talk about Bitcoin surging. Our token CEO, timing was great for us, and how security token industry is really taking off now, but lots of different topics we’re going to touch on. I want to bring in my buddy, your buddy Daniel Creech, analyst of Curzio Research. Daniel thanks so much for coming back. I think you left because maybe had COVID. Actually, I think you had that vacation planned already, but welcome back.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, there was a holiday there. Frank Curzio, what’s up man? Happy New Year.

Frank Curzio: Oh, man. Happy New Year to you. And yeah, how’s the vacation? Let’s start off there, man. I mean, it was cool seeing the family I guess, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, it was great. I flew this time. I’ve been driving the last few times for family issues, and to visit with friends. But the airports were good. People for the most part were halfway normal, other than wearing masks everywhere. Flew in and out of Charlotte, which has a cool open common area walkway. They got real nice white rocking chairs that you can sit there and people watch and grab some food. So, overall was great. Flights were full; a lot of people were traveling. I think TSA said that they screened 1.2 million passengers Saturday or Sunday before Christmas. So, hopefully people are starting to come back around a little bit.

Frank Curzio: I was surprised at that number, right? I mean, you have lockdowns every place, and I mean a lot of governors are saying, “Don’t see your family. You can’t do it.” It’s weird being in Florida and seeing that, I think, but that’s really good. And in Christmas spirit, I think you said you were going to sing a Christmas song for us today, certainly, didn’t you?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely. No, not at all. We don’t do carols where I’m from. But no, we had a great time. It was good seeing everybody, everybody’s healthy. So, we’re grateful for that. And yeah, it was other than where I was the high was like 10, 12 degrees on Christmas, so that a little bit of wind in southwest Ohio is pretty damn cold. But it was a lot of fun. It was great.

Frank Curzio: I got to tell you in Florida, and I live in northern Florida, so it is seasonal here it gets to the 40s. But actually, it was eighty degrees on Christmas Eve at around 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM. By 3:00 AM, it was in the 20s. I mean, if you live in certain areas, whatever, I’ve never seen that drastic of a change, where it was kind of like a mini hurricane, tornado in the middle of the night. But it kind of sucked because it down poured at night from probably ’till midnight. I mean, it was raining sideways here, it was crazy. And we never ever get snow, never. Very, very rare. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t seen any snow over 10 years. And then, as the temperatures dropped, the rain stopped. So, but if it continued, we might have got a little bit of snow, especially through Christmas, which would have been cool because my daughter still hasn’t seen snow. My oldest one was in Baltimore when they had that massive storm, and we lived in there. But my youngest hasn’t really seen snow.

Daniel Creech: That’s so awesome. I remember that from Arizona. I mean, I’m from snow, so it was just the norm. But it’s so funny here, and especially little kids. It’s so cute and funny when they see it for the first time, then tell you about it. Or when you realize they haven’t seen in-person other than movies and all that kind of stuff, so that’s entertaining.

Frank Curzio: I should say, she saw it one time because they had this snow machine down in Jacksonville for the holidays like three four years-

Daniel Creech: That’s not real. That doesn’t count.

Frank Curzio: But it was real, like ice and snow. It was really coming out ice and snow and everything. And then my daughter went ahead to play in it, and then the gloves got soaking wet, their feet got… They’re like, “I’m freezing.” I’m like, “Man, you guys would never survive in the Northeast.” It’s just so funny. I’m like, “Come on.” But they want snow, and so they actually feel how cold it is sometimes. But I want to get to some topics here today, and let’s start off with the hottest topic, I think, in the last few months, and it is Bitcoin. I mean, surging, and there’s a lot behind the surge.

Frank Curzio: It’s funny: The last four months, I’ve never seen more promotions in terms of people I follow through Twitter, promoting the hell out of this. And of course, they promote this and say, “Well, you’ve got to own this instead of gold,” which is ridiculous. I think you could own both of them. The thesis of why you buying Bitcoin is a similar thesis to why you buying gold, with minor exceptions. Limited supply, but still, gold does have its uses, and there’s a massive supply and demand disruption. There’s really no supply in the market right now, but from well underdeveloped, all these guys who were in massive debts. Some of the majors almost went under in 14, 15 because it was such a bad market, and they leveraged themselves to hell. Now, they’re in amazing shape, producing under $1,000 an ounce. It’s just, to me, both industries make sense. But Bitcoin lately, where is it today? Like 27,000-

Daniel Creech: It was knocking on 30. It pulled back a little bit, but it’s damn near 30.

Frank Curzio: I saw 27,000 today, but I didn’t even know it was pushing 30. But it’s amazing when you see this move, where everyone was like, “I told you so.” But I mean, this is a massive move. We’re talking… What is it? Started the year, probably, you’re looking at… We recommend it 18 months ago. I think that’s when it hit, 6,000, 5,000. I mean, this is a massive, massive, massive move in such a short period of time. And I think everyone’s getting into this. So, look, it’s got fundamental reasons. You’re seeing things different today than they were in 2017, where PayPal, was it 300, 400 million people have access to it. You’re looking at Visa cards… The company called Simply, I think it’s called, launching Visa cards that are Bitcoin Visa cards, which is huge. MicroStrategy, companies putting their money in Bitcoin, and let’s go there really quick. I mean, that’s pretty crazy, when you see, was it MicroStrategy, right?

Daniel Creech: Yep.

Frank Curzio: A software company, and they’re making a lot of noise because the CEO is big believer in Bitcoin, started putting a lot of cash in it.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, CEO Michael Saylor is, well, you’re talking about not necessarily picking the exact bottom, but definitely catching the major next leg up. They started buying Bitcoin… Well, first of all, he made big headlines when he came out. And he actually… What I appreciated was he attacked it from a fiduciary responsibility role. And he basically said, “Hey, we’re going to keep cash on our balance sheet instead of in US Treasuries like most companies do, or short-term bonds of whatever sort, to just earn something.” He said, “We’re going to keep it in Bitcoin.” Because he was actually looking to do the best thing for the shareholders, which was really cool to me. And then you get, basically, a 50% increase in price since he’s done that.

Daniel Creech: They started buying Bitcoin. I think they bought 50 million in cash first, at some point in August… No, they bought 250 million in August. Frank, I looked it up on one of their… This is as of December 21st. They have bought 70,470 bitcoins. They’ve invested 1.125 billion of their cash. Now recently, how did they raise that money? They raised over 600 million in debt to what? Buy bitcoin. Now, if the price drops 15% or 25% instead of rallying 50, what do you say to your fiduciary responsibility there?

Frank Curzio: I mean-

Daniel Creech: I mean, I’m playing devil’s advocate, of course. I mean, I’m giving the guy credit.

Frank Curzio: You got to give the guy credit.

Daniel Creech: You got to give the guy credit for having balls to say this and do this. So, sorry, 1.125 billion invested. Their average price is almost 16,000. So, it’s damn near a double.

Frank Curzio: And I’m showing a chart. Guys, if you watch it on YouTube, you get to see a video, and everything. That’s why we’re doing a video, so I could show charts. I could show different things. It’s not a necessity; if you watch on iTunes, it’s fine. But I’ll just bring up a chart here of MicroStrategy. And I mean, let’s look at the last month or so. But even if we go further back… Let’s go three months. So, you’re looking at a company where November 1st, November 2nd, it was 166. Today, it’s 386. And that’s not because business is booming, it’s because of the Bitcoin strategy, right? So, you’re asking, “Is this a good strategy?” I think it’s very dangerous. I mean, what happens if you did this in 2017.

Daniel Creech: January of ’18.

Frank Curzio: January ’18 is when this thing really crashed, when we hit 20,000, went all the way… I think about as low as 3,500, 4,000. Whatever, don’t quote me on that. But it crashed tremendously. Everything did. Ethereum was… I think Ethereum was 1,200, and corrected to 100 or whatever it was. But when you have a cash balance, it’s almost like this is a Bitcoin company now, right? So, I think it’s very dangerous. It works out, and people are so unfair. I get so many emails, “Did you see this guy? This guy’s a genius!” It’s a genius strategy because it worked out. But what happens if he did it back in 2017, near the top? I mean, his stock price and his shareholders would get crushed because you see the move that’s happening because they’re in Bitcoin now, it would… Look what would happen.

Frank Curzio: So, the timing is good, and maybe it goes higher. But when I look at the fiduciary responsibility, and now we’re a publicly traded company to our CEO token. When it comes to that cash, I think you have to be conservative with it, right? I mean, you want to invest, and you want to try to earn a risk-free rate on it. The highest risk-free rate that you could possibly get. But to me, this is a dangerous strategy that worked. Shareholders are happy, everyone’s happy. But what happens when it doesn’t work? Because, Daniel, if you want a good example of this, when I was looking at crypto companies in 2017, 2016… Even then, 2017, so many of these ICOs came out, right? And what did they do? They raised money. They raised five million, 10 million. Some got lucky to raise 20, 25 million. And what did they do? All this money coming into the ICO utility tokens… Not ours, ours is a security token. We get equity stake, and you get dividends, totally different market. It’s like a stock market.

Frank Curzio: But utility tokens, they raised all this money in crypto around the world, right? Special exemptions, whatever, they went behind… So many loopholes, and people in the… They created funds that in the US, where if you’re international, you could invest in a fund and invest in the ICO just so you can get that money, provided crazy discounts. But all that money came in was mostly in Ethereum. And these kids who raised this money didn’t think of putting it into cash. And what happened? Ethereum went down 80% plus along, with most cryptos, down 80, 90%. And you’re sitting on a $10 million balance… Which, a utility token with no utilities, you’re supposed to build up the company. These people gave you that money. I mean, that’s just an example of how this doesn’t work. So, am I happy for these guys? Yes, but I don’t know. I mean, can I get your opinion on it? Maybe if you invest 5% of your cash. This guy’s really going all in here.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, I mean, and again, kudos to him with the perfect timing on… I love the idea that they raised debt to buy bitcoin. That makes me grin. What’s going to be interesting to me is Bitcoin at some point, everything pulls back. So, it’s not going to go straight to 30 or 50,000. So when it goes from, let’s say, 28. Right now,, it looks like 28,150-ish. If it goes to 20 it’ll be interesting to see the correlation with MicroStrategy stock. Because I do think now you have a huge mindset shift with… And like you said, when things are tanking, the stock is going to go down because it’s a direct play on Bitcoin as well as this business.

Daniel Creech: But the interesting thing is, the mindset is completely different now between the last crash in Bitcoin, so it’ll be so interesting to watch and follow. And there’ll be a lot of opportunity, because when Bitcoin hit basically 20,000 in 2017, and then it dropped to… I think under 4,000. You think 4,000 is in play anytime soon? I mean, I’ll admit, I don’t. I think maybe 10 or 12,000 would be the new 4,000. Just kind of… But anything’s possible, of course. But that’ll be interesting to see on any pullback on how people allocate that.

Frank Curzio: Now, I agree with you. I don’t think we’ll see 4,000. But let me ask you this. Would you tell people to buy bitcoin here?

Daniel Creech: I would under the one… Just like a couple weeks ago, unless you’re buying it one time, if you’re not willing to buy it again at a higher or a lower price, then I wouldn’t, no. But yeah, I mean, if you want exposure to it, it’s hard to… Man, I think just from the 21st of December, it was at 21 or 22,000. So, it’s another $10,000 since then, so it’s hard to… It would be hard to pull the trigger right now. Frank, let’s switch gears here on the tailwinds. Did you see the first national football players going to start getting paid in Bitcoin?

Frank Curzio: Yes, I did. Yes, I did.

Daniel Creech: Russell Okung, is that how you say that? Russell Okung?

Frank Curzio: I just saw the news really quick, so I didn’t catch the name. But it reminds me of when people wanted to get paid in Euros. When sports were like, “Yeah, Euros make more money.” But I don’t know. I mean, look, it just goes to show you, Dan, that it’s more easier to buy bitcoin and transfer it to cash than it’s ever been, where that’s when an industry scales, when you make it easy.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Absolutely.

Frank Curzio: I think that gets lost with a lot of businesses, especially new businesses, especially in my field who just assume everybody knows what EBITDA is, and all these metrics. We do a good job explaining it in detail and putting things in perspective. We don’t say, “Well, it’s not trading 25 times from earnings.” We say, “Well, that’s compared to the S&P. It’s trading at 22 times earnings, or it’s industry…” We put things in perspective. And again, because this is our field, right? So, Michael Lewis is a good example of this, where he got my mom to go see Moneyball, which is about statistics and baseball, which is two most boring things in the world because he made an amazing story out of it. So, my mom’s like, “Wow, I didn’t know that was about statistics.” But she got it. Yeah, because of his writing, because of how exciting he makes it, and Billy Beane, the whole story behind it. That’s why he’s just a great writer. He simplifies it and brings in a much bigger audience, and I think that’s what’s happening with Bitcoin.

Frank Curzio: It’s going to happen with security tokens too, because we’re seeing that become easier and easier where it was difficult to do. There was a lot of navigation. We were one of the first to market. But what Bitcoin here, it’s more people have access to it, and it’s not too difficult, especially, if you just go through Coinbase, which is pretty simple, and have your account up. And I think that’s going to add to more and more people looking to buy. And of course, as you know with every trend in the world is people love buying at the absolute top, when the excitement is the most, and everyone’s talking about it. And a lot of times, if you look back historically, it’s not a good idea.

Frank Curzio: I mean, you could have said that at 16,000, 17,000, 18,000, and it’s 27,000 a couple of weeks later, but I just think you have to be careful. I’m interested to see if the Winklevoss twins, if some of the people who were in very, very early are lightening up their holdings up 1,000s of percent here. It makes sense to me that they would actually lighten up a little bit, but I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know.

Daniel Creech: No, those guys, they’re already rich. They don’t need to lighten up anything. Plus, don’t they have a half a million target?

Frank Curzio: Yes, they do, which would be interesting. A half a million, 500,000 target price in the next 10 years, and that’s not assuming I think that it becomes… What was it? I think that’s based on store of value, but not if it’s an actual currency, if it becomes a currency. And somehow, not replaces the dollar, but it’s an alternative. And some could argue that it’s already a currency, right? You could use it for lots of different things. And let’s change tunes here because-

Daniel Creech: Yeah, enough good news. Let’s get to the SEC here.

Frank Curzio: We saw news come out, which didn’t surprise us. And it wasn’t the… It was the SEC for that. So the SEC came out against Ripple, right? So, XRP getting sued. Very, very big deal. And this is one that we follow in our Crypto Intelligence portfolio, and it was funny because this story fits perfectly within our thesis, right? I mean, you were involved in that too, when we wrote it up. But recommending this and seeing the major players in it; Wall Street players, guys, this isn’t just kids. These are Wall Street players that are behind Ripple. A lot of big names in venture capital. And well, you have a utility token, you’re supposed to have utility features. So, you if you don’t, it’s kind of like you go to Dave & Buster’s and you put… Say, you have four kids, you put $25 on each card, and they don’t work. That’s what it’s…

Frank Curzio: Instead, they work, you could play games, it keeps the points, and you can get prizes at the end. Binance is a good example of someone who has a lot of utility functions because you don’t get equity stake in these. I think people still don’t understand that. So, the value is tied to the utility. What does it do by owning that crypto? And with Binance, you could… It helps… You can lower your trading fees. You could use it to purchase travel at a discount. They have like 20, 30, 40 different uses on their website where you could use the Binance token, and it has numerous utilities.

Frank Curzio: Now, we recommended XRP because these guys didn’t have a utility, and I knew there was big names in it. And these guys were dumping the crap out of the tokens. So, as it hot they just sold into the market, and generate a shitload of money, and they still never… I mean, if XRP goes away, there’s nothing that’s going to happen. It doesn’t do anything. And the reason why I recommended it because a lot of people started complaining. Then they said they were going to stop releasing tokens, or selling them into the market and dumping them, and they did. And I’m like, “These guys have to change because if they don’t change, they’re going to get sued. These guys are going to be dead in the water.” And we waited like four months, right? I mean, you know the story from here, but it’s pretty crazy what happened to this company.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, and the big takeaway there for me in a new industry and cryptocurrency, and I’m not a computer engineer, I’m not a genius on those levels at all. So, I really had to dig into some of this just to try to make sense of it. But it doesn’t matter what widgets or market you’re in, you still have to take in the factor of human nature. And the thing that was so cool about that into this new industry was you had a stellar management team with reputations. And then you had, like you said, they would release so many XRP into the market to raise capital. And we’re not talking about a little amount.

Daniel Creech: So, when we recommended it, you dubbed them as basically the most hated management team or the most hated crypto in cryptocurrency, in XRP. We added to it a couple times. We first bought it in November of 2019. Then, we recommended a little bit more in January of 2020, and then again in June, and then sold it in September. The cool thing is we ended up getting out of it for about an 18% gain, but the difference between when we recommended it. So, from Q2 in 2019 to Q3 2019. In Q2 they sold $250 million worth of XRP into the market, which obviously pissed off a lot of people as prices were going down and everything. Fast forward one quarter, it went from 251 to 66-

Frank Curzio: Which was good.

Daniel Creech: Obviously. It kept going down, and last quarter of I think 20… Or the first quarter. They went all the way down to 1.75 million in Q1 of 2020. That was total XRP sales. And that was way down from 13 million the previous quarter going back. So what do they do recently though, it went right back up to the 30s. But in addition to the SEC investigation, and that crypto is down 50% from basically just a few days ago. I think it’s around 20 cents. It was a little higher than 40. So, seeing what management needs to do, and they don’t follow through, you can get out and cut your losses or gains and move on. It’s a good overall macro lesson.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I mean, recommending this for what I saw is… People are complaining, they have to stop dumping these tokens, which is basically insider sales. Nobody knows where this money is going, nobody knows. They don’t have to report anything up with these utility companies, anything. Like, how much the management has, what they’re actually doing with that cash? What are they developing? All I know is they’re raising a shitload of money. And the company still has no utilities, meaning these guys could raise $20 million and buy six houses, you don’t know. There’s not… That’s the difference between security tokens and utility tokens. But seeing that management team and the people behind it and saying, “Okay, these guys are going to…” A lot of people came out and said that there’s a fraud out in utilities. And I’m like, “Okay, this thing is going to turn,” because these guys get it. Their management team, they understand if they don’t change it, they’re going to get sued. And they started changing, and we benefited, and then we got out. What was the gain that we got out at? How much was it?

Daniel Creech: 18%.

Frank Curzio: About 18%, right?

Daniel Creech: Which is zero in the world of crypto.

Frank Curzio: You could look at some of our crypto holdings, and like most people in crypto but we’ve done a really, really good job in crypto. Our performance is… We close out for 500% gain, we have 400%, what 300% in several stocks. Massive, massive winners, that we got in it. We didn’t take a ton of risk. We did it through really established tokens with good management teams, not like crazy stuff. Again, we took advantage of DeFi with Aragon, and I think we closed out of 525, 30 whatever it was, a position just a few months. But this is one of the most important… To me, even if it was a small loss, and I’ve said this before, where we recommended a company, and I forgot which newsletter it was in. Was it Summit? Not Summit, no, it was… because Summit’s up a lot now. So, it’s above it’s above the buy-up-to price. I’m not going to give away stocks here, but it was Standard Motor Products.

Frank Curzio: Standard Motor Products, actually, when it was up 15% for us in a couple months, right? Really started to take off. And then they lost their largest customer, and the stock sold off about 15, 16%. We took a 1% loss on it, whatever it was. You have to realize, if you’re an investor that those are mass… Those are so much more important than the massive wins. Because you’re going to have massive wins, but it’s how do you limit your losses? For me, if you told me a small-cap company lost its largest customer, and they just said, “Look, we’re going to do a lot of this stuff in-house,” and you only lose 1%. That’s pretty amazing.

Frank Curzio: With Ripple talking about how this is kind of… Yeah, these guys need to change. They need to change, or they’re going to get sued. And they didn’t, and we got out, and we have to get out at a gain. But now when you look where it is now and where it’s going, guys, this is something that’s absolutely worthless. When they go through the books, the SEC for this company, the stuff they’re going to find… Where’s all the money going? They’re going to look at all these guys accounts and say, “Okay, here’s where all the money’s going.” You still have no utility uses, which means XRP is worthless. It may go up 100% from here, 200%. I don’t know what it’s going to do. But I know that that specific one is worthless because it has no utility functions.

Frank Curzio: It’s been investigated by the SEC. And from someone who’s researched hundreds, six, 700 of these and 90% were garbage… This was one of the ones that I’m glad the SEC is doing its job and cleaning it up. Because this is an incredible industry that has amazing potential, especially with security tokens and Coinbase going public, they’re going to have to list security tokens. Because you look at utility tokens have little regulation. And they’re going to be deemed securities. So, they have to get into security tokens in order to grow that exchange. So, I’m glad. I like to see this. I think a lot of people are like, “Well, the SEC should stay away,” and total decentralized and stuff. You got to understand that for an investor coming into this industry, that money has to be safe. And seeing guys like this, and people say, “Oh, it’s crypto.” It’s not just crypto. There’s Wall Street guys behind this, and that’s what really pisses me off. I mean, I don’t know, and there’s going to be more to come because there’s a lot of companies just like this.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. And even to add to the stress on that side, if you’re a holder of that. Let’s say the SEC looks through the books, and you come out in six months with a decent headline. Well, that doesn’t really going to help you because Coinbase is already announcing they’re going to suspend trading. So, maybe they’ll bring all that back on. But man, that’s a wild ride as an investor, and we’ve dealt with our losers, and like you always say, the stress of following those, and trying to figure out what to do and go through everything. Man, that’s just… I’m glad we’re out of that. And yeah, it’s a good lesson. So, we can move on from that. Thank goodness.

Frank Curzio: No, no, definitely. Definitely. So, I want to move on a little bit more because we have… Let’s talk about the stimulus. I mean, as soon as came out finally for four months, five months they’ve been talking about this. Lockdowns closed businesses, and now they’re giving people $600. $600 for forcing people that want to work to not work, and string them along this whole entire time because you guys can’t come up with a deal, which has nothing to do with COVID and helping these people, which both sides agree on. It’s about how much shit we could put into this bill, which we saw. I mean, this is a pandemic. This is a once in a lifetime, hopefully, thing, maybe, whatever, but a Black Swan event. You can’t play politics here. You just can’t play politics here. I don’t know. I mean, I know you have strong opinions about this too.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, it’s just… I mean, it’s terrible because I just lost it. But I mean, Trump did… I thought his video was genius. He posted on his Twitter and he was reading off hundreds of millions of dollars going to different countries and all that, and listen, nothing against different countries. But now in the last several months, which you pointed out, when you are forced to shut down and you are at risk of losing everything on purpose, and they don’t help you, and then when they do, they give you a $600 check. And maybe now they’ll even bump it up to two grand. But obviously, there’s a big difference between those two, but is $2,000 going to make a small business owner that’s been closed for six months whole? Hell no. That’s pathetic, and is still pathetic. Well, so then you bring on… Bloomberg had a decent article. Did you see Larry Summers put his foot in his mouth? Larry Summers is the former Treasury-

Frank Curzio: No, I didn’t see that.

Daniel Creech: He was under Clinton, and then he was some… He was the Treasury Secretary under Clinton, I believe. And then, under Obama he was Director of National Economic, whatever. But anyway, he’s a bigwig in the career government politicians. And he was on Bloomberg. I believe he did an interview, and he was saying, “Hey, this is not a good idea. This $2,000 thing could overheat the economy.” And he made what I would say is kind of in jest of saying, “Hey, well, what’s the difference between why not five or why not 10?” And that’ll bring in a conversation we’re going to have all of next year, which I completely dread already. But that whole modern monetary theory, and, “Hey, why don’t we just tell businesses to stop, and give everybody 10 grand a month? What’s wrong with that?”

Daniel Creech: That’s the conversation in the direction we’re going. You don’t do that, real quick, just because when you throw in more money chasing the same amount of goods or services, prices are going to go through the roof, and it’s going to hurt the poor people 10 times harder than anybody else, which is ironic because that’s who always they say that they’re passing all this shit that help out so much, so.

Frank Curzio: It’s funny because if you’re looking at Lawrence Summers, one of the things that are funny, I remember, I don’t know if you saw the social network with Facebook, but he was the head of Harvard at the time. And they showed this in the movie, I don’t know how accurate it is. But it’s probably a story, but they made it entertaining, which they usually do in Hollywood. But it was the Winklevoss twins were pissed off that Zuckerberg… They were all at Harvard, that he stole their ideas. So, they said let’s just go to Harvard see if they take care of it. And they went to Summers and said, “Hey, you know what, Zuckerberg stole this idea.” And he’s like, “Well, that’s too bad.” And the Winklevoss twins were like, “But this could be potentially a million dollar idea, Facebook.” He’s like, “All right, isn’t that a little bit of a stretch?” You look at the valuation today. They had that in the movie. I don’t know how true that is. I’m sure Hollywood up a little bit.

Daniel Creech: Oh, yeah.

Frank Curzio: It’s just funny where the old guard and stuff like that, they don’t understand.

Daniel Creech: But the sad thing here is on the stimulus is it’s back to business as usual. And don’t get me wrong: Trump was nothing short of a huge debt. In fact, he ran on being the king of debt. Do you remember when he said that during the first…?

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: Oh, gosh, that was… Hey, I’m the king of debt. And no doubt, on a lot of scales, he is… Trump as the most conservative president we’ve had easily since Reagan, but what else? What do they have in common… The biggest? What happened to the national debt under Ronald Reagan? It went through the roof. So, there is no such thing as a conservative in the national debt anymore. And there hasn’t been since the ’80s. But the crazy thing is, is that I don’t understand how the average person still has faith… And we’ll get to the election here in 30 seconds. But I don’t understand how the average person is going to continue to have faith, or what little bit they may have remaining, in politicians, when you wait so long with your businesses shut and then that bill that comes out ,and it’s $900 billion, and a portion of that goes to you and hundreds of millions… Did you see the Pakistan gender something?

Frank Curzio: I got it right here. I mean, it’s 85 million in Cambodia.

Daniel Creech: How can you not… Man, I mean, if you have any faith left I’m impressed by that. You ought to email us in and tell us why because I don’t understand that at all. That’s not the biggest thing for term limits, and in a march there, then I don’t know what it is. But it’s sad for people, but listen this is the arena. It doesn’t mean we can’t make money. And the easiest way in the next stock market, or in the next year, is every time you see a headline about breaking up Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, and Apple, buy it. Because there’s no way those guys are going to turn their back on the biggest corporations that help them every step of the way forward.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, and most companies like that, when they do break them up, they become even more powerful. They achieve their goal with AT&T and Exxon and Standard Oil back in the day, where they made it more competitive, but those people got much, much more.

Daniel Creech: But if you would’ve bought… Exactly. If you had the option to buy that…

Frank Curzio: So, an investor, yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Creech: Exactly.

Frank Curzio: But just really quick just to sum this up, so $600 checks, that’s it, right? And you’re forcing people who are dying to work. These people want to work. You have forced them to close their businesses for a virus that has a 99.5% survival rate. You’re mandating masks, social distancing, along with massive lockdowns. You have the governors, you have the mayors, and these mayors and governors are not doing what they’re saying. They’re hypocrites, a lot of them. But then you look at massive lockdowns, and take California, for example: mandating masks, social distancing, huge lockdowns, probably the biggest of any state outside of New York. And COVID is spreading faster in California than anywhere else in the world. So, it’s just questions we need to ask ourselves, where if you’re really practicing social distancing, if you’re wearing masks, and we have lockdowns, why hell is just spreading so rapidly.

Frank Curzio: And people say, “Oh, it’s spreading now, because we just locked it.” No, you’ve been locked down for three weeks. Okay? And now you’re pushing that into another two to three weeks. So, we need more data on this, and the data isn’t supported. But when you’re forcing these people to stay home and say, “Listen, you need to stay home. You can’t work. You can’t open your business.” Walmart, you’re allowed to open. Home Depot, you’re okay. But no, you’re a restaurant owner, indoor, no. Even if you have outdoor facilities, too bad. Nope, we don’t want you to. Even though there’s no data supporting that. You more easily get COVID that way by going to indoor restaurant than a Walmart or any other indoor place. That’s a Band-Aid allowed to stay open by a government.

Frank Curzio: And then what happens is you give $600 checks to people as you strung them along. It just goes to show you about our politicians. These are politicians who campaign all the time of how we’re going to help constituents. We’re going to… It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican. Obviously, these guys don’t give a shit about you, don’t give a shit about me. It’s evident: 85 million of Cambodian, 134 million to Burma, 1.3 billion for Egypt, the Egyptian military, 25 million for, like you said, democracy and gender programs in Pakistan. Why is this crap in this bill when 10s of millions of Americans are in a lot of trouble? I mean, I’m fortunate: I own two businesses that are doing well. The other business mostly hands off my phone business. And we’re fortunate to do… But there’s… I have friends who are gym owners.

Frank Curzio: I have friends who are bar owners. And even in Florida, you go to 80% capacity with these businesses, or 70% capacity. And that’s a difference between you staying open or closing or going bankrupt. And they won’t even let them go up to 70%. Here, they do in Florida. Again, it’s not spreading as fast. They just need more data, but $1 billion to the Smithsonian, additional 154 million for the National Gallery of Art. Are you kidding me? I mean, 500 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua. Why is this… Excuse my language. I know it’s the holiday season-

Daniel Creech: This is a family show, Frank.

Frank Curzio: But why is shit in this bill? They know the whole world is going to see it, don’t they? And they forced this, and this is what they’re arguing about, of why the bill didn’t pass. It’s not because of the help, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: It’s because of this garbage, and just to see that, to me, it’s incredible. I know when I always say, “I’m so surprised.” You say, “Frank, why are you surprised, right?”

Daniel Creech: Yeah, I mean, this is the status quo. I mean, when people tell you who they are, just listen. And I think to add insult to injury, I am going to end on an awesome note though. But to add insult to injury, that bill is over 5,000 pages long. So, you literally are just back to the status quo. And I’m not saying Trump changed all this. So, I don’t mean back to the status quo in the sense that it was changed for the last four years dramatically. But you have people literally just continuing to vote on legislation that they have no idea what’s in it. There’s no possible way any of those guys, I would bet handful of them can even read. But let alone read a 5,000 page bill. So, it’s bad.

Daniel Creech: I mean, that’s the world of politics, and that’s the norm. It’s disgusting. But you can either continue to get mad on it, or see it for what it is and make decisions accordingly, from the individual standpoint, all the way out to businesses and anything else. The best thing is, and this is just one of the best stories of capitalism and big heartedness in 2020, so, Dave Portnoy, Barstool Sports founder sold to Penn Gaming, right? I don’t know if anybody follows this guy. He is a character… Saying he’s a hilarious character doesn’t even begin to describe him.

Frank Curzio: I mean, regardless if you love him or hate him-

Daniel Creech: Oh, he’s an outspoken. He cracks me up, and what I like is that I watch the NFL if I’m with family or hanging out, but I could care less about most pro sports in the fact of how closely I follow… So, I can look at him because he does betting in football and all kinds of stuff. But I can watch him on the middle of the fence because I really don’t care one way or another. So, he doesn’t offend me when he’s hilarious and crude, but he’s a big small business guy because he built his company before selling it. And he started a fund, Barstool Fund, to help small businesses. And I think he put in a half a million dollars to start it. And I’m going to donate to this thing too. Because this just is a feel good story. He said, I just checked his Twitter a little while ago, two hours ago, he woke up, there is over $10 million from over 85,000 supporters that have donated to this.

Daniel Creech: So, this guy raises $10 million for small businesses, and it’s cool. He posts, he FaceTimes with people, business owners, tells them that they’re part of this or whatever. I mean, it is good stuff. So when you get frustrated about the politicians and the status quo, there are wonderful people out there. And hopefully, when you look at Hollywood and all the wealthy people that are constantly telling you what to do, I would hope that all those people that were putting… And you can use your money however you want to. I’m the biggest capitalist there is. But if you’re willing to bail out protesters and violent people when they’re burning down stores and rioting, I would hope that you’re willing to support the small businesses that they, A) Burned down or had to shut down. But man, kudos to him. 10 million freaking dollars is amazing. I don’t know when he started it, but it wasn’t a long time ago. So, that just shows you the power. A) It shows you capitalism getting to work, individualism, and just good people that care and help donate money and time. It’s great.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it is cool to see. And again, he has a very strong personality, a very strong following, but also there’s a lot of people that don’t like him where he’s trading stocks and saying, “This is the easiest thing of all.” So, it rubs people the wrong way. But he’s passionate, and he’s entertaining as hell. So… But I like what he’s doing. I think he’s very honest in what he does. And yeah, stuff like that, it’s just a feel good story. And before we even mentioned, Portnoy, you were talking about… We’re talking about what our politicians… Listen, you could be pissed. Just like I say, you could be pissed the Fed spending tons of money. It doesn’t matter, right? You got to react accordingly.

Frank Curzio: Even if you disagree, or I mean you want to hold the sun. You want to protest, do what you got to do, but if we’re going to see continue spending and all this garbage, buy bitcoin, buy gold. It’s going to do much, much better. You’re going to see more money into the market where a 20% correction, we’re not allowed to have that anymore. Corrections are normal cost of business. We’re not allowed to. I mean, the Feds are going to inject themselves, right? In the.com bubble we didn’t get… We didn’t see the government come in. No, the freaking Nasdaq fell was it 75% from its highs. And it was like a three year period before, hey, the strongest survive. They became lean, smart, they actually had businesses. They didn’t have three webpages, and a $2 billion valuation. But just the government being there and forcing themselves into these industries. And having that support means that stocks are probably going to go higher.

Frank Curzio: On every pullback, it’s going to be a buying opportunity. So, you could argue, you could hate it. You could say this sucks, but at the end of the day, it’s about you, your family, and portfolio. Adjust accordingly. It doesn’t matter, Democrat, Republican, whatever. You see what’s coming out, you see these politicians, you see… And that brings us to our next topic, which is the election in Georgia. So, just a week away, I think. Over the past two to three… After the election with Trump, I feel like that this story isn’t as big as it first was in the two weeks after. Biden check the winner, whatever, but that it was like everyone’s like, “Holy cow, Georgia.” I feel like it’s losing that luster a little bit. But you can’t look at this and not be concerned. Because if the Democrats win this, then they control everything. We’re going to see massive, massive changes, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, I mean, full disclosure. I’m surprised that we haven’t seen a nice pullback day leading up to that election. Because if, as it stands, and as crazy as it is, there are Senate hearings in Georgia going on about the election, the presidential election right now, which is wild because I know everybody’s written that off. I will admit when I’m wrong. But there is the two videos out there about, allegedly, where they pull votes from under a table after they usher people out. And you can Google this; this is not hard to find. Trump retweeted it.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know if you can Google it, but you can find it.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, DuckDuckGo. And the other one where it appears pretty clear that a count. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman. But basically, they’re stacking these ballots together and putting them through the counter, and they literally grab the exact same ballots, shuffle them up again, and put them back. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t look into those to make sure they are exactly what they seem to be. But that coupled with the small, small percentage of absentee ballots that are not getting thrown out when you have… I think it’s typically like 3% get tossed out on an average year. Well, this year, you increase them by millions and millions and millions and a lower percentage got thrown out. That is basically statistically impossible.

Daniel Creech: So, I’m still waiting for some fireworks on the presidential thing. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but yeah, if… Listen, the last time the Republicans had all three branches, you had a major tax cut. They screwed up, in my opinion, trying to get through healthcare right away. John McCain put an end to that before he passed. Then they got a massive tax bill passed when they had all three powers of government. The last time the Democrats had it, you had healthcare under Obama. So, if you don’t look at it and think that something major wouldn’t be passed if Georgia goes to the Democrats and the presidential holds up like that, then I think that the market is mispricing that significantly.

Frank Curzio: You know what, maybe they’re not mispricing. I can tell you why. I know you disagree with this, but hear me out. We have a ton of moderate Democrats, to say just like we have a ton of moderate Republicans. You only hear from the extremes: the far right, the far left, because that’s the storytelling. That’s the burning of the buildings. That’s like, it’s crazy, right? But when you look at moderate Democrats, what do they want to do? They want to get Trump out of office. They don’t like him, that’s fine. That’s cool. You did it. You basically did it. You basically gone unless something dramatically changed. And I agree with you, with I just can’t believe how you have a video of people… Why aren’t these people on the stand? Why haven’t we seen this publicly? Why?

Frank Curzio: I mean, it sounds like these people are on a beach and nothing happened to them, but just ask them what happened? Were they not… Why did you close at 9:30? The fact that we have a video and nobody cares. It’s mind blowing to me because… Forget about Republicans, Democrats. I say that a lot because I want… When we talk about politics, people have very strong opinions. But this is our voting process. People died to give us this right, and you don’t want to… You have video of some taking out votes out of a table, dismissing everyone in what was it, like 10:30. And all of a sudden, these votes get counted at 3:00 AM by only three or four people compared to the 30 or 40 that were there. It’s just why aren’t these guys on the stand? Why don’t they in front of Congress? Why aren’t we questioning exactly what happened? The fact that nobody really cares blows me away. And getting back to the tons of moderate Democrats and most people in the middle here. These are people that hated Trump, fine. You hated Trump, he’s gone.

Frank Curzio: This is a group that believes in climate change, tax cuts for the middle class, wants more taxes on the rich, believes in our constitution, believes in capitalism, pro-growth, the American dream, if you work hard enough, you can succeed anything. They just have different of opinion in how to grow our country compared to say, moderate Republicans. But now if you’re a moderate Democrat living in Georgia, and again, you accomplished it. You got rid of Trump. You hated him. But are you going to vote in that election knowing that if those Democrats win, your tax is going to be raised considerably? And they’ll say, “No, it’s not in the middle class because most middle income families, middle class own equities, and own assets and the capital gains tax is going to skyrocket. So, you’re going to see tax… Biden said it himself. I don’t remember a president saying, “Hey, elect me, I’m raising taxes.” It almost never happens.

Daniel Creech: Are you going on a limb and saying there won’t be major legislation passed if they have all three? If the Democrats have all three branches?

Frank Curzio: No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I wonder if those Democrats who are moderate are just going to say, “Yeah, we want…” Because if they… If the Democrats… It’s not going to be a moderate Democrat, it’s going to be much more pushed to the left, where you’re going to see that the foundation that America was built on is going to change, right? They want to add seats to Supreme Court. This isn’t about differences in climate change at all. You’re looking at them adding two new… Puerto Rico and DC, so they have a better shot of always controlling the Senate.

Frank Curzio: You’re looking at the New Green Deal, which you want to basically rebuild almost every building across every city to make it more environmentally friendly. And you’re going to stop fracking. So, if you stop fracking, one of the biggest things that’s kept us out of wars is that we, for the first time in history, and it happened a couple years ago, and should I cover it? I visit every major shale area. Yeah, we’re going to stop fracking. We’re energy independent. People don’t understand how important that is, where it gives us significant advantage over China, Japan, Asia, Europe. We have our resources here. You’re going to just take that away. We’re going to be more dependent. A lot of wars are caused because of oil and OPEC in the Middle East. We’re going to go from… We’re not going to be… If they make this decision, it’s not going to be moderate. It’s going to be… I mean, you look at Schumer, you look at Pelosi, and what they’ve been saying, defund the police and things like that. Yeah, there’s going to be a radical change. And for me, my point is, I wonder if-

Daniel Creech: I was going to say, what are you disagreeing with me on?

Frank Curzio: I wonder if there’s Democrats out there that are moderate that are like, “You know what, all right, maybe it’s better that… Because if we really get everything…” They get control, they don’t give a shit about anyone, which we know based on the stimulus bill. They’re going to really push that left agenda. It’s going to be more and more left, but I’m wondering here, from Democrats like that, or even Republicans… But to me, I think that could change where they could be like, “Okay, we don’t want to give these guys too much power. We got what we wanted. We got Trump out. But do we really want all this other garbage?” Because at the end of the day, if you’re really looking at Georgia and Democrats win this, you’re going to get your taxes raised. I don’t care what you say, or what you believe.

Frank Curzio: Everyone is going to get their taxes raised unless you make probably less than 30 grand a year, but everyone’s going to get their taxes raised. You have to. We have a massive amount of debt. It has to come from someplace, and all the rich people… If you’re going to tax them to the point where they’re going to get the hell out of the country. They’re already leaving certain states like New York, California, in droves. So, where’s that money going to come from to support all this? You’re spending like maniacs handing checks to people in businesses for nothing. You have to make up those payments. But it’s going to be interesting to see this election and how it works out. But I can’t even make a prediction. I have no idea. But yeah, it is going to be interesting of how even moderate Democrats vote for that. Maybe they’re like, I don’t give a shit. I’m just going to vote for… I don’t know. I’m just curious on that.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, it’ll be… Like you said, I mean, but as long as you have some exposure to gold and silver, or better gold, silver, and stocks, I think that’ll place your head even though they’ll sell off for the first couple days if the market really pulls back. But yeah, I mean, just make sure you’re hedged a little bit, and stay long. And we’ll find a lot of good ideas in the next year. And like I said, it’s aggravating, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to make money.

Frank Curzio: Exactly. And that’s how you have to position your portfolio.

Daniel Creech: So, I will tease this, because you could argue that we’re evil here at Curzio Research because of some of the companies we’ve recommended. You can talk about bailouts and things like that. And Goldman Sachs is a pick that’s doing well for CRA members, Curzio Research Advisory.

Frank Curzio: I can’t say the emails that came in when I recommended them.

Daniel Creech: Well, you can’t. We’re going to talk about this later, maybe we’ll do a quick YouTube video. You really have to be comfortable with your conscience to say, “Okay, if you can’t beat them, join them.” I mean, they’re not a solid company in the terms of moral. They’re terrible, but it’s an easy way to look at the way the world is, and you’re either going to profit or not profit off of it.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. I mean, if you’re going to buy a bank it should be Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. I mean, just evaluate the earnings are going to explode. They’re exploding already. They’re exploding across the board. You see-

Daniel Creech: I was having fun with the fact that they get bailed out basically 100 cents on the dollar. They’re all connected. It’s BS. But again, what are you going to do? Are you going to use that profit to do good, or continue to compound it and be “evil?”

Frank Curzio: Now, it will be interesting. I know profit’s going to explode. It’s just amazing how nobody wants the banks, and everybody likes them. It’s kind of funny. But I want to go into how to position yourself into next year. Because, yeah, there’s a lot of things going on. But first, I want to say this. I don’t know if you saw this, but I took a poll. And it was two days ago on my Twitter account, and we got something like 250 people that responded. So, I asked a question. I had four different… So, the question had four different choices. The question was, how long will it take for crews to be back in operation? Hotels and casinos to get back to 70% capacity? I said, will it happen in Q1, Q2, Q3, or 2022?

Frank Curzio: What is surprising is that we saw a low percentage, a single digit percentage for Q1. So most people don’t think, okay, things are going back… I didn’t say go back to normal. I said, 70% in cruises just an operation. Not that all of them, it’s going to be just a few of them. So, low percentages Q1, I get that. What I was surprised that is there was close to 70% that either said Q3, and the highest percentage out of that. I mean, the total Q3 and 2022. So, almost 70% was Q3 and 2022. But even a high percent said that they don’t believe this is going to happen. 70% felt 2022, which there’s two observations to make there. And again, this is my poll, this is on Twitter, it was only 244… Probably more accurate than any fricking poll out there. The way they keep track of the score is amazing. It’s an awesome job, by the way. You can make a fortune doing it and can be absolutely wrong.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, we won’t go there on a rant. But there’s two observations here. The first is, if you’re looking at this taking place long-term, if it happens, say by second quarter, you should be buying cruises, hotels, casinos, they’re going to surge from here if it happened sooner than that timeframe. The other observation is if that many people, 70%, and again, it’s a small poll on Twitter, if you really believe that things aren’t going to get back to 70% until 2022, you should be lightening up on your equity exposure right now because that is definitely not factored into the stock market, trading at pretty much record high levels. You’re looking at Apple at 31 times forward earnings, hasn’t traded there since the early growth days of 15, 20 years ago. Microsoft 30 times, the same way. The FAANG stocks are 28, 29, with Google and Facebook to round that out. You’re looking at… I mean, even when you look at Caterpillar, 25 times forward earnings for Caterpillar.

Frank Curzio: I mean, forget about Disney. It’s probably trading at 95, 100 times forward earnings, which again, we won’t go there because I’ve been wrong on the stock price. People just love to buy it. And those earnings aren’t going to get back to pre-COVID levels for another five years. People love it. They don’t care. They want to get the stream. That’s great. I get it. But when I look at the sentiment of people that really believe that’s going to take 2022. If you really… If that is true, and say this is a much, much bigger poll, and that’s true, you really should be lightening up on equities, don’t you think?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, that and increase your hedges because the same song and dance is going to continue. So, if that does get pushed out, and the market starts to sell that off, I have no doubt that you’ll have Fed… Well, not Fed Chair Yellen now, former Fed Chair Yellen, who is going to be treasury secretary if Biden gets and whoever is going to be at the Fed. I mean, they’re going to make announcements, and they’re going to continue to try to prop everything up. So, I think that’s good for gold and Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, limit your exposure on that. But it’s always fun to have a little bit of riskiness like that to really capture the upside. We’ve had some casinos in CVO and things that are doing great, but lighten up and hedge, but I don’t know… Man, not liking gold and silver stocks here is just goofy to me. So, I would take the opportunity to buy those. You’re going to have more stimulus of some sort, which is only going to be bad for dollars, and that’ll be bullish for assets.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to see across the board, just not from our central government, for every central government.

Daniel Creech: Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. All around the world.

Frank Curzio: So, when I look at… What’s the strategy? There’s one thing that I’m noticing. It’s funny at the end of the year because a lot of people feel like, “Okay, it’s over, I’m not paying attention.” You worry about looking at your taxes, tackle selling stuff like that, but it’s amazing: The past few days where I’ve seen clean energy is up tremendously, right? The industry of like 40% of the past four months. It’s down about 12% in the past five trading days. You’re looking at rare earth metals, right? We have all of our research engines and stuff like that, that we pay a lot of money for, and it tells you what’s outperforming for up the day, and what sector it is on. And earth metals was up 4% on Monday, and it was down 4% on Tuesday. So, there’s just a lot of shifting going around.

Frank Curzio: But one of the things you’re seeing is stocks that haven’t really performed this year and we have out performance… I mean, you can always do better. But we’ve done very, very good this year within our portfolio. I think most people would agree with that. But we do have two stocks of fan favorites that didn’t really participate. And now they’re being sold off. They’re down by 10, 12%. It’s getting sold off because of tax laws. People need to take losses because they have so many winners, right? So, I will look heading into next year, start doing your research now. It’s your money, you don’t have to. You could go on vacation, relax until New Year’s, whatever. But I’m saying look at some of the names that are down 15, 20% in December because it’s for selling.

Frank Curzio: People need to sell. They’re not selling because the fundamental of the company changed. They’re just selling because the stock price is down, and maybe they bought at a higher price, and they’re losers. So, they need to offset some of their gains. And I see that a lot where it’s first, second week, third week in January these things really, really take off because maybe you have a $10 stock that is at eight dollars. Well, okay, now people bought at 10, it’s eight, and they’re going to sell it, and it’ll go down to five. And in three weeks’ time, you see this thing go right back to eight, eight and a half. And they get that growth trend back and stuff like that. You look at management, but it’s a way to really find some hidden gems and companies that that people hate. I’m not saying to buy value in companies that aren’t growing. But you see a lot of these stocks sell off. And yeah, there’s a lot of good names out there.

Frank Curzio: Asteroid Hospitality Group, Independence Contract Drilling, AG Mortgage Investment Trust, you think that would come back, Farmer Brothers, there’s a bunch of them if you type in Google or whatever, some of the biggest losers of the year. But you’re going to see those stocks sell off even more, maybe 20% 25%, providing a pretty good buying opportunity. That’s one of the strategies I look at. I think you need to own a bank. We covered that. I think banks are going to be incredible. They’re trading at… Now they have a growth profile. Now they could increase their dividends. Now they could buy back stock. Yet, a lot of these things are still trading near book value, which is incredible, and that’s usually the biggest buying opportunity. And I understand why you were trading below that with your restrictions and having handcuffs on. But now they’ve just been released.

Frank Curzio: So, you’re looking at banks, I think it’s a great way to small-cap, mid-cap, large cap, I think the whole entire sector is going to go a lot higher. And just continue with small-caps, especially micro-caps, Daniel, these are three areas I’m looking at. But micro-caps are seeing a tremendous amount of inflows. These good ideas are getting funded. And we’ve gotten into two of them very early for our subscribers in Curzio Venture Opportunities. Our last picks, two or three of our last picks, were companies that you really never heard of. But having the connections I have, and then forming these companies, doing reverse mergers, and then building these companies up that are generating millions of revenue already.

Frank Curzio: It’s really… I’m still seeing tons of ideas in that area of the market. Again, you have to be in the right circles to see these things early on. But so far, we’ve been good, and our network is powerful. And we’ve been in these things that are really starting to take off, but I’m still seeing ideas there, but I want to get your thoughts on… What are you looking into next year? What’s going to happen to whatever? If it’s sectors, if it’s stocks, or… Yeah?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, the thing I’ll be screening for, like you said, we won’t give away the last pick in CVO. But when you’re at all-time highs, it’ll be interesting to see the different mergers and different deals that are being made. So, when you see headlines about a company buying stakes in other companies or trying to take them over, I would really dig into those because you have to get creative at all-time highs. The odds are significantly with the market even going higher, as hard as it is to be bullish, as you just keep going up and ignore basically all the rules and potential slowdowns with the economy given the virus and the vaccine and all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Creech: Be prepared for a headline, I saw somebody that took the vaccine that passed away. That’s awful. But those kind of headlines are going to be coming. Heaven forbid somebody gets it after the vaccine, that’s going to be a crazy headline. So, we’re always going to have to deal with that. And then the other thing would be looking at strong management teams, of course, and activists. So, I think it’s a really interesting story that Intel popped 5% on Dan Loeb getting involved. And I think you’re going to see more of that as… I mean, Intel, I don’t have it right in front of me, but it’s what? It’s PE is probably 11.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, yeah. I mean-

Daniel Creech: And it’s a great company. Yeah, they’ve screwed up a lot. We used to have that. I got so sick and tired of hearing about the delays in their chips coming out, but that’s a rock solid balance sheet company. It’s ripe for low hanging fruit for somebody like Loeb to come in and push them around. And that stock could easily go up 25% from here. And that’ll be neat to see the big conglomerates be held accountable by some old corporate raiders, that Carl Icahn was so famous for in the ’80s and ’70s, I guess. But yeah, I think the Intel thing is really interesting, and following Dan Loeb is usually not a terrible idea.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it’s not. I mean, he’s great.

Daniel Creech: You need to get that guy on the podcast. He just seems like a smart mother-

Frank Curzio: It’s hard to get big hedge fund guys-

Daniel Creech: Yeah, that’s true.

Frank Curzio: Because it’s so guarded in regulation and stuff like that. I mean, they have the deal where if they’re going on the media channels, CNBC, Fox Business, they understand because CNBC wants them on. They’re not saying, “Hey, can I come on?” And when they come on what do they do? Yeah, they actively promote what they’re doing. And they could actually turn around and sell that position two, three weeks later. Maybe they’re loading up in a huge position, and they’ll come on TV and say… I’ve seen this done with Ackman, right? So, just going on TV, and the whole thesis behind Hilton and everything and being worried, and I don’t know.

Frank Curzio: It’s funny how he got criticized for that. But hey, you want him on TV, and that’s what they’re going to do, right? Because they’re going to promote their portfolio, so it’s hard to get those guys on. I’m going to try to get a lot… We’re getting amazing quality guests because our podcast is really starting to get a huge following. It was already pretty big, and now it’s just, thanks to you, word of mouth, we’re getting a lot of people, especially through our Curzio Research YouTube page, a lot of people going there. They love the video format, they see it. It just makes it for a much better experience. And we got a professional studio here, studio cameras shooting in 1080P, just using great technology, which is awesome. So, thanks to you, we’re getting a big audience, which means when you have a big audience that it’s easy to get great guests on. And a lot of these guys are reaching out to us, which is exciting. And that’s what I’m looking for next year. I guess, Dan, we’ll end on this. You have any New Year’s resolutions?

Daniel Creech: In short, no. I’m not a big New Year’s resolution guy. I do like the idea of using the new year to try to start something, but man I haven’t. No, I haven’t. I haven’t really thought anything about it.

Frank Curzio: That’s kind of quick, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. It’ll be Friday, right? Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve?

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: So, I justify all my bad habits by taking major holidays off, so I will not be out partying. I’ll be in bed by probably 10 o’clock tomorrow. I’m not a big New Year’s guy.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, most people-

Daniel Creech: I let all the amateurs do that. I’ll pick up where I left off Friday.

Frank Curzio: It’s funny. Most people like are like, “All right, I got to get this up in January, and they go nuts in December.” Whatever that vice is, they’re like, “I’m going all in.” Whatever.

Daniel Creech: They just go the same way, and buy workout because everybody buys a gym membership for January.

Frank Curzio: Gym membership.

Daniel Creech: You buy a… Who’s publicly traded in fitness?

Frank Curzio: I mean, you have Planet Fitness. You have… Oh, well, I know you’re going to make fun… But that’s fine.

Daniel Creech: Oh, yeah, Frank’s going to use his Peloton we have in the office now. If you want to break in, steal the Peloton first. Leave our shit here, and don’t mess with our computers. Take the Peloton.

Frank Curzio: I was saying when that stock 80, 85, and I waited a little while before maybe I shorted and don’t fight that trend’s going higher. Now it’s at 60, but buying a Peloton. I’ve been using it every day. I got to tell you, man, it really is amazing. It’s cool. It’s like a whole network. They have thousands of different programs. You could also take rides in hundreds, if not thousands, of different places all over the world where you can just ride the bike. But it’s so interactive, and it’s really cool. You’re not going to see anyone that has a Peloton that’s going to complain about. It’s just like Tesla. When people buy Tesla, they love it. When it goes… Even when my daughter sees a Tesla like, “Look, that’s a Tesla.” It’s just when you have that, that brand, how powerful it is cannot be underestimated, especially when it comes to a stock price.

Frank Curzio: And that’s why when you seeing valuations get stretched off of something that sells a product that so many people like it’s not about valuation anymore, right? It’s about emotion. It’s about people getting attached to it. And that’s why you see Tesla’s don’t even try to value it. I mean, it was overvalued 600 points ago. Yeah, it was 500 points ago. But you don’t even try to value it. But you’re looking at something that that people love. You got to see sales explode. It’s more battery, whatever. But you can’t really justify the valuation. The same with Peloton, through the roof, but you can justify that people love that product. They just bought a big facility to increase production. It took me two and a half months to get it.

Daniel Creech: Oh, wow.

Frank Curzio: Two and a half months to get. I got it just before Christmas.

Daniel Creech: Those things aren’t cheap. I’m not going to ask you on air here.

Frank Curzio: No, I mean, I think it’s 1,800 for the older bike, and it’s 2,200 for the new bike. And then you have to pay for the membership, which is $25 a month, or you could… I think the scaled down motion is $9.99, but it depends. I mean, I work out with a trainer too. That’s one of my New Year’s resolutions is to stay fit. I mean, I have my Under Armour shirt on my daughter bought me, and been working out, and flexing and stuff, but I’m tired from doing that, if you see the video. But it’s for me, I want to try to get in shape. And it’s worth that expense to me because I’m the type of person… When it comes to working out, because I’m so busy, I need to have someone, to have a schedule and someone yelling at me and say, “Workout.” And that’s why I have a trainer. Peloton, you could have that person. It’s virtual classes everywhere, and I could see why it works. I really can. I’m not saying to try and buy a stock at these levels, but-

Daniel Creech: Buy the bike. Don’t buy the stock; buy the bike.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, don’t buy the stock; buy the bike. But you know what, you could buy the stock. It’s at an all-time high, pretty closely. But it’s crazy. But that’s one of the things: Stay fit and really focus. I want to really focus on our token. I feel like we’re first to that industry, Daniel, where it’s just amazing the context we have in that industry, the ideas I have. There’s companies like Nikola that get funded. What’s the valuation on that? Yes, it got crushed. But you talk about valuation, I want to say six, 7 billion. I’m going to get a look. I haven’t looked at in a while. But for a company that’s not really going to produce anything for four years, right? Because it’s the concept; it’s the idea.

Frank Curzio: So, for me, when I’m looking at our security token, what’s the grand idea? Of course, you’re going to stay in publishing and stuff, but how do we take advantage? Is it a fund where a lot of these guys coming to us, and they don’t know how to market themselves. It’s a tough industry to market. People don’t understand it, and they’re seeing how good of a job we do. We raised money through our own file, which is saying something about our brand. Our clients believe in us so much that we had investors come in and we raised $4 million, which is amazing. We didn’t do it through any institution. We did it just through our list.

Frank Curzio: So, find that idea where a lot of these companies are going to come to us in an early stage. That’s going to be in a Crypto Intelligence newsletter. If you’re a Curzio One subscriber as well, you’re going to get access to all of our products. But just growing that and finding what is that idea? And we talked about this yesterday, right, Daniel, where… What is the idea of security tokens? Where we’re a leader in the industry, and we grow that leadership where it’s more like Amazon. How do you stay ahead of the competition? That’s how I’m thinking now and thinking ahead. Because if you don’t think like that, then you become… And I’d mentioned two names is AOL, or even Research Emotion, who invented the smartphone. They invented the smartphone, and Apple said, “Well, that’s kind of like a piece of garbage, and we can do it better.” And that’s why Apple is the biggest company in the world. It’s 100% because of the iPhone, 65% of their sales still, 60%.

Frank Curzio: So, you don’t want to be first to an industry and let your guard down. And that’s what I’m focused on the most: Talking to the right people in the industry, where we’re going to go, and I think that’s going to be reflected in our token and what we’re going to do. But that’s something that is exciting, that we’re a publicly traded company through this method. Now, you’ve seen Bitcoin take off, which is a great thing. And it’s just adding more excitement to the industry. And security tokens have grown tremendously. There’s a lot in the works. But those are two things I’m really looking forward to.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. And I mean, from my perspective, it’s exciting being a young guy. I remember talking to you about the next bull market, and arguably the bull market we’re in, in gold and silver right now, is my first one since really diving in and being in investing. So, it’s fun to be in the center of that and watch those prices move higher, as well as the bull market in stocks. But yeah, the STO thing will be exciting because like you said, we’re in the center of that, and we’re just pushing cards over and see where they fall. But that to me is a very… That adrenaline, it’s like if you’re going to take the last shot in a game the time that you walk out from the timeout, and to the time that you take that shot. I don’t care if you make or miss it. But that adrenaline, there is… Man, if we could bottle that and sell that, man, would we be rich.

Daniel Creech: But I’m telling you, I just think that’s neat. So, up until… With the STOs, I don’t think it’s a big stretch. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to think that the boom in Bitcoin right now approaching $30,000, the boom in STOs, and companies that are going to raise money and have access to individuals. I don’t know… I don’t believe that that’s a huge stretch. So, I’m looking forward to that. I expect that to happen. I think it’ll take major strides this year.

Daniel Creech: And I want to step back, especially over the next few days, and let’s say quarter and appreciate and know that that’s coming in and get off on that adrenaline because I don’t know if anybody else thinks like that. But to me, that’s really cool. And you want to… You got to stop and smell the roses and just say, “Hey, this may work out or it may not.” But right now, the anticipation of whether it will or won’t, is awesome. And I hope everybody gets to experience something like that. And everybody does. You just got to pay attention. And everybody does, it just depends on what you’re involved in. So, take that, have a cocktail, and just drift away. That’s cool.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. I would recommend that to anybody. I mean, if you have an idea just… I mean, the process, even if it doesn’t work out what you’ll learn. And I mean, look at so many business owners, I won’t say almost everyone, but a massive percentage of guys who are running businesses have run businesses that failed. You learn your mistakes, and everything, and we had lots of mistakes. And because this is an industry when you’re being first that… Sometimes it’s fun, but you’re also the guinea pig for some… When you have partners, and platforms, and stuff, and you need them to interact, which is out of control sometimes. So, it took a couple extra months for us to get into token trading, then it took another month to actually get our investors to be able to put their tokens on MERJ.

Frank Curzio: Again, just because we’re at the stage when it’s really at, where they… Okay, we’re raising money. We’re doing this, and what are going to do, reg D or reg C? What are we going to do, crowdfunding? But when you’re looking at the crypto industry, I could tell you that the people who we dealt with really didn’t take it to the stage where we had it. They were like, “Okay, here’s how you create the token. Here’s the structure. Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s the report, and here’s the transfer, here’s all this stuff. But they never got to the point where, okay, now you’re training mom-and pop-investors, what’s next? Because now, that’s Wall Street. And you need to know both. And I feel like even with a lot of people on the crypto side, they don’t understand that process.

Frank Curzio: They understand how to bring it, but it’s almost like you need two sets of lawyers and going through that, and learning. But again, it’s pretty amazing, and that’s what keeps me up at night is… It’s like the internet being created. And say it was created before this, but say it’s like mid-1990s, Daniel, and you’re engulfed in this. And who do you want to be? You can go anywhere. I mean, a lot of the travel agencies weren’t even developed then. You look at no social media companies. But where do you want to go because there’s so many outlets that this is going to explode, and it is going to explode because it checks every box. From someone that’s been following trends all my life, it’s… I bring up Uber a lot, but Uber checked every box. Everything you hate about taxis, it addressed. It’s much safer. It’s cheaper. You can rate your driver. You can call your driver and say, “Hey, I’m on the corner right here. This is the color my shirt.”

Frank Curzio: It just makes for a much better experience, where, why would you take a taxi for any more? Other than maybe you don’t feel like waiting for that driver to come in a high traffic area, whatever. When you look at this, the costs for us to go public are dramatically less. This thing would have cost $2-3 million if we did it. It cost a 10th of that. For us, it’s very good where it’s not full regulation on where it’s costing millions of dollars. And that’s going to change because we’re going to move up that ladder to the point where we want this to trade at quality numbers, we’re going to be reporting and transparency, knowing exactly what numbers are good or bad. And for us, it’s great for the issuer. But it’s not just about the issuer; it’s about you. It’s about mom-and-pop investors, where you can invest into Snowflake. Look when Snowflake came out, at that valuation. Look at where Airbnb came out. Look at where DoorDash came out.

Frank Curzio: You’re like, “Oh man, I’m trying to get into the IPO price before these things go up 100% in one day.” And yet, Snowflake coming out 120. If you’re Buffet, you got to invest at 120, lightened a deal a couple weeks before, and then the thing… It’s over 300 or 400? Like three and change. DoorDash you have those insiders in single digit. Some of these VC funds… Here’s an opportunity where will we succeed? I don’t know. We’re a small-cap company. Maybe people hate newsletters. Maybe people start hating me, start hating… I don’t know. It is risky. You don’t know, I’m going to be honest with you. But what I do know is if we turn this into a billion dollar company, you’re able to get it on the ground floor, and you’re going to make a shitload of money, and you don’t have that opportunity anyplace else anymore because IPOs… They wait till these guys generate a huge amount of sales. They build up with these roadshows, and they come out multibillion dollar valuations. And you want to be able to get in that early stage growth because that provides you life-changing gains.

Frank Curzio: So, that’s why this sector is going to be a trillion dollar sector. It’s just a matter of time. I think it’s going to happen within five, six years. You’re going to see dramatic changes, and this industry explode next year. Towards the end of the year, it did great, but that’s something that I’m really excited about, Daniel. So, just focusing on that. I know you’ve been in it. I talk to you all the time, with you being in the office to the point where I got to kick you out sometimes, but-

Daniel Creech: Yeah, getting COVID.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, good thing for COVID, right? So, and everything, nobody got it for me which I have my family, which was awesome. So, we made sure that we called everybody and did our protocols. And everyone was okay and got tested and stuff like that, which was cool. So, yeah.

Daniel Creech: Real quick, I went and got tested just to be safe because I was going home, and I have some older family members. The people that do the testing, even the people that help you go through the lines, when I went down to Jacksonville, man, hats off to them. God bless them. They’re human, they have bad days. I couldn’t imagine dealing with people like that, especially people that are, and/or, sick, feared, scared, bitching about being there as I was because I didn’t want to go through the process. But man, those are wonderful, wonderful people. So if you’re in that situation, make sure you’re extra kind to them because they deserve it.

Frank Curzio: No, absolutely. Well said, well said. Well, what a way to end the podcast. And Dan, thanks so much for coming on.

Daniel Creech: Great to be back. Happy new year everyone..

Frank Curzio: Yeah, the back and forth and stuff, send your emails, frank@curzioresearch.com. And Daniel, what’s your email address?

Daniel Creech: Same.

Frank Curzio: You guys could do your work. You could figure it out at Curzio Research. Just Daniel with a C? Or is it DC? I mean, just try, and eventually you’ll get him. So, I’ll give you that hint. But I love your political opinions because I get emails from you, saying, “What’s Daniel doing?” So, it’s funny. But anyway, thanks so much for coming on, buddy. I really appreciate it. And yeah, looking forward to New Year with you, man.

Daniel Creech: Yep, absolutely.

Frank Curzio: All right, guys. So, real quick here, just finishing the year. Hopefully, all you guys enjoy New Year’s with your families. I know it’s not that easy, where some places are mandating you can’t see anyone or do anything and whatever. I don’t want to get political here. But what I’m hearing out there is a lot of people say 2020 is the year to forget. It’s the worst year in decades. To be truly happy, you have to experience pain. You have to know how it is to when things are bad, or know how that feels, right? And we look at 2020 instead of focusing on all the negatives, everything that happened, focus on what you learned. Instead of just saying, “Hey, this is a horrible year.” I mean, you learned a ton here.

Frank Curzio: If you happen to be fortunate where you owned assets or you owned equities, you definitely increased your net wealth this year ,almost no matter what you bought. I mean, I know a lot of you haven’t lived through a full blown bull market in everything. I mean, you look at copper, you look at uranium. Uranium stocks’ taking off. You look at… You got lumber. You look at… It’s not just Bitcoin and equities hitting all-time highs. I mean, there’s numerous, numerous markets across the board that are hitting all-time highs, where it’s pretty difficult, unless you’re going short, that you didn’t make money in the market. And that’s what we’re here for. We’re going to try to help you guys out as much as we can. We did just to show you I have your best interests at heart.

Frank Curzio: We sold a ton of positions in February before the market crashed. And look, we make money by selling newsletters and by giving you different ideas to invest in. That’s not in my best interest to do something like that. But it is in my best interest to make sure that you guys are safe. It’s not just you’re having those huge returns, which we’re in a bull market. But yeah, it’s even more important when shit hits the fan to really have someone there for you. And for us, we’re all in, and this is what I do. I love it. Dan loves it. And for this year, I really appreciate all the support. I am grateful for launching the CEO token, being the first in the market.

Frank Curzio: I’m usually an optimist. I always look to positive things rather than negative things. I know some people lost their lives to COVID, which is terrible. And it’s just so many disagreements. There’s a lot of hate in the world right now. There is, there is a lot of hate in the world. And it’s so funny because if you talk to people face-to-face, it’s fine. But when you’re on social media, it gets really crazy right now, and it sucks. I think there’s going to be a rude awakening for social media. That’s one of the predictions I’m making. I’m not just talking about breaking up these companies. But these are companies that use people. They use people. They take all of our data and sell to other people and make an absolute fortune off of it. Which… And now some of these are suppressing some data and controlling that data.

Frank Curzio: When you look at it, it’s the people that without the people these platforms are worthless. So, we should demand that, “Hey, if you’re going to share our data,” which every site does now. It says, in order to even look at a site, you got to click the box it says okay, accept our terms and conditions. Try and reading those terms and conditions. We’re selling everything to everyone to all our partners to third parties. Your name just goes out there, and it’s everywhere to see, and Facebook is tracking you. They’re tracking you on your phone as much as they can with Google and Apple and all these companies. But at the end of the day, if you decide to come off these platforms and say, “I don’t want my data shared,” it will lead to a rude awakening. I don’t know if everyone would do that because we’re so addicted to these platforms. But it’s crazy, where when I look at social media companies. It’s kind of like the shit of the industry, right?

Frank Curzio: I mean, these guys are using people. They’re not even original. They’re just using our data, everything we do, and selling it to advertisers. And advertising is eating it like candy because their rate of returns are up tremendously because they’re tracking us every second of the day. It’s not putting on a commercial on cable TV that you really don’t know the demographic. They’re following us. They know what stores we’re in. They know how long we drive. They know where our office is. They know everything about us. So, to sell this data, and make money, and then control that data to where we’re only allowed to see some of it, there’s going to be awakening. It might not happen next year, but it’s going to happen. But that’s one of the things that I see in the market that I didn’t talk about before.

Frank Curzio: But getting back to this year. I know it’s a tough year for a lot of people, but always look at the positives. How are you going to change what you learned from… When it comes to your stocks and investments, I know a lot of you are not engulfed in it like I am. You guys pay for my research, for that. I’ve gotten presents from some people. Don’t send me any presents. I don’t want anything. If you did well with our services, go out and take your wife to dinner at, hopefully, a restaurant that’s open. Or go on a vacation and spend it on your kids. Again, you guys pay a lot of money for my services. I’m always going to make sure they’re worth it and work hard and try to have those returns for you.

Frank Curzio: But for me, I just want to say I appreciate everything. We’re finishing the year very, very strong. You can tell I work my ass off for you. Thank you so much to all the investors, and being a publicly traded company has a lot more responsibilities, and you’re busy more than ever. But none of that’s possible without you guys. So, I just want to say thank you very much. Happy New Year, and I love you guys. So, instead of saying I’ll see in seven days, I’ll see you next year. 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.