Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

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

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

Let’s go to July 31st. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I bring you the headlines and I’ll tell you what’s really moving these markets. So on today’s show, we’re going to break down a bunch of earnings reports, including Microsoft, Starbucks, AMD and Marriott. It’s going to be one of the most important reports of the earnings season. I’m going to explain why.

All the negative talk of Bitcoin going lower and lower now pushing towards its all-time highs again due to positive comments from Trump and RFK at last week’s Bitcoin conference Break that down and our live crypto webinar is tomorrow. It’s 7 pm. Be sure to sign up at CurzioCrypto.com, it’s absolutely free. I’m going to discuss five critical catalysts that are about to push many of the top cryptos significantly higher, and I’m expecting these gains to come in the next three to six months. I think it’s going to be late for you guys. Again, it’s absolutely free, it’s live. Sign up at CurzioCryptocom. Look forward to that 7 pm tomorrow. But first let me say this Nice to be back in a saddle across from the best analyst in the world, the best looking guy in the world.

0:01:26 – Daniel Creech

Daniel Creech. What’s going on, buddy? Not necessarily in that order. What’s happening, frank? Not in that order. I’m glad you’re back, sir. I don’t want to tell you what to do. Your name’s on the door and you are my boss. However, you’re not allowed to take two weeks off back to back. I know you didn aware we had an assassination attempt, we had the sitting president resign from his reelection and now we have drags, trans and queers running the Olympic ceremony. Absolutely crazy, Frank. I have no idea what’s going on and I’m glad you’re back. That’s all I can say.

0:01:55 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, it was tough. I booked a trip to Saratoga every year with my friends and that was booked like months ago. But due to unforeseen circumstances when my daughter had to go to summer school which is okay, I’ve been in summer school plenty of times actually got left back in the seventh grade but we had to push like the family vacation and it was like almost back to back, which is tough. But, um, while all that important stuff was going on, I was doing important stuff too, and it’s really important. Let’s go see the jabberwockies. I don’t know if you saw them, they’re fantastic. Who jabberwies? I don’t even know what that is. Yeah, I was going to say America’s Got Talent.

They’re awesome. Bless you Gesundheit. Vegas was pretty crazy. It was a little hot there. I took my family there. A little hot, it’s like 120.

0:02:34 – Daniel Creech

It’s summertime, it’s hot everywhere, it’s a good heat, Daniel, it’s a good man.

0:02:40 – Frank Curzio

It’s 120, it’s freaking hot there, but you’re indoors most of the time. We had a really, really great time. Lots, lots of fun. Uh also zip lining and craziness, but it’s saratoga. I did pretty well, it gets. Go see my friend’s horse race again, which is uh the horse that lost a kentucky derby who I really like, which is uh fierceness. And then he beat Sierra Leone, uh, great, great race. And I actually got lucky. I don’t know if I told you I might have told you damn, but I hit a race for ten thousand dollars rub it in for yeah by betting numbers and a 31.

The shot came in for an exacta over an eight to one and, uh, the eight to one won the race by a nose and had the exacta box. So if it came in the other way, it probably would have been 30 000. I’m not complaining at all, but that was the biggest win I’ve ever had and, uh, yeah, it was pretty nice, made the rest of the trip very, very cool. So, very important things going on. While the president was, you know, almost got assassinated and all that other stuff, but a lot going on.

We’re going to talk about Bitcoin conferences and stuff, but I want to start off, daniel, with earnings. I mean, we have a massive amount just this week and over the next couple of weeks we but this is, I want to say this is one of the busiest weeks. I don’t know, it’s 25% or 30% of SP500. Yeah, somewhere around that. Yeah, it is reporting and lots, lots of you know lots of big names coming as well. Right, we have the rest of the big tech companies coming, but for now, you know Microsoft, amd and we can start there Microsoft weird, right, I mean, came out the report.

0:04:02 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, and it is absolutely ridiculous. And listen our jobs. I’m not asking for a pat on the back or complaining because we love our jobs and such, but you have to be able to point to the noise and how ridiculous markets get. So when you look at Microsoft, the numbers were absolutely incredible. Azure, the cloud services company, grew 29%, Frank, but that was below the 29% to 30, 30 to 31% that they guided for, so they missed it. They guided 30 to 31. They came in at 29. And, as you said, what? The stock went down $250 billion.

0:04:35 – Frank Curzio

At one point the stock was down 7% at once, which is a $250 billion market cap loss and I want to put that in respect because it’s a 7% loss, right, but you’re looking at a $3 trillion company, so it’s a 7% loss. But you’re looking at a $3 trillion company, it’s a 7% loss and no big deal, but the $250 billion in market cap that it lost and now it’s come back. Just to put that in perspective, that’s like Wells Fargo, Pepsi or Netflix going to zero, because that’s what their market caps are A little bit below that. Think about that. That’s how big these freaking technology companies are. Not even $ big these freaking technology companies are with a trillion, not even one trillion it’s.

You know, NVIDIA is still doing very well, right, and we’ll talk about NVIDIA in a minute, because AMD reported and it’s moving up, they say in sympathy, but you know, lost a trillion dollars in market cap, but remember it was less than a trillion, probably five months ago, right? And so you know, you have to put things in perspective. Where Microsoft, I just think this might have been a sell on the news event because you know it has, it has, I’m pretty sure. Don’t quote me on this, but I think it’s outperform most of the large cap tech companies because a lot of them get annihilated, especially in the chip sector. Right the chip sector has really gotten crushed and a nice pullback. So you know this is pretty good for Microsoft. But overall I think the quarter was really good. It was solid and it’s bouncing back right now.

0:05:43 – Daniel Creech

It was an amazing quarter. Yeah, it was a Florida gift and it was absolutely ridiculous that that thing sold off seven or eight percent. And, to your point, it always just shows about how, when expectations and everybody’s expecting just to blow out corners, growing this division just in cloud at twenty nine percent is incredible. They also grew all their other segments. The CEO went on TV and through the conference call, was saying that they’re going to have at least double digit revenue and operating income throughout the next fiscal year. They guided for the high to just under 30 percent again in cloud division growth for the next quarter.

I mean these guys. This just proves that the big AI and, frank, you’re more hyped up on AI than I am and I’m not a bear on AI, don’t get me wrong. But the point is, is that all these talking heads in the media and I get it, we have to have a job. You got 24, seven news outlets. You got to. You got to give people whatever they want when they’re. You got to feed the ducks when they’re quacking, as they say, frank. But the point is, is that you want to take away with? These? Numbers were absolutely impressive, impressive for the size of this company. The growth is still putting up. It just proves AI is not near over and you can buy these big companies, even though there’s a rotation to small cap. It’s finally good to see them getting a heartbeat. But the point is is that Microsoft is doing great. We got Amazon. They report tomorrow after the bell on Thursday, so we’ll see what their AWS segment says.

But everybody that’s saying and wanting to call the top and be that person that can be wrong 30 times in a row and then celebrate when they’re right, like you like to joke, frank, ignore them talking heads. This was a fantastic quarter. It was like, let me rant real quick, excuse me, just like Google. When you were gone, put up a good quarter, frank. The stock went down about 5% and everybody’s tried to act like that was a big deal. You know what Google’s biggest problem is? They are woke and absolutely Florida ridiculous. I thought this was a joke, frank, so I did it on my iPhone okay, my communist iPhone and I was searching on my Google and I went assassination of President TR and you know what? Autofill did Nothing. They’re just erasing.

So here’s the point. You really now, as the election comes near and again I’m not telling you how to think. I’m simply telling you to think, but you have a choice, because you are literally and we recommended Google in our Curzio research advisory we’re up 25 ish percent. However, you are selling your soul to buy these companies when they are blatantly covering up everything. They have chosen what side they’re on, and that’s okay. You can be whatever side you’re on. But I’m just saying big tech’s real fear is not the numbers and impressive growth they’re putting up, it’s the authoritatum-ism or whatever you want to say on getting people in line as we come up for the election. If you’re not scared, I don’t want to tell you to panic, but you should at least be aware of what big tech is doing and censoring everybody, and it’s scary as hell. You can still make money off of these woke bastards like we are, but just understand. It’s a scary situation, frank.

0:08:29 – Frank Curzio

It is a scary situation. It is scary how you know. I saw Kamala Harris calling out Trump and saying that, hey, I’m ready to bait, say it to my face and I’m looking at it going Right in the momentum. First of all, you had your own party hates you, right, they hated you for a long time. You had the worst approval rating of any vice president in the history of the United States. I don’t think she’d accomplish anything. She’d never owned a business. She didn’t really get a good law school. She failed her bar exam before passing it, which is fine.

But for someone who never ran a business, for someone who had I think it’s over 160 pieces of legislation for a four-year period when she was Senate of California and passed nothing, for you to really go out there, I would say from a Democratic strategy point, it worked for Biden and he won by being in a basement. I would not be. I mean, you have zero upside and a ton of downside to debate Trump. Usually people lose when they debate him, but she’s calling him out. But it’s just amazing how the whole Democratic Party just went from this is the worst person to the now we love, and they have all these clips all over CNN of how she’s so terrible, but now she’s the greatest thing ever. But it’s amazing how they should play that. They are playing the game well and they have a lot of momentum. Oh, they know exactly how to play the game.

0:09:36 – Daniel Creech

But if you believe the polls right now that she’s winning, believe that inflation is moved lower over the last several months? And Politico I took a screenshot of this in Politico the other day and it made me laugh out loud the idea that you can write inflation is coming down without actually saying the rate of inflation is coming down because inflation is not coming down. Prices have not come down. But we don’t need rules and regulations, frank. We don’t even have to be in the reality of our world today. We’re almost living in the matrix. It’s a lot of fun. And in fact, speaking of the matrix, frank, I tweeted go to Creech’s Corner. On X. I tweeted a great meme of Donald Trump looking like Keanu Reeves doing his whole backward bending, dodging bullets thing.

0:10:13 – Frank Curzio

It’s amazing Way to go. Trump, yeah, but it is interesting to see the whole strategy and it is going to influence many, many stocks because they’re going back and saying, if you look at Kamala, too and this is important going into earnings season and also going if there’s a shot she wins Remember, they’re trying to backtrack everything that she said, even though it’s on video how we’re going to ban fracking. That’s a really big deal. If you own oil companies, guys. That’s what she said. Now, she’s not going to ban fracking. She’s going to say everything she can. Right Again, this is how she ran on. Her platform is interesting because one of the most liberal, probably people that will ever be at office if she wins by far, by far, by a long shot. But you have to adjust your portfolios. It is going to matter, even with technology, stocks and what’s going on and funding and stuff, and it is something that we’re going to be talking about a lot. You have to talk about politics in this because it’s going to influence your portfolio to see what’s going on.

And getting back to earnings season two, which is a company that I think is a little controversial, is AMD. I mean, amd is up right now. Let’s see. I think it’s up. It’s up 5.5% right now. Okay, 5.5%. It was up 10% earlier today. So it was up 10% earlier today. So it’s up 5%.

It’s around 11 am as we’re taping this and they reported a decent quarter, but I’m looking at a stock that came down from 227. And I’m also looking at a stock I’m bringing up the chart here. If you’re watching on our YouTube page, it was actually just from a month ago. You’re looking at a stock that was 183 a couple of weeks ago, okay, three weeks ago, so it fell to the 130s and now it’s 146. And we’re saying, well, they’re back. And I saw Kramer talking about it on CNBC and saying they’re back. I got to tell you I’ve been telling Bill of Void since the 200s that AMD because it’s trading at this astronomical valuation like it’s a great AI play and I like the numbers that they put up because if you look at division, especially data centers, which represents AI, that’s a big growth driver. It was up 150% year over year and they also raised sales guidance and that’s fine.

Did you see the rest of AMD’s quarter? Did you look at it? Because everyone’s talking about AI, ai, ai. But this is not a pure play on AI and I think people really need to understand that they haven’t made that transition into being a pure play like NVIDIA is a pure play and you want to know how much NVIDIA is a pure play. I don’t know if you saw this, daniel. So AMD is up and they reported and raised their guidance. It’s up, say, 6%, right, so it’s up 6% right now. If you look at NVIDIA, it’s up 10% on AMD’s quarter because the strength that they showed was all in AI and NVIDIA is a pure AI player. So you know, I don’t know if you looked at those numbers. I wanted to have a couple more points on that, but it was interesting just to see how, you know, the NVIDIA is up more than AMD and AMD was up 10%. It’s actually pulling back a little bit.

0:12:54 – Daniel Creech

Well, and, like I mean everybody said, nvidia is definitely the king right now. What sticks out with AMD to me and everybody else is you grew data center segment revenue up 115% year over year. Now I know what you’re. I think I know what you’re hinting at in the other divisions, because there’s some big ones like down 59% year over year and down 41% year over year in other segments To your point.

It’s not a pure play. But you’re right, the talking heads and me included. When I saw the 115% year over year, I was like, hey, again, I’m looking at it from an AI, not Again, I’m looking at it from an AI, not a pure play, because I think you’re correct on that, through its segments. I’m just saying when I caught, as you were gone, the notion of this AI bubble or transition from big cap to small caps, almost like this trade was over, and I think that what this really proves on the AI division for NVIDIA is this is nowhere near over, but there’s some big numbers in other segments that are going the wrong way if you’re an amd player, yeah and look.

0:13:48 – Frank Curzio

Well, you know I’m going to put on a nerd hat and listen up. This is important if you want to make money on stocks. You know a lot of companies have different divisions. Some have three divisions, two divisions, five divisions. Disney just restructured their divisions to get rid of all the shitty garbage. Hot star customers, because those are ones they signed up to get to like 200 million. But they were like you know, they’re like a dollar per customer because they’re mostly international right. Everyone realized, you know, average revenue per user is horrible and they realized that they’re not going to make money off it.

And, by the way, I will say this about Disney we recommended Disney as a trade and I love talking about and we’re going to go here, but I love talking about mistakes. Now, I recommended Disney and was right in terms of the movies, right. So you have Inside Out 2. You’re looking at a billion dollar first. I think billion dollar franchise is going to be an animation franchise. A billion dollars and this was something that they were hoping they would generate probably 150, right. So you’re looking at all that money. Now you look at Wolverine. It’s the highest grossing R-rated film in history. That’s going to be easy. A billion dollar movie, right. So this is a company that generated a ton of money. That was unexpected, and yet the stock has gone down, right. And when I look at that I’m like, oh shit, how did I fuck up? You know how I messed up this trade? Because those two movies I was like they’re going to blow them out in a Disney movies. You know what was the better play IMAX. Imax is surging right now on that. So you know, for me, I’m always looking at how to get an edge and this is where I’m going to why I’m leading this with the divisions, because some companies have divisions and they’re very small.

No-transcript is an IBM. Ibm was doing everything right, transitioning its business, but it had this legacy bullshit and garbage part of its business that it was low margin, that it took them a very, very long time to get out of. And it’s not like they want to get totally out of gaming, but it’s been a disaster for them. When NVIDIA is like, hey, we’re all high end, we’re doing every single division. When you look across, nvidia has been on fire. It’s the pure play in AI and AMD is trying to be a pure play on AI and they’re not. They have a lot of baggage with them. Just like when you’re looking at IBM getting into cloud, getting into digital right, getting into more, even digital currencies and stuff. So just the software behind it. It was transitioning its business.

This is AMD the same thing. So when I look at AMD, it’s not a pure play. I still think it can go up a little bit from here. But if you’re looking at the pure plays NVIDIA, nvidia is up more, which is crazy. Nvidia is up more on AMD’s quarter and everyone’s like AMD’s back. Amd’s very dangerous here. It’s super expensive. It’s more expensive than NVIDIA and NVIDIA is the 100% AI play. That’s just a few takeaways. Another one is, I mean, intel’s dead. I mean you’re looking at these companies, they just continue. Intel’s not dead, they’re firing what? 10,000?

or something yeah 10,000 more employees, they’re getting free. That’s what happens when you pass a chip act. How much do they get? They got a huge portion of that Billions and billions. What is that? 5 billion plus? I had a guess. I don’t even know.

0:17:03 – Daniel Creech

And what do?

0:17:03 – Frank Curzio

you do, you take that money and you fire 10,000 employees. You can’t make that stuff up. So when I’m looking at AMD and NVIDIA and where they’re going, amd is trying to play catch up, catch up, catch up and they’re so far behind because they’re catching up to like the H100 chip when the H200 chip is out right now, and then you have their next generation, the Blackboard Chicks, is coming out. So the amount of money that AMD is going to have to put in R&D to keep up with NVIDIA is billions, if not tens of billions, and that’s going to hurt margins. So when I look at, if you’re buying AMD right now as an AI play, nvidia on this pullback is a much better play and Intel both of these guys, I mean you’re looking at the largest chip makers, which is who just reported as well, which is Vago right, broadcom, ab Chavez.

0:17:50 – Daniel Creech

A while ago. Yeah, A little while ago.

0:17:52 – Frank Curzio

So I mean, these guys are just, they’re light, light, light years I’ve had at Intel and I don’t know. Intel has good cash flow, you know, and free cash flow. There’s something wrong there because they’re behind every single trend. And once you’re behind in this trend, as you can see, even AMD is having trouble catching up, a lot of trouble catching up, and they may never, ever, ever catch up to NVIDIA. But it’s not this pure play AI. If that’s why you’re buying AMD, just be careful. I’m just telling you the numbers. It’s not like I have nothing personal against them, but I told you to avoid it. Well, over 200. It’s down a lot. You might say well, frank, it’s up 5%, 6%. It was 180 three weeks ago, coming back with a little momentum and then boom. Now you know, even after this report which they raised, guidance, pretty good, yeah, it’s not performing the way you want it to.

0:18:34 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, a beaten raise is good. I mean you’re giving them credit, but, like you said, it’s not, gaming isn’t going away. Gaming isn’t going away and it has a strong quarter, and all that year over year it was down a lot. But yeah, to your point, it’s just not the pure play that the media likes to tell what it is.

0:18:57 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, divisions could be smaller, and then you could say, well, it accounts for like 10% of revenue, 15% of revenue. This is 50% of their revenue over the past 12 months, those divisions, and they’re down close to over 40%, 45% each. I want to talk about Marriott. I don’t know if you saw that quarter. I think this is significant. You’re expecting Microsoft we’re going to look at different reports coming out. Of course, you’ve got Amazon coming out and we saw Google the week before.

When I look at Marriott, it’s one of the most important quarters because it gauges the consumer and this is a sector that has held up very, very well because they had pricing power and they still charge you a shitload of fees, which I see firsthand, which is why I think Airbnb is a great buy, because it’s not just booking these things. Whatever your price line Expedia or directly is, when you get there, they charge you even more and it’s a surprise, it’s $50, $75, whatever. It is a day which is crazy. They just lowered their Q3 and full year guidance. Okay, they said China’s a disaster, which we’ve been on for a very, very long time. I can’t tell you how many people have been like, well, China’s coming back. And we looked a little bit and then we saw just these false readings. We have very good contacts in China, but if you look, just the writing’s on the wall because what do we cover, dan? We’re looking at Nike, we’re looking at Levi’s, even Starbucks, these disaster and a lot of them have been blaming China. But they also said they’re going to see softer expectations in North America, and that’s something they haven’t said, and this is a leading hotel company. I need you to pay attention, because next week we’re going to have Hilton report and if they confirm so, now we’re looking at the airlines. We thought the airlines are supposed to be much, much better.

I’m not talking about what happened with CrowdStrike we can get to that in a second too but when I look at the details of what’s happening with the consumer, we’ve seen a slowdown from the consumer in turn for a while now We’ve been highlighting this for at least three, four months where we switched finally and said, listen, the Fed needs to cut rates, because we were seeing it and I’m sure you’re seeing it as well. I mean, I’ve been toweek low and they still didn’t report good numbers, but it was just so depressed that it went up after earnings. My point here is you’re looking at the airlines pull back. You’re at softer trends. You’re looking at, now, the hotels pulling back. This is directly this is a leading indicator telling you, right, that, hey, the consumer is definitely slowing down.

And what happened with these companies? They always had pricing power. If you look at Chipotle, they were able to raise prices what? Five times in the past 18 months. You can’t raise prices anymore, right? People are changing their shopping habits. This is something to take a look at. So this is what’s going on with the Fed.

We’re going to talk later and they’re probably going to. It’s almost a guarantee that they’re going to start cutting in September. When they cut rates, it’s because the economy is slowing and they see a big slowdown. It’s not this wow, rates are low, so buy stocks and this is great. There’s got to be stocks that benefit from high rates, like the banks and stuff like that.

So you’re going to see a lot of portfolio things that we’re going to go over in terms of allocation, where to go to, and just during this earnings season, you’re also seeing the ones that have been beat up the most are seeing the biggest gains, where the ones with high expectations even if you’re off a little like a Microsoft, I’m surprised. And they were off a fraction and now it’s coming back a little bit. Be careful. Expectations are so high where you can report a company. Look at the numbers Microsoft reported, look at the numbers that Google reported and you can get hit. So be very, very careful. Now you’re seeing small caps where the names that have gotten beaten up, like McDonald’s for the two-week low that reported bad earnings, those stocks have gone higher. So it’s going to be interesting there in this earnings season.

But pay attention, marriott was very, very surprised. Soft expectations in North America that was a very big surprise, the biggest surprise that I’ve seen. That I feel like no one’s really talking about. Everyone’s focusing on the big tech companies. But let’s monitor. Next week’s going to be Hilton. Pay attention to that because if that’s a slowdown, you really have to look at your allocation in your portfolio because consumers-related stocks they’re going to start getting absolutely crushed Because these guys had pricing power. They no longer have pricing power and they’re seeing softer trends, meaning lower traffic. When you see lower traffic, how do you get those earnings? You got to raise prices. Now that you no longer have those pricing power, this is where you see the shift where you can see a lot of these names come down tremendously. I was just blown away when I saw Marriott’s earnings. I was like wow, I couldn’t believe that. They said softer trends in North America Also.

0:23:03 – Daniel Creech

Finally they’re seeing negative trends in China, which they really weren’t as bad in past quarters. Quickly on China all you got to know about the old Chinese over there is when they start flooding their markets by lowering interest rates and borrowing or, excuse me, lowering borrowing rates, which they’re doing and flooding the economy with more money. It’s because they are panicking over there and they’re in a absolute spiral downward.

0:23:23 – Frank Curzio

Nothing’s working.

0:23:24 – Daniel Creech

Breaking news Communism doesn’t work, folks, so it hasn’t ever worked.

0:23:27 – Frank Curzio

I mean nothing’s working Won’t ever work.

0:23:28 – Daniel Creech

So ignore that it could be a trade. Don’t park your money over there and don’t bet on them. Yeah, now it is a little crazy.

0:23:42 – Frank Curzio

Not exactly a huge public service announcement there.

0:23:43 – Daniel Creech

But you got to be common sense here. Well, there’s a lot of people are saying china’s great yeah, china’s good, their numbers are better than expected.

0:23:45 – Frank Curzio

But you guys see on cnbc and people talking about all the time but but it’s not there. From the context that we see, now.

0:23:48 – Daniel Creech

it can be a great trade because when you flood your market, when you lower your borrowing costs, when you spur silliness all over the economy over there and you have some vast amounts of people, it can work and it would be a great trade. But I’ve heard people talking about Alibaba. For how long now and I’m not saying that you know people say, oh well, Charlie Munger’s buying Alibaba hand over fist and we’ve been in and out of their trading, but maybe at some point it’ll come back there.

0:24:14 – Frank Curzio

Oh, you know what Alibaba is doing they’re getting into AI Frank. That’s got to be good for the everything that you said with China. China’s been doing that for the last two years and none of this shit has worked Well.

0:24:22 – Daniel Creech

The lowering the borrowing rates are like last week. I mean, that’s really new Again so they’ve been doing that.

0:24:26 – Frank Curzio

But it’s just yeah, stay away If you have a lot of exposure to China. We’ve seen it right. I mean China can say whatever you China.

Going there, visiting China seeing the assets and saying, wow, this company is for real. Shaking the CFO’s seat, they took me out to dinner and everything and those assets they just don’t own, they don’t exist. I was like holy shit. I was like this is crazy. But yeah, china is really crazy. You can see the writing on the wall with a lot of the companies I mean Starbucks is there as well. I don’t know if you want to talk about Starbucks, who reported too right.

0:25:02 – Daniel Creech

Not really I, just when I read through the numbers. Some friends of mine were asking me last night when a bunch of us guys were having cigars and they asked me about Starbucks and I said, well, if I had a gun to my head I would think they would report a decent quarter. They didn’t. When I was looking at the numbers I figured the stock was down. It was bouncing a little bit. I think that must be so suppressed. It’s good news. But same store comps excuse me were negative and China was a disaster. I don’t know what they said on the conference call. I didn’t dig into it because I’m not a Starbucks fan, but I did think that was interesting. On the, it just goes with the Nikes, the China. If you’re like you said, if you’re relying on China to be your growth engine, that’s just a struggle right now. There’s a lot of headwinds right there.

0:25:43 – Frank Curzio

I mean, it’s gotten hit on the whole China worry and also, you know, I think it was wrong for people to say and I made this mistake in 2008, like, people aren’t going to pay that much for a cup of coffee anymore. People are going to pay if they like. The experience and what happened with Starbucks, why they ran into trouble, I’m going to tell you. There’s someone who goes to Starbucks and goes to like two or three different ones, and my daughters sometimes go there. You order ahead on the app, which is fantastic, and you order. And this way, you know, when you order on the app, you want to be able to, especially when it comes to coffee. Right, that’s your fix and you’re running to work. It’s very stressful, right, especially if you commute. So you order, you stop, you can go to a drive-thru or you stop and just run in and you grab your stuff.

I got to tell you, the last four months we haven’t really gone to Starbucks because there was three times where they didn’t have our stuff ready in 15 minutes, 20 minutes before we ordered and we left the house and we went there and we waited another 10 minutes and you can’t really wait, right, because I got to take the kids to school and I was like, and there’s like 30 people in there and the thing is is in an environment where it’s tough to hire people and I’m seeing this even in my phone store where it’s tough to hire good people, you can’t hire someone that’s like a half-ass employee at Starbucks. The learning curve there with how many drinks you have to make, and it’s just if you have a high turnover there McDonald’s you could probably get away with it. You throw someone out the window, whatever. It’s not as hard At Starbucks you can’t. And the whole customer service experience I think just the whole customer experience really went to shit. And now you’re trying to win those customers back. It’s down 30%. If you look at the chart, last three months it’s kind of been the same price around the same price.

This is a little bit into May, but overall I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything of a turnaround. But it’s not because, well, I’m going to switch from Starbucks because it’s too expensive and go someplace else. It’s the experience. People will pay again. When it comes to drugs, people are going to pay as much as they want. They just pay forever. That’s their vice. But they have a lot of fixing to do and I just didn’t see it there with that quarter. And then, speaking of fixing, I mean, did you see Delta come out and say how much I think it was about $500 million CrowdStrike cost them? Yeah, and they were really pissed off, I think. I don’t know if I. I think I heard those comments earlier.

0:27:49 – Daniel Creech

Let me interrupt you here on this quickly, because I saw a headline about CrowdStrike. So CrowdStrike’s been falling down as it should. I mean it was the biggest it crash in the world, or whatever what the headlines were.

0:28:03 – Frank Curzio

And Delta traveling during that.

0:28:04 – Daniel Creech

Delta had an absolute mess. You experienced that firsthand when the headlines came out about Delta wanting compensation. Why is that news? If they shut down your entire business, there has to be some insurance clauses or something. Now Delta is coming out and said it cost him a half a billion dollars. $500 million is what it’s going to cost him. How the hell is it news that CrowdStrike should be, or possibly is, on the hook for some of that? You don’t have business disruption insurance. You don’t have some sort of a hey, we just hired some dumb ass who hit the wrong button and crashed your whole IT system and oh, by the way, no big deal, we’re just still your. You know, you’re still our customers and we messed up and sorry, Like yeah.

0:28:45 – Frank Curzio

What am I missing there? And I think that’s how you have to look at this. It’s almost like you know how long it takes when you probably ran into Ebola and stuff like that, and how long it takes. I mean, this is your chance to really get back online. The problem is probably has good food and you have your customers and you’re going to want it. Crowdstrike is one of many, many, many companies that provide these types of services right, and a lot of the services on the cloud, and the fact that it impacted I was at the airport. We flew from Vegas to Atlanta and then we have the hour flight back to Jacksonville. I got off that flight, daniel, holy fuck, I got off that flight. I can guarantee you that day I’ll guarantee it there was more people in that Atlanta airport than there have ever been in the history since that airport.

0:29:29 – Daniel Creech

That’s saying something.

0:29:30 – Frank Curzio

We had to wait four or five airplanes just to get a spot which was about an hour on the runway. So we landed, we waited an hour and we had to make our next flight. We didn’t have to worry because that flight was. We didn’t really get hurt because we left the first flight out of Vegas. We got there and I think it was a two hour delay and we were on for an hour. So it was almost like you know, we got back. Okay, we got lucky.

When I got off, the customer service line had at least 400 people on it At least it went all the way down the whole freaking airport at delta and every one of those people are at least 10 to 15 minutes to switch your flights and get everything on. I’ve been there. It’s not like, oh, really quick, let me go. Those people must have been online. There’s people sleeping all over the airport. I mean it’s an absolute disaster.

Oh yeah, so with crowd track I tweet about this the stock fell from 375 to about 315 and people like you know coming out and kind of defending it. I said this is a great short here. I mean, you’re going to see a lot of effects where they’re going to have to provide huge concessions. You’re probably going to lose clients, right. And I tweeted this on July 22nd when the stock was, you know, a little bit low and it fell. Now it’s like 235, right.

And now I, you know, I’ve been doing research on this. So, and now I’ve been doing research on this. So when I tweet, I said, yeah, it’s tough to see it catch a bid. It was still trading at 70 times forward earnings right, so likely to lose some of its customers. Outage and the short-term uncertainty right. It’s probably going to go below 200. Now an analyst just came out who’s very, very good, who covers this sector. His name is Peter Levine, from Evercore, and very respectable. He said the stock’s probably going to head even lower because a survey that they took said that 99% of CrowdStrike’s customers are expecting concessions. Okay, makes sense. 99?.

0:31:08 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, 99%, that’s a decent number.

0:31:09 – Frank Curzio

And partners. Right, their partners they work with are not closing deals right now, which puts bookings at risk, so he believes they’re going to have to pull guidance immediately because they have no chance of making it. Uh, he said he they see around 5.5 billion in financial losses, with insurance from crowd strike only covering less than 20 of that. 5.5 billion in these days doesn’t seem like a lot of money to crowd strike, the company, generated 3.2 billion in sales the past 12 months. That’s a shitload of money for them and I’m gonna have to pay it up front or they paid over time. There’s a massive amount of uncertainty and there’s a lot of companies. Crowdstrike might be the best at it, but there’s a lot of good companies in that software space that could easily come in and take their place. Right, maybe you’re not going to switch to Chipotle. I like it. Okay, it’s good, I’ll wait three months and I’ll go back. They’re really going to have trouble getting these customers back. I think this is lot more. So be very, very careful.

0:31:59 – Daniel Creech

Just thinking out loud and playing a little bit of devil’s advocate here. I mean it can’t be. I wouldn’t think it would be super easy to just switch services like this. I mean, can you go from CrowdStrike to a competitor lickety split? I would assume that it’s kind of a sticky product, which is why You’re right. But you want to know what unbinds sticky products, crashing your whole damn airplane system? Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like that. I’ve never seen anything like that. It was just airports.

0:32:23 – Frank Curzio

It was so many things across, yeah, which is crazy. And if you could do that, then what is saying that a hacker can’t do that? Think about where we’re all digital. Our accounts are all digital, right. Our bank accounts are all digital. Our brokerage accounts are all digital. I mean, everything is digital.

0:32:38 – Daniel Creech

Voting is going. Digital Voting will never ever go digital.

0:32:42 – Frank Curzio

Voting will never, ever, ever go digital, ever. It will never go digital because you could use just software, data analytics, use AI to make sure that those results will never, ever that are 100% accurate, and that’s why it will never, ever happen. You’ll never have them. You’ll never have it like 100% digital Because you could make it where that’s it. It’s digital, everything right, it’s foolproof. You’ll never have it, not in any country. You’ll never see it. So this is crazy.

Anyway, that’s what we have for earnings Covered. A lot of stuff, right. I think we’re going to see a lot more companies come out, but a lot going on, Daniel and quarter and you have to sell intel, right. So that’s how you have to look at you. Look at marriott be careful, hilton’s at risk. Hilton might be down today, I don’t even know. I think Marriott’s down five percent, but if hilton comes out and warns, I mean you got to look at the hotels across the board. So I we sold one of ours at red rock ago.

I just think hotels has been such a great trade. They had pricing power, it was busy, and you’re seeing these trends start to reverse and these guys are trading at premium valuations, all-time highs, and you can see a big pullback in that sector. Next, and we saw with technology we’ve been seeing it in consumer staples. We’ve been seeing a lot of sectors McDonald’s you’re looking at so many names have pulled back that you wouldn’t think of where everyone’s telling you the economy is great, the market’s great, everything’s awesome, but it’s definitely not the case.

You have to be very selective in what stocks you pick, and that’s going to be even more relevant as we head into the election. But I want to talk about something that I think is by far the best sector, the one that I think is going to outperform everything by far. This is the tailwinds are incredible, and that’s bitcoin. I mean, it’s not just bitcoin, it’s crypto in general. We just had the bitcoin conference and man it.

Some of the comments out of there are comments that we’ve never seen, ever, and I don’t give a shit if it’s because you try to win over votes and you try to do whatever, if some of this stuff really comes to fruition, because I’ve been doing this for 10 years within crypto almost 10 years years and I said there has to be regulation in the industry so people know their money’s safe. You got to be able to take custody of funds, you got to be able to have a banking system that’s reliable and we had the Democratic Party last year. Right, right at the beginning of 2023, attack this industry and go after everyone. Everyone and the crypto industry remembers that. Now Trump used that to his advantage and said hey, you know what? I’m gonna support crypto. I’ve laws around it and look at all the money that’s floating to his campaign.

we’re talking about, you know, over a hundred, over a hundred billion dollars so we’re looking at just a hundred million dollars that’s flown in, and these are like super PACs set up just for crypto. So now the democratic party’s seeing that and trying to flip-flop as well, just like Trump flip-flopped. Right, he wasn’t pro-crypto, but the comments out of that were amazing. I know that you covered it really thoroughly over the past week or so.

0:35:29 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, we’ll get to this as podcasts in the future unfold To your point. Everybody panders for votes Frank and Trump. Did you listen to his speech?

0:35:39 – Frank Curzio

I just saw the bullets from it and and Okay, so he ended it at the end of it he said some amazing things.

0:35:45 – Daniel Creech

I’m going to start at the end here, real quick Cause. At the end of it I don’t he wasn’t being disingenuous, in my opinion at all. You could tell he was loving it because I think he was having fun. But he was on his way to another rally and all that kind of stuff. But he says all right, you people, you know you enjoy your Bitcoin and your crypto and whatever else you’re playing with. It’s like what are you talking about? This is one of the most amazing assets with the greatest returns over the last decade. And he was just kind of like ah, you know whatever.

But what he did say that I thought was amazing was he called out Bitcoin is not a risk to the US dollar. Washington and government spending is a risk to the US dollar. That was a home run. That was a hell of a point. Now you have to look past the whole fact that he’s part of the whole Washington thing and he’s the reason that. Hey, ring the bell, congratulations United States. We literally Monday was the official day we triggered $35 trillion in debt. That is well done, nicely done. Drunken sailors are jealous as hell. So the fact that he said that was impressive for that crowd. Another thing he said that I give him credit for he literally mentioned Chokepoint 2.0, which you’ve been spot on and spearheading, only because we got kicked out of.

0:37:00 – Frank Curzio

Bank of America for making an investment, in just making an investment. It’s not even part of our revenue yet right, so it’s making an investment, which everyone did. Nike went to the metaverse. We made an investment in the metaverse and Bank of America shut us down and said you know, we can no longer do business with you. And even when you called, I got an answer machine saying basically that, no matter what you say, we’re not going to do business with you, you, you. And even when you called, I got an answer machine saying basically that, no matter what you say, we’re not gonna do business. But you got 30 days to remove everything and I was like you gotta be effing, kidding me.

And you know how difficult that is. When you have lots of employees, your payroll is going through and switching within 30 days and forcing us uh, we were part of that too. It’s called operation choke point 2.0, operation choke point uh. What was it? 1.0, if you want to call it? That was when they went after uh and pawn shops and different things like pawn shops, marijuana companies and and you know so.

They couldn’t use banks or anything and and and um illegally. The government targeted them illegally and lost in court, and the firm that beat them is actually the leading firm on this time around, too, uh is going after uh the government because of illegally shutting the banks, and they did it illegally. Those banks were not fraud. When you’re looking at a lot of them, it just you know when you see them, and not only that, they made sure that to tell all the banks if you do anything within crypto, we’re going to audit you. There was like secret recordings behind that that people taped like nobody does crypto, nobody does anything.

And then you see this. You know massive sell-off, which is crazy, but, uh, you know for these banks and what they did to them Signature, silver Bank it’s sad and Signature. I want to remind you that. Who is it? Barney Frank. Barney Frank was on the board of Signature. Okay, barney Frank. Again, dodd-frank Made all the laws for the bank and stuff like that, put his name all over it. He had no idea this was coming. He’s like what’s going on? It’s almost like he’re arrested. He’s like what the hell’s going? They didn’t even know it was coming. Okay, and that guy should know everything that’s coming, being that dialed in, and he didn’t even know it was coming in his defense.

0:38:44 – Daniel Creech

He was holy cow. He was the name on a board getting a paycheck frank. You know that he didn’t have a damn thing to do with that I mean he was all over.

0:38:50 – Frank Curzio

I remember being on cnbc every single day talking about all this stuff. So you know, but just a guy that’s in the inside, like that had no I get you on that.

0:38:57 – Daniel Creech

So two more things if you don’t mind. No, I’ll get on Trump. So he stopped short of talking about building a huge I’ve seen some headlines I think they’re a little bit disingenuous because he said he wanted to hold all the Bitcoin that the current US government has and he did kind of hint that hey, we can stockpile and no problem there. He didn’t go as far as Robert F Kennedy Jr did, who said he would mandate buying so many Bitcoin a day until we get to four million and looking at a strategic reserve. By the way, senator Cynthia Loomis from Wyoming actually has put together and put forward a bill to kind of. She also spoke yep, yep, and she spoke there.

0:39:43 – Frank Curzio

Trump got one of the most rowdy applauses when he said he would fire gary gensler, current chair. Do you see his face on that? Do you see his face when he said it? So he’s like I’m gonna fire gary. It’s like day one. And then the crowd went nuts and he just paused because he wasn’t ready for it and he actually said he goes. Wow, I think he said I didn’t realize he hated him.

He’s like well, I’m gonna repeat, it went crazy, but he was so surprised of how many people hit a Gensler. But I want to stay on that point before we get to the next one, really quick, because this is important. If you look at the difference right, because you’re looking at reports out there saying that Kamala Harris is about to flip-flop and accept crypto and stuff like that there’s a big difference between Trump and Harris, because you could say, well, they’re both flip-flop, they’re both politicians. There’s a big difference between them. Okay, because when Trump was president, he didn’t like Bitcoin, but he stayed out of the industry. I mean, he let people decide if they wanted to invest in it or not. He didn’t believe in it, but he didn’t target it. Biden and Harris did the opposite. Right, they attacked the industry. They targeted people doing everything in their power to shut down crypto. Right, to completely ban it. And there’s clear examples, right? So we just talked about Operation Chokepoint 2.0, where illegally shutting down signature and silverback, they provide the framework. Right, they never provide a framework for rules for the industry, which we were waiting for, neither Trump, but not only that. It’s.

I know companies personally of being in this industry. Okay, and I won’t mention the names. But if you look, even the bigger names, like if you’re looking at the Coinbases, if you look in, you know, okay, one company T0, that were on that, you know, platform for our security token they were working and talking with the SEC because there’s no framework there and they’re saying, okay, is it okay if we do this, is it okay if we do this? And I’m like, yeah, you could say this, you can’t say that. So they work with the SEC, same with Coinbase work with the SEC to get that launch right, to get the IPO launch, and the SEC just turns around and sues them for the things that the SEC said yeah, this is okay, which is fucking crazy when you think about it.

This is what they did to the crypto company. They prevented Galaxy Digital, a massive donor to the Democratic Party, from getting a US listing for the past three years, despite the company having every single qualification easily. They said that they’re going to charge crypto miners a 30% excise tax on electricity they use and you may say, well, frank, it’s climate change miners a 30% excise tax on electricity they use, and you may say, well, frank, it’s climate change. Well, there’s a huge bias because there’s no excise tax being proposed on AI and data centers, right, which is expected to use three times the amount of electricity compared to cryptocurrencies by 2026. They also try to reject the Bitcoin spot ETFs and now even the Ethereum spot ETFs from launching.

So to me, when I look at the Democratic Party, they made a massive mistake going after these guys. You killed innovation. You forced a lot of these companies to leave the country and go someplace else. Because they’re Asia You’re looking at Europe, caribbean they’re all building it up tremendously. These are crypto diehards. They don’t forget this shit. And when I look and I look at, say Novogratz. Right, Daniel, so you have Novogratz. You’re familiar with Galaxy Digital.

0:42:33 – Daniel Creech

And I know my biggest holding. I’m a big fan, which proves I’m apolitical, because that’s a demicraft and I’m investing.

0:42:38 – Frank Curzio

Now I’ll tell you one thing If you have and I mean this if you’re within a crypto company and the CEO of the company is donating to the Democratic Party, I don’t know that he is.

0:42:48 – Daniel Creech

Do you know that he is? No, I know he’s a Democrat. I know that he’s supporting Trump more.

0:42:53 – Frank Curzio

He was supporting Trump over Biden. But now you have Kamala Harris. But I’m telling you, if you have a crypto company any crypto company, if you’re invested in a crypto company, or if you have accounts there and that person’s CEO of that company is going to donate to the Democratic Party, get out of that company immediately. Because what they’re saying is I don’t give a fuck about you as my client. I give more. You know, I press much more preference when it comes to my political and your political ideas. Because you’re looking at Trump about to go all in and say, hey, I’m going to do all this for the crypto industry, right, and he’s out there and he’s saying it man, you don’t want to mess with the crypto people because they will crush you. I mean, these guys have nothing else to do. They’ll post millions times a day. But if you’re looking at what the crypto industry went through, daniel, over 2023, even until now, where some of these things got shut down I mean you look at Galaxy Digital as well. Again, they can’t get the NASDAQ listing. They basically shut down this freaking industry. If you really have a crypto company that’s more concerned with donating to the Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party is going to come in there and they don’t support this, you’re not going to see. What you’re going to see is these amazing catalysts come to fruition, where you are going to see a massive surge in Bitcoin 100,000, 150,000 maybe by the end of the year and I’m telling you you’re going to make a ton of money on a lot of the next 100 to 150 cryptos. Those are great software companies that cryptos are, which is amazing to me. But you really have to pay attention to this because if Trump gets in, it’s definitely pro, pro, pro, pro crypto. And I don’t think you’re going to see Kamala. I wouldn’t even bother touching that, because it’s a different thing. I hate it compared to attacking the industry and targeting going after, and that’s what that party did over the past two years.

So for me, this is the best sector, daniel, right now, to invest in. I mean, we’re holding a webinar and we’ve done several of these. Okay, so we’re going to talk about these five massive tailwinds things that we haven’t talked about that we just created over the past month, month and a half of why you need to get exposure to the sector right away. So you’re looking at Bitcoin’s held up and Ethereum has held up and you’re okay. The rest of the industry has been shit. Even the best cryptos outside of those have underperformed significantly, and it’s going to give you a chance to get two X, three X, four X gains of these things. I bet you can get them in the next three to six months. I’m going to show you exactly how to do that.

So, live webinar if you haven’t seen it, daniel and I do this all the time. It’s really, really cool and we spend about 15 minutes on a presentation and it is live, no bullshit. It’s going to be Thursday, august 1st, tomorrow at 7pm, so you could sign up at CurzioCrypto.com Anyone that’s on our it. But definitely pay attention to this, guys, because this is a sector that’s just ripe over the next year, and I can’t pick another sector that I could say, hey, this looks fantastic going into next year. This is a sector that has so many cows, massive tailwinds, and if Trump does get elected and does what he says he’s going to do, this sector could absolutely surge. And a lot of that was just. I think people felt that at the Bitcoin conference because there was even more. I mean, he just said a lot of positive things there, right.

0:45:52 – Daniel Creech

Oh, absolutely, and not only him, but several people there. Michael Saylor, quickly, we’ll end with this Base case 2045, I believe he said Bitcoin $13 million. Base case. Base case Frank Base case.

0:46:07 – Frank Curzio

I love it. You know, being in small cap cap land, I always hear people tell me this when they’re doing this stock is like two, three dollars and I really like it. They’re like this is a hundred dollar stock. I’m like get the fucking five first and then we’ll. And you know what I mean.

0:46:18 – Daniel Creech

Seriously, like like come on you know, it makes no sense to me. That’s a t-shirt, frank, get the florida five. Yeah, it just pisses me off because I’m like because anyone that has ever said that to me.

0:46:28 – Frank Curzio

Usually, usually the stock I mean almost 100% of the time the stock will never work out or go down. So the fact that it’s that optimistic and I know you can put numbers behind anything if everything works out and anything past two years is crazy, because the whole world could change in two years, just like we saw with COVID, just like we saw during the credit crisis. There’s a lot of things that happened. Going out past 12 months and trying to forecast is absolutely crazy, but it’s going to go significantly higher and I never said I’ll go 100 grand this year. It’s going to go to 100 grand this year. I think it’s trying to go even 150. Just the catalysts are there and I’m going to explain them to you and these are new. This isn’t stuff that I’ve been talking about in past webinars. So again, live free. We do this stuff. It’s really really cool. But definitely pay attention. I’ll show you how to position yourself.

Even some people have subscribe to our newsletter, crypto Intelligence. We’re new to this sector. We walk you through it and teach you, but this is an area you have to have exposure to and everyone’s like Bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin. You’re going to do okay. On those, you’re going to have a chance to make life-changing gains, because some of the greatest cryptos think about everything under maybe the top seven technology stocks. What we’re seeing in small caps right now. I mean small caps. Some of them are up 100%, 200%. Some of these things are surging right Because they were down so much. You’re going to buy the best companies, though it’s not small caps. These are the best crypto companies. These are the next 100 that are really good, that we researched, that have underperformed significantly.

The amount of money coming into this sector now is incredible, and just into this sector now is incredible and just you know, when I was, when I saw the highlights of trump, I saw you know, through videos and shorts and stuff like that the gary genza comments. But he also said a point of bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council to design regulatory guidance. That’s going to be done. First, 100 days shut down. Um, the operation checkpoint 2, which you mentioned. Uh, they’re never going to introduce the us digital currency, which is fantastic, because that’s really scary, because that would be. The government could basically say all right, you’re spending too much money on gas, we’re going to freeze your account. That’s crazy. Ensure that America is a global Bitcoin and crypto leader and that’s the most important thing because there is literally and being in this sector, dan, there is man, there’s tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of ideas and funding that wants to come into this industry.

And it’s very difficult when you don’t have a framework. When you don’t have a framework, it’s very difficult to commit and saying I don’t know what the regulatory environment is going to be in six months and if Trump happens to win again. A couple weeks ago it was guaranteed, but now they say Harris might be leading or whatever, but if Trump actually gets in some of these things, you defend the right to crypto. Self-custody is massive and, like you said, rfk spoke uh, where he says he’s going to purchase 550 bitcoin daily until there’s a us reserve at least four million. I mean he’s not going to get elected, but this is stuff we’ve never heard before and this comes after blackrock.

I mean these are game changers. This is what the crypto industry needs, and any crypto person and any Bitcoin diehard that says we don’t need this is an idiot, because this is going to drive Bitcoin significantly higher, because we’re not talking about what drove Bitcoin higher in the past, which is retail. We’re talking about trillions in capital that can come into this industry. This is a $2 trillion market that could easily be $10 to $15 trillion. So the opportunity is there. And just that Bitcoin conference man. Everyone’s talking about it as a reason why you’ve seen Bitcoin and Ethereum push higher, but it was very, very exciting for him. It was really, really good news.

0:49:41 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, absolutely. And, like I said, the dumbed down version for Daniel is you have a fixed, finite number of Bitcoins and if you have a small percentage of global assets or money flow into that, you’re going to have skyrocket price. Michigan State Pension Fund, jersey City, up their latest pension in Bitcoin ETFs. Michigan State put $6 million. Again, $6 million isn’t a big deal.

The idea that you have this open dialogue, you have pension funds investing in this, the fact that you just had a sitting president and current running on the Republican side for that amongst all the senators, and things at that conference are absolutely that is a paradigm shift. When you go from attacking an industry to being pro, or at least not attacking the industry, that is a paradigm shift and, as investors, all you got to do to take advantage of that is get some exposure to it. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it is going to happen over the next several months as the election unfolds, as regulation unfolds and I do I’m trying to talk myself out of being crazy leveraged towards this and oil and gas, which is selling off, but we’ll talk about that later.

0:50:43 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and I talked earlier with. The big shift is here is on a political front, and what’s politics about? It’s all about money, right, that’s all everything’s about, right. When it comes to these people. It’s all about money. So defend America, jobs and protect progress.

Those are crypto super PACs. They raised so far more than 110 million in the election cycle. So that’s according to the Federal Election Commission, the FEC records, and that is the reason why you flip-flop, right. So Trump was first and now you have Kamala, really, really late.

But remember, if you look at the Winklevoss twins and what they went through, roger Ver, they’re going after Coinbase. They went after you. Look at Ripple, the SEC was actually overruled in some of these things because they outstead their boundaries, right? So the Winklevoss twins are looking at this and saying, wow, okay, we’re billionaires. But if you really have someone that’s going to come in and do this, this is going to change the landscape. It’s going to make them filthy, filthy, rich, right? It’s going to open up the US business and the US for all crypto businesses, which is fantastic. That is a game changer. So pay close attention. I would say also, if you look at know, people talk about gold and why you should own gold. Central banks have been buying gold when and I track this. I also tweeted this, daniel, at frank cursius uh been uh we should.

0:51:57 – Daniel Creech

I recommended gold. While you’re going buying gold at a record pace, at a record pace since q2 2022.

0:52:03 – Frank Curzio

Why q2? That was shortly. You should buy gold, no matter what. I’m not gonna shit on gold here, I’m gonna say this but central banks are buying gold. Everybody knows it, right, they’ve been buying, but they started when in Q2. Like, right in Q2, this is shortly after Russia was banned from SWIFT Everyone was like holy shit, they didn’t expect that. Right, the SWIFT system, right, all their accounts, everything trades, all that was banned. 250% and gold’s up 30%. And I hear more from the gold bugs that it’s up 30% since then. Like, it’s up, like tremendously.

But imagine buying Bitcoin. And I think, if you’re looking at central banks talking about this, there is a shot that they’re going to put this on their balance sheets. And if they do that’s, I mean just the catalyst there. The tailwinds that are coming are really fantastic for this industry. We’re going to talk about that. So, guys, seriously, reserve your spot. Join me, live Daniel’s.

Well, it’s going to be tomorrow, thursday, august 1st. Go to curziocrypto.com to register. It’s free. Going to share lots of names for you. Going to share those five catalysts that I haven’t shared.

This is kind of one on the political front. This is just one, but when you hear them, you’re going to realize that it’s going to be hard to lose money in this industry. If you’re invested in the right names and it’s not just Bitcoin, ethereum, which are going to do good. There’s a lot of names that are down 30, 40, 50, some down 70% from their highs. Now you’re going to have this flood of money into crypto and it’s going to benefit those underlying names that are underneath that, and that’s where you have to invest in this. Trust me I say this often. I don’t say this often, but I say this often. I don’t say this often, but I say you hear this often from other people where you’re going to get life-changing gains. For me, investing in crypto is life-changing because it allowed me to buy a beautiful house in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in Jacksonville, buying Bitcoin and Ethereum very, very early, and this is one of those opportunities. So definitely, it’s free.

Listen, you don’t have to do anything you want, but start educating yourself, because going into next year, it looks a little crazy. Rates are going lower. You see sectors all over the place, stocks all over the place, 30% moves down and stuff. This is one sector that makes a lot of sense over the next 6 to 12 months and you can make a lot of money in, because it’s been super, super depressed and that’s what we’re seeing during earnings season. The names that are depressed, that are reporting, are getting a pop. Mcdonald’s, AMDs and the ones like the Microsofts and the Googles that have led the market have been pulling back off earnings even though the results are good. A lot of these crypto names underneath Bitcoin and Ethereum have just significantly underperformed and they’re going to catch up, and that catch-up trade is going to happen in the next three or six months. I’ll show you how to make money on that.

So lots of fun stuff with crypto RFK as well. I just love those comments, but yeah, it was pretty good. Massive turnout and I thought you know all the diehards who hate. Well, actually, I would say the gold diehards, right, just shitting on Bitcoin. Every single time you see a 10% correction and now it’s going back up, but I don’t know why, Daniel, that they can’t own both. What’s the problem with owning gold and Bitcoin?

0:54:51 – Daniel Creech

I don’t know. I say the world’s been, I have no idea.

0:54:54 – Frank Curzio

I mean, it’s good from a marketing perspective, I get it, but it’s like for me, I’m losing more and more reasons. I can’t. I’m trying to figure out why people would own gold and you own gold because of these deficits. Okay, we’ve seen deficits skyrocket. Right, they’re still skyrocketing. With low interest rates. It’s a great time to invest in it, because gold doesn’t pay you anything, so low interest rates, it’s much better. We had low interest rates for 10 years.

All these events occurred since 2012, through pretty much COVID, and we didn’t see gold really move. And if it didn’t happen then and now you’re competing against Bitcoin, which is the younger person’s gold, for the same reasons. Well, you know, protect inflation or I don’t know if you would call it a safe haven asset. But is gold really a safe haven asset? I don’t know. I mean, it’s just unperformed, almost every single asset class. I just running out of reasons to buy gold long term when you have Bitcoin out there. You know, with that said said, I think gold does go higher, but um, I just think you know the better play is probably going to be bitcoin, uh, long term.

0:56:04 – Daniel Creech

So I don’t know. Yeah, I, you own both I, I have no doubt bitcoin will outperform it.

0:56:05 – Frank Curzio

But, yeah, I, I just think you have both. You know I’m gonna get someone. I want to get a peter schiff on here or someone, or someone that’s really like die hard, all in on gold and just figure it. Because, yeah, I want to figure out what it’s almost like. Uranium, right, uranium went all the way to 100, 105 and now it’s down. It’s almost in the 70s, now it’s 80.

And when you look at uranium, the reason why it went up, if you look at it three years, four years right, the argument was like okay, you’re gonna see this massive exposure to electricity, which now we’re seeing even more AI, the huge supply-demand imbalance Okay, that was the argument to push it all the way up from the 30s to the 40s. Now, on the way down, you’re still saying the same exact thing. And when you do that, what I’ve learned over my 30-year career is, when you still have the same reasons to purchase an asset and it’s already priced in, everyone’s saying it. See, when I look at gold, everybody’s been talking about it for a while. The same exact reasons.

With Bitcoin, there’s new reasons to buy it, but I think they both go higher. I think you have to own both, but it is going to be interesting to see. Do I want to hold gold for the next 10 years? I don’t know. Maybe you guys can figure it out. Frankkerzerresearchcom and that’s always a good argument, but I really want to get some gold bugs on the podcast and talk to them about it and do some more interviews with that, but we’ll see, huh, anything else. I think we covered a lot, a lot of stuff, right. I mean, we covered uh, of course you know, through bitcoin, but earnings and we’re going to see lots and lots of you said, um, what is it? What do we have uh reporting tomorrow or after the bell?

0:57:24 – Daniel Creech

the big dog is amazon, amazon and apple amazon and apple.

0:57:27 – Frank Curzio

Apple’s going to be interesting. Did you see the price target raises on Apple, Holy cow? No, I didn’t. I mean we put Apple, we bought them.

0:57:34 – Daniel Creech

I’ve seen some jokes about their AI features. That made me laugh out loud, but that’s it.

0:57:38 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I mean they’re going to be a huge benefit. It’s really the refresh cycle, the 15 and 16. You’re going to see the to see what Apple is going to say. I don’t know how great their current numbers are going to be, but I don’t know if they always got conservatively, but there’s a lot of high expectations. We bought that stock when it was very low expectations. It was very high expectations on Apple. I wouldn’t be surprised if they report pullback a little bit, but they better report good numbers.

No-transcript, we’re gonna have a podcast for you, which is great, which is, uh, you know, wall street unplug premium. And also we are going to tape our live event thursday, which is tomorrow, august 1st, uh, and register curziocrypto.com and we’ll see you then at seven. Those usually usually go very, very well. We have a lot of fun and it is live, so we can make mistakes, you can make fun of us, but it’s really, really cool and, trust me, I want to tell you that it should be mandatory that you see it, or even see the replay of it, because it’s not often that I really believe you can make a lot of money in a certain sector. Right, seriously, it it’s almost like pulling assets from the market.

I mean, we told you right before COVID and stuff like that, with the information we had, it’s just everything’s lined up and we didn’t really see the benefits go into Bitcoin, ethereum yet. But just those underlying names are so depressed and I think there’s an easy opportunity for you to make a lot, a lot of money in that, and I’ll show you how it is. So I’m really excited about it. I’m putting probably $100,000 more into that allocation into crypto. It’s going to be one of my largest allocations in terms of sectors. So I just don’t say it, I don’t just bullshit you. I’m putting my money there and I think you should do it too. So, again, if you want to attend that event that’ll be tomorrow, and also for Wall Street Unplugged premium users we’ll see you then.

0:59:26 – Daniel Creech

But, daniel, any final Email me daniel@curzioresearchcom. Actually email Frank.

0:59:30 – Frank Curzio

No, don’t email me with anything. I’m sick of getting negative emails. All right, guys, we’ll see you tomorrow. Take care. 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, Daniel Creech, as we discuss which of these week’s trends could turn into massive windfalls the big trends that we see lurking on the 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

1:01:05 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money, and your responsibility.