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

How’s it going out there? It’s March 26th and I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where we break down headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Daniel Creech, what’s going on, man? How’s everything?

0:00:33 – Daniel Creech

Frank, everything is good. Sir, how are you? Oh, Frank, I’m glad you’re here. I got to talk to you about something You’re a dog lover.

0:00:40 – Frank Curzio

Yes, big time.

0:00:40 – Daniel Creech

Did you hear that a dog sold for a record amount? How much? Have you heard anything about this? No, I didn’t hear about how much About $5 million US. What kind of dog was it? I knew you were going to ask that it’s a breed between a wolf dog and a Caucasian something, and I can’t even pronounce the name of this thing. But I thought of you because you are Dr Doolittle himself something, and I can’t even pronounce the name of this thing. But I thought of you because you are Dr Doolittle himself. Frank has millions of birds, snakes, reptiles, animals, all that kind of stuff, Frank. Last fun fact about this dog the owner whoever this guy is I’m not going to butcher his name, he’s overseas has 150 different breeds of dogs. Obviously you collect them and stuff. He’s a breeder himself. This thing eats six and a half pounds of chicken a day, holy cow.

0:01:28 – Frank Curzio

And I don’t know how big this thing is. Where’d you get this?

0:01:29 – Daniel Creech

story from. That’s a great story. I check. This is what I do, Frank. I check headlines for you guys to try to bring economics, politics, fun, all kinds of crazy stuff. Yeah, it’s such a big game Dogs cats I wanted to bring this up a week or so ago, but anyway, I just thought that was hilarious. So there’s a record, all that good stuff.

0:01:49 – Frank Curzio

So anyway, on to something important. You know, it’s funny with dogs, though it sells so much, right, it’s just even when they have the commercials and they show the dogs. You see those commercials when they have, like you know, one eye or three legs and they’re walking around donate. Oh yeah, these. I mean I don’t know how many three-legged, like, how many three-legged dogs you think there are.

0:02:05 – Daniel Creech

I think every one of them is on that commercial I might see one like every five years, but if you watch that it looks like like every fourth dog has three legs and one eye.

0:02:13 – Frank Curzio

if you watch those commercials because they’re like, and you’re gonna save these dogs, or you know, and I love when they try to pitch them like, oh, this, this animal is okay, he’s out for sale, he’s great, great, he’s so nice. And the dog’s like freaking running around or the cat’s like, oh my God, so crazy.

0:02:25 – Daniel Creech

Been returned twice because he ate a child.

0:02:28 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, but he’s okay now, he’s fine, he’s fine. Listen, there’s bad people too, but there’s bad dogs, right, it’s just so funny. There’s a reason for someone to really take back a dog of lovers. So anyway, but, um, you know, I want to start off day with uh with some news, because first I want to be I’m really happy because the first guys, I’ve been going away a lot. I went away for the last few days on business and it’s nice to come back. When the market’s up, yeah, market’s down, I’m like, hey, Daniel, handle the alerts and everything and and, yeah, I’ll be back a couple days. He’s always like, what the?

But uh, you know, we came back to Disney with Snow White and it’s a pretty big deal. We talk about Disney a lot here and I’m not getting it. I’m really not understanding Disney and Snow White. It just tanked the box office. They’re going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on this. I think it generated something like $40, $43 million. It cost, they say, $250 million, but it’s more, like’s more, like 400 to 500 million, because you got a double f of marketing and stuff like that, which they’re going to cut off the marketing because they know it’s doing shit.

But to give you some history on snow white. Like companies always remake stuff, they always do, and with disney and some of these other companies, especially when it comes like the cgi or the animation or whatever, which this is an animation, but it’s even when you look at the marvel movies, it’s almost a guarantee that these things make money as long as you don’t do anything stupid. So if you look back at history, the original snow white was first made 1937. You had walt disney. This was his movie. This is what started walt disney. He leveraged everything and said, okay, I’m mortgaging my house, everything, everything. This is going to be great. He went all in, like most billionaires and companies have started. I’m going all in. People say you should diversify. If you want to become a billionaire, don’t diversify, go all in. I’m not telling you to do that. I don’t want to do that. It’s not the advice I’m giving you, but I’m going all in on this. And it was a blockbuster hit. In today’s dollars, inflation adjusted that generated close to $4 billion back then. That’s how big that movie was for Walt Disney. It’s why the company exists today.

So when it comes to Snow White remaking this movie, it should have been a layup, just like every Spider-Man that comes out, there was spider-mans, three spider-mans, with the same exact story, three different actors and it’s automatic, a billion dollars each of them. Now they even spun out more and more spider-man. It’s like automatic. But the star of this movie is rachel zegler and you’re allowed to have your own opinions or whatever, but she’s woke times 10 and trashed the original. None of that. She trashed the original version.

That’s what happens when you have, like, young kids that don’t understand like the history behind something. Right, they think like whatever they say is more important than everything. That’s fine, I get it. When you’re in your 20s, when you’re younger, whatever you know, you think you’re the greatest or what. I get it. But you called the original version weird that the prince was literally stalking snow white.

She made comments on social media about freeing Palestine, which, again, you can have your own opinion, you want. But it did not go over. Well, because Gal Gadot, who’s awesome, she’s the Wonder Woman, right, she’s in this movie, she’s a co-star, she’s Jewish, and it resulted in her getting a lot of death threats, where Disney actually had to ramp up security because of some of the shit she was saying. And I thought when Iger came on board, he was done with this shit. I thought he was done with this, with this, because when you look at the history of this company since 2020, I mean, strange world lost 200 million dollars about educating children about sexual preferences.

Light year was the latest toy story having a lesbian kiss scene in it. The little mermaid, uh, slapping racism warnings on dumbo about the black crows in it. Lady and the tramp. They took events in. Siamese cats. The acolyte, which is the latest star wars series, got canceled. The actresses they were insanely woke, right. So I just I don’t think I’ve ever seen a brand blow up like this and have total disregard for what its customers wants, because this is one of the greatest brands in the world. This is the fam. This is like McDonald’s. When you were a kid I don’t know if you remember this, Daniel, but it was the biggest honor in the world to have your birthday party at mcdonald’s.

It was the biggest thing when I was little, because the playpen it’s just everything in there the playpen I like the way you call it, but that’s it. It’s all germs and everything. Now, everyone’s germs. You’re good, it was the biggest deal in the world. And when kids when I was a kid when you see McDonald’s, you lit up. You’re like, oh my God, I got it. That’s how Disney was. We went to Disney. You were like, oh my God, and it’s not what their customers want.

And you see companies like Budweiser who, completely messed up, took a beating and they said, okay, we figured it out, we apologize, we need to get better. Now, all’s good. People are drinking my light again. Right, america always forgives. They do, they always forgive. As long as you just go up there and say, listen, all right, I messed up, it’s my fault, but here’s how we’re going to get better. Okay, that’s a great story, because we all have flaws. Disney’s not apologizing. They keep doubling down.

I’m not sure how much longer they could do this, since your core customer is that family, that working family and these working families with their kids. They hate your message, loud and clear, loud and clear. They hate it. They hate it since 2020. They hate it even more now and you’re refusing to change. I’m just not sure. I don’t know how anyone could own that stock right now.

No, it’s just the streaming part, which is bad enough from a business perspective. You’re getting into a business where you have trillion-dollar companies who don’t even really care about their streaming or spending more on content and building it. You can’t really compete with them, but yet that is your growth model. That’s one thing. Right Now, they’re starting to open up lots of parks, and I like that. But if your core customer doesn’t want to come to these parks and they’re going to Universal instead and they’re just like I lot of people are you got to get them back. Get them back because you’re the greatest storytelling company in the world.

I don’t understand why you just don’t get it. It’s there for you to see. It’s their money. You see the advertising. You see just enough of this Like make it law, say listen, if anyone talks about this bullshit, you’re done with throwing you off the set.

Put in their contract. You don’t get paid at all. You know, whatever you need to do, I mean you need to button up these people because you have contracts with them and when they’re just going out there and even if they’re kids, you know, people just don’t want to hear this shit. They want to be entertained and they don’t want politics to be involved. Sometimes, fortunately, we have to talk about politics because it matters what your stock, investments and things like that. We’ll have an opinion here or there, but it has to do with the investments. But when you see being injected into this company, I just don’t get it. I mean, you get it, I don’t. I don get it. I don’t, I don’t get it. Like, don’t don’t clear his day, stop doing this shit, or we’re not going to go to your movies, and they just keep doing it. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, I just don’t get it. I don’t get it.

0:08:51 – Daniel Creech

Let me ask you, Frank, what would Disney need to do for you to think that they think they’re on the right path? So, as a fiduciary role, I don’t know and I’m not trying to put argument on you, but if you keep doing this, like at when would you say, okay, this is who they are and this is who they want to be in remake? Forget old Disney. This is what they see going forward. And, yeah, at some point, if it hits the bottom line hard enough, maybe they’ll make some changes. But like I guess I don’t know why anybody would be surprised about this.

0:09:30 – Frank Curzio

You asked me what I would do if I was CEO of that company. I’m not even kidding, I’m not asking you that, I’m not even being arrogant.

0:09:35 – Daniel Creech

What would it take for you to say, ok, this is who they are. And I was wrong, because I thought that they were kind of the old Disney, and this is clearly who they want their customer base to be? I mean, look, and I’m not saying right or wrong with that, I’m just saying like I keep looking at this and kind of think, man, everybody seems to be shocked, but core management continues to make these movies for a reason Forget about shock, like the numbers.

0:09:57 – Frank Curzio

You own the stock. We’re talking about the stock pick here. Why are you on the stock? It’s not even like you’re shocked, like okay, it’s not so much shock that you’re still doing woke, but it is shocking that look at the money like 250, $500 million.

Anyway, it costs minimum 250, probably about 400 million. If I had to average this, it’s usually double the budget. They’re not going to go to 500 million because it’s not selling. They’re going to pull their marketing budget pretty soon. So say, 350, $400 million, something that’s supposed to generate $100 million and it generated $43 million. And now it’s not even that good of a movie. But it’s just the backlash they’re receiving. If I became CEO of that company, I could tell you that the market cap would increase by 3x in two years. And you’re laughing, but I’m serious.

0:10:36 – Daniel Creech

It’s very-. I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at the situation.

0:10:39 – Frank Curzio

And I’m going to tell you why. And this is what I would do. Okay, and you guys feel free to email me and make fun of me or whatever. This is what I would do if I was Disney One. I do what Trump’s doing right now Get rid of everything, everything, woke everything through and make it public. This way, you’re going to get back your original customers, which is your massive freaking base. Get rid of everything and say we’re never going to do this again because we know our customers don’t want this and this is terrible, and get rid of it. Okay, that’s perfectly fine. You get rid of all that stuff Instead of focusing on streaming and have to produce your new content, because that’s what streaming is about.

It’s about new content. It’s not about your library Nobody wants to watch double 80,000 times. It’s about your new content. You don’t have any new content coming up Very little, and you cannot compete with them, but you have a great library, so license that stuff, sign deals with other people, but don’t worry about creating your own content. Like go on Amazon Prime sign deals with Prime, sign deals with Mac sign deals and say, okay, you have Disney content. This way, you’re getting licensing fees and you’re making a fortune, constant cashflow, instead of trying to compete directly with companies that spend $10 billion and don’t even know that they spend $10 billion on content $20 billion, $30 billion. Like the Amazons, like Google and YouTube TV. They just raise their prices by $10 a month and no one blinked an eye. That’s who you’re competing against.

You’re Hulu or live TV? It’s the bundle services. You’re getting the ESPN brand. It’s the ESPN. Get out of the woke part. I know you think that that’s part of that ESPN brand, but you could tell that you’re canceling so much shit and you’re not even renewing some of your licensing fees.

Things are really bad. You’re getting rid of all your freaking good talent. Things are bad. Those are signs that things are really bad, you know. But now you focus on parks. Open up a million parks. People love parks. You have unlimited pricing power with that shit. People are paying $150 just to walk in just to walk in and blackout dates. If it’s, you know, during season, you’re charging even more. You go in there. You people are buying seven dollar freaking waters. Open up all these parks constantly, get more and more rides and keep that storytelling like the storytelling with movie in the movies. You’re the greatest storytellers ever, you know.

So focus on the box office, less on streaming, but these measures and make it public that you’re getting everything rid of woke, because you’re going to get back all your customers. They’re going to know you for real that that’s what you need to do. You have all the tools available. Like, I just don’t get it. Like you’re going, you’re reducing your customer base by focusing on this woke agenda that it’s a hate agenda. It is no one that’s woke, that’s happy. You don’t see these people walking around like hey, they only, they only happy, happy if Trump gets shot at, that’s the only time they’re freaking happy. I just I don’t want to go that long into this, but I don’t think it’s that difficult. Where you have that brand, you have the storytellers, the box office, marvel. You have so many great freaking assets in there you could do so many amazing things with and you’re just focusing on stupid shit. I just don’t get it. I just don’t get it. But maybe it’s me.

I thought Iger said enough of the politics. That’s what he said when he came in. I’m like good for you. Iger said whatever he needed and then you know obviously that’s not true and he’s going to be gone and it’s going to be interesting who the next CEO is. It’s going to be a really big deal because that’s going to happen probably in the next 12 months, because he’s gone, he’s done, he. It’s disappointing just to see it like, hey, if you do this, you’re not going to generate money, and they’re like, ok, we’re going to do it anyway, all right, well, no one’s going to buy your fucking stock, then it’s going to crash, all right, don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised. That’s freaking easy. Looking at the stock, you’d have to go back two and a half years ago.

0:14:02 – Daniel Creech

I just went back. Holy shit, it’s like been years, years, years. Oh, it’s been terrible. Yeah, absolutely. And hey, I’ve been in dead stocks for a while. I understand that, but this is proof, and this is why you listen to this podcast. This is proof that Frank Curzio is a much better person than Daniel Creech and has a lot better optimistic view on other humans, because I view Disney as them doing exactly what they intend and think they should be doing crazy stuff. Frank, what else do you want to talk about today?

0:14:26 – Frank Curzio

Well, before we talk about it, I got to bring up a nice chart. Sorry, but this is 2015. Nice In 2015, the stock was 104, and it’s 100 today in 2015. Okay, yeah, ups and downs. And then 2021, you lied to everyone. You said streaming is the greatest business in the world. And you lied. You said we’re signing all these customers. You did, but you signed them for free. Nobody cared, because they’re just like oh, you’re signing customers, what’s your average revenue per user? It was, like you know, a dollar, because you’re just signing all these people internationally which aren’t really going to pay up for their services. So that’s why they’re going to start really bleeding tons of subscribers, especially now that it clear on your website that someone wants to cancel. You just have to press a button and I can tell you go, try to cancel your Disney account now. You’re not going to be able to do it. There’s no way you’re going to be able to do it. Try to cancel your Disney account now.

0:15:09 – Daniel Creech

There’s no way you’re going to be able to do it. What’s the great movie where he says now you can’t leave? Yeah exactly. That’s hey. The only comeback Disney has, Frank, to what you just said about their stock being flat or a little bit higher back a decade, is Dollar Tree. Man, Dollar Tree. You want to know how you turn $9.5 billion into $1 billion. You buy Family Dollar 10 years ago, Frank. That’s how you do it, you know it’s— I’m being funny there, they bought it for $9 billion in 2014.

0:15:42 – Frank Curzio

So today they sold it for— $9, $9 billion in 2014.

0:15:44 – Daniel Creech

So today they sold it for Nine, nine and a half I’ve looked up I think it’s eight and a half. Nine billion. It’s around nine billion Including debt.

0:15:47 – Frank Curzio

Let’s just use nine, nine billion, right. So they sold it for one billion to PE firms and 89% loss To tell you. Listen, dollar Tree was trying to sell this family dollar brand forever Because it was I mean, it’s it’s a 66-year-old brand. They were closing stores I don’t know how many stores they have, but they closed 1,000 in the last three years. That’s kind of why they’re looking to sell it. They just want it at a higher price and they’re just like F it.

Why would they sell this business at such a steep discount, considering, if you look, I’m pretty sure that brand alone don’t quote me on this, I think generates five billion in annual sales and you’re selling it for a billion. Like why? Because the margins are really terrible and it was killing the company’s overall performance, kind of like what amd is going through. Right. Amd, their ai is growing. They’re doing well ai. However, you know it’s now down to about 30 of their revenue comes from like pcs and phones and that business is in gaming and they’re getting annihilated like those things would decline high double digits and it’s tough. And you know the reason why I thought amd might have hit a bottom is because it used to be 50. Then it would sound to 30. I think it’s like 27 now is basically the shitty part of the business.

Just like disney, they restructured their business and threw all this shitty international subscribers, which is, uh, what was it called? Star, I believe that and they were like oh, let’s separate this and put this in the garbage area, right. It’s kind of like what companies spin off. They always spin off that garbage unit and then they get a lot of money for it and they’re like here you can buy the garbage unit and when it comes out in the ipo, they’re like that garbage unit it’s no longer garbage, it’s great now, and they try to make you buy it and this way they get all that money anyway. We won’t go into importantly. It was the opportunity cost, because management was spending tons of time trying to make this brand work and trying to sell it and you’re focusing on something that’s not working, when maybe Dollar Tree is working a little bit better.

But there’s a lot of debt around these businesses and in 2015, when Dollar Tree bought Family Dollar, interest rates were basically nothing and today we know the interest rates have skyrocketed, right, so you know they’re refinancing. If you have to refinance debt, it’s insane. Now, to put this in perspective. I did a little research on this data. It’s pretty cool.

So the Fed came out with a report in 2017 when interest rates were very, very low still, and that was when the Fed was about to start raising. Before we got into COVID. They lowered again, but they starting to raise. We’re going to say, okay, we’re going to tighten. So now, when that happens, the futures like we have today they were pricing in rates going from 1.25% to 3% by 2019. And they said, based on a $2.2 trillion in corporate loans outstanding and that was at the time, 2017, it would result in interest payments Interest payments alone, interest payments alone increasing by $2 billion in 2017, $15 billion by 2018, and $37 billion by 2019, just in interest payments, just in interest payments. And it was saying that’s if rates go to 3%. We’re at 4.5%.

So what does that mean? If you have to refinance your debt right now, you’re effed. You’re effed, which is why there’s a crisis going on, which few people are talking about, and you should learn a lot about this few stories out there. There’s a crisis going on in private equity markets right now. So when you have private equity companies, okay, like the two firms that just bought Family Dollar. Okay, that worked out for them, that’s fine.

But most of the private equity companies, their job is to buy companies in the private market. Well, sometimes they might see something has a huge discount and they’ll buy it and they’ll take it private. And they take it private because then they’re going to leverage those assets 5, 10, sometimes 20 to 1. That’s their job. And what do they do? They build out a lot more stores. They’re going to lower costs. They make a fortune, an absolute fortune, in doing this, even though most of the companies after they go public are really shit, right? Pe firms don’t care, because their liquidity period is when an IPO. They don’t care, right? You see that with first data over and over again, how much money that lost and finally they went public with it. So then they get that money. They move on to the next deal.

But PE firms right now and these are private companies whose values have crashed to the point where they can’t go public so if they can’t go public, they’re sitting on their balance sheets. And now they’re sitting on their balance sheets for years and they have to refinance this debt that they took out years ago and rates are much lower. So the PE firms are basically sitting on a ton of these assets. They need to get off their balance Because if they have to refinance a debt, they might go under. And this is why, when it comes to the Sugarfina deal for my Curzio One members got in. It has enormous upside potential.

I didn’t get it until I talked to these guys. I’m like Sugarfina well, I don’t know Right now consumer brand, why isn’t it AI or whatever? And they’re basically rolling up all these luxury confection brands, gifting candy brands into one giant company and they’re buying these assets from PE firms for $0.10 to $0.15 on the dollar. Because PE firms have no choice. They have to get this stuff on the balance sheet. They’re not making money on it. They want to be able to use that cash right and the refinancing is coming. So they’re like we really need to get this off our balance sheets. And when you look at the guys who run Sugarfina, they know this because they’re in the private equity markets and they’re like wow, all these guys are about to dump this shit right on us. Why don’t we be the company that buys all this stuff for 10, 15 cents on a dollar? That’s how so many companies made money during the credit crisis. There wasn’t a lot, but a lot of private assets and real estate for 10, 15 cents on a dollar. Because a lot of that shit, you know. The government was happy selling some of it instead of taking over Fannie and Freddie. And look what happened to the real estate market. Right, that’s how the biggest investors Warren Buffett, all of them invest. They buy stuff. When shit’s like hitting the fan, they buy it dirt cheap.

This management team did the same thing with Marriott Hotels. This is when industry, hotel industry Everyone’s used to hotel industry Amazing. You drive along a highway, you see thousands of hotels. It wasn’t always like that. It was a shitty business in the 90s and Scott LaPorta, part of the management team, rolled up all these companies to Marriott and said, hey, we have the business model, let’s roll these up, buy them for cheap and then we’ll expand. And that’s what they did.

And the hotel industry of gambling they gambled on these freaking companies. That all crashed and it was a recession, basically from 2000 to 2003. And the market sucked back then. And what do they do? They spun off the casino business and then they started buying these casino businesses for nothing, absolutely nothing, whether it was Bally’s, whether it was Caesars, and that they were able to spin them off later on. They made a fortune doing this. But that’s when you want to buy these assets, when you get them at a steep discount, because you have so many companies and so many people that are desperate, they’re forced to sell these brands.

But PE firms right now, guys, if you can start doing your research on it, it’s a story a few people are talking about. A lot of these guys are in trouble. They’re sitting with deteriorating assets on their balance sheet which they’re not going to go public anytime soon. The valuations are down, they’re generating no returns for investors and now they have to refinance the debt, which is almost going to put these guys out of business. It’s insane that they’re just like hey, give me any cash for it, give me a couple million dollars, give me $5 million, give me $10 million or something that they bought for $100 million, because now they can leverage the shit out of this and go all, and now they’re generating their fees. Right now, people who invest in private equity firms are pissed off because they’re not generating good returns, because they only generate the returns when these companies go public and the public market’s kind of shitty right now. It’s really shitty.

You see a couple of deals coming out here and there, but most of them are kind of shitty. So when I see with sugarfina and I talked to scott lapora and paul kessa, paul was telling me we have 13 companies we’re ready to buy I’m like how is that possible? Now I know how it’s possible because they told me about it. I’ve done the research on it. I’m like, wow, these guys are going to buy 13 freaking companies. They have Sugarfina, they have the brand, they have the facilities. Now they’re just going to merge all this stuff in this roll-up strategy. It’s a company with an $80 million valuation that they.

Maybe we have a prolonged recession, but I love the freaking business model. That’s something like I was like, holy shit, you really want to invest, like in chocolate companies or whatever, but they’re consolidating this to make a massive company. That’s the best time to do a roll-up strategy, when you can buy these assets. They’re cheap and they’re just being given to you because other companies have to sell. They’re forced to sell. So that deal closes next week.

We’ve been talking about it. Sugar Fiend, if you’re interested, you have to be a one member to get access. But if you’re interested, email me, Frank@curzioresearch.com we have a discount on Curzio One. But just pay attention to the private equity market, because I just feel like David Faber should be doing more work on it, because I love when he talks about deals. He always does a great job. That’s what he does on TV, just even with Family Dollar, with all these deals coming out, you could tell, because he really gets into it. He’s one of the best at it. He should be really bringing this up, because private equity firms are in a lot of trouble right now. They’re just selling their assets. They’re looking at it.

Balance sheets suck right now. They have no cash, they have no capital, no dry powder and they want crush. And this is a time you want to be aggressive. They can’t get aggressive because they got aggressive a couple of years ago when it straight to zero and now they have to refinance a lot of this shit which is going to kill them. But it’s something very interesting. Sugar fiend is the best way to play it for us, but there’s probably other ways which I’m trying to figure out because you probably could leverage that idea and make a lot of money, but no one’s really talking about it’t know. But look, bloomberg has a couple of stories on it.

0:24:44 – Daniel Creech

Good deal for us. Well, the deal yeah.

0:24:47 – Frank Curzio

Listen, it’s good terms and it’s a good deal. I mean, you’re getting 6% dividend. You’re getting full warrants at $80 million valuation, which was valued at $80 million. They just came out with their new valuation, from someone independent, which values at $96 million. You get an $80 million. Could it work out?

I’m hoping it’s one of my biggest investments. It’s risky but maybe it doesn’t right. There’s risk to every deal and I tell everyone that. But for me, I love the thesis on this, now that I understand it, because nobody’s really doing this and, like Paul said when I interviewed him, I give that interview to everyone who’s on our list, even people who are non-One members, just to see the work that we do for Curzio One no-transcript, what they have, and that’s why we’re raising money and trying to really, you know, pay their balance sheet so they can use that money to buy a lot of these companies that are dirt cheap, which is pretty cool. See why I’m so excited about this and why I’ve been pitching it so much. And again, hopefully it does work out.

They think they’re going to go public nine to 12 months. If they do, you can sell the warrants immediately. These guys, public is already in the works for them. They said nine months. I’m saying 12 months. These guys don’t look to go public. They’re not looking to get a double on this, they’re looking to increase sales to 100, 200, 300 million. This way they get institutions involved and they do even bigger deals.

So for me, I like deals like that. I feel like it’s a lower risk deal with still massive upside potential. It gives you a chance to take money off the table with your warrants after a year you have to go public which you could sell immediately if you want, and yet long-term it could be very, very, very, very promising and be life-changing. So that’s the deals that we offer in Curzio One, but it all ties into what’s going into the markets right now. It took me a while in the stand-up, but now I get it. I do a lot of research on it and if you’ve got any research on private equity firms and stuff that you’re seeing that I just talked about, please, Frank@curzioresearch.com. I get so many emails from everyone through China. What’s going to play out with PE firms, especially since rates are remaining higher for much longer than anyone anticipated and it looks like they’re going to remain higher even longer throughout this year. Let’s see what happens.

0:26:54 – Daniel Creech

A lot of chaos. You want to talk? Well, I would like to talk crypto. Do you want to talk crypto for a minute? Crypto GameStop.

0:27:00 – Frank Curzio

Buy, buy, buy. Listen to Frank, the credit to Kramer. Give the buy, buy, buy. Ruining my segue.

0:27:05 – Daniel Creech

It’s up. What is up? 11%. It was. I don’t know what it is up now. It was up a little bit more than that. Yeah, yes, this is interesting because this has been a saga for a while.

I tweeted a long time ago, which in our business means I was wrong. Early does not mean correct. In this business, people. I was wrong 16%. But quickly, Frank. They reported earnings last night reported 30 cents in earnings per share. That was 22 cents better than estimates. I think there’s always only two analyst estimates.

Revenue fell almost 30% a year, Frank, and if I told you, as you just said, the stock’s up 15%, why? How do you increase earnings by lowering your revenue? Well, you cut the hell out of cost, Frank. In 2023, they ended exited operations in Ireland, Switzerland and Australia. This is after Ryan Cohen took the helm. In 2024, they closed down operations in Germany. During 2024, Frank, they also closed 590 stores in the US. These guys are cutting things down to the bone and none of that matters, because the big announcement was, as you just said, they, they, the board of directors under Ryan Cohen, who we’ll talk about more in a moment has said that the board of directors has voted in favor of having Bitcoin as a US treasury asset Frank. This company has $100 million left on its non-expiration share buyback. That’s not that big of a deal, although we are a fan of buybacks. It has over four and a half billion Frank in cash and now it’s telling you it’s going to buy Bitcoin. My question to you is how much Bitcoin do they start buying and when?

0:28:49 – Frank Curzio

You know, do they really have $4.5 billion in cash on their balance sheet? Is that right?

0:28:56 – Daniel Creech

Well, you’re calling me out Now. I have to look it up.

0:28:58 – Frank Curzio

I mean, they have more cash on their balance sheet than they do in sales.

0:29:02 – Daniel Creech

Frank, it’s dying business. Did you not listen to anything?

0:29:04 – Frank Curzio

I just said I don’t want to say credit to the CEO, because he really you know I’m trying not to say the F word a lot, but he really F’d the Wall Street bet guys, because, as you know, you have Rory and Kitty like bringing this stock up and every time he did it, he did a financing right in their face, right. So you know, which is the stock could have run incredibly and really destroyed all the shorts Even further, like it did once upon a time when, I think the stock went to what $300 or something like that. It’s crazy, something ridiculous, but it’s, you know, a lot of cash on the balance sheet. So what do you do with it? Well, yeah, 4.7 billion, 4.7 billion in cash. How’s that possible?

0:29:38 – Daniel Creech

Now to your point. Sorry to interrupt, I promise.

0:29:39 – Frank Curzio

I’ll let you go after this, but to your point.

0:29:41 – Daniel Creech

how did they do all that? Well, they raised at I mean, these guys were going to the equity markets, I mean these guys made microstrategy look, you know nothing and they were at least buying Bitcoin but they raised a couple billion dollars in just at the money at the market offerings, Frank. So that’s, they diluted the hell out of shareholders. And we’re not talking about if you’ve been holding it, I’m talking about from here forward. That’s what I was asking you. But, sorry, go ahead. So you’re right, they have all that because they just diluted the hell out of everybody.

0:30:07 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I think we have to look at the bigger point instead of looking at GameStop here. Okay, there are more companies that are going to announce this and I’m not talking about the GameStops, where they’re announcing it because they want their stock to go higher. They’re going to announce this because they’re going to probably make a shitload of money on their cash by doing this, compared to just keep it on the balance sheet or keep it in treasuries. And they’re going to do that because there’s a limited supply of Bitcoin, which all of you know you should know by now, especially Liz’s podcast for the last six, seven years. That’s why we’ve been buying it since 6,000. The massive demand that’s coming is coming from institutions. You have Goldman Sachs, wisconsin’s pension fund, bank of Montreal, abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds. All these guys just bought a ton of Bitcoin. I think Goldman Sachs is over 2 billion, abu Dhabi’s is billions. Now you have pension funds getting in and they all bought as of last quarter, which was Q4. And why did they do that? Because Trump got elected and became president. Now, why is that a big deal? Because now they’re going to be able to legally do this, because it’s a fiduciary responsibility.

They can’t get into Bitcoin because you saw what happened to the banks. They talked to the SEC when it came to Silver Bank, when it came to Signature, and said, hey, we’re going to take custody. Is bank would have come to signature and said, hey, we’re going to take custody, is it okay if we have? You know, if we’re into Bitcoin, they’re like sure. And then they went after them and basically destroyed them and said if anyone does any business with them, that we’re going to audit you. And they cut off their lifelines and they forced them into bankruptcy right. These companies were solvent. The SEC came out and they forced those companies into bankruptcy right, which is illegal.

That’s Operation Chokepoint two, and we’ll see how that turns out. The lawyer who last did operation choke point one actually won against the government, and this was during the Obama years when he shut off to porno industry and just all kinds of companies Anything that they thought was risky. They said you can’t do business anymore, which is kind of legal. So the banks can’t do business with them anymore. Now that regulation is coming, that’s their fiduciary responsibility to make sure that they’re getting into an asset that they can’t. The government can’t just turn it off. And now you’re going to see this regulatory framework because you mentioned, you have Paul Atkins, the confirmation. What is that tomorrow?

0:32:02 – Daniel Creech

The debate whatever that’s called, yeah Starts tomorrow, the 27th. So nominated chair SEC Paul Atkins gets grilled tomorrow.

0:32:12 – Frank Curzio

Frank, tomorrow Frank I guess, yeah, it’s all grand standing, but anyway he’s gonna get nominated and and he already served.

0:32:17 – Daniel Creech

So I mean you would think that it would be a shoe in so he’s gonna get.

0:32:20 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, so he’s. Once this happens, he already has the framework made up already, right? So once they’re gonna push this right away and once you have the framework, they’re gonna say I guess everything on coinbase is not a security. They’re gonna probably give you fdic laws where it’s going to be insured. They’re going to make sure your assets are protected. They’re going to treat it like it’s a brokerage firm. They’re going to allow custody in the US.

These are all things you really need to see the growth of this industry, because someone that’s been in this industry from our token when you have to be careful, where we have to file financials, I think every six months on a T-Zero website, because we’re kind of like semi-publicly traded with our Curzio token right, that’s a direct equity stake in our company. It’s not a utility token, it’s a direct equity stake, right, if we get bought and you’re a shareholder, just like in Microsoft or whatever, you’re going to get paid. And it was amazing doing the financials because t0 had to change their language almost every single time that we did it. So we’re promoting financials and you know we’re talking about risks and everything. Just like you know you would. You would do in the annual report and call reports, but it was amazing how they always came back with edits for themselves and saying oh, you can’t say this, can’t say, tokenization, you can’t say this, can’t say. And because they were fighting back and forth, going they’re not too. They just don’t want to get sued. Right, they’re trying to follow laws, but there’s no laws there. And now you have the SEC, as early January, saying we’re going after everyone To the bigger point here. When it comes to GameStop, you’re going to see a lot more companies do this because there’s regulation coming.

You’re looking at institutions as a whole. They manage close to 100 trillion in assets, which BlackRock suggests a 2% allocation is going to eventually go into Bitcoin over time. They’re saying maybe three to five years. To put this in perspective, let’s say BlackRock is right and it’s fair. They’re definitely talking their book because they have the largest Bitcoin ETF. Right, so BlackRock does and I get it. But if they’re right, 2% of the $100 trillion in money managed by these institutions, if that flows into Bitcoin, that’s $2 trillion Into an asset. Right now, bitcoin that has a market cap of $1.7 trillion. What do you think is going to happen? Keep in mind keep in mind this does not include countries creating their own strategic Bitcoin reserve. Now the US has done that, and this is the Czech Republic, this is Russia, switzerland, poland, hong Kong, venezuela, germany, japan, south Africa All of them mentioned publicly. They’re looking into doing this and creating one.

Also, it does not include the US buying more Bitcoin or buying Bitcoin to add to a strategic reserve, which is still very much on the table. You just need Congress approval. You have Cynthia Lumens who’s responsible for this. She’s still pushing it, which it could result. They wanted to buy 200,000 Bitcoin every year, which is more than produced per year. Right now. I think it’s 164,000 Bitcoin are produced every year after the latest halving, which was 2024. And if you times that by the full year, it’s around 164,000. And she was talking about buying. The US government alone is going to buy $200,000. Even if they buy $25,000 or $10,000, it’s a game changer. Also, this doesn’t include the companies like MicroStrategy and others adding it to their balance sheet. It does not include any retail buying at all any retail buying.

So if you look at Bitcoin, with its limited supply, where do you think it’s going to go? It can go down to 60, and go down to 50 again and go down to 70. But I can tell you, just like I told you when I was going to 100,000. Okay, I’m not saying I had to pat myself in the back, went through the ups and downs, got a couple of emails or whatever I said. I don’t know. I’m not going to give you a timeframe, but it’s going to be within three, especially when these new regulations come out. The next hundred are really good companies that you’re going to see money flow into Now.

We predicted this a while ago and we lost money right for our subscribers. And it’s come down. Tom, just stay there. I’ve seen some of these things down 30, 40 percent and you’re up 1,000 percent, 2,000 percent. We’ve had those gains in our portfolio several times of these companies.

But when you look at the money that’s going to pour into Bitcoin with the limited supply, all this is coming. Okay, you could trade it short term, be like it’s $80,000, $70,000. Oh shit. Now the strategic reserve is announced. I thought it was disappointing news because everyone thought they were going to start buying it. Instead, they put what they had basically in custody, if you want to say, putting all in the strategic Bitcoin reserve and keeping it there, and that’s what they’re going to do if they seize more Bitcoin going forward, which is taking more and more supply off the market that can’t be sold. So now these other countries join in. Now that you have different accounting laws FASB laws now no longer says that Bitcoin or any other crypto has to be a liability on your balance sheet, which is a joke. Now it’s an asset. Now you can borrow against it. Now custody is coming out. Now it’s going to be just like a brokerage firm. Now more people have access to it.

The demand for a limited asset it’s here. You can’t argue it anymore. You can’t say it’s going to zero. You can’t say people don’t like it. It’s here. It’s already integrated in almost everything within the banking systems. It’s here and it’s going to go a lot. Start picking away at it and make it a 1% 2% allocation.

Just like I said with gold, just like I say with Bitcoin, gold was shit for 10 years. I have gold. It’s like 2% 3% of my portfolio and a lot of my gold stocks are coming back. A lot of the gold that I own two gold coins, I mean. I bought them when gold was $1,700. And again it was going up and down or whatever. Man, it’s really attractive Again. Maybe it goes to 80, maybe it goes to 75, whatever, but long-term. You’ve seen this massive demand. These tailwinds are not going away.

Nothing’s going to change, at least for the next four years that Trump’s in office, the way the Democrats are still promoting some of this woke shit and still won’t get away from it. It could be another eight years or 12 years before they get someone in office, because they’re not changing their policy, which the whole world, all of America, voted that. We don’t like those policies, that’s not what we want and they’re not changing. So, as long as you have the Republicans, no matter who it is, they’re going to be pro-crypto and I think you’re going to have the Democrats pro-crypto, unless they hate money, and that’s all politicians care about is money, because more money flowed in from crypto than any other organization when it came to campaign financing, when it came to the money coming in and donations, and that could be a part of why Trump won Getting the younger vote, getting a ton of money and said, hey, you know what, let’s be pro-crypto. Is it bullshit or whatever? He didn’t like crypto. Maybe he’s played it smart politically.

No-transcript. More ETFs are going to come out which are structured, which are managed, that are going to own more than Bitcoin, ethereum and Solana. That’s where you can make like 25 years in today’s terms, because everybody wants to be a billionaire tomorrow. If someone says, oh well, we’re going to wait, next quarter we’re going to see all the benefits, the stock goes down 30% and then next quarter, when it happens, it goes up 30%. But everything’s so short term. But if you could just ignore the noise, listen, it’s going to be really good for.

0:39:10 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, look no further than right here. I want to be a billionaire by tomorrow too, so I understand that very, very well. A couple of things for me. We can get more into this tomorrow, Frank, on Wall Street Unplugged Premium, but there is some momentum. You mentioned more companies will add Bitcoin and such. There’s a cool website, bitcointreasuriesnet. I don’t know if you’ve ever messed around with that, Frank, but they show you just categories from public and private and all that kind of stuff. Bitcoin treasuriesnet. This has 88 publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin, 22 private companies, 12 governments, etc. Gives you some fun stats, but that’ll be something to look and watch as things unfold. Obviously, MicroStrategy holds over 500,000 Bitcoin now as it continues to accumulate. We’ll see GameStop on this list very soon, once they make their announcement, Frank. A couple other things really quickly here Bitcoin and treasuries.

0:40:01 – Frank Curzio

Isn’t that funny, though. What Like the Bitcoin? It says Bitcoin and treasuries. I got that site up. Oh yeah, how they do it’s just 3 million, but like the stable coins, or they got to be backstabbed so they buy treasuries which kind of like you were saying it right. Isn’t it kind of funny that that-.

0:40:15 – Daniel Creech

Yes, we can’t wait to get into the irony of how Bitcoin is going to save the most fiat fucked up currency in the world, but that’s the way we roll here.

0:40:22 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, the dollar’s going to crash.

0:40:33 – Daniel Creech

But we have stable coins that are rolling asset in the world. Hey, just a couple on what you were saying about momentum and how Bitcoin is being accepted, and not just Bitcoin, but crypto. Did you see the news out of Interactive Brokers? No, interactive Brokers a phenomenal trading platform. I don’t use it personally, but I know too many people that do and I need to switch over there. But Interactive Brokers expanded their listing of crypto offerings, Frank, they are now going to add Solana, ada, xrp and even Doge trading. Wow, this is already in addition to Bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. So some momentum there. Djt, the company that bears the initials of our president, signed a deal with cryptocom. Frank, they’re going to do more ETFs and such for Bitcoin, bitcoin related assets. So we have a lot of momentum there that we can dig into a little bit more tomorrow if we choose.

But there is a lot going on around this regulation and the genius or genius act that got voted through the House. I always get these confused, Frank. It’s now going to the Senate. There’s two pieces of legislation out there, but that’s popular and a lot of momentum because the Senate the House, has passed it. If the Senate takes it up, tim Scott, there is pro thinking he’s going to get that within the first hundred days of Trump’s presidency, which is about a month away. It’d be April.

0:41:54 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, but then again on day. How many times did Trump? On day one, we’re going to release the JFK files. On day one. We’re going to on day one. The war is going to end On day one.

0:42:05 – Daniel Creech

Frank, were you included on any group chats for any war plans or anything? I wasn’t. Yeah, listen.

0:42:10 – Frank Curzio

Daniel, on day one, on day one, when people invest in our company, they’re going to be a billionaire on day one. It’s just so funny. I love it, but a lot of good news there, so I like it. No, it’s cool and I’m going to tell you, listen, if you’re going to start a business too, if you have a business and you think of a marketing, we have Robinhood.

Robinhood disrupted the whole industry. They said, hey, we’re offering free trading. Free trading, and everyone else wasn’t offering free trading. Right, that’s how they made their money, that was their bread and butter. And yet you can say, okay, it’s not really free trading, because they’re taking a tiny percentage and nobody really cares Like nobody really cares about that, even though you, because you have Citadel behind the scenes taking a percentage and that’s how they’re making their money and that’s fine. And then they have all kinds of pro versions on Robinhood and stuff like that. But they forced every single brokerage firm to change their business model. And when I look at Interactive Brokers, they did such a great job. I even have an account at Interactive Brokers. Again, we’re not marketing them. I would love to market much and, again, I’m not getting paid by them, but my mother has an account there too, because they offered, they said, and all this stuff going on, and remember it was like 30 free trades or all this stuff, and then it’s like free trading and all this.

What they did is they came up with a marketing plan that no one really expected and they said hey, you know what? All that money in your money market account, and now it’s about 3.75% with interest rates. And I was like holy shit, because sometimes you want to be in cash and now you’re being cash. You’re getting paid a lot of. That’s a great return, especially with inflation lower than 3%. You used to have a negative real return, which accounts for inflation, right, so inflation is 4% and interest rates 2%. You’re actually losing money in cash. But that’s not the case anymore because you’re making money but real interest rates positive. And now they got so much business and just blew up, right, they’re so big, and now they’re coming out with other things. And then what did Robinhood do? Did you see what they did? Their announcement with the marketing. Right now, I think it’s 401k, I think, or IRA. They’re matching 3% if you have your IRA, I think. Oh, nice, I think it’s 401k.

You’ve got to compete for funds.

0:44:11 – Daniel Creech

You’ve got to match 3%. Money goes where it’s treated.

0:44:15 – Frank Curzio

And so when you have your business, if you’re going to do something that everyone else does, it’s very hard Because if you’re doing that, even as a small business, they have deeper pockets and it’s hard to compete. You have to do something that they can’t compete, and there’s A lot of competitors don’t really have a brand. You don’t even know who’s running the brand. You know anyone that’s there. We have credibility. We have the ability to actually go into consulting right. We have the ability to go into advertising because we have the podcast, which we’re going to see more advertising on our podcast, like every podcast in the world does, except for promoting the right brands, not just whoever wants to give us a check right, because I’m not going to promote shitty brands, but you want to see where you compete.

It’s amazing how Robinhood right, it was E-Traders. Fidelity, it was Schwab, it was all these freaking guys and now you look at Interactive Brokers and Robinhood and even Coinbase right. It’s amazing how you penetrate the industry. You come up with different things. Yeah, I don’t know Interactive Brokers that they’re just so forward looking. It’s, it’s. It’s such a great company. It really is. It’s good. It’s the reason why people made so much money in that freaking stock.

0:45:13 – Daniel Creech

so I don’t know his name, but the chairman has always uh, I love the chairman because he’s so funny because every time he goes on cnbc he does it with this camera.

0:45:20 – Frank Curzio

It’s like 15 years old and his camera is all the way up here and he’s looking at like you see, like the top of, and you’re like you just want to say hey, I think they called out who was it. I think Joe Kernan called out Novogratz, because Novogratz had this camera that he was just to come on and he’s like you know how much money you make at Goldman and everything. He’s like you really can’t get someone to, but he’s very smart and gets these hard to write. People and man, that marketing strategy, the assets. I’d love to see it If you want to send it to me. It’s pretty easy for me to find as well through Capital IQ at Bloomberg, but to see the assets that have flowed into that company, holy shit, over the past like seven, eight years, is unbelievable. I mean it’s amazing how they outperformed everybody. It’s just really cool.

So I think another topic I wanted to go into really quick is you know ai. So I saw something and and listen, I love seeing this because it’s something that people don’t talk about. Because google was supposed to be, that, their business supposed to be. Really they would threaten the most from ai, because you can go different sites and search through ai and you get better results and they’re not biased, right. So that’s where most of their revenue 90 plus their revenue comes from, which filters into cloud and things like that. But but Google’s new Gemini 2.5 model, which is built with reasoning I’ll explain that in the middle and now in a minute it ranks number one on the LM Arena leaderboard. The LM Arena leaderboard is basically independent. It’s what people use and it’s constantly updated, like almost by the minute, and it shows which systems are the best and they have like these probabilities and stuff like that. And if you’re watching us on YouTube, I can show you a picture and it used to be based on science and mathematics and they say which systems work the best based on the science questions and mathematics and how quick it is, how accurate it is, and they have these percentages. Now it’s reasoning and knowledge, because we’re taking the next step in AI and when you look at it right here, it says reasoning and knowledge. They’re like 18.8 percent reasoning and knowledge, which is gemini 2.5, which is their new large language model, and they’re kicking everyone’s ass really in this.

Now in science and mathematics. It’s a little funny because in science they’re almost the highest they’re 84, but two other companies are a little bit higher I, I believe this is Claude, and number one is Grok. Even in mathematics, number one is Grok and when I think about that is Grok was started so late in the game, and this is Elon Musk and X, and I know he has a lot of people behind this right but and he built the system in a few months, where Jason Wong was like holy shit, I can’t believe how quick someone could build a system like this. That’s actually ranked number one in science and math, but when you include reasoning and knowledge, this is how you’re using AI as the next step, which is building web applications, agentic code, so you’re training AI agents to act independently like humans. This is where you’re looking at Google, and the Gemini 2.5 model excels and this changes a lot. I’m mentioning this because it feels like every week, but it’s probably every month, new models are being released or updated, and you’re looking at new models from OpenAI, claude, gemini, all these systems and basically they get better and better. But this competition is pushing the best systems and the best companies with deepest paths to constantly innovate, are they going to get left behind, which is great news, because it’s the reason why we’re running at light speed with AI and people think it’s slowing down. It’s not. It’s why Jensen Wong said that we need 100 times the computing power, not because of generative AI, which is what you’re seeing, which a lot of people use, where you plug it in and you can I mean, I use it for my daughters all the time.

I’m not telling it to write for them, I use it as a research tool, like create a multiple choice test on World War. I include these 15 terms. It’s an 11th grade test and put in as many prompts as you want and give me the answers on a separate sheet and it gives it in one second right. Seriously, in like two, three seconds, you have a 40 question multiple choice test that I can give them and it’s helped them out tremendously. You could do that. That’s large language models.

The next step of this is going to be task specific AI, which is yeah, it has to do with reasoning, it has to do with human-like intelligence, it has to do with reactive machines, agentic memory, predictability. These are the things that are coming to AI, where we haven’t even scratched the surface, where these things are going to operate as close to a human as possible. They’re going to be able to predict and remember. Humans make mistakes. So to think this is going to take over all of your jobs or that this is going to be a perfect system we’re not perfect. That this is going to be a perfect system we’re not perfect and that’s what it’s.

Based off of Our information I mean, you could read a textbook right now, Daniel and based on what the AI system is getting from, where it’s getting it from. Christopher Columbus discovered America and Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America. Depending on where it’s pulling its information. Right, when I grew up, it was Christopher Columbus. Now, all of a sudden, it’s not Christopher Columbus. I don’t know. I don’t know what changes history. History is usually history, right. It’s usually factual based, and people write about it.

0:50:14 – Daniel Creech

The winners change history, Frank.

0:50:15 – Frank Curzio

But yes. But the point is is, even in situations where we think things are perfect, even say, if it comes to a stock trading system, where AI systems are being used, when something works, everyone piles in until it doesn’t work, until a mistake is made, and that’s a dangerous part of AI. But that’s where they’re trying to get the predictability. We don’t have predictability right, we have probability. We could say, hey, based on this, what we’ve seen in the past, this usually happens, and now you have AI figuring that out to try to increase those percentages. But it’s all about probability and forecasting. You’re not going to be able to forecast because now you get closer to your customer and the next generation of this is going to be incredible and the companies are going to make money off this. So, for those of you that think AI is slowing down, when you really look at this list and you see this constant changing seriously, every month, another company jumps to the top here and all these developers are using these systems. It’s really, really incredible. Please start learning about AI.

We have a member of our team who is managing editor and I told her I don’t care what you spend on AI. Sign up to so many different services, you know, whatever. Monthly. They’re $20 to $75 a month. Whatever you don’t like, cancel in a couple months. And now she’s using AI to basically increase her productivity, I would say by 3x at least right now, and so much so that one of my biggest investors said hey, you know what, do you mind if I talk to her? Really quick, I said not at all. I said you talk to her and he was like that was amazing, right? So instead of like being an editor and being like, wow, this stuff could edit, and being afraid of AI, she’s learning to use AI to increase productivity, which is making her worth that much more valuable. That’s what you need to do Embrace it and start learning about it how to increase productivity.

If you’re at a job, use AI to make you more productive and you’re going to be a valuable employee, instead of just sitting there and saying, oh, ai is going to take my job because I do the same freaking thing every day. Find out how you can increase productivity. And again, it’s a learning curve. People normally don’t like to learn new things. Learn it because it’s not just protecting your job. You’re going to increase your salary by a factor of whatever because you’re going to be that much more valuable, to the point where maybe you can even start your own company one day where people are going to be able to use those services, and you could do that.

The knowledge is out there. You got everything out there. You can research a lot of this stuff and it’s not expensive. You could have like a thousand dollars, $2,000, and really sign up to like probably 10 different services and learn all this stuff Seriously. Once you do that, you’re going to learn a lot what works, what doesn’t work, how you post on social media it’s working for us, incredibly.

Social media platforms we’re growing on all of them because we’re learning about the algorithms. We’re learning how to use AI. We’re learning how to produce the content that we’re saying right now, where it’s only on a podcast format, but we’re now changing it, where we used to copy and paste this to YouTube. That doesn’t work. Youtube is a different format. You got to shorten everything. You got to get right into the tiles. You don’t have an introduction. This is what we’re learning from our partners and people that were, you know, services that we’re hiring and consultants. Now we’re starting to increase our traffic tremendously over our social media platforms.

Learn this stuff. It really, really matters. And just to see, like you know, get Gemini, which is this is 2.5, which is Google, which you thought was severely threatened. Now they’re one of the leaders in AI and that’s how it’s going to continue, because these guys are continuing to spending money on this. They need to be leaders in this industry and the fact that they keep competing with each other, it means more and more money is going to continue to be spent on this industry. There’s going to be lots of opportunities to buy for you and a lot of those opportunities will come in our AI newsletter or on our Wall Street Unplugged premium podcast, which we tape tomorrow. But I wanted to bring that up. I was just surprised that Gemini is really at the top and really kicking ass right now, and Grok, which is like the newest one right, is at the top in science and math, which is also incredible.

0:53:47 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, all it takes is money. Buy those sweet NVIDIA chips and band them together.

0:53:52 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, it is those sweet NVIDIA chips and band them together. Yeah, no, it is, it’s uh, and NVIDIA’s too.

0:53:58 – Daniel Creech

NVIDIA hasn’t really come back. Still, we can talk more about that tomorrow too. There’s more uh stories out there about um. This is a good one. I thought this was fake, but evidently it’s real. Evidently, the financial times is writing about how China is talking about environmental restrictions on going to hurt Nvidia’s chips because they’re not made. Yeah, I’m pretty. I’m still not sure that it’s true. I’ve seen it. Cnbc was talking about it. It was interesting, but yeah, so anything to push stocks like that down are great, because China gives a fly in Florida about the environment like nobody I’ve ever seen.

0:54:32 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, it’s true, it’s true. And really, if you look at China, I mean China has pulled back pretty sharply, right. I mean, if you’re looking at, I mean I saw this stat, so where is it? I’m going to try to find it here for you. So I get all these research reports from everyone. I was just surprised because some things you’re not covering, you don’t know right, because you know china really taken off and I’m like man, china’s taking off. You see a lot of money flowing into it. There’s this whole promotional thing and I know you know you got hedge funds getting into it and it moved.

They moved a lot higher, but there’s hedge funds are making money to me there’s no basis behind it, because you’re still seeing, like you know, they’re like, oh, there’s stimulus plan. They’ve been out stimulus plans forever. Right, it’s just like, hey, we’re getting into this. It was good timing, you know, and credit to the people who bought it. But when you’re looking at China, it’s really kind of breaking down right now. So, yeah, it was great, it was awesome at the beginning. Now you’re seeing it pull back and I think it’s in correction territory.

0:55:23 – Daniel Creech

Well, they’re doing everything they should. I mean, president Xi just met with a ton of US CEOs and leaders. That’s good. He met with Chinese leaders without locking them in a cage. Remember that whole Alibaba and Jack Ma disappearing off the face of the earth for a while, although there is a billion people over there, so it’s easy to blend in. I get it, you don’t stand out there, but yeah, they did that. Listen, they keep teasing about this more stimulus and stuff, and I get it. You’re not wrong in saying that. That’s wrong, Frank. It does work and those guys have moved markets. Baba, all those guys, a lot of their tech trades have absolutely skyrocketed. I’m sure the hedge fund guys have.

0:55:58 – Frank Curzio

I mean, uh, your boy Tepper, he’s got to be up a ton of money now, yeah, he should be up a ton of money, but there’s like this massive, like like money’s flowing out of China, like immediately, because if you have no substance behind it, you could always drive something higher by a story.

I’m not interested in that at all, I’m just saying Disney drove its stock from $100, or basically $8, to $175 on a story. We’re adding all these subscribers. No one even looked at the average RMP user. When they did, they’re like how come this company isn’t making money? So at the end of the day, you have to come up with saying, okay, where do we see China? Where you’re not seeing it? You’re still not seeing it. Even from my sources you’re not seeing it. Things are a disaster there.

But if you have enough of a marketing campaign, you could push any stock higher in the short term, any sector higher in the short term, because there’s not a lot of options, especially when you have one of the biggest hedge funds, one of the most influential guys, who’s my favorite fund manager by far. It’s skyrocketed and now you’re seeing it pull back. And once it pulls back with these algorithms and stuff like that with hedge funds being involved, you know it usually accelerates in either direction. You know that momentum direction is either going to go higher or lower, and now it’s going lower. You’re probably going to see it go a lot lower, so let’s keep it simple China is a bunch of communists.

0:57:07 – Daniel Creech

You do not invest in communism for the long term. This is a trade. It always is. It’s a manipulative situation. That’s the best thing you can say. Anybody telling you to buy China for any other reason is either lying or not paying attention. They’re Florida communist people. It’s not anything new.

0:57:22 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. Well said. So, coming to the end, here covered a lot Questions, comments. You can always feel free to email me, Frank@curzioresearch.com, especially if you’re interested. If you want to get into one membership we discounted tremendously for one year, took a trial membership just so you can get a sugar-fiending deal and we have another deal coming out next month. That’s really cool in biotech, from one of our best sources in biotech. That’s making a lot of money for our subscribers in the private markets. So it’s a really cool deal.

But if you’re interested in a credit investor, it’s $25,000 minimum. We’re going to close it next week. If not, no worries, I’m very upfront. I get to talk to you. You get a lot of membership perks and stuff like that, plus access to our conference, which is going to be in September, October, which would be awesome. I get to meet everyone in person. I’m going to get a lot of people to speak there, a lot of people. I yeah, let me think about whatever.

Most people came in because the price was absolutely right for them and it makes a lot of sense and it gives you a chance to try it for a year and if you don’t like, you could be like okay, you know you’re not spending the full membership, which is very, very expensive, because you’re getting all of our products and services free forever uh, along with private placement deals if you’re a current investor. But, um, it’s a really good deal and again, I’m really high on sugarfine and I’m hoping that thing works out. If it doesn’t, I’m going to lose money. The guys behind are going to lose a lot of money. I’ve gotten into deals guys and I tell Daniel this as well Like, if you look at private deals, we got into, I think, three different mining deals that all went to shit because mining went to shit and the person who gave it to me him a couple of years ago and he apologized. He said don’t apologize to me. I said one you lost 10 times more money than everyone else that did. I know the risks. Everyone that’s getting in knows the risks and sometimes they don’t work. That’s fine.

But when it comes to these private deals you want to invest in several’re really lucky. You could really get into something that could be life-changing and that’s why I like Sugarfina, because I think that’s the possibility long-term and also I think you can make money like a quick double. If it goes public in 9, 12 months. It’s going to be going public at a much higher valuation than what we’re getting in at and, if it does, you could sell some of your shares and lower your risk and invest in other deals.

The quality of deals that we’re getting right now and the people that I’ve been working with 30 years like there’s only a few people that I get into these deals with I get pitched hundreds of deals all the time. I could probably get into 200 deals a year. Everyone’s looking to raise money, but it’s got to be a specific deal that really works. And now the quality of deals are really getting special. Where you know, I’m starting to invest a lot of money in these private areas and, again, I’m really optimistic that some of these are going to work, especially the valuations we’re coming in and the terms that we’re getting when it comes to five-year warrants or dividends and stuff like that. It’s really cool and I think a lot of our investors are going to be happy hopefully, hopefully, especially me, since I probably have more money invested in these than everybody else that’s investing, but it should be pretty cool. So any questions or comments on that, feel free to email frank@CruzierResearch.com. All right, guys, we’ll see you tomorrow at Wall Street.

1:00:09 – Daniel Creech

Unplugged Premium Take care.

1:00:11 – Frank Curzio

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1:00:00 -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.