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

Frank Curzio: What’s going on out there? It’s January 13th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets.

Frank Curzio: Growing up, I always wanted to be a basketball player. I would shoot hundreds of shots every single day, play in the snow and shoot around no matter what the weather was, 20 degrees, 30 degrees. As a kid you don’t really feel how cold it is. Now you do, as you get older. Playing in so many leagues, so many, tons of leagues. Sometimes four within one season, and the season was like three months, three and a half months, which included, you know, a 6:00 game, 7:15, and 8:30 game, and I also played on Saturdays. That was my life even into my 30s, early 30s, playing like crazy, just loved it.

Frank Curzio: And when I graduated grammar school, St. Mathias, Queens, New York. A lot of people that are familiar with St. Mathias, listeners and friends. But after that, I went to Christ the King High School, which was located in Middle Village, not too far away. And it was a great basketball school, where if you’re looking at the women’s team, it was kind of like Connecticut, in college, and ranked number one almost all the time. Always, always ranked in the top five, but really number one. You would have kids all over the country just come to Christ the King because that was like… Christ the King, and then you go to Connecticut. That was really the playbook. If you’re really, really good, that’s what you want. It’s like Alabama watching national championship game; like, their subs are going to be in the pros, their third string. If you want that, that’s where you go, Alabama, right now. That’s where you want to go.

Frank Curzio: Well, the men’s team is also very, very good and ranked high, always in the top 20. But when I went, they were ranked, I think, number two or three. I think it was when Kenny Anderson was playing. Back then Malloy, I think, was ranked like number one, number two. Tallentine, it’s crazy. And I didn’t make the team. I was actually too chubby. I couldn’t keep up with them. I had all the skills, and plus, there was three kids, and politics were involved, where teachers did… Their parents were teachers. I didn’t make it. So, not making that team was like the best thing that ever happened to me. I was so disappointed. But instead of putting my tail between the legs, just be like, yeah, I can’t believe it, and being upset, I played my ass off to get better. I did everything I can to get better.

Frank Curzio: And the competitiveness that came out with me, from the point where every time I saw those kids that made that team, and I played against them a lot and leagues in the summertime, like my mission was to destroy them, kill them. Even today, when I play against them, I’m talking about six, seven years ago, because I just went back to New York to play. I still have that. I have to beat them. And that transferred over to almost everything, you see in stock picks and being right. And sometimes, it’s not the best thing, to be so competitive.

Frank Curzio: It’s great. It’s a great skill. It’s a leading skill. But sometimes, it gets crazy. I couldn’t really shake hands after a game when I lost. And then I’d wait like 15, 20 minutes, and I’d go over and say, “Hey, great game, guys.” I just couldn’t do… I was just locked in, where we had to win. And it wasn’t about me; it was about my team. Now, in order to get better when I was younger, we had to play against black people, because black people were the best basketball players in our neighborhoods. And we traveled to certain neighborhoods… And I’m not gonna lie, when we got in the car, there’s five of us, we almost got beat up a couple of times. And people would go, “What are you doing here?” But once we played, everyone was the same color. There was no race involved. There was nothing.

Frank Curzio: It was just like, wow, these guys are good. These white boys are good. It was great. And I still have a lot of these friends, where I’ll talk to them through social media, they’ll follow me and listen to the podcast. But it was all about basketball, all about basketball. And growing up in sports, to me, in Queens, New York, racism didn’t exist. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist everywhere. There’s just tons of respect, when you’re playing against each other. When you’re playing against each other, you’re the enemy. Afterwards, we’re all brothers.

Frank Curzio: And again, I’m still friends with a lot of those people today, and that’s the environment I grew up in, in Queens, New York. Is it like that every place? No. But I think it’s like that in a lot of places, right? It is definitely different today compared to 20 years ago, 30 years ago, right? I mean, 20 years ago is when I played… I’m talking about 20, 30 years before that, before, you know, when I was in high school and stuff. I know it’s crazy.

Frank Curzio: Why am I bringing this up? Today in America, there is a theme going around that there’s racism all over the place. It’s everywhere, almost like you have to watch your back or you’re going to get jumped. You’re going to get the shit kicked out of you. You better watch out. And as an adult, you see the political agenda and it’s easy to call bullshit, whatever. I get it. Why are you saying this? Is there racism? Of course there is. Of course there is. It’s never going to go away. But the majority of Americans, in my point of view, at least the people that I know, the places I lived, where I travel to all over, most are not racist. They are not. But if you fast forward to today, my daughter enrolled… We enrolled her in private school, and this was until the sixth grade.

Frank Curzio: I wasn’t really happy with how they were teaching her. They never yelled at her. You never got detention. It’s just, oh, you have a problem, the teacher would come over and try to figure it out. It’s so not the real world. It’s so not the real world. Seriously, they don’t yell at these kids. They don’t even… Nothing, nothing. They get awarded for mediocrity. You don’t even have to be good. Just like you see, everybody gets a trophy. No. In my day, not everybody got a trophy. You had to be good to get a trophy. That’s was it. And that created where I didn’t get trophies when I was really young, to the point where I started getting MVP trophies because I wanted that. It drove me. I wasn’t like, “Where’s my trophy? Where’s the trophy?” Oh cool, everybody gets a trophy.

Frank Curzio: I wanted to take her out of there, so I did, and my daughter wanted to go to public school. She’s like, “I have a lot of friends in public school, I want to go to public school.” The public school is okay here, but bringing it back to even me, when I grew up, I went to Catholic school and the nuns used to hit you when you were bad. They hit you. They actually hit you. It hurt when they hit you. It wasn’t like, oh no, they hit you. You did not mess around. There were consequences if you did something wrong. Back then, if you went back to your parents and said, oh, the teacher hit me, they’d beat you. Your parents would beat you. Nowadays, you go to the cops, you arrest people. It’s crazy. That’s not the right way, and if I ever saw one of those nuns, I know they are probably 70, 75, I’d probably take them and throw them in the lake for hitting me. I’m like, really… It was kind of crazy. Things were different back then.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, with my daughter, she’s like, I want to go to public school. The public school here is okay, and she has a lot of friends there, and she wanted to play on the basketball team. She was like, okay, cool. But I was a little worried, where… How she’s growing up, she’s not being prepared for the world. The world is ruthless. Come on, it comes at you a million miles an hour. You’ve got to prepare for this stuff. You can’t trust everybody. You’ve got to be smart. You’re coming out of some of these schools and you just think, wow, everything’s so nice. I’m going to go to New York City and try it. Not now. New York City is closed, it’s probably done forever. I want to get a real good job. No. It’s cutthroat. Cutthroat.

Frank Curzio: I enrolled her in public school and she loved it this year. It was great, until about three weeks ago. That’s when she did a TikTok video. If you’re not familiar with TikTok, it is addicting. You can watch videos all day. You do like 20 second videos, a lot of them, you do these dances every song. A lot of songs have a dance, and everybody wants to do the dance. She did a TikTok video, and it was a hip-hop song sung by a girl who’s black, who uses the N word about 50 times, but this was a clean version of the song. They have clean versions that you could use. She taped it, a 20 second dance, and she’s lip syncing and everything, and at the end, right before she was about to say that N word… Which again, if you’re white and you say the N word, you lose your life. If you’re black, you have to say it. They encourage you to say it, almost because it’s on every song, every hip-hop song, which is just mind boggling to me. It’s something that… A word that you want to disappear, that’s terrible, that’s racist, but yet, the people it’s racist against like to say it the most, which is crazy.

Frank Curzio: At the end of the video, the girl says N, and my daughter just follows, she didn’t say that. She didn’t even say the letter N or anything. You have a bunch of little kids in school, then you have this group that’s really likes to beat the crap out of all the girls and crazy, and everybody tries to kiss up to them. Just like a typical high school. But some girls just went over and said, “Did you see my daughter? She said the N word. She said the N word. She’s a racist. Look at the video.” My daughter was like, I didn’t say it. My daughter took it down and said, “If I offended anybody, I’m sorry.” I listened to it, everybody listened to it. Nothing. She did another video, and that made it worse because it was like, if you didn’t say anything, why did you take it down? This and that.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, she went to gym, which is outside. This huge field, not a lot of teachers out there, and 15 girls, a lot of them, came up to her and said, “Oh, you said the N word? You wait.” And they are talking about jumping her and they want to fight her. I taught my daughter how to fight, but we’re talking about girls that are… Two of them are like my size, that would murder her. You’re talking about five or six of them. And they do that, they beat the crap out of some of these kids, and they get suspended for like a week, and then they are back.

Frank Curzio: You have this group people are trying to get in good with all the tough people, and when you have all these kids and they are throwing around that word, racism, it’s kind of crazy. It’s a big word. All of a sudden, it started spreading like wildfire across the school, across her grade, and everybody thinks she’s a racist now. She’s in seventh grade, and there is no common sense there. I told her, “It doesn’t matter if you said it or not. I know you didn’t. But according to everybody, you said it. That’s it. Perception is reality.” Forget my daughter… One of her best friends is black. Forget that she plays basketball for her school, she’s one of the best on her team, which has black girls, which she gets along with. She does TikTok videos with black and Hispanic friends all the time. Forget all that. None of that matters now. None of that matters because she’s been labeled, and her whole school has turned on her.

Frank Curzio: When she was outside at gym and you have 15 girls coming up to you, it’s pretty scary. She was like, “I didn’t say it. I’m sorry. Whatever I have to do.” I went to the principal’s office. I said, “Okay, if I see five girls on top of her, I’m done. I’m going to jail, because I’m going to take one of the girls and probably throw her across the street.” For me, it was never, like, the third man in always gets the shit kicked out of him. You get knocked out. If you have a one-on-one fight, fine. If you see a third person coming in, most of the time, and I’ve seen it growing up, that person gets knocked out. You’re not third manning it. It’s not two-on-one, it’s not three-on-one. It’s not four-on-one. You fight those, it’s different. If it’s one-on-one, it’s different. Fight your own battles, that’s the way I believe.

Frank Curzio: Think about seeing your kid get the shit kicked out of her by six or seven people. How are you going to react? And they all take their cameras out and look at it. So for me, I did the smart thing. I went to the principal. The principal was really cool. He was like, none of this is going to happen. He looked at the video, he said nothing’s there. But it doesn’t matter. It’s still going on and on. Now, it’s three weeks later, and still, a lot of girls… When she goes down the hall, “Look at the racist. She’s a bitch.” They called her a bitch. “What are you looking at, bitch?” And again, I taught her how to fight, how to defend herself, but you can’t defend against five people all jumping you. Most of these are really crazy. You know the crazy kids in school. It’s been going on for a while, and what we found out is my daughter has… There was two other girls, and they went after another one, same thing, calling her racist. And then another one because she had a video and people posted it all over social media, that’s kids.

Frank Curzio: Even as adults… When she was trick or treating, and she had a Trump hat on. So when she got to school, all of the black and Hispanic kids went after her and said, “You’re a racist, you support Trump. You’re a racist. You’re a racist. You’re a racist.” Think about that for a minute, because these girls are now isolated from everyone else. When they see them in the hallway, people are calling them names. They live in fear every day when they go to school, which is a horrible thing. No kid should have to go through that.

Frank Curzio: But my question is, why is this young community… Why are they so angry? Why do they believe that racism is a huge issue? Which it’s not. My daughter is a really good kid. I taught her the right way. But the anger that’s there, when I was in school, if someone started… And the schools I went to, the majority were white, but if someone started with a black person, whether you knew them or not, because they don’t like the color of their skin, the white kids would beat the shit out of the person that started with him. That’s how I grew up. And maybe I’m just… In Queens, New York, that’s the only place like that. But I have tons of friends out there. I never looked at that. Maybe it’s because I played sports, and I don’t think it exists in sports, that team concept. But now, it’s pretty crazy. Why are they so angry? Why? Why does that happen?

Frank Curzio: I think you guys know the answer to that because anger is everywhere. Division is everywhere. Both sides have no intentions on making things better and getting along. No way. That doesn’t work for anybody other than us, the people. You have friends who are Democrats, Republican, that you know that are cool. But when it gets into politics, it’s like this, “I hate your guts. You’re an idiot for thinking this way,” when our country was basically founded on that, to debate each other to find the best solution. Now, you’re not even allowed to listen to the other side. If you think differently, forget it. You’re gone. No way.

Frank Curzio: But filtering this down, it’s down to our kids because in politics, it’s easy for adults to separate the real shit from the BS. At least, most of us can. But our actions, our words, what we hear in the media: How Trump is a domestic terrorist, when Biden said Trump supporters are Nazis, when Jemele Hill said that all Trump supporters are racist, when you hear people saying Biden is a cheater, or Biden is going to die soon… This way, Kamala Harris is going to take over. I mean, this filters down on both sides. Our kids are listening to this. They are listening to this and they are getting pissed off. You’re going to hear about this a little bit later when I bring on my nephew, who is trading, and it’s the reason why I’m bringing him on. It’s going to be fantastic. We’re not going to talk politics, but it’s amazing to see how much he is into politics and how many kids… Think about when you were 18, 19, 20. You didn’t know anything really about politics. You didn’t follow… Now, it’s like these kids are engulfed and the anger on social media.

Frank Curzio: There is so much anger out there. Kids, they don’t know the difference, and they only know what they are being taught by the teachers and the media and what they watch. Imagine your kid watching MSNBC for 30 minutes. Seriously, watching MSNBC… She would hate America. She would hate capitalism. Seriously, you put on that show, it’s like they hate everything and everybody. It’s all anger, it’s all mad, it’s all blaming everybody else. It’s not like, hey, everybody come together and this is a great thing. None of that.

Frank Curzio: She would be angry all the time about issues, and issues we all know, as adults, are never going to fricking change. They never changed for 40 years. Healthcare more affordable… Really, is it? Equality for everyone. Really? Narrow the wealth gap? It’s more widened today that it’s ever been in history. We’re going to clean up your neighborhood. Oh, yeah? Really? There’s places in Baltimore that are cleaned up. Look at the major cities. Atlanta, you look at… Really? They really cleaned up. Because a lot of these places are real danger zones now. Now, they are getting worse now, if you’re taking police away and cutting those budgets. It’s pretty scary.

Frank Curzio: We’re going to lower the deficit, 40 years, go back. All these promises… Nothing. Nothing ever changes. But yet, you’re going to shout to the rooftops because someone’s telling you about something. You support the agenda. The next thing you know… It’s crazy. It consumes your whole entire life as a young kid, and for something we’re not even going to see: change. We’re not going to change. You really think we’re going to see change no matter who’s elected? No. Maybe tiny things, but it’s the same thing over and over and over again. But how do you think this is going to end when it comes to our kids?

Frank Curzio: I’m a common sense guy. I always speak the truth even though it pisses some people off. You’re my subscribers. I tell it how it is. And that’s the thing, if you don’t like me, don’t listen to this podcast. Don’t subscribe to my newsletters. That’s okay. That’s fine. I get it. You can’t have everybody liking you. If they do, that probably means you’re fake because you could be shy, and some people like shy people. You could be outspoken. You’re not going to be able to appease everybody. You want to do that with your business. I’m trying to make as much money as I can for everybody and do great things for them. But when it comes to personalities, there’s people you’re going to like, people you don’t like. It’s fine. But just be true to yourself.

Frank Curzio: But being a common sense guy, how does this end? I see a massive revolution taking place, where our kids growing up are going to be more divided than ever. Because when it comes to my daughter, I taught her to respect all people, everyone. But after her experience, as we have black girls, Hispanic girls accusing her of being a racist, something she didn’t do, calling her a racist, calling her a bitch, saying they were going to jump her outside, to the point where I had to go pick her up. Think about that. How is that going to influence her growing up? How does she think about black people? I hope she doesn’t think everybody is like this, that they are going to lie and call her racist or whatever. I hope so. But I hope she doesn’t grow up like that for the rest of her life. I’ll teach her not to. But when we look as kids, our character right now as adults is based on our experiences growing up and who taught us.

Frank Curzio: If you’re black, and you’re walking down the street, and you get jumped by 10 white guys, and they are calling you the N word and beating the shit out of you, when you’re like 12, 13, you’re going to think differently about white people going… You should. We live through our experiences, and that builds our character. And something like this… And if she said the N word, I’d say, “Well, you’ve got to deal with it, honey. Sorry. You messed up. You apologized. If someone wants to fight you, then you deserve to get the shit kicked out of you, if you said something like that.” That’s what I really tell my daughter. You deal with it; this way, you know better. But the fact that she didn’t do anything, and now… She’s a really, really good kid, a nice kid that helps people. She has a good heart. And now to see the whole school turning on her, it’s pretty crazy. It’s nuts. It’s almost like a religion. Grow up as Catholic, you’re going to believe in Jesus, God, the Bible.

Frank Curzio: It’s never going to change until you die because that’s what you were taught as a kid. But I feel like this gets lost on both sides of the aisle. Calling each other racist and cheaters because we have to look at this, it’s filtering down to our kids. It’s influencing them. It’s changing them in a very bad way. Anyway, when it comes to my daughter, I told her, never to run away from your problems. You need to face your fears. It’s really difficult head on, but this is different. This isn’t your typical case of bullying, which goes on in every school. It went on when I was a kid. It goes on, and you deal with it, and hopefully, it’s not bad. You deal with it. And again, that builds your character. You stick up to a bully and believe me, it’ll be the best thing that you do.

Frank Curzio: But my daughter is being labeled as a racist. That’s a really big word in today’s world. It’s worse than being a bully. You’re being labeled as someone that hates a certain type of people. And it couldn’t be further from the truth. My daughter loves hip-hop. She has black friends. Nothing. Nothing. And that’s the way we taught her, and it’s just really sad. But this whole racist thing, it’s not just a temporary thing or a phase. It’s not something that’s going to go away unless you really change. It’s a trend, and it’s in its very early stages, and it’s has tons and tons of momentum. It continues to grow. And it’s going to grow as long as we continue to bash each other, and bash each other as adults. And it’s going to lead to even more division. Which, let’s face it, is exactly what our politicians and media want. That’s what they want. That’s how they make a fortune. That’s how they maintain power.

Frank Curzio: People fighting, arguing. Those are the people that post the most. You want a good example of it, just look at my Twitter account. Look at my social media accounts. I’m covering the CES, it’s an electronics show, which is kind of horrible because it’s all digital this year. Been going to it for over eight years. Still, just posting different things. I’ll get, “This is cool, this is that.” Ideas, again, @FrankCurzio. Whatever. And just a few people commented. And then when I post something political, just mildly political, it lights up. It lights up. There’s tons of comments. People on the left are going to hate you. People on the right are even going to hate you. The people in the middle might… But everybody posts. You’re getting their emotions out. They are taking the time to actually post. Not just listen, but to post.

Frank Curzio: And when you do that, when you have emotions, when you have feelings, you start watching TV shows that support your agenda, whether it’s Fox or whether it’s CNN, and you get engulfed with this, and what they are doing is just programing you to hate. They are not saying, “Hey, you know what, Trump’s gone. Let’s figure this out. 75 million people voted for Donald Trump. Let’s think about why they voted for Donald Trump.” Which is kind of the theme. I like AOC coming out and saying that, “We’ve got to figure out why there was so many minorities that voted more than ever for the Republican party. What are we doing wrong?” That’s cool. That’s how you should look at this, instead of saying 75 million people are crazy. Because when you’re throwing Trump off the platform and all this crazy stuff, you’re making that worse.

Frank Curzio: It’s creating more division. You’re trying to impeach him. It’s creating more division. It’s more hate. And again, that’s what politicians want. I feel like we’re falling right into this, and the biggest consequences filters down to our children. It does. Everyday stuff. What I’m doing with her… I’m enrolling her in a good private school in Jacksonville, and I wonder how many parents are dealing with this problem right now. I don’t know if it’s going to go away. And again, if it’s one-on-one fight… But she has a school calling her something that she’s not. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. And again, I hate running away from this, but this is a big problem, and I’m afraid what I’m going to do if I see girls jumping her. I’m really afraid what I’m going to do, what any parent would do.

Frank Curzio: I was just looking at this. Seriously, how many parents are dealing with this? Where I feel like our kids are being conditioned the wrong way. There’s heat, you can’t disagree with anybody, whether you’re Republican, conservative, moderate Republican, if you’re a moderate Democrat, whatever it is, the division is insane. It’s very scary times. Look, this podcast, I try to provide you with no bullshit research. I have no agenda here other than to help you make money, teach you the right way to invest from the mistakes I made in my 25-year plus career. How to avoid the scams… There’s tons of them out there. Bringing all my experience from Wall Street to Main Street, educating the small investors. That’s my passion. I love doing that. I love it.

Frank Curzio: My goal is for you to make enough money where your kids and their kids are financially secure and you don’t have to worry about money anymore. So you can retire early, maybe travel, have extra time to share with your kids, your grandkids. That’s what I love doing for you. For this situation, I’m going to ask you for your help. Email me at frank@curzioresearch.com. I think anyone could use advice on this, because this is new territory for me. Is this happening to you? Has this happened to your kids at such a young age? Is this an isolated situation just happening to my daughter at her school? Are young kids, no matter what color, race, gender, are they calling other kids racist? Are we really seeing this in schools right now? Because this should be over. It wasn’t like that when I was in school.

Frank Curzio: Why is it coming back for? I definitely want to hear from you. I need to hear from you. Email me at frank@curzioresearch.com. But I just want to share that personal experience because at the end of the day, whatever side you’re on, this anger is not about you, it’s filtering down to our kids, and that might be my fault. Maybe she hears me talk about it or whatever, but we need to change, we really do. The way, everything is set up… Right now, it’s set up for you to be angry, it’s set up for division. And there is a lot of people that make a fortune because of that. And unfortunately, that’s not you. They need your anger. They need you to post. They need you to go on social media. That need that engagement. This way, they can track you even more and sell you stuff, sell all the stuff they advertise. They need that. They want that engagement. Start watching their TV programs. They charge more for advertising. They need that. But the consequences, they don’t care about. But for me, I’m caring about it now that it’s filtered down to my daughter.

Frank Curzio: Let’s move on. I’m going to move on because I have a great guest today. Someone that should know by now. That’s Andrew Horowitz. I haven’t had him on in a couple of months. President of Andrew Horowitz company, host of the Disciplined Investor podcast, an amazing, amazing podcast. He’s been doing it just as long as me, a little bit longer though. Probably for 13, 14 years, Andrew’s been doing the podcast, so we’ve known each other for a very, very long time, back during TheStreet.com days. It’s going to be a great conversation. We’re really going to cover the sectors. You’re going to benefit from the blue wave, because there is definitely sectors you’re seeing money filter in. We’re going to talk about different stocks and how these moves are absolutely insane. Should you chase some of them because they went up 150%… You think that’s crazy, now they are up 300%.

Frank Curzio: We’re going to share lots of ideas. Andrew’s actually going to share one of his favorite shorts, which is controversial. And I know I’m going to get tons of emails on it because everyone I know loves this stock. And it’s interesting, wait until you hear. Really, really good stuff. And let’s get to that interview right now.

Frank Curzio: Andrew Horowitz, thank you so much for joining us again on Wall Street Unplugged.

Andrew Horowitz: Hey, Frank. You’re looking good. Look at you. Lost all that weight. Happy New Year. You did a lot of work on your bod, didn’t you? You did some kind of crazy crunch fitness, something or other, something?

Frank Curzio: Yes, and I’ll never do it again. I don’t know how people do it, man. I really went like no salt, no bread, no nothing. I was forgetting things. I hated everybody. I hated everything. And then I gained a good seven pounds back, which I needed. I lost like 22 in, I think. It’s like a month and a half, or something like that.

Andrew Horowitz: Are you a nicer person now that you’re fatter?

Frank Curzio: Yes. It’s a fact.

Andrew Horowitz: We’re all happy. We’re all happy.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Absolutely. I like seeing you. Purple background. I wore my purple shirt for you today. I think this is purple.

Andrew Horowitz: Thank you. Looking good.

Frank Curzio: No, looking good. Let’s start, since you’re the one that I turned to who has all the answers for marketing.

Andrew Horowitz: I don’t think so.

Frank Curzio: What’s going on here? We have the blue wave now, which was a surprise. We didn’t expect it. The markets didn’t expect it. All the research companies came out, all the sell-side firms came out immediately the next day, adjusting their portfolios. It’s not so much whether the S&P 500, people thought it would crash, wouldn’t crash. It’s more that it’s a rotation. We’re seeing infrastructure names, environmental names, man, even cyclical, trader, power batteries, wind, solar. Can these moves be sustained? Because we’re seeing these stocks move not just 25% higher, but they are going up like two, three, four X in a couple of weeks now. It’s getting insane.

Andrew Horowitz: Right. Listen, I think it was an excuse for the opportunity for all those people that were looking for the value play, that reversion trade into the energies, the banks, financials, maybe some of the staples to say, hey, this is it. Because what’s going to happen is, we’re going to get massive amounts of stimulus dumped on us. That’s the theory, right, that we’re going to have a blue wave, and we’re going to have a massive amount of stimulus just dumped upon us in the form of fiscal stimulus, which is very direct rather than monetary stimulus. And we’re going to see infrastructure plays happening. We’re going to see green new deal. We’re going to see all of this happening and almost in lockstep. You can look at what’s happening with those sectors, and they’ve done more than very well. They are doing extraordinarily well leading up to the election, as people were getting their situation placed into their bets and after the election, when they found out what was actually the… Hopefully, the finals. We’ll see in a few what the final is, but the final results of this whole thing.

Andrew Horowitz: And on top of that, when you saw the Georgia runoff and the fact that there was going to be a tie in the Senate and that Vice President-elect Harris is going to be the tie-breaker, everybody is like, all right, well, we just better get in on this trade. What’s funny, Frank, is if you think about all the negative issues that go along with the same side of this narrative… Which is, okay, if we have this blue wave that comes in or if we have the democrats come in, they are going to want to roll back some of the regulatory easings that were done. They are going to want to increase corporate taxes, and that’s going to be bad for earnings. But everybody seems to be ignoring all of that. They are going to want to break up Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon, and anybody that has a lot of money and billionaires are going to be like, oh, you should not be a billionaire, you bad person.

Andrew Horowitz: That’s kind of like, those don’t seem to really, they are lagging a bit. Listen, the large cap growth side of the equation is down marginally for the year. The large cap value side of the equation, when you look at the Russell 1000, is up for the year. There has definitely been a turn this year and in December. But I just think it’s people looking for an excuse that they need to find a place for their money, and they think that, you know what, after a 30% differential between growth and value last year, that maybe this will be, maybe this will be the thing that swings it in favor of the value. So they are pushing money in it like crazy.

Frank Curzio: And just like crazy, and you’re right what you said earlier. It seems like everyone that has their own company and does well is the enemy now. I don’t know how that happened.

Andrew Horowitz: Bad people. Bad people.

Frank Curzio: Bad, bad.

Andrew Horowitz: How dare you be successful, Frank.

Frank Curzio: Yes. And America, it gives you the opportunity to be successful, but don’t be too successful. Don’t you dare be too successful. When I look at this, just going over some of these stocks I looked at. Guys, Curzio Research’s YouTube page, we have all the videos where you can see my ugly face and Andrew’s beautiful face. But I’m just showing charts… This is 3D. This is five days. This thing was at like 11 and it went to 30. You’re looking at, what is it? Plug Power, some of these names. Right, Andrew?

Andrew Horowitz: Go look at, pull up SSYS, that’s the other 3D printer. Stratasys.

Frank Curzio: Stratasys.

Andrew Horowitz: SSYS.

Frank Curzio: I had that in my portfolio and sold a little too early. Don’t remind me. But yeah, this is another one where you look at five days. Some of these moves are-

Andrew Horowitz: Amazing.

Frank Curzio: They are insane. So for me, when I look at this and where these things are going, as I said earlier, is it the rotation into this? Obviously, environmentally friendly, you have marijuana stocks, they are taking off. A lot of these names are taking off. But as someone who recommends stocks and has your clients, what are you telling them in this market? Because there is that FOMO, fear of missing out, and we all have it. But yet, if you buy these things at these levels and you’re wrong… Not you and I because we own our own companies, but if you think about institutions that hire these managers, if you’re going into these things, they could drop 25, 30% because they are up 2 or 300. Look at Zoom. Zoom is like 600. It’s like three and change now.

Andrew Horowitz: Yep.

Frank Curzio: How do you play this, and are you able to find new ideas in this market, where it seems like a lot of stuff is going up?

Andrew Horowitz: One of the things… We use different strategies for different things. But one of the things that has kept us, I would say in good stead with our clients is that one of the strategies that we use for picking stocks is a fundamental screen that is not emotional. It doesn’t look for and is not going to find names that have no earnings, they are just moving up. That’s just not going to happen in the screen. But one of the things that happens is that we find a number of stocks that meet certain criteria, like growth of earnings, growth of revenue, margin expansion, high ROE, certain volume trading, et cetera. And one of the things that happens is, when we get a certain number of companies that come through that screen, we invest in them. But when we find that there’s only a small amount, maybe 20 stocks, that meet that screening criteria, we reduce down our overall portfolio allocation to equities. And when it expands, we expand it also.

Andrew Horowitz: Interestingly enough, right now, there’s only about 30 or so, 33 names that came through that in the last quarter, which gives us about a 45% equity allocation. Well, that’s not a full allocation towards equities because there’s something not right with the fundamentals. We’re not seeing a matchup of the collars and the cuffs, so to speak. One of the problems is that this whole narrative… This is really the core of this, Frank. This is, I think, this is the core of the discussion. The narrative has been it’s okay to have 23 times forward earnings on the S&P 500 or whatever stock that you choose, or whatever index you choose, if in fact we have low rates. When we have historically low interest rates on treasuries and on bonds, et cetera, down at .5, .6 or so on the 10-year… Hey, you know what, it’s justified because there’s a risk-free rate of return. You use it in your calculations and you come out with a discount factor that, of course, more favors those companies that are growing, and then you can give them a higher multiple factor.

Andrew Horowitz: What’s really interesting right now is we’ve seen that the 10-year has gone from what, .5 or so, to like 1.17. Now, that’s still low, right?

Frank Curzio: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Horowitz: But that narrative has now changed. The narrative is now, well, it’s okay. It’s still low, but even though it’s increased substantially, we can still justify these levels of price earnings multiples because that means that the economy is doing better and rates are naturally going to come up. The problem is, you can’t have both sides of this equation and both sides of the discussion yielding the same outcome. It’s impossible.

Frank Curzio: No, it is. And just to see the rise just in the past month in the 10-year, which I’m showing. And that leads into my next question, because you and I love economics. We love the economy. I think you do a great job. I like doing it too. When you say in economy, bell curves, it’s hard to take a class like that. But the economy is really about everything that we do, everything we buy. Your next door neighbor is selling their house, how much you’re paying for milk, how many people are getting new cars… It’s a lot of fun when you look at it that way, you can really see firsthand and not have to be an economist, of what’s going on. Do C-stats mean anything anymore? We had bad jobless reports, we had manufacturing not that good. Does it matter? Since it seems like even the worse we get, the Fed is just going to be there and spending trillions. Listen, that’s the Kool-Aid, you have to drink it. If not, then you’re going to be sitting on the sidelines watching this go higher. But the economic data… I feel like it’s kind of useless over the past three or four months, where it doesn’t even matter. Right?

Andrew Horowitz: It doesn’t matter. I mean, everybody has been really concerned and riled up about oh my gosh, we’re going to have socialism if the Democrats come in. And we’re going to socialize everything. Listen, we have socialized our financial systems over the last 10 years really well, actually 12 years. And in this last go around, all those people that were crying they don’t want socialism, to be honest with you, you should be very thankful that the government came in with PPP programs, with the unemployment compensation, with direct checks. I mean, if we have nothing else, aren’t direct payments to citizens a form of socialized finance? Right? You take taxes in and you send it out. And what we’ve done, basically, as we’ve done before, we’ve plugged the hole that was made by a financial crisis.

Andrew Horowitz: And if you’re in the, I would say, 35-year-old range and when you started investing and maybe saw the collapse back in 2008, 2009. And then you saw that the Fed and the government came to the rescue to the bail out the banks, to bail out the businesses, and to bail you out. And now, fast forward to 2020, where we had a different, but yet a financial meltdown, and the Fed came in to rescue the day. And we saw that along the way, the fiscal stimulus and the trillions and the last $900 billion was simply a down payment, a down payment on the next amount that’s coming out. You’re thinking, hey, what is there really risk in, is there really risk in the markets? Because at the end of the day, what’s going to happen is that the Fed or the government is going to bail everybody out. Nobody fails. But there is eventually going to be something, and one of the… But when?

Frank Curzio: When does it end?

Andrew Horowitz: It can’t end now. It ends in mutually assured destruction from an economic standpoint around the world if anybody lets up. Because you have now pulled forward this technology, incredible technology, that has allowed for companies to increase margins with less employees, never needing to have those employees back. And this nonsense of, oh, it’s a fungible situation, where you have the ability for workers that were working on, I don’t know, construction, to all of a sudden enter the technology field now. That’s not going to happen. The amount of training that needs to happen and all that is ridiculous. The thing is, right now, economics don’t matter. We saw that jobs number, where somehow, magically, we’re 6.7%, which we’re really a lot higher if you don’t do all the statistical shenanigans that go on to calculate the labor participation rate. And then you saw a loss of 150,000 plus last month, in December. Nobody blinked because they realized the worse the numbers get, the more opportunity we have for the government to stand in.

Andrew Horowitz: And the last go round, the $600 per week unemployment, gave a lot of people more money and fixed their balance sheets. It was a, I hate to say this, but as terrible as this is… It’s terrible, so forgive me in advance. It was like a gift from heaven, this whole lockdown, where the government felt so bad that they just plowed money, more money, to some places that need it: less money to others, more money to individuals that need it, less to others. But in the meantime, they’ve continued on, and that’s why the retail sector is doing so incredibly well. Who would have thought? All these people out of work, millions of people out of work-

Frank Curzio: Restaurants.

Andrew Horowitz: Restaurants are coming back very strong. Shake Shack hit a new 52-week high today. You look at even the cruise lines who keep on postponing their launches are up 50, 60% from their lows. Planes are getting all sorts of bailout money, so yeah, it’s here to stay unfortunately. There’s point in really relying on the economics other than as a sideline to understanding what the big picture is.

Frank Curzio: We just talked about when does this end. We’re seeing the 10-year rise, which if it keeps rising, that’s bad. You’re going to see the Fed… What I’ve been saying, they are going to use yield curve control, even Gunlocke, who was on TV yesterday. Bob Gates said the same thing. They can’t have those rates rise, which is going into short-term rates. So now, we look at short-term rates, which they are keeping low, and they are going to keep low, it seems like forever. But remember, they have that magical two percent inflation target, where we want to see it around two percent. And again, everyone out there, we know that you’re seeing inflation in fricking everything that you buy, but it doesn’t matter because the Fed looks at the CBI, that’s all they look at.

Frank Curzio: By the way, the two percent, you know when they first said that? 2012.

Andrew Horowitz: Two percent, and not only that, everybody around the world has adopted this. And what does that number mean? It’s this arbitrary number that they just can’t get to. And by the way, if they got to two percent, like they were thinking they were going to-

Frank Curzio: That’s where I’m going.

Andrew Horowitz: They already changed, they moved the goal post. They moved the goal post.

Frank Curzio: Three percent, because this is different from TARP, when we did… It was $700 billion, $750 billion. It turned out to be less than $500 billion, like 470, 480. That went directly to the banks to stabilize the system. That was different.

Andrew Horowitz: Directly, right.

Frank Curzio: This isn’t going to the economy, this is going like a check you’re getting in the mail. This goes right to you. For you not to see inflation skyrocket over the next 12 months, I would be extremely surprised.

Andrew Horowitz: I agree.

Frank Curzio: I just don’t know if that’s going to be the death of all this where, okay, inflation goes to three and a half, four percent. What are you going to do? Long-term rates… What are you going to do? Because eventually, you’re going to remove the punch bowl and that premium on so many stocks, which some deserve. You mentioned winners from COVID, that the government said, hey, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, you guys can stay open, but nobody… They pick and choose, which is crazy. But it is interesting to see how this will blow up. Now, I think we both agree on that for what we’ve been talking about, but let’s talk about this year. Maybe we don’t see inflation skyrocket this year, but we still have these underlying positive currents that are creating a tailwind for equities.

Frank Curzio: What are some the sectors, stocks, that you see that could benefit? Because a lot of these things are 52-week highs, which means you’re going to take on a lot more risk to buy these things than usual. But is that potential upside still there?

Andrew Horowitz: You have a low dollar. There is inflation. We have wealth inflation going on right now. Listen, this is fascinating. During the whole COVID lockdown and during the last eight months or so, there has been more retail accounts open with either Robinhood, or Schwab, or TD Ameritrade, or E-Trade, or name your particular interactive brokerage; you name it, they are backed up. I know this because I’m in the business, and I know that they are taking people off the desk from service to go into new accounts because they just can’t handle the flow.

Andrew Horowitz: One of the amazing things that I heard recently was that one of the biggest deposits, or the similarities in deposits, over the last number of months have been the incremental amounts that have been put in that have been very apparent: $300 and $600. $300 and $600 were the most often incremental amounts that were put into accounts. What is the significance there? That’s from your extended payroll, unemployment, or your unemployment compensation that was put in. People are taking all this money and putting it into the markets. That’s what’s been… Putting it into Bitcoin or various crypto currencies or whatever they are putting it into, and they are definitely buying the SPACs, they are buying the EV names. We have a dollar that seems to be going down and the potential for, as we have such a terrible situation here, probably another 20 or 18 months until we get fully vaccinated, if we get to that point here in the US. It’s not going away tomorrow. And people still having this post-virus stress disorder, the PVSD that I’ve talked about. And they are spending… They are doing differently.

Andrew Horowitz: What they are doing right now is, everybody is really all hyped up about the idea that, hey, you know what, electric vehicles are really hot, charging stations like a blink, an SBE are really doing very well. You mentioned plug power, which is hydrogen-based. They got a deal out of Denmark today. They got something out of South Korea a couple of weeks ago. Their stock is up by some multiple of something, it’s a gigantic number. You see Tesla, which keeps going up, which numbers defy gravity entirely. But what we see right now is the potential. What’s really fascinating is the energy sector is also moving up dramatically, with everybody cheering on electric vehicles.

Frank Curzio: Explain that to me. Explain that to me. More electric vehicles, you’re seeing less… We also have an administration that said they are against fracking. Okay, maybe on federal land, but it’s going to result in fewer wells being drilled. Not right now, but there’s just a massive supply right now. We have most businesses closed. Most major cities are still fricking closed. Moving oil is kind of incredible. I don’t know.

Andrew Horowitz: It’s all OPEC. It’s all OPEC. Listen, you know this. Oil is all supply and demand.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Andrew Horowitz: But everybody knew they were going to have to do a production cut. And the fact is that it’s all supply and demand on oil. The idea that things are opening up, the idea that things are opening up… Everybody is going to start traveling again is something, but I think that the clamp down on… It’s artificial. It’s not really demand. It’s supply constraint in the form of what they did with the production cuts and everybody is just hopping onboard.

Andrew Horowitz: Listen, the other day, let me just give you the summation of everything that’s going on in one quick story. The other day, Elon Musk, he mentioned something about used signal. He kind of puts these cryptic Twitter messages out there. He said, used signal and this stock. I’m not going to mention the stock name, stock symbol, but this stock went up, Symbol Medical Devices, or something like that. Signal Medical Devices, was up like 600% in three days because everybody was thinking that he said that… This is one employee, no revenue stock, that was a penny stock, that was up like 600%. It’s down like 60% today when everybody finally realized, oh, that’s not what he was talking about, was that stock.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. That is funny. He was talking about Signal. I use Signal, so it’s basically encrypted, and everything disappears, and it’s more safe, and-

Andrew Horowitz: Right. Everybody is looking for the next big winner because they are there. The speculation is high. We see it in the crypto market. We see it in the EV market. We see it in the SPAC market. Then we have, on top of this, a lot of these guys that are doing the SPACs that have become… They have this God-like image of themselves, that they are making everybody wealth. Look at some of the guys that have been talking about this, and they are like, stay with me, we’ll make all this money. With all these nonsense numbers bringing in companies into the SPAC that was a prior bankrupt. Look at Fisker, for example. Look at Lord’s Town. Look at all these different names that are being pushed into these SPACs, and you have to question, are they making money? Are they ever going to make any money? But once they have the word SPAC slapped on them, they are up 40, 50% in a day, and they keep on riding from there.

Andrew Horowitz: And you see companies that are becoming public, DoorDash, which is up 16, 17% today, moving incredibly. You see Airbnb starting to recover after DoorDash just blew out. It came right down, smoked right back up to the top because people are thinking, you know what, I need to make money, this is the way to do it. There is an absolute stock frenzy going on. You don’t want to call it a bubble, whatever, but come on, let’s face it. There is a frenzy going on because there is too much money out there that needs to be shoved into somewhere. Tina is alive and well. There is no other alternative. And the fact is that people are saying, I’m watching everybody else make money.

Andrew Horowitz: I had a CPA I talked to this week. He says, “You know what, I pulled all my money out in December. I’m done. I’m not doing this because I got my money back for my 401k.” But he said these valuations make no sense. A CPA, valuation guy. Okay. He says, “But I’m thinking about buying Tesla.” I said, “What? What do you mean?” Seriously, not kidding. I had this conversation. He said, “I’m going to buy Tesla.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I’m going to buy Tesla because I think everybody I know has it. They are always talking about it. What’s the worst that can happen. I don’t know about the valuation, but maybe it will go up to $1000 or something like that. I’ll make a few bucks on it.” I said, “Wait, wait, wait. What about the valuation?” He says, “Yeah, I know, but.” That’s kind of the story that’s going on.

Andrew Horowitz: There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s musical chairs. As long as you have a chair when the music stops, you’re in good shape. But in the meantime, have fun.

Frank Curzio: What do you mean there’s a frenzy out there? Look at the Signal advance, you were saying. It’s just a one month chart, but look at the five day chart. This is what Elon Musk did. It was at $6 and it went $40 in like a couple of hours. And even now-

Andrew Horowitz: Was it $6 or 60 cents?

Frank Curzio: Oh, I don’t know. I think it was… 60 cents on the seventh, and then it went up to $6 a couple of days. By the eighth… And then on the 11th, it was $40. It’s still $15 right now. It’s still $15.

Andrew Horowitz: Right. It’s still $15.

Frank Curzio: But no one cares. There’s no frenzy. What are talking about? There’s nothing out there. It makes it difficult. My nephew is young. I’m interviewing him after us, and he plays options. He’s on Robinhood. And I want people to understand that. Options are very difficult; it’s a time value. So even if you’re writing your thesis, if you’re not right in the right time frame, you’re going to get crushed. He got crushed on a couple, he wasn’t making money. But I think there’s this thing out there where people can go on Robinhood, and you’re going to make money, and you’re going to do fine. But that fear of missing out creates those emotions when you’re younger. He had Tesla, and it entered the S&P 500, and he calls on it. That Monday, it opened up down, so he sold it for a small gain. If he kept it, he would have made $30,000 on like $1000 bet or whatever. That’s what he’s thinking. He’s not thinking, wow, I made like 30%.

Frank Curzio: This market, is it going to result in what we see during these times, where the Robinhood accounts, the young investors… Because right now, it’s difficult for seasoned investors, managers, to really tell them, “Hey, what are you doing wrong?” Because these kids are actually making money because they are buying all these… They keep going higher and higher. They are buying on rumors and after the news, and they are still making money, so it’s kind of a crazy environment.

Andrew Horowitz: Listen, Robinhood has gamified the whole process of investing, and that’s fine. Listen, it’s all about making money. I am not a believer, everybody knows this, in the store value or the currency concept for Bitcoin. I am not. So, you want to throw pies, hold it before you throw the pie. Let me say something. However, as an investment, have at it. I’m all over it. You want to invest in it, you want to work it, you want to have it for short-term, midterm, whatever. But let’s not get into the whole idea that this is a religion, that there is something different going on here than has gone on with any other asset in the past, especially these new assets.

Andrew Horowitz: There is a small amount of overall liquidity in it so that helps to push the price around pretty much. And I’m not talking about any of the other coins or anything else. I’m just talking about the concept of Bitcoin. When it comes to the investing here, too, if it’s moving up, if you’re making money, if you’re doing it for a short-term trade or even a swing trade, whatever it may be, and it doesn’t make any money… In fact, it’s maybe losing money, or maybe it’s even bankrupt like a Kodak that everybody was chasing. Remember that one?

Frank Curzio: I remember Kodak. I remember it very well.

Andrew Horowitz: Have at it.

Frank Curzio: I was at the Consumer Electronics Show-

Frank Curzio: This time, and I said, you want a great stock, something that’s completely off of everyone’s radar is Kodak. It was $2. I had it at $2, and then COVID hit and it went to $3 or $4, it came down. I took a very small profit and got out of it. But the insiders were like loading up like crazy. And then the whole COVID thing… But it was just weird. I was going by the booths and I’m like, why are these insiders loading up?

Frank Curzio: Anyway, but when you’re trying to find these new ideas, it’s not easy. You mentioned one, Blink. What do you like about Blink? Just being in the right sector? Is it better, off the charts?

Andrew Horowitz: In theory, if we’re going to go along with the idea that’s there going to be more EVs out there, we’re going to have more need… One of the big things about EV, and what has stopped me in the past and a lot of people is, okay, I’m going on a trip. I have to plan out where I’m going to charge this thing. Whereas, if we’re going on a trip with a regular car, there is a gas station every five seconds. The difference is that we need more charging stations and we need to have various places, whether it’s retrofitted inside of a gas station or an addition to, or maybe in a Taco Bell or a Chic-Fil-A, or I don’t know where, somewhere they have these charging stations. That’s going to be a requirement to make sure that people can travel from place to place to place, assuming we go back to traveling and all. And therefore, not having to have a home base that they come back to all the time.

Andrew Horowitz: And of course, we have the battery capacity issue that keeps on expanding and getting better. And whether you look at the Tesla or some of the other car companies that are coming out, Lucid Motors or Fiskers or whatever… But the thing is, we have a 300 or even a 400 mile range on the battery. There’s nothing like getting to that last level of battery charge and not having… Or gas in your car, and not having a gas station around. I think that that’s an interesting thing: These Blink charging stations are something that’s starting to perk up a lot of interest, and I think that is within the sector, and it has that tailwind of green.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. It definitely has a tailwind of green. I want to talk about a subject here that I know you want to talk about as well because this is something that hasn’t really interested me for a while, even though so many people said you got to get into this, you’ve got to get into this. Emerging markets. I didn’t like emerging markets, and I love the US, because the US was growing… There were pockets in the US that were growing tremendously. There’s sectors you could take advantage of. And that’s why when you’re looking at valuation, as long as your company is growing and putting up those numbers, it’s going to be rewarded with their stock pricing. Europe is really coming down. China’s growth was slow.

Frank Curzio: Now, they’ve always been cheap. That’s been the offer. They are cheap. They are cheap. They are cheap.

Andrew Horowitz: Cheap, right.

Frank Curzio: Cheaper gets cheaper, right. It’s the worst argument. But now, you’re actually seeing these economies grow and grow faster than the US and coming out of this thing. It’s some place I’m looking at, I know it’s a boring topic for everybody, emerging markets. I got the… But I really see opportunity where you can make a lot of money. What do you think about emerging markets here? And this is the first time you’ve heard me really talk about them in probably a good six, seven years.

Andrew Horowitz: We’ve held pieces and parts and larger and smaller of emerging markets as an asset class for a long time in our global allocations and in our investology strategy. And the reason for it is, from a diversification standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. If you look at a chart going back, and you kind of look at where are the number one regions and sectors been over time, emerging markets were kind of looped back and forth into the top, into the bottom, into the top, just like every other one. However, one of the things we have going for us right now, with the emerging markets is, number one, they seem to… Many of them, not all… Latin America is definitely not, but many of them have gotten a better handle on this whole virus thing, at least from the news flow that we know. Whether it’s true or not, is another discussion.

Andrew Horowitz: Secondly, you have a dollar that’s dropping. That’s very, very beneficial to emerging markets. A weak dollar is very good for emerging markets. It makes their products… It just makes their assets kind of move up because what’s happening is you invest there, and their currencies are moving up, and that’s a good thing for them. Obviously, it’s not good from some of the purchases that we made with that and the differential between the pricing of manufacturing, but it’s still cheap as can be, and it makes a really significant benefit to them.

Andrew Horowitz: And then on top of that, you have the fact that we still want to move away from areas, and China has been a big move around the world to diversify our manufacturing and things away from China for all the different reasons we’ve talked about. You have different regions that are starting to crop up as alternatives to utilizing China, which could really take that emerging side of them to a much bigger level. There’s some great things that are coming out of those areas, and it’s one of those things you want to have in a portfolio.

Frank Curzio: I definitely agree. I definitely agree. Running out of time here… And like always, I’ve known you for such a long time, such a great friend. I love you. I always want to give you a chance to talk about what you’re doing at The Disciplined Investor, you talk about investology. And let us know how people can get in touch with you.

Andrew Horowitz: You can go over to the disciplinedinvestor.com. Check that out. That’s right there. There you go. This is where our podcasts are. You can go to the button that says strategies, check out all the different strategies that we have, and kind of scroll… Look, there’s Frank right there. Look, Frank. See you with the helmet on? The Yankee-

Frank Curzio: That’s me right there. Look at that. I wish I had that body though.

Andrew Horowitz: We have different strategies for different people. Actually, it’s been a great few months. The interest has been, seriously to a point that we’re like, okay, what are we going to do here, the amount of new accounts and new clients coming in have been astounding over the last several months, so thank you for that. But you can go there, check out all the things, listen to The Disciplined Investor podcast. Find it on Apple, iTunes, Spotify or anywhere else that’s out there that you find your podcasts. You can listen to DH Unplugged each and every week, as well. Just reach out, there’s a couple of different things. Ask us, on the top of the site. There’s a contact us… Just find a way. I’m going to give you something right now, Frank. I’m going to give you one stock to go.

Frank Curzio: All right. One stock to go. I’m writing it down.

Andrew Horowitz: I’ll give you a few on the long side. I’m going to give you one on the short side. It’s a speculative play, it’s very interesting. Microstrategy, MSTR. This company, Michael Saylor, I’ve known him… Not known him, but I’ve known of him for a long time. Interesting company, great company. Yep, yep. Basically bought $625 million worth of Bitcoin, an average buy is about $15,000 sometime in November, December. Doubled up on his money, which yielded… We’ll just say he made $800 million or so. From what we know about of the stock, the stock has been trading like it’s Bitcoin. The stock market cap is doubled from about $1 billion to about, I think it went to about from $2 to $4 billion or $5 billion of market cap. In other words, that incremental amount of $400 or $500 or $800 million of profit leveraged up the value of the company somehow about two and a half times, which is absurd. And if in fact you see that Bitcoin, if it starts to slide down, what happens to that valuation. It’s not going to come in the form of earnings because unless they’re going to somehow, which they may, move it from balance sheet assets somehow to the income statement, I don’t know, companies do strange things, it’s possible.

Andrew Horowitz: We think that this is definitely over-valued for what it is and just because they have balance sheet assets, which is good, is solid, it doesn’t mean that the company’s valuation from market cap standpoint should be two and a half times of what it was before with only a small amount of incremental change from the balance sheet asset. So, Microstrategy for the short side. It’s an aggressive play, it’s an interesting play, something you may want to look at.

Frank Curzio: Very interesting.

Andrew Horowitz: There you go.

Frank Curzio: I don’t agree with what he’s doing, and we established the CEO token, we’re a public traded company now. I’m a big fan of Bitcoin for many, many, many years, but I don’t like the idea of putting other people’s money and that balance sheet into it because if this guy would have did this in 2018, January, he probably would have got fired six months later. And our other company is going to do… It’s cool because it went up and it worked.

Andrew Horowitz: He’s been prodding Elon Musk to do this. He’s been prodding Musk to do this.

Frank Curzio: He’s been dead on. He’s been dead right, but just for me, when I look at the responsibilities, fiduciary responsibilities and you have a cash balance, terrible. What happens if it doesn’t work out? And Bitcoin could go to 3,000 or 5,000, which I don’t see happening, but it could easily go there, if the government decides, it cuts everything off and says-

Andrew Horowitz: I think there is the potential.

Frank Curzio: That is a risk, where now you crushed it. Now, you’re crushing your investors. That’s the thing I worry about. But listen, the guy’s been right. Got to give him credit though. I hear you.

Andrew Horowitz: I can totally give him credit. Two things, prediction for this year. I think that there’s going to be a lot more talk about regulation, especially with the Biden administration around Bitcoin or around cryptos to a point. And I also think there is going some kind of discussion about regulation from the SEC about SPACs. Because if you really understand about SPACs and how they are working, they are great deals for the managers that have put them together. That’s why they are putting these things together left and right and just using all this money. But there is a lot of excess going on.

Frank Curzio: It’s fun now because everybody makes money. It’s almost like a Ponzi scheme, where even the last people getting in, which is mom and pop investors, are able to buy these things even before they take over a company and make money. However, the amount of money these guys make and the reason why they are doing this is because if you’re Peter Teele and you invested in Facebook, you can’t turn around and sell that right away. It worked out fantastic, but it was like seven, eight years. This is, you have a pool, it’s on the stock exchange, you’re buying a private company, it immediately becomes public, and then your luck up here is a few months. They are gone. They are gone. All these guys are gone. And they cash out.

Andrew Horowitz: It’s the ultimate pump and dump. Ultimate pump and dumps.

Frank Curzio: I’m not saying… There are some that are good, but right now-

Andrew Horowitz: There will be a few that will work out.

Frank Curzio: There’s like 65 or something, that are looking for-

Andrew Horowitz: There’s probably two or three coming on the market today. There was one today that came out to market.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know. It’s insane. But I did want to go… Quickly, before we go, I want to say one thing because I look at your podcast and I said, the CDI podcast guest visualization.

Andrew Horowitz: Oh yeah. There’s a good one. Look at that one.

Frank Curzio: Look at that guy right here. You must really like me. This is based on what?

Andrew Horowitz: That is actually an algorithm that we built about the self-perception of the worth of the guest.

Frank Curzio: Love it. Love it. Love it. I love it. I love it.

Frank Curzio: That’s cool, man. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And another thing here-

Andrew Horowitz: Click that. Click it. Click that. Click that, Frank. I think that will take you right to… I think it’s clickable. It should be clickable. It will take you to all the different podcasts that you were on, I think. It should.

Frank Curzio: Is it? I don’t know. It was weird because it was actually the other way a second ago. But you know what, I just made this bigger so maybe it’s not. But no, that’s awesome. I really appreciate it. And one more thing I want to share with everybody, which if you know Andrew, you see him on his Twitter account, he posts all these things. I wanted to show you the Andrew that I get and what this guy texts me all the time because he loves to cook.

Andrew Horowitz: Oh.

Frank Curzio: You text me all this stuff, and then the big fish that you’re catching with the family. I like this. I used to say when I die, I want to come back as Tom Brady. But you know what, when I die, I want to come back as you. You have an unbelievable life. The pictures that you send me-

Andrew Horowitz: A lot of fun.

Frank Curzio: I’ve got to get on your boat and really cool stuff. Really cool stuff.

Andrew Horowitz: Thanks for having me, Frank. I really appreciate it. Great show.

Frank Curzio: Thanks for coming on, and I’ll talk to you soon, man. Take care.

Andrew Horowitz: All right, great. Bye.

Frank Curzio: All right, guys. Great stuff from Andrew. I love having him on. Always shares ideas. Just great. We’re really good friends. Great guy. But again, this podcast is about you, not about me. Let me know what you thought. frank@curzioresearch.com. Also, pretty interesting short pick there. I get tons of emails myself about how much Microstrategy you’re going to buy. Buying Bitcoin with the cash and the balance sheet. But we saw news come out today, where we have LaGarde saying that she wants to more into Bitcoin because a lot of people are using it to embezzle money and stuff like that. Listen, that’s a real risk, guys. It’s a real risk where the government could shut a lot of this off, which would be crazy. It has nothing to do with our token, our CEO token or anything like that, but that could happen. But just really great interview, love having him on because we go everywhere. The economy and the things that we talked about, guys, it’s really true. It’s really true.

Frank Curzio: Does it really matter anymore? Do you want to follow his data? Is it a big deal? I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter when you see the money supply and how much money is coming into the system. But really good conversation, love having him on, and we have different opinions on different things, which is good. That’s the way America should be, where you debate things and you come up with the best solution. These days, you’re not allowed to debate for some reason. But I’m trying something new here. I’m going to bring in my nephew. His name is Joe Davide. I want to get a better idea of how the younger generation views the markets, the economy, politics. Not so much politics, but just it’s a very, very massive theme, it’s very massive.

Frank Curzio: The reason why I want to bring him on, if you look at the size of Robinhood, if you look at what’s going on with Bitcoin… When I launched our CEO token, all of our partners, almost everyone I talked to was younger than me. All younger than me. Very few older than me. Bitcoin is a young thing to understand, but look where it is. Maybe is there something we could learn from an amateur investor, whereas these kids are buying Tesla at 400, which I never in a million years would have recommended, at 400, and it’s 800, it’s over 800. Or buying Tilray at four and it’s 14. That’s where this is going. If you’re looking at certain stats, if you want to see how big this is and how it’s changing the face of investments, where you have to address it with the younger generation doing this. The NASDAQ reported their metrics yesterday for the month of December.

Frank Curzio: US equity options volume for options and contracts, 277 million. Last month, I’m pretty sure was the record, 242 million, but 277 million compared to last year, pre-COVID, 147 million. There wasn’t one month last year, and I won’t say last year, I should say 2019, because we’re in 2021. In 2019, there wasn’t one year where they surpassed 200 million contracts. Who is buying these options? Lots of kids, lots of young investors are getting into it.

Frank Curzio: Joe Davide, I’m bringing you on. The pressure is on. First, I want to thank you. Thank you so much for coming on, buddy.

Joe Davide: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Frank Curzio: Joe, how old are you?

Joe Davide: 20.

Frank Curzio: 20. Okay, great. When did you start buying stocks? And what got you into stocks at that age? Because even my dad was in the stocks at that age. But I really wasn’t buying them and stuff like that. I really was just focused on basketball, focused on different things. It’s a different world out there. Kids are involved in politics, they are involved in investing, but how did you… did you talk to your friends? What made you get involved in this?

Joe Davide: Right. I probably started investing, probably last year. Mostly, I had high school jobs, I just put money in an E-Trade account, let it sit. Really, when I started really learning about trading options was when I first came down here a couple of months ago, and then I really just started watching YouTube videos, watching other YouTubers and just seeing it… Just seemed like I can get the hang of it, and I took it from there.

Frank Curzio: I was going to ask that. Where do you find your data from? Where did you learn about this? It’s basically through YouTube videos. The YouTube community is massive among young people.

Joe Davide: Massive.

Frank Curzio: We’re just entering that market, and we’re seeing more and more people… Because all we do is videos on the Curzio Research YouTube page.

Joe Davide: Exactly.

Frank Curzio: And I get advice from you and someone else, Erica, who is actually in the room now. She listens to our podcast, and she does great. She’s like our social media girl. And I’m getting advice from younger kids on how could we expand our audience because they think differently than we do as adults, especially when it comes to social media and stuff. But do you know one of the people… Could you name one of the people that you listen to?

Joe Davide: On YouTube, besides Curzio Research, probably the channel, Zip Trader. He’s great.

Frank Curzio: How many followers does he have?

Joe Davide: I believe he has 300K.

Frank Curzio: 300,000 followers.

Joe Davide: I’d have to double check, but somewhere around there.

Frank Curzio: How old is he, do you know? Has he been doing it for a long time? Is he a young guy?

Joe Davide: He’s a young guy. Probably if I had to guess, mid 20s.

Frank Curzio: Mid-20s. What do we have, Erica, how many subscribers do we have to our YouTube channel? Just over 3,000. This guy has 300,000. 300,000. Dude, that’s how big, and just one of many… These guys have millions of people listening to them, which is amazing. They just post it on their own channels basically. And you really started trading options. You’re really into options when I talked to you.

Frank Curzio: Talk about some of your option trades. What was one of your biggest winners?

Joe Davide: The biggest winner was most likely A&B, where I bought it right when… It was a couple of months ago when I first got down here. I spent probably $1,000 on the option. I brought in like $3,000 on it. That was one of the biggest winners, but the biggest loser was LI Auto. I spent $3,500 on that option, lost the entire thing. So it’s pretty risky, and it’s not the best thing to do, but that’s the price for learning.

Frank Curzio: Are you buying calls, is that what you’re doing, you’re buying calls?

Joe Davide: Yes. Yep.

Frank Curzio: So you’re just buying calls, and how far out do you look?

Joe Davide: Usually for me, I’m looking around two months in advance.

Frank Curzio: And you bought Tesla as well?

Joe Davide: Recently. I bought Tesla right before it was added to the S&P 500.

Frank Curzio: Just a couple of weeks ago.

Joe Davide: Yep, anticipating that it was going to jump huge on that day. A few days beforehand, it went up like $40. I had a pretty good return on it and right when it was added, it went down like $50.

Frank Curzio: On Monday, I remember… Because over the weekend, you said, “What do you think? Do you think Tesla is going high tomorrow?” And I said, “Do you really want me to tell you where a stock’s going to go and when?”

Joe Davide: I know. But I was looking for information. And the next thing you know, that day it dropped like $50. I pulled out like $400 but the problem was, if you look at it now, my expiration date was January 7th on it. I would have made a killing.

Frank Curzio: You would have made a killing.

Joe Davide: I would have killed it, even if I exercised it, yeah.

Frank Curzio: Looking at that is kind of scary to me because it’s not even that… When you’re young, I say this, this is going to be fun, I’m going to get emails on this, but it’s true. I always laugh when you hear about a young sports athlete in his early 20s and they get married right away ,and then they find out he cheated on his wife. He’s crazy. It’s kind of par for the course a lot of times, you know what I mean. And I think as guys mature, because we’re still not mature in our 20s, as we mature, we think about the consequences of what we’re going. But at a young age, instead of… Were you thinking more about, wow, I did great on this trade. I made a little bit of money on this trade, or were you thinking more about holy shit, if I’d held this thing, I’d be a millionaire kind of thing?

Joe Davide: In the moment, I was thinking I’m glad I made money on it. Now, for me to be mad, it’s not going to get anywhere, it’s over. I’m just happy that I can look back and say, okay, I was right. If I had held it out, this is where I’d be. But it’s going to happen again sometime in the future.

Frank Curzio: Tesla might be a bad example, because you find everybody’s talking about Tesla. How do you find your ideas? Are you getting your ideas… Are you learning how to trade from them, or are you actually getting ideas?

Joe Davide: Stocks. Trading ideas.

Frank Curzio: Just one person is giving you all of these ideas?

Joe Davide: Yes, he’s the biggest one.

Frank Curzio: He’s giving everyone ideas at the same time, and everyone just basically… And what happens when he’s wrong? Does he come and say, “Hey, this is what went wrong.”

Joe Davide: Nope. You can’t be right every pick. But it can be out of 10 picks, he’ll probably say seven right.

Frank Curzio: Why options opposed to just… if you bought Tesla, you’d probably be doing amazing. But again, options. But why options because options are so difficult because you could writing a thesis, but your time could be wrong? If you’re wrong, you’re going to get destroyed, you lose everything.

Joe Davide: Right.

Frank Curzio: It’s like all or none, which is extremely risky. That’s okay. But you’re just playing against guys with algorithms, 5G, that are doing three million trades for every quarter second, whatever. Why options, and why not buy some of this stock?

Joe Davide: I do buy stock. I usually just buy options because it’s 100 shares a contract. If you hit your mark, it’s a lot of money involved, and I’m trying to build a portfolio where at least I can get like 20,000 in there from options, and then I’ll actually invest that money in stocks I like, and then from there, go that way.

Frank Curzio: Okay. What was one of your worst trades? Because one of them just came up, you lost a lot. Which one was that one?

Joe Davide: That was LA Auto.

Frank Curzio: What is that stock?

Joe Davide: That’s an EV company. It’s in the same area as Neo, Tesla, XPENG.

Frank Curzio: It’s China-based and didn’t get to list it or something?

Joe Davide: Yes.

Frank Curzio: And the stock crashed, right?

Joe Davide: So, the government was going to D-list the company. Same with Neo and XPENG, and they all dropped. That’s what my option was, and I just held it out.

Frank Curzio: How much did you have into it?

Joe Davide: $3,500.

Frank Curzio: And how much does that represent of your total portfolio?

Joe Davide: That was, at the time, that was 35% of your portfolio.

Frank Curzio: So 35% of your portfolio wiped out like nothing.

Joe Davide: Gone. Gone.

Frank Curzio: And you’re not wrong, you’re not right. This is part of the building process as you learn. But for me, as someone who loves you, you’re my nephew. I want to teach you, but I don’t think I could teach you right now because right now, the younger generation is smarter than us. Buying this stuff, which there’s no manager out that that’s really going to buy Tesla at 400, 500, and it’s at 800,.when you see Peloton break 75.80 and it goes to 140. When we look at valuation, for example, you’re looking at trading, do you know what a market cap is?

Joe Davide: Yep.

Frank Curzio: Do you look at market cap and how much it could double? You’re looking at fundamentals and stuff?

Joe Davide: Yep.

Frank Curzio: Why did you buy, what was it, the auto company? Why did you buy that one?

Joe Davide: At the time, it had a lot of momentum behind it because the group of stocks like Neo and everything, they were coming out with new batteries and everything, and LA Auto just seemed pretty appetizing to me. So I was like, you know what, I’ll put it in not knowing the government was going to delist it, because if they didn’t delist it, I probably would have hit my mark. I had a $4 call on it right when it was at like $33. It just dropped all the way down to like 30, 29, 28. It stayed around there, and then time decay killed it.

Frank Curzio: Traders sometimes… It doesn’t matter about fundamentals, as it matters about anything, but it matters about trading patterns. But this is just like an idea that heard from somebody basically?

Joe Davide: Yeah, I was really into investing, and then all of a sudden, I just got to trading. You can buy stocks and buy shares, scalping really quickly. At the beginning of the day, buy a 100 shares of a company, it goes up $5, bail out. But options, I just like better because there is a lot more money, but I’m not really in it right now for the money, I’m just trying to learn everything one step at a time, really learn everything with the markets and then from there I’ll really dive into something specific.

Frank Curzio: There’s not a great investor out there that hasn’t gotten crushed and lost. That’s how you build, that’s how you learn. Those are learning experiences. You can’t have a model portfolio. You have to have steak in it where the feelings, where you’re like, oh shit. When you have that, that’s the learning experience because now you’re looking it at like, now you ask yourself, what if. You love this thing, it really doesn’t matter if the company makes batteries or anything. How long a year is it, a month, two months, three months? You’ve got to hope something happens in that three months. We’re in a bull market, everything’s going higher, and 95% of the companies are above the moving average.

Frank Curzio: But at the end of the day, where do you see this going to the point where, do you feel like there’s a correction coming, do you feel like there’s a collapse? Do you feel that a little bit? Do you get nervous at all? Are you just like, wow. Like Dave Portnoy says, he’s like, this is easy. This stuff’s a joke. And he’s right. He’s like, I really don’t know if anybody should just buy these stocks and I’m up like a million dollars, two million. And it’s true, he’s saying that and you’re like, you can’t really get pissed off at him because he’s right. And it makes guys like us who have been doing all this, I’m like, whoa, really? And I have calls on Tesla, I have calls on Peloton, I have calls on Zoom. Zoom’s down like 45% from the ties, but it’s kind of crazy when you think about it.

Frank Curzio: What platform do you use?

Joe Davide: I actually switched from Power E-Trade to Thinker’s Web, which is T.D. Ameritrade.

Frank Curzio: And why did you switch for?

Joe Davide: Because Power E-Trade is 15 minutes off, and in order to get real time, you have to pay another $130 a month. I said, you know what, I’ll just switch and have real time, so at least if I’m looking at stocks or looking at plays to trade, which I don’t place a trade every day, it’s like maybe once a week, but at least the numbers are actually accurate instead of 15 minutes off.

Frank Curzio: Makes sense. What about Robinhood, have you been on that platform?

Joe Davide: Nope. Not yet. I don’t know. I’m not really a big fan of Robinhood yet. I’m not on the bandwagon yet.

Frank Curzio: Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of people. Even my wife opened up an account. My wife opened up… This story is great. My wife opened up an account. She said, “I want to trade a couple of stocks. My friends are doing it.” This is like six months ago. She didn’t put a lot of money in it, and when she did that, she signed up on Robinhood and she bought a couple of stocks and then she’s like, “They gave me a share of one stock for free.” You know what stock that was?

Joe Davide: What stock?

Frank Curzio: Plug Power.

Joe Davide: Do you know where it’s at now?

Frank Curzio: They gave her one share at six and it’s 71.

Joe Davide: Yeah. I was going to say, today it’s got to be-

Frank Curzio: Honey, put everything in it. We won’t have to work anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do this forever. I love it. It’s not even a job to me. But it’s funny where that’s how the market is, where could we learn something from that because it’s amazing how many people turn their back on Bitcoin, Joe, who said this is bullshit. All these, J.B. Dobbins said it was a fraud. Warren Buffet destroyed… These guys are destroying it.

Joe Davide: Because it’s going to hurt their portfolio.

Frank Curzio: And they are all reversing course because now they are like, wait a minute. Now, we kind of understand this a little bit. You get lost in those opportunities some times when you’re just setting your goals and you’re like, wow, this can’t happen. This can’t be sustained. But what I’m hearing from you, Joe, is pretty much, this is the young traders, this is what they are doing, even on the Robinhood or whatever platform you’re using. I think there’s a lot be learned on both sides. But going through this process for you, you have your end goal and I think that was what, to make a certain amount of money and then you’re going to buy regular stocks. Do you think you could turn it off, like stop buying options one day?

Joe Davide: Definitely not. I’ll keep doing it, but just getting a decent amount of money in the account and really trying to invest and just let it grow. But yeah, at that start, I love option trading. It’s definitely something I going to keep doing.

Frank Curzio: You think about how you’re setting up mentally. Say if you bought Tesla and you bought calls on it and you put a couple thousand dollars in it and it’s worth $50,000 now. I would think it’s impossible for you to change to where you’re like, okay, I’m going to buy AT&T and just hold. No way, right, that ain’t going to happen.

Joe Davide: It depends. I would do that personally. If I had, say $50,000 came into my account, I would probably have 25K for option trading and then invest the other 25K to actual invest.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know.

Joe Davide: That’s what I would do. I would spin it up and I would just keep, I wouldn’t even take any money out. I would grow it all the way until 200K.

Frank Curzio: I know you’re living down here. Joe is running my stores, doing a great job running my stores, the phone stores, business I own, which I’m hands-off, guys. It’s a fantastic, amazing business. Do you have a lot of friends that are trading? Do you talk to other people that are trading?

Joe Davide: On YouTube, I am in a discord group of YouTube. It’s like 5,000 people talking about all their day trading stocks and everything. I just use it, go on it every morning.

Frank Curzio: Is it like a pump and dump? Like, oh, you got to buy this stock before it’s too late. Or it’s like, hey guys, this stock looks good, it’s breaking out.

Joe Davide: It was like… Power Plug, that was one of the stocks that was mentioned weeks ago and I did not even catch it. I don’t even know what it is. I’m not going to take part in it. At the time it was like $40. Look where it is now.

Frank Curzio: Just to buy and it goes in to like 3D, I don’t know if you have DDD, the stock was like 11 and all of a sudden it had decent news, should have been up 20%. It went up 130% in one day and now it’s like 25, 26 or whatever it is. It was just a week. When I see stuff like this, I’m looking and I’m going like, holy cow.

Frank Curzio: Let’s go to the political front. Because I know that the younger generation is really involved in politics to the point where, our younger generation, no way. We didn’t care about this crap. We were playing basketball. We were hanging out. Like, for example, do you know who the House Speaker is?

Joe Davide: Nancy.

Frank Curzio: There’s no way there is any one, when I was your age, anyone who knew that. We barely knew who the Vice President was. We didn’t care. We didn’t care. We were just like… Now, you’re engulfed in it, and it’s like, whoa, we got to get this guy out, with issues that probably are not going to impact you for a very, very long time. You think they are. You think there is going to be climate change. You think all this stuff. They are going to promise you everything in the world. That’s what they do to get elected and nothing. You go back four years and nothing’s gotten done. But you’re more politically involved, now I think and talk about it. What about your friends at school and college and stuff? They are talking now?

Joe Davide: Right now, the political scene is like on fire. All my friends, we’re all into it. Everyone’s keeping up. The only thing is, I’m definitely more Republican, but most of my friends are Democrats. It’s pretty good debating-wise. We don’t get too heated.

Frank Curzio: Is it a debate or is it a fighting?

Joe Davide: Sometimes it’s fighting. There’s a few friends of mine that will literally fight. I just don’t even bring it up with them because it’s not going to get anywhere.

Frank Curzio: No.

Joe Davide: I’m not going to change their mind.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know, man. I know some of you may be listening and saying, that’s a good thing. I think it’s horrible.

Joe Davide: It’s tough.

Frank Curzio: Play basketball. Go have fun. You’re supposed to go nuts, you’re supposed to get drunk and be stupid and make mistakes and those are the memories that you… Your memories are going to be, oh man, Trump lost, or I can’t believe that, or this person’s a cheater, or Trump’s a racist. That’s what is the kids are seeing these days. It’s so amazing that, that’s what you’re growing up with, where… Man, politics were not a big deal when I was younger. I was just like, whatever. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. Your parents cared because they’re older and retirement and interest and earning and healthcare obviously. There is things that impact them that are very, very important. And young people, I feel like they are missing out on the fun stuff, those memories that I never will forget. A lot of them, me being irresponsible and stupid, but they are fun, and those are the things you remember all the time. You don’t remember about that test you got an A on. You remember going out drunk the day before and didn’t even know you were taking a test and you got a 75, you were so drunk.

Frank Curzio: Those are the things that you laugh at and joke around about. It’s just kind of amazing. What do you like now, what’s going on in that community, what are some of the stocks, are they saying, you got to watch out? Is there is any betting against, is there buying puts, anything like that or no?

Joe Davide: Today, I was looking, yeah, there were definitely puts against Tesla today, this morning, because this morning, it was down like, it dropped to 834, around there. Dropped a considerable amount, so they were right about that. It’s mostly close because right now, the market’s been booming. This is the stuff I’ve been following, been booming. I definitely think there is time for a pullback, a correction. It’s definitely coming. I’m not sure when, but if I had to guess, whenever Joe Biden gets in office. Every president gets in office, the market’s a little shaky, so I think it’s going to stay until then. February to March, hey, if he does what he said when he was running what he was going to do, shut down the country again.

Frank Curzio: Where did you learn that, that every time a president… You heard that somewhere, right?

Joe Davide: Research, yeah. Usually, most times, when a president gets in office, the market’s shaky, maybe it does a little correcting.

Frank Curzio: Did you see it off the YouTube channel or anything?

Joe Davide: I’ve known that for when Trump got elected. That was the biggest news because his first 100 days, people were antagonizing him over it, over what he was passing. At that point, four years ago now, I’ve always had that in the back of my mind.

Frank Curzio: That’s interesting because my advice to you is when you listen to these people is, do your own homework.

Joe Davide: Exactly.

Frank Curzio: Even if you’re listening to me, and I have my ideas, guys. You’ve got to do your own homework. It’s your money at the end of the day. You’re following my advice, and you guys trust me. I’ve been doing this a long time, and you should. I’m going to be wrong sometimes. I’m right more than I’m wrong, or the day that happens, I’ll never do this again. But for me, I’ve always checked that out. I always want to see. When I went to visit fracking, when I learned about fracking, I thought I was going to go to these areas and there was going to be dead animals everywhere. And I realized it’s impossible for fracking to cause water contamination. It doesn’t exist. This is all completely made up. Water is 500 feet deep, and you’re going around this 6000, 10,000, 12,000 deep and pulling up. You can get all those chemicals and dump them in a lake, that’s different, that’s intentional.

Frank Curzio: I was just surprised the agenda was fracking is killing animals, it’s killing people. You’re lighting your forests on fire from that move. It’s all bullshit. I’m like, wow. What it resulted in is me coming back recommending a lot of these stocks, and my guys did great. But even with you, when you’re looking at this, Joe, if you think that that YouTube channel, there is a bunch of them, and they are all like, like a stock and telling you to buy it and stuff like that. If you could find out, do your own research, and say, hey, you know what, this is bullshit. What’s going to happen is they are going to drive it up and it’s going to be a great opportunity for you to make money if you do your own homework.

Joe Davide: Exactly.

Frank Curzio: Usually when you do that, you’re going to be an island by yourself, when you’re against the crowd. But right now, we’re in a market where you could bet with the crowd and make a fortune. You could buy on rumors. It used to be buy on rumors, sell on news. It’s buy on rumors, buy even more after the news.

Joe Davide: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: I haven’t seen that since the dot com.

Joe Davide: There’s so much hype to that. Penny stock is literally you just pick.

Frank Curzio: You can pick and they go up 70, 80, 90%. Options don’t matter right now, which is crazy. But it’s not going to be like that all the time. It hasn’t been like that since the dot com era, and that was a very, very long time ago. The young generation, before you were born, were looking at 97, 98, 99, when all these things were really taking off. And even 98, you’re like, wow, this has to crash and the market doubled. 1999 to 2000, if you don’t know that, the NASDAQ doubled again and then it crashed and it went down like 70, 80% or whatever. It’s not always like this. But I’m glad you’re learning from your mistakes. And I just wanted to hear the other side.

Frank Curzio: Let me know what you thought about this. frank@curzioresearch.com. For me, you can learn from anyone. People say, use the word, he’s smart or she’s smart. I think everyone is smart depending on what the subject is. I don’t know anything about plumbing, but I think they are brilliant, something happens to your toilet bowl. These guys are amazing. These guys are brilliant, whatever it is. But I think everyone has something you can learn from and bring that to the table, and I’m glad you came on and explained it because this gave a good perspective, I think, to everyone out there just to see because… These kids, they don’t know what they are doing. They might not know what they are doing, but they are making a shit load of money right now. I can tell you that. They are. They are buying a lot of this stuff and a lot of people are avoiding it.

Frank Curzio: I just want to say thanks for coming on. I appreciate it, man.

Joe Davide: Of course.

Frank Curzio: That was awesome. And guys, if you’re going to send emails in and complain about Joe, I’m just going to let you know one thing, I’m just going to let you know one thing, this is my sister’s son. Christine, who runs our HR and our customer service department, so when you send in emails, they go through her first. So if you say anything bad, especially if you’re a subscriber, she knows your address. Remember that. I shouldn’t say that, people take me seriously. They are going to… In today’s world, you can’t joke, everything’s-

Joe Davide: It’s a threat.

Frank Curzio: End it. Anyway, just be careful because she’s going to see that email first. Momma’s boy. You never know. But Joe, thank you so much for coming on.

Joe Davide: Of course.

Frank Curzio: I appreciate it, bud.

Joe Davide: Thank you for having me on.

Frank Curzio: Guys, listen, hopefully, you guys enjoyed the show today. A lot going on. Definitely check out our Curzio Research YouTube page, a whole list of videos and all this stuff. We’re doing a lot more, and we’re going to have exclusive stuff that we’re doing. And that’s absolutely free. Just go there and subscribe. Like it. It’s getting to 3,000. You’re seeing other guys with 300,000. We really want to build this up, focus on all investors, even the younger investors and educate them. And of course, there’s always something that we could learn from them as well. And hopefully, you liked the interviews today.

Frank Curzio: That’s it for me. A lot of fun. Enjoy the week. Stop talking about politics because everybody gets mad when you talk about politics. And as always, I’ll see you guys in seven days. Take care.

Announcer: 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. Wall Street Unplugged, produced by the Choose Yourself Podcast Network, the leader in podcasts produced to help you choose yourself.