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: How’s it going out there? It’s July 7th, and I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged Podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. So, I hope all of had a wonderful holiday weekend with the family. I spent time with my daughters, lighting fireworks on the beach. Had a great time. I also spent Friday and Saturday with my wife. I told you guys last week, we were supposed to go to the Mötley Crüe concert, which also featured Def Leppard, Poison, really, really cool, looking forward to it and then Wednesday came along and I started looking at the dates, and I found out that the tickets I bought were for next year, 2022.

Frank Curzio: And I have to tell you, I’m pretty thorough with this, but be very careful, because now, my wife posted it on Facebook, and we’re hearing the same story from so many different people of how crazy it is. But when you pull up even Ticketmaster or whatever you go on, StubHub, and tickets to the concert, for, say, July and August, they have all the concerts listed as it’s this year. And then when you click it, apparently some of those are for next year. And even when you check out, my wife and I, there’s a lot of people that went through it.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, maybe I could’ve looked a little bit harder, I was just assuming it was on Friday. So, it’s 2022, which left a big gap because it’s hard to follow that up, when you have an excitement of going to a live concert. It’s going to be fun, so, what are we going to do? I’ve got to make it up to her. And we got a babysitter and spent the day in St. Augustine. And we go there maybe once, twice a year, went to a few bars, got a foot massage, which was awesome, reflexology, which is really cool. Bought some cool things. We even got time to go to the outlets, which actually pissed me off.

Frank Curzio: Now, what I’m about to say could get this podcast kicked off iTunes, so if that happens, just to let you know out there, you can find this podcast on our curzioresearch.com site, or the Curzio Research YouTube page, which hopefully, it doesn’t get kicked off there too. Because we film, as you know, Wall Street Unplugged every single week in video format, which is awesome, getting tons of page views, tons of subscribers. Anyway, just in case I get kicked off, you have options. Because something pissed me off going to the outlets. And I’m going to say what so many people want to but can’t.

Frank Curzio: This gay shit is getting out of control. Full disclaimer: I’m not gay. I have friends who are gay. I believe in equal rights. No problem with gay people at all. You have to say this disclaimer before you say anything about anything and talk about anything. But nearly every single store at the outlets had rainbow clothing, rainbow products, sneakers with rainbows on them, shirts, gadgets, iPhone covers. I mean, they were displayed everywhere. Everywhere. In front of every store. And this was like 20%, 25% of the inventory of these stores had some kind of gay association.

Frank Curzio: And this was Friday, July 2nd, Gay Pride month was June. Gay Pride month. I mean, gays get an entire month to recognize the LGBT community and the impact they’ve had in the world, right? That’s the standard definition on Wiki if you want to look at it. But a whole month, a whole month they get, right? Let’s put this in perspective. George Washington defeated the British, helped win the Revolutionary War, created this wonderful country, had the opportunity to be king after winning, have absolute power, become a dictator, do whatever he wanted to do. And instead decided to help draft the Constitution, create a democratic system of government, which we all live by today.

Frank Curzio: This guy gets one day. One day. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, won the Civil War. Imagine the North lost that war. I mean, holy cow, where would we be today if that happened? And the fact that after winning, Abraham Lincoln, he put his ego aside and said, “Hey, we’re not fighting anymore, we’re going to help rebuild the South so we have unity with Americans again.” He gets one day.

Frank Curzio: Martin Luther King, one of the most important activists ever, leader of the civil rights movement, despite all the prejudice, hardships done to Black people over that time period. His message, only through non-violence is reconciliation. Amazing person. He gets one day.

Frank Curzio: I could keep going. You’ve got Neil Armstrong, Amelia Earhart, Walt Disney, Alexander Graham Bell, that guy was pretty important, right? He was pretty important. They don’t even have a day. They don’t have a day. The gay community, they have an entire month. And then on top of that, you throw in the media and the corporations promoting the hell out of this. And they’re promoting to intentionally draw as much attention as they can to themselves showing how great they are and checking off all the boxes, to the point where even gay people are like, “All right, enough already. Enough.”

Frank Curzio: And then we have transgenders. And I hope that’s a proper term; I think it changes every six months. Again, I have no problem with transgenders. I believe everyone should be themselves no matter what. I’ve said that numerous times on this podcast; that’s what having good character is all about. And I say that on… How many podcasts do I mention character and how important it is to me? There’s so many fake people in this world, which I hate. If you’re an asshole, be an asshole. Whatever. Just be yourself. It’s important.

Frank Curzio: But transgenders right now? I mean, they could basically crack someone in the back of the head with a baseball bat in front of the mayor and police commissioner, and they won’t go to jail. I mean, seriously, they’re more powerful than the President right now. I have no problem what bathroom you use. If a transgender was next to me in the urinal I would probably say, “Hey, how you doing, what’s up?” Or whatever, and going into the women’s bathroom, some people have a problem with that, I don’t know if there’s ever been a case of aggression or rape from transgenders or anything, or a recorded case. Maybe there has been or whatever.

Frank Curzio: But I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with letting them compete at the Olympics. And no one’s allowed to speak out about this on social media or you’re gone. A few people can, and forget about supporting all of our women and their rights, how they have to compete essentially against men. But you can’t even talk about this from a woman’s perspective. I mean, the Me Too movement, women, forget about it. They’re trumped. They’re trumped by Black Lives Matter. Then you have environmentalists, and the LGBTQ community, they’re at the top when it comes to the powerful organizations.

Frank Curzio: So, even if you’re defending women you’re going to get in trouble because there’s a higher group, a more powerful group there. But standing up for women all over the world, for the Olympics, sorry, not allowed. Not allowed when it means talking against a more powerful group than you. But holy cow, how is that allowed? How is anyone allowing this? And again, I just love how the corporations, big institutions who have racist backgrounds and settled so many lawsuits for decades, you can go into pretty much most Fortune 500 companies, not giving all their employees equal opportunities.

Frank Curzio: Now, what do they do? They go full overboard. Opposite end of the spectrum. And a good example is the Academy Awards, I mean, look what they did in 2015. Not one Black person was even nominated, forget winning, I mean, not even nominated for any category. And that followed 2014, the same thing happened. But 2015, people got pissed. Because 2015, there was a lot of good movies that year. Will Smith for Concussion. Michael B. Jordan for Creed. Straight Outta Compton was fantastic. And the following year, what did they do? After the Academy got called out on this?

Frank Curzio: They nominate Blacks everywhere, right? Six Black actors nominated, five won. Moonlight won Best Picture, first all-Black cast movie to win the award. I know you’ve probably never heard of it and not too many people saw it, even today. But it beat out La La Land, if you remember. You remember Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, they couldn’t believe the Academy would do this either. They announced onstage that La La Land won the Best Picture when they were presenting that final award. And then a producer ran up onstage, and this is a good two minutes of them celebrating, saying, “No, no, no, no, no, Moonlight won, it’s not a mistake, this is not a joke.” And, whatever, the wrong card was handed to them or whatever.

Frank Curzio: But what a debacle that was, but, Moonlight? I mean, how many people know that Moonlight was the movie of the year in 2015? Or the Academy Awards, which were in 2016 for 2015 movies. Nobody gets that. But for every mistake that’s made, especially in public, there’s always a huge overcorrection. We can see it in the markets. Dodd–Frank banking regulation, 2008. More regulation, we’ve got to go… And they went all the way to the extreme, to the point where, what was the point of this regulation? So, they’re not too big to fail? They’re five to seven X bigger, the biggest banks in the world, than they were back then because of the rules you put in place.

Frank Curzio: Then you dial it a little bit back. But come on, I covered that the other day. The most powerful industry by far, these guys are huge, there’s no competition, you can’t go from a mid-cap to a large cap in the banking industry. So, they’re going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. They’re always going to be too big to fail and get bailed out. Perfect environment for those guys, holy cow, money being thrown into the system, everything. What about COVID?

Frank Curzio: Closing all schools and COVID, zero evidence that it impacts children. And when it comes to racism, bigotry, gay rights, if someone says the wrong thing publicly, what happens? Public apologies. You have to march in every LGBTQ parade and kiss ass for the rest of your life. I mean, I’m a big fan of Rachel Nichols, by far the best NBA reporter. She’s been doing it for, what, over 20 years? Does the finals every year, and she got pissed that somebody took her place who is a good reporter, definitely less qualified.

Frank Curzio: And she expressed it. And it wasn’t like, yeah, she’s NBA, she’s not racist, a lot of NBA players came out against her, but she said, “Hey, I think ESPN is just pushing this movement,” where why would they give her that spot? And she got caught on tape saying that. So what did she do? She came out and immediately apologized. “That’s not what I meant,” ESPN didn’t care. They’re the most political organization in the world. And they banned her. They suspended her even though she apologized.

Frank Curzio: I mean, it’s crazy out there. But, for me, look, that’s why it’s cool to be boss, to be independent. I can say exactly how I feel, which should be the case, right? This is America. I mean, it’s liberating. Not being subject to a company’s agenda simply because you work there. And I have to tell you, it wasn’t always like that, I was in those shoes earlier in my career. And you had to be careful with the things you said at the companies I’m at. It wasn’t so much political, but you had to support certain things and you can’t really speak out against it, no way. Good luck. You’re gone.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, I have tons of respect for gays, I have tons of respect for transgenders, LGBTQ community, I love people who are not fake. Just be yourself, be honest, and you’ll always be able to look at yourself in the mirror. That’s the best advice I can give, because growing up, you always want to be somebody else, somebody else, somebody else, and you realize, hey, this is me. I mean, I tried to change my accent a little bit from New York, because I was told that, “You want to succeed in business, you’ve got to get rid of that accent and it’s too heavy,” and whatever.

Frank Curzio: And then I realized, doing the podcast for 14 years, I said, you know what, F- that. This is me. Yes, I’m not going to fully pronounce words and I’m going to say “aks” instead of “ask” and stuff like that, that’s me, you don’t like it, tune into another podcast; that’s fine. But I’m being true to myself. With that said, enough with the gay pride shit, I mean, 30 days is insane. And now it’s going into July; it’s past 30 days. Again, even gay people are like, “Enough already.” It’s totally overboard throwing it out there, and it’s great, celebrate it, it’s awesome, again.

Frank Curzio: But 30 days, and then you’re going past it, and they just throw it in your face intentionally. It almost defeats the purpose, right? Because you’re probably going to piss people off the more you’re continually throwing shit in people’s face all the time. And I don’t know, maybe that is the purpose, maybe that is the political agenda, piss more people off or whatever, but, man, come on. We know, equal rights, treat everybody the same, we get it, we get it, we get it. 30 days, that’s great. Now it’s extending into July and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, sorry about the rant, I had to go there. I know this is an investment podcast, I’m just telling you how I feel and going different places with my family and stuff like that. But man, even when I talk about this in different circles, people say the same thing, but they can’t really say it out loud. For me, I want to say it out loud, I want to be honest, I’m honest, and I’m always honest. Maybe I’m too honest, that’s what gets me in trouble.

Frank Curzio: Anyway, let’s move on to I guess more important things, which is our guest. And it’s a first timer, if you watch me on Benzinga, it’s Benzinga’s Power Hour, it’s every Thursday, 12:00 o’clock. It’s been on for the past few weeks, I’m going to be on for the next eight weeks, so Power Hour is a live show that they do on YouTube, where you share stock ideas. And it’s hosted by Luke Jacobi, who’s the director of operations for Benzinga for eight years, you’ll be surprised when you hear that, that’s how long he’s been there. Because when you see him, he looks young. He’s been around the markets close to 10 years, doing a fantastic job, he interviews me all the time, and I tell him, “Hey, I have this podcast, I have everybody on it.”

Frank Curzio: He’s like, “Oh, you don’t have me on,” which is really cool, and he was just poking fun at it. But he’s really good, again, been around the markets for a long time, he’s an amazing host that’s interviewed some of the top people in our industry. Also a smart analyst with access to great ideas, and that’s what this podcast is going to be about, because when I’m on his podcast, I’m sharing ideas, he’s coming on this podcast sharing his ideas, so get your pen and paper ready. Again, he interviews, has great, great contacts, deep, deep network, great host, he’s a superstar in the making in the industry. And let’s get to my interview with my buddy, Luke, right now.

Frank Curzio: Luke, thanks so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged.

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, absolutely, thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Frank Curzio: So, exciting times for you, you’re working at Benzinga, you’ve been there for nine years, you are now director of operations, and also, you host Power Hour, which I’ve been on in the past few weeks. I’m going to be on, I think, the next seven or eight weeks. And now, it’s nice to get you on the other side of the microphone. But talk about that journey, because you’ve been there for such a long time and seen it develop and everything, director of operations, that’s really cool, man.

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, so, it’s been quite a wild ride, the business has adapted significantly over the past nine years. The way that I got here is by happenstance. I saw that Benzinga was based out of Michigan, which is where I grew up. I have been a stock market junky for quite a while. I think I opened my first brokerage account when I was 15 years old, and my dad had to walk me into a Scottrade branch and fill out all the papers in his name because I wasn’t even old enough. I saved up lawn mowing money, whatever the account minimum was then, $2,500 or something like that.

Luke Jacobi: But I’ve been a stock market junky for quite a while. So, Benzinga was in the same area, just reached out to say hi, and basically got a message back from Jason, the founder of the company, saying, “Hey, we need more people to write articles, do you want to work here for free?” And I said, well, that sounds awesome. I get to just write about stocks and people will read it? All right, I’m down to do that, write up my stock ideas, my pitches, learn how to cover news, that sort of thing.

Luke Jacobi: So, that’s how the journey began, and today we are the most widely used news source for North American brokerages, so pretty much every major brokerage in North America carries Benzinga content, makes it available to their users. We get 20 million people a month to benzinga.com proper, to our site, we’ve built a ton of subscription products over the years, like our Benzinga Pro. So, it’s definitely been a hell of a journey over those nine years.

Frank Curzio: No, that’s awesome, and Jason I worked with at TheStreet.com and we both have a lot of respect for each other, I just had him on the podcast a couple of months ago. Just a great guy, and to see what he’s done with this company is incredible. And that’s one of the things I want to talk to you about, because the WallStreetBets thing, everybody knows about it now, I think it’s over 10 million strong now, but a lot of that started on your website with Citron, go into that a little bit. And also, are you surprised at how many young investors are coming into the market and coming into this platform?

Frank Curzio: Because even when I’m on your platform, it’s really cool. You do a great job hosting it. But it seems like just the way it’s set up, and I can see so many young investors… It’s just simple to use, people understand, you’re shouting out lots of ideas, you’re making it exciting. You’re talented people who are really, really excited, and that growth’s amazing. But I guess just talk about that; it’s awesome.

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, so, the GameStop and Citron moment was one of those, “Oh, shit, we made it,” type moments, in that when Citron was coming out with its short thesis and sort of doing that first talk about why it’s shorting GameStop, Benzinga was a platform that they said, “Hey, I’ll come on and make this short case,” they’d published some materials before. But I think it was the first time that they ended up just coming on video, saying, “I’ll make this short case to the individual investor via Benzinga.”

Luke Jacobi: And the reason why that was like a, “We made it,” type moment is because he looks at Benzinga as this is the mechanism to get in touch with the retail investor. It’s not through a CNBC, it’s not through a Yahoo Finance. Benzinga is the platform to do it. So, that was a really neat moment, but it’s the culmination of what we’ve been building towards. Our mission has always been about we want to make financial information easier to consume, we want to strip out jargon. We’re not going to make our readers read a 4,000 word story just to find out that Tesla announced a buyback, right?

Luke Jacobi: We want to get them to the point. We want to make things actionable. We’ve always written for mobile first. We’ve always tried to simplify… To let users get in and out. And so, we’re proud to say that our readership is younger, or skews younger, than any other financial media site out there, and that more of 70% of our readers on benzinga.com are aged 44 and below. More than 70%, almost every other financial media website out there, you’re going to see the exact opposite, where 70%, 80%, 90% of their visitors are aged 45 and above.

Luke Jacobi: Which makes sense, because that’s historically when people have gotten more involved in the market, they’ve taken more care about their finances as they’re getting closer to retirement. But the paradigm shift has been happening for many years. COVID sort of lit the fire of what was already going on in showing people, hey, markets are way more accessible than you think. And we’ve been there for the individual investor for that whole journey.

Frank Curzio: And just to show why that was a revolutionary moment… Andrew left, I met him several times, know him, he spoke at some of the conferences at a previous company I was at, and a great, great short seller, right? I think we all agree with that.

Luke Jacobi: Yes.

Frank Curzio: And he came on the platform, was it GameStop? So it was GameStop, saying-

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, it was GameStop, it was-

Frank Curzio: “I’m going to explain to everybody why I’m shorting this.” Of course, he has that massive short position before and comes on all the platforms, but that’s when a lot of people on WallStreetBets kind of took the other side and blew it out of the water. I think Jason said that it resulted in your systems going down, I think he said, I’m not too sure if that’s factual or not. But it’s an awesome result, and Citron, 20 years of doing short research, of not doing that anymore, saying, “We can’t do this anymore.”

Frank Curzio: When you have a market and a group like that, that could really trigger short sells, that’s a revolutionary change, right? That’s like a fundamental change in the markets. We talk about one of the best at what he does. He’s changing his business model because of what’s going on and starting a new platform. That’s pretty amazing stuff, man, that’s pretty cool.

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, he’s definitely a well-respected icon of Wall Street, and again, the fact that he looks at us as, “Hey, this is a vehicle that I have to make my case about something,” was pretty neat for us.

Frank Curzio: So, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been hosting the podcast, believe it or not, for 14 years. Holy cow, that’s how old I am, very, very, old. But everyone kind of has a podcast and stuff like that. But people always ask me, “What’s the value in it?” And it allowed me to create this amazing company, right? Where we have tons of subscribers now, generating millions in revenue. But the most important aspect is, I never saw it free for me, because I am interviewing brilliant people all the time. And I see the list of guests that you’re interviewing; how do you take that in?

Frank Curzio: Because these are people that are brilliant, and they’re sharing their ideas with you. Now you’re building your network, how important is that? Because people out there who do want to start their own podcast and start their own show, yeah, you might not make money off the podcast right away; you’ve got to find ways to do it. But the value of that is incredible in terms of the investment ideas and the access and the network, right?

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, the network is huge. The way that I think about it is, I care a lot about what I have to say, more than anybody else, I care more than anybody else about what I have to say. Our viewers don’t care a ton. They care about a lot of the names that they’re already familiar with, they care about the ideas that they’re already familiar with, and want to dig deeper into those names. So, building out the network, being able to grab hold of audiences that the people that we’re interviewing already have goes a really long way.

Luke Jacobi: And a mistake that I made early into getting started with our show was that I was too laissez-faire going into a lot of these conversations, in that it would be… Let’s say we’re interviewing Andrew Left, okay, we know he’s got a short position on this, a short position on that, boom, that’s enough to get into the interview. But the audience, that he’s going to bring in to listen to that segment, already know the basic stuff about him. They want to dig into that level too, what hasn’t he already publicly talked about? What hasn’t he already Tweeted about in the past 48 hours?

Luke Jacobi: Did you dig for sort of the meaning behind the statement? And so that’s the other big takeaway that I’ve had is when you bring the people on, they’re carrying an audience that already has that general idea as to what they’re talking about. It’s my job to try to be smart enough to dig into what are they really getting at here? What is the message that we need to uncover? Et cetera.

Frank Curzio: And that’s the job, right? Because for me, with the podcast, I do a ton of research on every guest. I go to LinkedIn, I look at what they said the last three to six months. I look at their interviews. I don’t want to ask the same shit all the time to then that they’ve answered numerous times. And I’ll come up with stuff, and I try to find something outside the scope of investing that maybe they make their own tequila or something, and that lights them up at the end of the interview, but it just shows they have character. It’s not just like a robot talking.

Frank Curzio: But just the amount of work that goes in to prepare for every interview is huge, and one of the other things I learned from interviewing people for so long is listening. So, sometimes talking is bad, right? So, a lot of times, what I see on financial media channels, on TV, is these guys are asking a question, and they have a list of questions, like 10 different questions. And for me, when I ask a question, if something goes in a direction I think is very, very cool, and I want to learn more about, the script is over.

Frank Curzio: I’ll have a couple of questions I want to ask, where I see people ask a question, and you’ll see them just looking, not listening to their guests, and I’m like, man, listen to these people, let them talk, because, one, you’re going to learn a lot, and it’s going to lead to a great conversation where we might touch up on something. Like now, we’re supposed to go over ideas and stuff and I find this fascinating, just learning how you built your personal brand on Benzinga and young investors like Andrew Left, and going there, the interview just takes a turn depending on where we’re going with it by listening.

Frank Curzio: But it really is cool, man. I hope you continue to do it, you’re doing a great job. Now, enough of being nice, because every time I’m on your show you put my feet to the fire: ideas, ideas, ideas.

Luke Jacobi: Oh, I do.

Frank Curzio: So, I’m going to do the same for you. I gave you, I think, three; hopefully, you can give us three. If not, two, whatever you can give us. But what are some of the things that you’re looking at. And like you say, I know you’re a stock junkie. I know you do a lot of research and homework and stuff like that. So, I’m looking forward to hearing some of these picks, man.

Luke Jacobi: All right, so let’s dive into them. I’m going to pull out the notepad. I’ve got a handful that I think we can get into. All right, let’s start with ticker PRTS, carparts.com. It’s one that I’ve talked about quite a bit. Background on the business is basically they are the online car part reseller. So, if you’re thinking you need a new headlamp or whatever piece of your vehicle that you need, carparts.com has all the inventory to be able to provide that.

Luke Jacobi: A couple of reasons why I think this stock is interesting. On the story side of things, only 3% of car parts are sold online. We’re in a market where 97% are still sold retail, via service, it makes sense that a lot of it is folks take their cars in somewhere to get serviced and then they’re buying the parts from whoever is doing that service. But, again, you still have a ton of individuals who are going to an O’Reilly’s, into places like that, purchasing in store, so much so that only 3% is purchased online. So, I think that the industry is good.

Luke Jacobi: The other thing that we have going for us is that new vehicle inventories are at all-time lows, new car prices are high, people are going to hold onto used cars longer, they’re going to need more parts, right? It’s, again, speaking towards the industry, the industry is good. The reason why I like this stock in particular is that the market doesn’t like it, it’s one of those stocks that truly is an internet, eComm play, but does get treated like one. If we look at a price to sales ratio on this stock, it’s I believe 1.6, so the stock’s trading at literally 1.6 times price to sale. Let’s say the S&P 500 averages four.

Luke Jacobi: And then annual revenue growth for carparts.com is 90%. They guided for something like 70% year-over-year revenue growth. They blew it out of the water. They hit 90%. The market is still only treating the stock with the 1.6 times price to sales ratio. They have cash in the balance sheets, so we don’t have any sort of offering risk. They’re building distribution centers. They’re launching marketing campaigns. And so, I think that the industry is right. I think the company is right. I think the valuation is right. So, there’s my first one: carparts.com, PRTS.

Frank Curzio: It’s interesting, they have… Covering it-

Luke Jacobi: What do you think of that one?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I hate it, I’m shorting it. No, I’m kidding. There’s four analysts that cover it here. You’ve got a target price, $24, $25, which is much higher than $18. So, yeah, they all have buy ratings on the stock, but it makes sense to me because you say 3% is online. But I’m surprised it’s not more because, yes, people go to, they’re bringing their car, but there’s a lot of companies that make brake pads. There’s a lot of companies that make a lot of different things, you can go in and sometimes they don’t have that, or you could price.

Frank Curzio: And you know what you’re getting. So, you go in there and you’re like, all right, maybe I want to buy something else, and go on the internet, and it’s going to be cheaper, right? So, I’m surprised that it’s only 3%. that’s an amazing number; it just shows how much growth is there. I like it. I like that idea. I think there’s huge growth there. I’m very familiar with the car cycle. I feel like I know a ton about it. I know why the autos, I mean, they have a different supply chain system, which is real to the market, and they were late to the party, where everyone else saw the supply chains getting really messed up and delayed, and they took up all the capacity, where Taiwan Semi, Samsung, pretty much make all the semiconductors for everything. And the autos were like, “Wait a minute, we’re seeing demand.”

Frank Curzio: They’re like, “Sorry, we’re already at 100% capacity.” And now, they have to build new facilities. So, if you go in and buy a new car right now, to your specs, I’m talking just your color and a regular model, it’s nine months before you get it. So, that’s why you’re seeing prices explode.

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, it’s just crazy, right? It’s insane.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. It is insane. So, yeah, I love this pick, man, it’s pretty cool. All right, let’s keep rolling, go ahead. Let’s keep going.

Luke Jacobi: All right, shall we keep on autos? I am in Detroit, Michigan, maybe a little bit of a bias, but I’m going to throw one out that I’ve been in for quite a while actually, since January, I’m still in it and I’m selling calls against the long position to lower the cost basis. But it’s going to be Ford Motor, ticker F. I think that there’s a little bit of a fundamental story to be made for Ford in that the stock is still relatively cheap. It’s had a really nice run, but it’s still relatively cheap.

Luke Jacobi: If we look at an EV to EBITDA ratio, I think price to sales is really hard for the autos because they have their financing arms. But if we look at an EV to EBITDA ratio, the stock is still only trading at eight, that’s significantly lower than if we want to take an S&P 500 average. And then, if we want to look at automakers in particular, whether we want to look at our Teslas, it looks really cheap, but if we want to look at our more traditional automakers which are a better comp like a Toyota and a General Motors. Valuation still has a little bit of room to come up.

Luke Jacobi: The reason why I think this one is still interesting at this point is Ford has proved to us this year that they are a PR machine. We see what I call the EV energy flowing into stocks, when we were seeing Neo rip and Tesla rip and all these EV stocks just start going. Ford came out and said to the market, “Hey, guys, we’re about to spend a ton of money on advertising an EV platform that we’re rolling out.” They absolutely haven’t disappointed this year. They’ve been a PR machine, talking about vehicles they’re launching a year from now, two years from now, three years from now.

Luke Jacobi: They are going to have products coming online, three, so we’re going to have new EV products on the marketplace for them, and when those hit, I’m expecting Ford to drop a ton of money on marketing and advertising for their EV products. So, again, I said I’m selling calls against the stock, if you look at the chart, it’s definitely not beautiful. So, I have an underlying long position stock, I’ve been selling calls against it for the past two months and just working that cost basis down 15 cents a week basically, which doesn’t sound like a ton, but it adds up. It maybe lowered my cost basis from an eight to a seven over the past two months.

Luke Jacobi: But, again, I like it for a longer term swing trade, I want to see them get that EV marketing machine, PR machine, rolling, which they’ve already showed us they can do, and let’s see if that can drive some more energy back into the stock.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, so, Ford I’m very familiar with. And the EV portfolio, I guess is surprising to some, but going to Consumer Electronics Show, I always do boots-on-the-ground research. I like going to conferences. I’ve been going there for 10 years, the last five years, Ford has spent billions getting into this industry, and just displaying their cars, displaying the technology, being able to talk to people on the floor, real employees, not the CEO who’s always going to tell you how great his company is.

Frank Curzio: But it was amazing to see them getting into this. With that said, for me being in the market for a car and looking at Ford and GM, I just feel like the production, if you can get past these next two quarters, it’s going to be fine, but like you said, they are a PR machine because they are talking their EV portfolio like crazy, which won’t be available until, what, 2030? Which is a very long time away, but they’re talking how great it is, and I get it and it’s fine. But you’re going to see massive production cuts here, that’s the only thing that worries me over the next two quarters, but you’re holding it long-term. I like what you’re doing in terms of the option strategy, lowering your cost basis.

Frank Curzio: But that’s the only thing that worries me because they just reported really bad numbers, I think they’re going to report…

Luke Jacobi: Really bad.

Frank Curzio: Because they’re not getting any production, they’re idling plants. So, if they can go through this and people don’t care, this thing is going to go to 20. So, it’s going to be interesting to see, but-

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, here’s my one piece of solace with this one, is that the company did guide that Q2 is going to be the worst part of their year. They said Q2 is going to suck. They told us that in Q1 it sucked, and they said that’s the trough. Hopefully, they had enough foresight to be able to foresee what the rest of the year was going to look like, I think that’s yet to be determined. But that’s the little bit of solace that I have.

Frank Curzio: And the cars that they’re getting, which are very few on the lot, are selling above sticker. I had to pay above sticker, no incentives, and I didn’t pay for that, the guy behind me was buying it. There was three that went on a lot, it was some Denalis, and three of them came in. I got lucky and had to buy it to that spec, and they were like, “Let me know which you want, because the other two are gone.” And there was like five people there and you need a car, right? If your lease is up, and there’s hardly any cars to buy because everyone’s having supply issues.

Frank Curzio: But then, said that, there’s usually 350 new cars on one of the lots, and there was 20, and that was common for a lot of these things. So, once this thing reverses, so Ford might make up the difference in terms of being able to charge huge prices, much higher prices. But it’ll be interesting to see; they’ve got to get those cars in the shops and get that production going. But, yeah, right now, it’s held up surprisingly through that quarter, which I thought was weak. But if they hold up through here, I think this thing could really, really start going for you.

Frank Curzio: So, right, real quick, do you have one more or are you done there? And if you’re done, it’s perfectly fine, but I’ve got to try to squeeze one more out of you.

Luke Jacobi: No, we’ll hit one more. We’ll go with more of a spec play, how is that?

Frank Curzio: All right.

Luke Jacobi: I’m going to throw this one out, another one I’ve talked about a ton, Voyager Digital, primary listing is in Canada with ticker VYGR, also OTC listed, ticker VYGVF on OTC markets. In short for this one, I don’t want to take up too long. But the in short for this one is that it’s a crypto brokerage rather than exchange, which means they offer commission free crypto trading. If you’re thinking about a Coinbase, you have to pay, what is it? Like a 1% fee in order to transact on the platform. Voyager is one of the few, them and Robinhood, that are actually allowing commission free crypto trading.

Luke Jacobi: The way that Voyager makes money is that if they fill your order better than they quoted it for you. They share in that saving. So, if they quote you Bitcoin at 30,000 they fill it for 29,000, there’s 1,000 dollars of savings, you’ve got to split that money. The reason why I think this one is interesting is that it’s gotten hit with all the other Bitcoin stocks. I’m talking about the Bitcoin miners in particular, your Riots and your Maras. But the thing that’s beautiful about Voyager is that they make money on both sides.

Luke Jacobi: As long as there’s transactions that are happening, users are trading, they’re making money. It’s not like they’re dependent on the price of Bitcoin to increase, they also offer 60 alt coins on their platform. So, let’s say Bitcoin falls out of favor, but then we see Dogecoin start going crazy again, they benefit from that transaction as well. Do I think that that user growth, new users entering the crypto market and joining the platform will slow down? Yes, but the stock price and the estimates have gotten washed out as Bitcoin has dropped off.

Luke Jacobi: I know from our readership on benzinga.com there is still a massive amount of people who care about crypto, are reading about crypto, involved with crypto and alt coins every single day, even though the price is way off of its highs. And so for that reason I’m trying to pick a bottom and Voyager, I said this is the more speculative one, the high risk, high reward type play. But Voyager Digital, that is the next one I’m throwing out there.

Frank Curzio: I wish I had an air horn. For people unfamiliar-

Luke Jacobi: See, that will do it.

Frank Curzio: Why do you do the air horn on Power Hour? What do you do that for?

Luke Jacobi: The air horn just lights it up, nothing drives energy like the air horn, all right?

Frank Curzio: So, the reason why I’m saying that is because my way is very familiar with this company, and we were very, very fortunate. We recommended it down here below a dollar, and we still have it in the portfolio. So we also had it up here and participated and moved down but we’re still up a lot. But very familiar with this company and what they’re doing; they’re just amazing. I didn’t know that they were splitting the difference if they get a better price and brokerage and stuff. But these guys are right in the middle of it, they’re 100% pure play on crypto, just like the Galaxy Digitals and the Marathons and the Riots.

Frank Curzio: So, if you’re a real believer, I think you agree with this, right? If Bitcoin is going to 100,000, which we hear all the time, and it doesn’t have to happen this year, it could happen two, three years, this company, Marathon, Riot, Galaxy, all of these things could pop tremendously. Yeah.

Luke Jacobi: Buy them all. The reason why I like this one though is that they make it on both sides, versus Mara. Mara owns Bitcoin, your price is pegged to whatever the price of Bitcoin is, whereas this one, I like that the revenue stream is a little bit more diversified. Of course, if Bitcoin goes up, it’s good for the whole space.

Frank Curzio: You’re right, I think Mara and also Riot just got a little lucky with the China closure, though, because now, they’re not the only game in town. But everyone’s struggling, and those guys are locked in, the hash rate’s down, so it is interesting to see how… I love the crypto industry and how much it changes, it’s really cool.

Luke Jacobi: Have you looked at CleanSpark?

Frank Curzio: No. I haven’t looked at CleanSpark. See, you’re going to make me write a name down, I love it. Why? What do you know about it?

Luke Jacobi: Check out CLSK, not in it, potentially going to be, those three that I just talked about, I’m in all three of those, but CleanSpark, one potentially getting into in the near term. So, the background of the company is that they do microgrids, it’s basically a SaaS play for small solar energy setups. So, if you have solar panels at your house, they’re running all the SaaS software to optimize energy collection, storage, repurposing back to the main energy grid, et cetera, that’s their core, and they’re a legacy business. They have military contracts to operate these microgrids at military bases. They’ve moved residential as well and are getting more residential uses.

Luke Jacobi: But basically to showcase that they’re really, really efficient with energy. They bought Bitcoin miners, and because they create all the energy themselves and maintain all the energy infrastructure themselves because that’s their core business is software, plus the hardware for these microgrid systems. They’re mining Bitcoin at less than $6,000 per coin. And they don’t get a ton of a premium for that at all. They get almost no credit for the revenue of their core business, which has been around for many years and existed as a public company for many years. And so, you’ve got the stock trading at $550 million market cap.

Luke Jacobi: And then cash and cash equivalents are something like $300 million. So, it’s a cheap stock and I think an interesting way to get some of that crypto mining exposure.

Frank Curzio: No, I love it. I love it. New idea, I also love the 52-week range, 260 to 42, that’s awesome. So, it’s trading at around 16 right now, but… So, listen, love the picks, love the ideas, you know your audience, the audience, they love those ideas. I love talking about your background, learning more about you, man. I think you’re doing a fantastic job. I’m looking forward to Power Hour and being on there tomorrow and every Thursday for the next few weeks.

Frank Curzio: If someone wants to get in touch with you, learn more about you and whatever, if it’s through social media or at Benzinga, how can they do that?

Luke Jacobi: Yeah, Twitter, super easy, Luke Jacobi is my handle, J-A-C-O-B-I, on Twitter. Reach out, say hi, if you ever have ideas of things we should be doing at Benzinga, things we should be doing better articles that you think suck, whatever it is, tell me. We’ve been building this company for nine years. We started the segment. We want to be the best out there. So, always looking for ways to improve our business.

Frank Curzio: No, that’s awesome stuff. Well, listen, thanks for coming on, keep kicking ass, man, and I’ll see you tomorrow on Power Hour. I was pretty nice, so you’ve got to be nice to me tomorrow, so it should be pretty cool.

Luke Jacobi: No, you were pretty nice. And don’t worry, I’ll have the air horn ready. We’ll be smashing that air horn.

Frank Curzio: All right, I’ll have some good ideas for you, man.

Luke Jacobi: Perfect.

Frank Curzio: So, listen, thanks so much for coming on. And, yeah, I’ll talk to you soon.

Luke Jacobi: Awesome, thank you, Frank. Talk soon.

Frank Curzio: All right guys, great stuff from Luke, you can watch him host Power Hour every Thursday, or every day actually at 12:00. But Thursday especially because that’s when I’m on the show. Talk about my favorite ideas, and I’m going to be on there over the next eight weeks, so I’m doing some partnerships with those guys. They’re growing tremendously, they’re doing fantastic, so be sure to give it a watch. And when I’m on, they have a chat box, feel free to answer questions, make fun of me, say anything you want, ask me anything you want. But thanks for Luke coming on, sharing those ideas. I say this all the time, this podcast is about you, not about me, let me know what you thought of that idea, frank@curzioresearch.com. That’s frank@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio: Now, let’s bring in the one and only Daniel Creech. What’s going on, man?

Daniel Creech: Frank, what’s happening?

Frank Curzio: So, we like talking about recent news for the week, and last week was a little… It was an all right. This week, holy cow.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: I mean, we could start off on a lot of different things, just what we do here, guys, is not just the topics that are important, but we get a lot of questions through you, because you’re emailing frank@curzioresearch.com, and these are topics that we want to cover. So, email us in if you want us to cover things. Email Monday, Tuesday, and say, “Hey, could you cover this in a podcast?” Or whatever, because a lot of these stories, there was a lot of stories, big stories out there, and I want to start with DiDi, with China, I mean, holy cow, what happened there?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Uber of China, you know. Well, there’s always a lot under the surface and so it did an initial public offering, Frank, what? Just a couple of days ago, surged, I think it was priced at $12 to $13, $14, it went over $16 at one time, and then what we always hype about and piss a lot of people off with, but why you have to pay attention to regulation and politics, right? Because China, those power enforcers over there just literally pulled the plug.

Daniel Creech: And this goes back, remember, I think last week we talked a little bit about Buffett and Munger and their Building Wealth special on CNBC, and Munger was praising some of China’s government in how quickly they get things done. So, when they say jump, people say, “How high?” When they say stop, stuff comes to a screeching halt. There’s no slowing down, there’s no speed limit detours in China. You don’t go from 65 to 45 to 30. You go from 65 to zero.

Daniel Creech: And so, what happened was basically their App Store over in China, China said, “Hey, you have to take the DiDi hail service, ride servicing app off of your platform.” And it caused shares to plunge, and, Frank, when shares plunge like that initially after the IPO, who gets hurt the worst?

Frank Curzio: Of course, it’s the retail investors, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what everything’s about, right? The whole market is based on, I’ll say it, fucking the retail investor, and they do that as much as they can, that’s what IPOs are and, yeah, especially now and the format and stuff like that, you’re going to be going on that, but they come out with a crazy valuation, we’ll talk about that because of Robinhood IPO. I love looking at these S-1s, that’s where you can really break down a company. Few people look at them and just figure it out.

Frank Curzio: But, anyway, let’s stay on DiDi here, because we’re seeing that, and I brought up the chart, which was funny, and it’s not funny for investors, though.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Well, it surged and the big thing here for me is you can easily play Monday morning quarterback and say, “Hey, you should’ve seen this coming, you can never count for China to tell the truth,” a lot of foreign governments and a lot of governments in general are not so straightforward with people. It’s easy to take that route, but this is a new data point that investors need to pay attention to. You really need to look at geopolitics and see where capital is going to flow. So, you noticed, Frank, yesterday, China related stocks, JD.com, Tencent, which they own WeChat, how would you describe WeChat over in China, Frank? The biggest and best instant messenger that everybody uses.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, where they track everything and provide… Yeah, so basically, WeChat’s huge, yeah.

Daniel Creech: And all those shares sold, Alibaba, Jack Ma, where, oh, where is Jack Ma, Frank?

Frank Curzio: I don’t know where he’s been, he did finally come out.

Daniel Creech: He did. He basically said he’s doing well. His diet’s working, he’s losing weight, he’s getting healthy.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, he said everything’s well, but I don’t know if you can really prepare for something like this. I mean, we’re bringing up the chart, the stock came out at $14 a couple of days ago, the 30th, I believe it was, and then went up to $17 or $16.50 about, and now it’s all the way down to $11. But how do you prepare for something like that when it seems like, doesn’t seem like, but China obviously timed this so they would screw them the most, right?

Daniel Creech: That’s the way it looks.

Frank Curzio: So, it’s, hey, you could’ve done this before and that’s okay. And it makes you think that ByteDance, which may be-

Daniel Creech: Your favorite platform.

Frank Curzio: TikTok is the greatest thing ever, holy cow. Don’t go on TikTok, it’s so great, I love TikTok, oh my God. You’ll just be laughing hysterically.

Daniel Creech: See? Look, all I had to go to get you going, look at that, see? It’s all you’ve got to say.

Frank Curzio: TikTok, holy cow is that addicting and it’s just really, really cool. You’re going to watch amazing, amazing videos tailored right to your needs. Anyway, ByteDance is going to be the biggest social media platform in the world, everybody is copying them and their format because it’s so amazing. But a lot of that has to do with collecting data, which is why the Trump administration came out and said, whether you agree or not, I don’t want to get political here, but they’re collecting data. China is collecting data.

Frank Curzio: But apparently with DiDi, I guess they’re not collecting? I don’t know, you think all of China, the government is collecting data, but if that was the case, then they wouldn’t be coming out and basically-

Daniel Creech: Well, the reason or justification is for consumer protection and cybersecurity threats and all that kind of stuff. So, that’s what the government over there is saying, “Hey, this is potentially harmful to individuals and their data, so we’re going to look out for you guys and protect all this.” What’s ironic about that is evidently you don’t care about the people’s data they already have, because when you take the app off, existing users of the DiDi app were still okay to use it, but you weren’t allowed to have new users.

Daniel Creech: Well, what does that do for a growth company and trying to get new revenue and new customers? To your point, who owns TikTok, Frank? What was it? Byte?

Frank Curzio: ByteDance.

Daniel Creech: ByteDance, they’re looking to IPO. Did you see the valuation that they’re talking about for private?

Frank Curzio: No, it’s got to be, what is it, 100 billion, plus?

Daniel Creech: No. Yeah, plus.

Frank Curzio: What is it?

Daniel Creech: So, first of all, I’ll tease you with that for a minute, instead of listing over here, they’re looking at either listing in China or Hong Kong, okay. So, you have geopolitical powers competing for public capital in markets and economies, that’s a big thing, we’ll go down that road another time. 400 to 500 billion dollars.

Frank Curzio: I was going to say, if that thing came out, I was really just going to say, Daniel, if that thing came out at a 300 billion dollar evaluation or lower, I would make that the largest position in my portfolio, because that thing is going to be a trillion dollar… If you see where Facebook is, ByteDance, that’s the future of social media, that’s the video platform, everybody’s copying it but, holy cow. And people are on it for a real long time, man, and they’re going to start generating a fortune.

Daniel Creech: Well, that kind of valuation, you talk about crazy and, hey, good for them, CNBC had a report where they were willing to accept a lower valuation, and they know they were going to get a lower valuation by listing somewhere else other than the United States, but they’re okay with that. Why? Well, if you ask a simple minded guy like me, it’s because you want to walk the line on China and not have these regulatory crackdowns just like DiDi. The worst thing in the world is to go public.

Daniel Creech: How many lawsuits, they’re facing at least two here in the US. I mean, they’re low hanging fruit, Frank, if you’re a lawyer, I’m not a lawyer. You’re misleading in your disclosures, you didn’t tell us that this was a risk, now it’s come out that China actually warned them not to go public and all that, you talk about just an absolute mess. And, again, if you bought this stock anywhere after its IPO and you’re down big and now motions are playing, you know.

Frank Curzio: All over TV, people talking about it on TV, which you talked about earlier.

Daniel Creech: So, I kind of sidestepped your earlier question, how do you play this? Well, you either avoid it completely or you trade it, in my opinion. After getting smacked, I think it was down almost another 10% today because it got pulled off basically the App Store version of China, now it got pulled off of the WeChat and Alibaba.

Frank Curzio: A bunch of apps, yeah.

Daniel Creech: So, it was down a little bit before we came on the air today, I don’t know what it’s doing right now, but as a trade, why wouldn’t this thing spike? Either trade it or stay away from it is my simple two cents.

Frank Curzio: How would it spike, though? I mean, you see a company that when they get removed from these App Stores, you’re done, there’s no place to download it now, right?

Daniel Creech: Right, but if you do certain things right over there and you get on the good side of China, they’re one headline away from saying, “You know, we’ll put this under review, maybe we’ll let them.”

Frank Curzio: Yeah, but you know what, Daniel, getting on the right side of China seems like? Because they were saying that they want to protect personal information, which is a joke to me, China saying protect anything, but protect personal information. So, they want to collect that data. This way, they can throw AI on it and study patterns and, again, that’s great for advertising dollars. So basically, you’re ruining their model of generating profits in social media.

Frank Curzio: So even if they change that, that’s kind of scary. And I know you see how there’s people… Listen, you really couldn’t see it coming, no matter who you are, it just happened. Maybe you’ll see one or two guys say, “It’s right here,” buried in the 500 page thing, whatever.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: And I know Jim Cramer was touting this, which you said, and I think he’s pretty pissed off now, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I happened to catch a little bit of CNBC this morning when they were talking about it with the new app getting taken off of WeChat and Alibaba, he was actually calling on the SCC commissioner, is it Gensler? I don’t have it in front of me.

Frank Curzio: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Creech: Something like that, about, hey, why aren’t you making an announcement of saying, “Hey, we’re going to look into this, we’re going to talk to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley,” I forget the third lead underwriter in that group, which just plays into our thesis for Curzio Research Advisory, invest in the most crooked people in Wall Street because Goldman Sachs.

Frank Curzio: They made their fees. They made their fees.

Daniel Creech: Let’s say they end up paying fees, they’re probably a third of whatever they-

Frank Curzio: They’re in this stock a lot lower, believe me, and they made their fees. They’re fine.

Daniel Creech: But Cramer seeing that and saying, “Hey, the SCC should be after this,” but what are you going to do? Are you going to go over to China and tell them, you’re basically just going to segregate markets, capital is going to have to decide where they want to list, where they’re treated best, ultimately it will flow there. That’s got to be bullish in the US for the longer term, but you’re going to miss out on some huge opportunities and growth stocks. But, again, if the regulatory environment is so thick hanging over, why would you want to play that game?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, and one thing I will say about Cramer because I know he was really pissed off, a lot of people have their strong opinions on Cramer, but I would say from someone that worked for him, when he gets something wrong, you don’t want to be around him, he’s really pissed, and he’s pissed because he understands the responsibility that he has that so many people are listening to him. He’ll take it out a lot on employees, including us, the research analysts, but I kind of always liked that and respected that because some people just, “Hey, this is going up, this is going down,” and they really don’t care.

Frank Curzio: Just that emotion shows the care, and we’re all going to get it wrong from time to time, so I’ll defend him a little bit there, but, no, I hear you. But this brings us to, I don’t know if I want to talk about a bigger point here when it comes to China, but China is becoming more powerful than the United States, right in front of our eyes. You see it in the political world where everybody’s on the take in China, just look at the trail. It’s so freaking easy, it’s unbelievable. It’s why they’re opening up. That’s really what I think doomed Trump, when he really started going after China and everything, because you’re cutting off that money supply to so many people.

Frank Curzio: But just the fact, ban this, ban that, and getting stronger and stronger, it’s kind of crazy. How much is out of China, even with Bitcoin and mining and stuff like that? And by the way, Crypto Intelligence coming out later today, and I recommended a stock based on that that’s going to be a huge beneficiary. But really, really good issue coming out, video issue for you Crypto Intelligence subscribers. But, yeah, when I see this with China and how much power, and how it’s getting greater and greater and greater and just… Look, it’s the Hong Kong thing, Taiwan. I don’t know, man, I don’t know.

Frank Curzio: That’s a risk down the line, later on, but, man, it could get hostile, I think it might get hostile, but it’s pretty crazy out there. It is, it really is, when you look at it under the hood, it’s not political or anything. It’s political in what they’re doing, how they know they can just bribe our politicians and get whatever they want, make sure they get access to every organization and everything, but it’s kind of crazy. And, again, I’m talking about China’s government. I’ve been to China. I love the people in China. It’s beautiful,. I think it’s great. But, yeah, that’s a little scary, you know?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely it’s going to cause volatility in the markets, there is risk for greater conflict in reality, but absolutely in the markets, so just be prepared for that, brace for that and just know, but pay attention because it’s good. The crackdown in crypto continues, they’re cracking down on companies that help process transactions and different things, but crypto is doing what? Its holding 35, it’s kind of marching back, bouncing around between 30 and 35 thousand.

Frank Curzio: And look at gold, did you see gold?

Daniel Creech: Yep, now, I mentioned that this morning to you and I was like, man, gold popped I think $20, $25 yesterday, it was up another $10 pre-market today, don’t know exactly what it is. Two days aren’t a big deal or a huge reversal, but it’s something to pay attention to because you talk about low hanging fruit, commodities and oil, we’ve talked about that a lot lately. But going forward, just pay attention to regulatory issues and just know that, hey, this is part of your investing world now.

Daniel Creech: So, know what ETFs you own, know what exposure you have. It’s real enticing to invest in China because it’s a huge growth market, but you have to remember, the government can enforce rules overnight and they can change their mind just as quickly, so, volatility, maybe look at it as a trading platform.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And even going into gold a little bit here too is just one of the greatest environments in gold probably in the last 20 years, that’s why I have a lot invested in gold. I don’t know where it’s going in the next couple of months or whatever, but I do know that inflation is coming, I know we’re seeing a 10-year come down, people are saying, “It could be inflation.” You’re flooding the markets, look at wages, wage growth, a lot of these numbers are getting crazy. Just look at the value of your home.

Frank Curzio: But also, these guys are in a perfect position, they’re in a great position where supply is still limited, they can produce for under $1,000 an ounce, where are we, $1,800, wherever we are today. These balance sheets have never been stronger, they’re buying back stock, they pay dividends, you talk about the producers here, and it’s going to open up the door to they need to find gold assets and projects, and that’s going to open the door to junior miners with really good management teams and projects, but it’s a really good time to invest in gold, you’re going to see the ups and downs. It’s going to give you the opportunity to buy things 10%, 15% lower.

Frank Curzio: But if you have just a two to four year outlook, this is a great industry to invest in and I haven’t seen better conditions in the gold industry than what we’re seeing right now probably for 20 years.

Daniel Creech: You’re still with your price target of $2,000 by the end of the year?

Frank Curzio: I think we’re going to hit $2,000 by the end of the year, yeah, I really do.

Daniel Creech: Well, you’re not far off, so that’s pretty good.

Frank Curzio: No, actually, $2,000, but I think we could blow past that. I think we could be at $2,500, if we go past $2,000, I’m going to go right to $2,500.

Daniel Creech: I wish I could do my best auctioneer voice, we’d go 21, 22, 2,250, 23.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, and look, if I’m wrong, it’s forecasting and who knows if it’s going to be December, who knows if it’s going to be three months after that, so don’t play it through options and have that time value in that. But I do know that it is going higher. And it should go higher. And I think also the Bitcoin environment is amazing as well. Visa, did you see that news on Visa?

Daniel Creech: No.

Frank Curzio: Their Bitcoin card has done one billion in transactions so far in the first half of the year.

Daniel Creech: Is that the rewards or is that using Bitcoin for purchases?

Frank Curzio: I think it’s a Bitcoin card, so I just read the headlines, I didn’t get any chance to read the story… I just saw it and was like, holy shit. But it just shows you, the adoption of Bitcoin is just amazing.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: I told the story in my Crypto Intelligence newsletter that you’ll hear, and I’ll say it again, but I was in St. Augustine, which is the oldest city in the United States, and we stayed at a DoubleTree and the ATM machine, Bitcoin. So you could pay for things Bitcoin, whatever, but it had Bitcoin available in an ATM machine, which I thought is amazing, that doesn’t get more mainstream than that at the oldest city.

Frank Curzio: But there’s news coming out about Tether again, all this stuff about Tether and being risky, and could be the Black Swan event. But, again, we’ve been through this once before. They’ve gotten fined and they got a look under the hood of what’s going on there, but you’re seeing, Bitcoin remains strong along with gold, and I guess talking about another topic here, one is, did you hear the rain just a minute ago?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, oh, yeah.

Frank Curzio: So, we’re in Florida, and the hurricane is here. We’re not really getting hit by a hurricane, guys.

Daniel Creech: No, it’s a tropical storm now.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it’s a tropical storm.

Daniel Creech: I say that like I know the difference, I’m still new enough here.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, you have to be careful because within three days it’s projected to hit Miami head on and almost be a hurricane into Miami, and now, Miami, I don’t even know if they’re getting any rain, that’s how far west it moved. But it’s barely going to hit Jacksonville, but all the water’s gone here. If you noticed, Daniel will go grab some water sometimes and he bought two cases and-

Daniel Creech: I got lucky, is the water gone from the grocery stores?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, they’re gone. So, I took a half a case to the house yesterday.

Daniel Creech: You know, it’s funny, normally I buy one, one a week at least for the office, and the other one I bought two, and I didn’t even honestly think about the storm, I was like, I’m lazy, I don’t want to come back in a couple days, I’m just going to get two now. Sometimes you get lucky.

Frank Curzio: No, yeah, but that was cool. But a lot of times, it’s so funny, right? Because you have to sound crazy, I remember, I’ve been here for 11 years and I’m probably jinxing the hell out of it for this year, but we had two hurricanes that created a little bit of damage, a little bit of flooding, nothing major. But we are in a place where it’s really almost very, very inland, if you look at that map and just look at Florida, we’re above Jacksonville.

Frank Curzio: But if you just look at that of how a hurricane has to almost come all the way into you, because we’re so far inland from the rest of Florida, it’s very hard to hit this area, but you would think that houses get destroyed every other year based on the news and stuff like that. But I remember they had one guy in a canoe and all of a sudden you see him paddling the canoe, and somebody walks in the water right by them while they’re paddling. It’s like, come on.

Frank Curzio: But in all of the news flow, because all my friends call and say, “Are you okay with the hurricane?” I’m like, yeah, it’s going to get a little bit of a rainstorm, a little bit of wind, but it’s not too bad. But, yeah, I do hear it, and that’s funny.

Frank Curzio: Now, I wanted to talk about the Robinhood IPO because a lot of stuff came out on it, they’re doing a direct listing. So, it’s not a traditional IPO. They have Goldman Sachs, of course.

Daniel Creech: Oh, yeah.

Frank Curzio: Lead underwriter, I think they’re the lead underwriter in the deal. And they have their S-1, which means you’ve got to say everything, and all your risks and everything has to be in there, and there was a lot of everything in there, right?

Daniel Creech: Of course, well, there has to be. Speaking of regulation, they just paid a big, $70 million fine, I think that was last week.

Frank Curzio: That was it, a $70 million fine, which I don’t know if that was for not-

Daniel Creech: It was related to the GameStop and all that kind of fiascos.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. But remember, with GameStop, their excuse for the whole thing was not SCC related or margin call requirements, it was, “Oh, we’re trying to protect the investor.” Bullshit. Bullshit. I mean, come on, that was great. They’re going to be great for Wall Street with the IPO, they’re perfectly set up for that, so good for them. But they also, the SCC, they’ve paid the former SCC head, Dale Gallagher, $30 million to work for their chief legal officer. Man.

Daniel Creech: Are you kidding? I didn’t see that.

Frank Curzio: I just interviewed Hester Peirce, Hester, what are you doing? Get out of the SCC, these people are hiring and they want experience and they want people with contacts, that’s what it is. When you’re an SCC commissioner, when that’s up, holy cow, it’s like an automatic five million dollar plus with a signing bonus of probably two, three Teslas and four houses right now, if you’re SCC commissioner. And it makes sense, right? Especially for Robinhood, which has needed to understand regulation a little bit better and position themselves right and understand what was coming at them if they were wrong and the fine they had to pay, but that’s a very, very big fine, guys. That’s a huge fine.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, that’s a huge fine.

Frank Curzio: 70 million.

Daniel Creech: But, hey, you know what, that’s the game, that’s the way it’s played. Fines aren’t that big of a deal for these massive corporations, but it’s sad but that’s the way it is. What’s got my attention here, for this Robinhood thing, is, so, Robinhood took off like crazy because it was allowing the retail investors to trade for free, which there’s nothing free, it’s all backend for front running, so it’s not free there.

Daniel Creech: But their user growth was exploding, and according to CNBC here, from March 2020, I don’t know if it goes through March of this year, but Robinhood has grown its funded accounts, they describe those as which have bank accounts linked to them, to 18 million customers, as of March this year. That’s up from 7.2 million in March of 2020. So, if you remember the timeline, Robinhood was blowing up because it allowed everybody, the little guy, to stick it to the big guy, call short squeezes, make lots of money.

Daniel Creech: Then the fiasco with them halting trading and all that happened. So, the account users is growing, they have the assets under custody are $80 billion, that’s up from just under $20 billion last March, so that’s a huge year over year. When this starts trading, Frank, who’s buying this? Because I think this is a great gauge of your retail investor sentiment. If this thing gets bit up, did everybody just forget that they locked them out, and are they not upset anymore? Why are these accounts so-

Frank Curzio: I know. You asked the wrong question. Who’s buying it. I know who’s selling it. Because they’re coming out with a direct listing, and their employees and directors are going to be able to sell a portion of this on day one. No three month lockup, no six month lockup, maybe for some of their shares, but they have the ability to sell a lot of shares on day one, which is insane because you’re promoting this whole entire company, all the metrics that you just mentioned, again, they’re going to be fantastic, more people will get involved in crypto just like Coinbase.

Frank Curzio: And now, guys, you have to realize something as a retail investor, okay, this is why I started this company, and, please, tune in on Friday for a CEO, we’re going to do our AGM, so our annual general meeting, we’re going to go over 2020 financials on everything, it’s at 11:30, you can register if you’re on our email list, you’ve got an email already or you can go to our website. Please register, because I’m going to talk about this. It’s why I created Curzio Research, it’s because in so many different industries, Wall Street, even financial newsletters, it’s the retail investor that gets screwed, right?

Frank Curzio: And that’s the whole point of everything, everything works as long as the retail investor is there. So, you want to create all this stuff and build up and they make… These guys who are selling, these IPOs, and the way they’re structured now, Daniel, it’s all about coming out with a multi-billion dollar valuation, doing the roadshow, they have series A, B, C, D, E, F, G freaking capital raises, the guys who invest early have the ability to invest at discounts in the next capital rates.

Frank Curzio: So, these guys are building up their positions at incredibly cheap prices to where this thing IPOs, and then they come out where things are great, they do the roadshow, they talk about the best statistics. And then they sell this to the retail investor, and the retail investor is people who use Robinhood, who most of the time don’t know better. They’re like, “Robinhood’s the greatest thing in the world.” Okay, but Snickers, I think, is the greatest candy bar in the world, but I’m not going to pay $150 for a Snickers bar.

Daniel Creech: Snickers is good.

Frank Curzio: It is good, I might pay like 20 bucks, maybe, depends how I’m craving that. But you get the point, right? The retail investor, it’s just like SPACs, all these guys are getting in, everyone’s making a fortune from a dollar, two dollar, three dollar, four dollar, five dollar, six dollars. You’re getting the chance to buy it at $11 when they finally announce who they’re buying and that valuation is inflated, and now you’re seeing SPACs not work as much. Only really good SPACs are working right now, good companies, good management teams, but everyone was creating a SPAC because it was easy money.

Frank Curzio: It was a lay up to generate 30, 40, 50 million in your pocket if you started this thing, and you’re out of that investment, which is what venture capital is all about. They’re not long-term holders, no, they get in, they get out, and just like Peter Thiel got out and he’s great and, again, he got out of Facebook for two billion after a $500,000 investment, it probably would’ve been worth 20, 30 billion, whatever it is. But that’s his job is to get out of these things, have liquidity and go into the next one, that’s what their job is, so they’re not long-term holders.

Frank Curzio: So, all these investors, they’re just selling you a story, coming out, and multi-billion dollar valuations, you don’t get to participate in the growth, and this is why the security token industry is starting to take off. The news has been fantastic the past couple of months because it gives companies the ability to raise money without going through the investment bank bullshit, with all the fees and everything, and it’s great for investors because, one, you have a quicker liquidity period, you don’t have to wait for private companies, seven to 10 years on average.

Frank Curzio: But for the customer, you’re able to invest in companies like ours during the super early stages of growth. And, listen, we’re a small cap company, most small caps don’t make it, or fail to grow, or go into mid-caps, there’s tons of risks there. But if we do things right and we create a billion dollar company, it’s going to be incredibly life changing for you, and you know what, if you buy Robinhood after the IPO, it’s not going to be incredibly life changing to you, where is it going to go? Up 100%, 200%? If everything works out perfect.

Frank Curzio: But you’re already coming into a valuation that’s insanely, insanely, insanely high, and they’re selling this, and that’s what pisses me off. You see this in the financial news industry, you see it in Wall Street, where you’ve got to level the playing field. There’s a reckoning coming and you’re seeing it with WallStreetBets, Daniel, you’re seeing it having a voice and them saying, “Hey, you know what, we want to be part of this, we want to make money, we want to be able to control things just like Wall Street controls everything,” but the whole Robinhood IPO, man, it’s all bullshit. It’s really-

Daniel Creech: So, you’re not buying it on day one?

Frank Curzio: I’m going to buy it.

Daniel Creech: You’re going to buy it.

Frank Curzio: No, no, I’m not going to buy it.

Daniel Creech: Good.

Frank Curzio: I won’t buy it, I won’t buy it because…

Daniel Creech: Well, to your point of what you just said-

Frank Curzio: The employees and directors are selling it in your face on day one, why would they be selling? Those guys know more about the company, yes, they’re in early and they’re taking some off the table, they’re looking to sell their stock on day one. That’s an indication of, whatever, if it’s Coinbase, again, Coinbase had a great valuation now, but what, did it go up to 400? And we’ll pick it up in one of our newsletters, Crypto Intelligence.

Daniel Creech: They just got upgraded, the price target only jumped to $10, but I think Oppenheimer bumped their target price from $434 to £444.

Frank Curzio: Their numbers are going to be amazing for the current quarter, they’re going to be fantastic. The guidance might come out a little conservative, but holy cow, just because Bitcoin came down, it’s the volatility, guys, liquidity, massive, massive. People buying and selling, they’re generating those fees and they’re doing fantastic right now. But, anyway.

Daniel Creech: The last thing on Robinhood there, just to your point, that’s what has my attention, because Robinhood was used as these meme stocks and to get these things off the ground, to the moon and all that as they joke on the forums and Reddit and all that, chat places. What if the retailers go short one time? What if they band together and try to short Robinhood because they screwed over, quote unquote, “the little guy,” what if Dave Portnoy jumps onto this?

Daniel Creech: So, I can’t wait to see how it trades, just because I want to see what the retail investor does, if there’s an appetite for it, if they bid it up. If this becomes another meme stock or just a platform, if users leave or continue to come, that’s an interesting thing to me. If you want to play the space, Schwab is good, they just did an acquisition recently, and Interactive Brokers is a very well run exchange company. So, check out those fundamentals, but if you’re looking to play in this space, I would look at those, volume and users are the drivers there.

Daniel Creech: But, yeah, that might not be too informative on the Robinhood thing, but it’s a wait and see for me, and I do think it’s going to be a good sentiment reader.

Frank Curzio: It doesn’t fit the MO of the WallStreetBets crowd. I mean, it’s AMC, you left them for dead, it’s GameStop, you left them for dead, it’s Tesla, all the criticism, we hate you, you’re never going to succeed, right in Elon Musk’s face. I mean, with this, there is so much optimism on this coming out at a high valuation, I feel like the other stocks that WallStreetBets take those positions in and they get their whole group, I think it’s over 10 million strong now, it is over 10 million strong now as of I think July 1st, members to that group on Reddit.

Frank Curzio: But that group is more like, “Hey, these guys are treating unfair,” whatever, Robinhood is not being treated unfair, they’re coming out on a monster valuation. Again, they have good metrics, but the fact that they’re structuring this like it’s supposed to be a good thing, giving some of this to their customers and Robinhood clients and stuff like that, and you have so many people selling on day one, guys, day one, that doesn’t happen in IPOs a lot. You could structure it, you could disclose whatever you want, you could say, “Hey, I’m going to rob you, I’m going to rob you right now and I’m going to collect everything,” as long as you disclose it, it’s okay in our industry.

Frank Curzio: So, they’re disclosing, listen. We have a lot of people selling on day one. That’s not really what I want to buy. But, again, don’t listen to me, just maybe it goes a lot higher, I have no idea.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, it’s a wait and see, so, it’ll be fun.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it’s a wait and see. One last thing here that I thought went under the radar, but no deal with OPEC, right? So, supply tighter, oil prices rose a little bit on this news. I don’t know, what was your take on it?

Daniel Creech: Well, it’s bullish for oil in a sense. So, you have the ESG movement, environmental social governance, you have that headwind, and that’s going to cause and call for lower drilling in the US. So, that’s a huge deal because you could see production decline. Now, with prices elevated, you’re going to have an incentive to keep doing that and the argument and the push pull and the tug of war behind what’s healthy for the environment and what’s not is going to continue on.

Daniel Creech: If OPEC, so the UAE came out today, I believe it was today, and said they’re either willing, I don’t know if they said they’re going to pump more, but they’re willing or they need to pump more. If OPEC dissolves and it’s a price war, that’s going to be bearish for the price of oil, which would be good for consumers. But if you just start having everybody pump as much as they can to take advantage of high prices, you’re going to flood the market and then that could cause oil prices to drop, that’d be great.

Daniel Creech: So, again, it’s a wait and see thing, I’m still bullish on it, I think they all come together. You have to wait and see what production comes out, it’s always hard to take these guys at face value as well, because they can say they’re cutting back and then when they have to release production or journalists do their job and dig into the details, but you notice, oil has popped the last couple of days on the no news thing or no agreement with OPEC, and then it’s kind of sold off.

Daniel Creech: So, I still think it’s bullish, I think they’ll come together and basically continue the cartel. But if not, that’d be great in the short term for consumers, and I’m still bullish on energy names absolutely.

Frank Curzio: I mean, you’re going to see prices go higher and, yes, that environment is ripe for that, especially with ESG. But I have to tell you something. There’s a company called Laredo Petroleum, I’m very familiar with this because I recommended it in a previous newsletter when I worked for another company, it did pretty well. And this is one of the companies that I visit with Cactus Schroeder because they had operations in over 100,000 acres I believe in two of the counties, Glasscock and Reading Counties.

Frank Curzio: And I really studied the Permian, it wasn’t all Permian, where drilling is low cost, it was like four, five counties, six counties, now it’s expanding a little bit more, you’ve got to drill a little bit deeper, but I really got a good understanding of this because I actually went there, boots on the ground. Cool company, almost went bankrupt when oil collapsed. Now, if you look over the past year, it’s up 10 X, so you have a company up 10 X, and this caught me by surprise. I don’t know if it’s a trend or not. 10 X and they announce that they’re laying off 5% of their workers.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know what to make of that, maybe it’s not a big deal, but you have oil prices rising, yes, maybe you’re going to drill less depending on if you get the right members on the board and the ESG community, again, they were able to get on Exxon’s board so they probably can get on any board and influence any of the shareholders, they’re influencing the largest funds in the world, the trillion dollar funds, to vote for them.

Frank Curzio: But laying off 5% of that workforce, that means you’re expecting demand to come down, that means you’re worried about costs at a time when it seems like you should still be pedal to the metal as prices have gone up, you already cut costs into this, Daniel, right? You cut costs tremendously, right? So, a lot of these guys are just starting to ramp up, they’re seeing margins explode again, they’re starting to generate cashflow, and even if they cut drilling by 10%, 15%, now they could drill almost anywhere they want and make money in shale areas.

Frank Curzio: And just to see LPI, guys, keep an eye on that, if you see a couple more companies, to me that’s a signal that the oil industry might be topping here. And I know you disagree with that, but, again, that’s something that is not common, it’s like spotting something that doesn’t belong. And that doesn’t make sense to me, and it might be a one off, but a company that’s doing fantastic, up 10 X over the past year I believe it is, oil prices rising, just coming out and laying off 5% of its workforce, I want to see if that’s a trend, if we see it elsewhere, because to me, I think that’s a tell that maybe these oil companies are worried about costs or worried about something.

Frank Curzio: I just don’t know why they would be cutting at a time when you should really be hiring and producing more and trying to produce more. So, I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of it, but I think it’s worth noting.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, that’s going to be volatile, I think the new average is going to be higher. So, maybe it drops into the 60s, I just think that oil is going to be elevated from here going forward, just kind of like the inflation statistics. Once you start looking year over year, it’s not moving too much, but it’s going to be higher on average than it was in the past. That’s going to be good for oil producers, and they’re just like the gold companies, they are showing discipline so far.

Daniel Creech: Their CapEx is under control, their distributions are under control, Royal Dutch Shell just announced this morning they’re increasing distribution starting in the second quarter by 20% to 30% I believe. So, it’s going to be a stock pickers market, which is going to be good for us. And, yeah, so I just think oil prices are going to average out. What?

Frank Curzio: You’re saying we’re good stock pickers?

Daniel Creech: No, I said that’s good for us, we’ve got to prove to be good stock pickers. What do you want as an analyst? Well, we need-

Frank Curzio: No pressure but that’s great for us because we’re the best.

Daniel Creech: We need companies to start trading on their own, not just all with the tide coming in and out, so, yeah.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. So, I want to talk about one last thing here because I like to provide ideas and stuff, and what I notice is the 52 week high list, a lot of companies making this list, not a lot of companies but you’re seeing technology companies get back into that list. The Facebooks and Nvidias and stuff like that, and that was the past couple of days. But there’s one stock that just amazes me, it’s Target.

Frank Curzio: And Target seems to be on this list every single week, every single week they’re on this list. And if you look at their chart, it’s up 100% over the past 12 months, and we’re looking at 12 months from now when COVID was really, companies were still like, well, some companies bottomed a year ago. But you’re seeing a nice, steady, slow move higher, it’s not like 15% gains in a week and then coming down, then a month later…

Frank Curzio: It’s just if you look at that chart, it’s kind of amazing, but Target is one of our holdings in Curzio Research Advisory, we really nailed that one. The only thing we didn’t nail is we wanted to take a bigger position but the thing started taking off on us when we recommended it, because we almost bottom ticked it, and just to see that company continue to hit new highs in what they’re doing and USB actually a couple of days ago upgraded them to buy from neutral. Hmm. Interesting. So, up 100%, surging, new all-time highs, and now you’re upgrading to buy.

Frank Curzio: I’m not saying that that’s bad or good or whatever, it’s just you can say they’re late to the party, but, again, Target could go up a lot higher from here, UBS could be right from where the stock is trading today. But that’s just another thing I wanted to note, just ideas that I’m seeing, but just quietly, right, Daniel, where slow, boring, can make you a lot of money.

Daniel Creech: Absolutely.

Frank Curzio: Everyone’s, GameStops and option market, tracking the option activity and trying to jump aboard what’s going there with the Najarians, I like those guys at CNBC and I’ve interviewed one of them, I think John Najarian on my podcast before a couple of years ago, but the GameStops and all this crazy stuff and these quick gains. But, listen, investing, you’re investing in this company, you could’ve sat on it and nobody is going to tell you that Target is at an all-time high right now, nobody even knows.

Frank Curzio: And that’s a great stock on a risk adjusted basis, you’re buying one of the largest retailers, grow in retail and got it right, and if you own that, good for you, and I’m hoping a lot of our subscribers own it, but it’s not always like those quick profits in a week. 100 gains in a year, holy cow.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely.

Frank Curzio: I mean, that’s pretty incredible.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, and you’re in a great business and that’s the definitely of investing, you buy, you monitor it, make sure your thesis is still intact, management is number one executing, and customers are voting with their wallets and their feet. It’s great, so, yeah, big and boring is good, insurance companies are the same way, banks can be the same way. They get in the headlines a little bit more, the banks, but, yeah, that’s wonderful. So, hopefully a lot of people own it and, yeah, more to come.

Frank Curzio: No, so, all right, Daniel, so we covered a lot today, thanks for stopping by, we always like to cover those subjects. Seriously, guys, email us frank@curzioresearch.com, daniel@curzioresearch.com, and let us know, on Monday or Tuesday before we do this, we tape this on Wednesday, and then it goes out Wednesday a couple of hours from after everything is produced and perfectly formatted.

Frank Curzio: But let us know if you want to cover a lot of things, because chances are we are covering it, we both cover all the markets and everything so it’s really cool. But, Dan, thanks for coming onboard. I appreciate it.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely, cheers.

Frank Curzio: All right, man, so, real quick, I’m going to mention this again, this is exciting because, man, Daniel has talked about different things of hey, did you see this, did you see that? I didn’t really see too much. I did publish our Crypto Intelligence. I have that all taped and that’s coming out later today, but I’ve really been working very, very hard on our presentation for our company, for our CEO token, our company and what it’s based on, how you can have a public equity stake in our company.

Frank Curzio: And that meeting is going to be July 9th, and that’s this Friday at 11:30, I think it’s open to 250, the first 250 investors, or people who sign up for it through Zoom. And, yeah, that’s our annual shareholder meeting, we’re going to update on your 2020 financials, and you’re saying, “2020 is a while ago.” We usually would do this around May, but we did get our financials audited, which really separates ourselves from everyone in the industry.

Frank Curzio: You have a small business and you’re getting your financials audited for the first time, holy cow, you’re going to be put through the wringer. Every number and everything, it’s the greatest thing now because you’re forced to know every single detail to the penny of everything that’s going on, but it took us a couple of months longer than expected, and now we’re going to talk about 2020, we’re going to talk about first quarter and also just break down those financials, you get to see them, they’re going to be on our website at curzioequityowners.com on our IR page, and most importantly we’re going to talk about the growth initiatives and explain why the position we’re in and how fortunate we are to really grow this company right now is very, very exciting times.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to break down those numbers for you and tell you why, because we’re focusing on two different industries now, it’s financial publishing and media, and also security tokens, which is seeing a massive, massive boom, especially over the past few months, something that’s got me very excited to the point where the largest platforms, trading platforms, are reaching out to us because they want us to trade on them. Which means we’re a US based company, we want to trade on a US based platform, and now we have the biggest guys in the industry reaching out to us and there’s a reason why everyone was reaching out to us, it’s our token structure is good, we have a good brand, we have good people, good subscribers, and it’s really, really exciting times for us right now.

Frank Curzio: So, that’s one of the things that escaped us is liquidity for the token, now if we do trade on a US exchange, that is going to increase liquidity tremendously. But if it happens it happens, but we are in talks with them, and it’s really, really cool how everyone is coming to us right now and it’s exciting times. So, if you want to get updates, perfectly free, we’re not selling anything, it just gives you an opportunity, you could buy our stock on the MERJ exchange if you want. CEO is the symbol.

Frank Curzio: Again, do your research on it and everything, your due diligence, but we’re going to talk about all this stuff, me personally, with slides going through, it’s going to be really cool and that’s Friday, July 9th at 11:30 AM. So, be sure everybody to tune in because it’s only open for the first 250 investors, and then we’re going to have a replay and a tape and stuff like that that’ll be available for anyone else who wants to go there, but I just wanted to pass that news along.

Frank Curzio: So, guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast, supporting us, like I said, exciting times I’m going to go over on Friday with the company and what we’re doing, and building this brand, and just always putting our customers first and it’s really, really great times, so I just appreciate all the support. Questions, comments, frank@curzioresearch.com, and thanks so much for listening. And, as always, I’ll see you guys in seven days. Take care.

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