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

Frank Curzio: What’s going out there? It’s February 17th. 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.

Frank Curzio: You know, so many of you are set up to fail and you don’t even know it. And it’s not your fault. It’s the way you’re programmed, to people you listen to, or are in front of every day. Your favorite newspaper that you read, whether it’s the Wall Street Journal or whatever it is when you wake up. Maybe it’s a financial media outlet you watch the morning. Even the website you like to view daily, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, any other social media platform that probably more than 75% of the world’s population who are over 16 years old are on, right? Some kind of social media platform.

Frank Curzio: But why am I saying that? Set up to fail. I want to dig a little deeper, because when we look at why does 5% of people become wealthy while most of the 95% end up struggling? I’m talking about the 1% of the billionaires and stuff like that. But if you look at the stats, at least 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, right? Let’s go onto CareerBuilder. And 70% of Americans have very little savings along with huge piles of debt. 70 percent. Massive divide.

Frank Curzio: And you could Google this and read books about it, how to succeed, how to be part of that 1%. And you’re going to see tips online where, work harder than everyone else, don’t sleep as much, and don’t waste your time will be extremely productive, be very competitive. Try to be the best at everything.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to be real with you” All that’s horseshit. It really is, because you truly want to be successful, if you want to be a great investor, make enough money so your kids and their kids do not have to work again, you have to learn to reprogram. You have to learn to think differently. Or simply put, don’t be part of the status quo.

Frank Curzio: That sounds pretty easy just when you say it. But for most people, that’s really, really difficult. I’m going to bring up some examples here that are going to piss you off, but it’s going to prove my point, because most people think the same way.

Frank Curzio: Let’s start with Al Gore. He launched “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, six years after losing the election. It was about effects of global warming, how the world was going to end if we don’t do something immediately. And everyone bought into the argument. He said, “If nothing is done to curb the emissions of carbon dioxide,” I’m quoting here, “and other greenhouse gases, temperatures will rise, ice caps will melt, ocean levels will rise, and weather patterns across the globe will be disrupted. So, the ice melting from the polar regions would flood the North Atlantic with fresh water.” Again, this was 2006. “Interrupting the warm water flow from the tropics toward Western Europe. The sea levels will rise at 10 years.” Pretty far off of that now, right? “Penetrating low-lying channels, which will flood the southern part of the United States.”

Frank Curzio: I haven’t seen… Just tons and tons of floods, a hurricane here or there. But in his presentation, he included images of melting glaciers, dying polar bears. Oh my God. Dying polar bears, right? Show a dying polar bear, they just… Their heart melts, right? Automatically. Great job.

Frank Curzio: Coastal cities inundated by massive flood, showing pictures of this. Cities wiped out by hurricanes and tornadoes and food supplies exterminated by droughts. Of course, none of this happened, right? None of this happened.

Frank Curzio: And the main reason, because back then the message was global warming. Now, it’s climate change. Change from global warming to climate change, right? I mean, imagine people in Texas right now freezing their balls off, what, with having no electricity. And you’re talking about climate change, right?

Frank Curzio: We’ll get to that in a minute, but tell them that they should be concerned about global warming. No. But that’s why 25% of your electricity needs in Texas come from alternative sources like solar panels, wind turbines, which are frozen right now. Right? Everybody knows the story. It’s all over the place. But it’s climate change, right? it can’t be global warming because it’s freezing. It’s climate change that caused this, whether the weather is very cold or super hot. If you have forest fires, all this is caused by climate change. Everything, right?

Frank Curzio: What people fail to realize was what Al Gore’s real agenda was, why he made “An Inconvenient Truth.” And if you really look at that, it was because he wanted to make an absolute fortune through carbon credits, position himself perfectly to be a huge beneficiary of the massive, massive environmental movement, the Paris Accord, everything, all this stuff. If you look at… How did he make it massive? What did he do? This is how smart this guy is. I’m not putting them down at all. I’m just saying.

Frank Curzio: By ensuring all high-ranking government officials, with any involvement with funding policies related to climate change at all, were in line with his vision. And if you look at the agencies, it’s Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Department of Education, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Frank Curzio: He got governments, he got celebrities, to endorse this vision, all underneath while he invested accordingly. And I’m not knocking Al Gore here. He’s brilliant in what he did. He created a story that’s easy to tell people that can identify with, billions follow, while positioning himself perfectly to make an absolute fortune.

Frank Curzio: His net worth went from $2 million before losing the election. $2 million, right? He supposedly like a farm guy. To over 250 million 10 years later… And he’s one of the biggest players in SPACs, by far. You look at every person who’s wealthy, right? And they keep creating these things. Al Gore, he’s right there. It’s unbelievable. If I had a guess, his wealth is easily worth $400 million now.

Frank Curzio: Now, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t believe in climate change. I think most of us do, in some regards, and we need to do things about it. But the crazy stories to scare the shit out of you, to think like you’re going to die in 10 years, the world’s going to end, to the point where Texas had a mandate that politicians have 25% of their electricity comes from solar or wind. This is Texas. This is Texas, the energy capital of the world, where they have more natural resources than 95% of countries around the world, where they burn natural gas for free, because they have so much of it. It’s almost like an unlimited supply. They can dig deeper and deeper and deeper. If natural gas prices go higher than they can afford to drill deeper. It’s almost an unlimited supply.

Frank Curzio: I was at a conference 12 years ago with Apache, the CEO speaking, saying we have enough natural gas to last 300 years, which is not in his best interest to say. I just thought it was funny, because he kind of said it under his breath. Burn it for free. By the way, natural gas. Super clean, super cheap energy. Now what do we have? Dozens of people who die from not having electricity in record freezing weather. All because a lot of our politicians are saying that the world is ending. This isn’t political, guys. I’m getting to a point here for all of those investors out there.

Frank Curzio: These politicians, when you think about it, know nothing about this technology at all. They don’t know the stats, they don’t know anything, right? They just get paid by organizations to promote an agenda. They’re on the take. And if the agenda changes, or if they look at their polls and people no longer care about climate change, they’re not going to talk about anymore. They’re politicians; they don’t care. None of the politicians of both sides care. They just care about power and making money. You should know that by now.

Frank Curzio: If they cared, they would’ve passed a stimulus bill immediately, right? Look at the House, how quick they impeached Trump: like, two seconds, no evidence or nothing or whatever. You can bring that up into… How can’t pass a stimulus bill when you force people to close, even though when you’re looking at… Did you see the US cases are down 80% since October? The cases. If you look at hospitalization rates, down 50% month over month. Why the hell is any school closed? Why the hell is everything that opened right now? I have no freaking idea. That’s okay. That’s okay.

Frank Curzio: But in the meantime, you’re conditioned to believe that the world is ending because of climate change. It’s what you read. It’s what you listened to. Guys, you have to learn. You have to learn to challenge everything. Challenge everything that I’m saying right now, everything you read. It’s easy to follow along with everybody else. Follow along with the message. But you know what’s not easy? Questioning it, to the point where the people who support that agenda will shut you down if you have a different opinion than them, right? You can’t even debate, which is crazy.

Frank Curzio: And same thing happened with fracking. HBO published “Gasland.” Everybody saw it. Huge, right? Unbelievable story. Great, great story. Great story. Showing people turning the faucets in Pennsylvania, and they basically put a lighter to it and lit it on fire. And this is all from fracking. Great, great story. Awesome. Everybody bought into it. Fracking is terrible. Even I bought into it until I went to Texas myself.

Frank Curzio: North Dakota, the Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford, Williston Basin to investigate myself, traveling through dozens of counties, weeks and weeks at a time, to learn about this technology. You know what? When I went there, I thought I was going to see dead animals everywhere. I really did. I was like, holy shit, this fracking thing is crazy because of what I was reading or what I was seeing.

Frank Curzio: But I learned this technology. It was easy to see all the bullshit that was being reported and the agenda, how fracking causes water contamination. Just forget about if you think that or not. I mean, you’re looking at fracking… It’s impossible, drilling thousands of feet below the surface, right? That used to be a vertical. Well now, they do it horizontally and then they frack, but they’re doing it thousands and thousands….

Frank Curzio: I mean, freshwater is what, maybe 500 feet, right? You go, I’ mean, you’re not going through that water, but even if you’re going… Unless those chemicals that they use, which used to be bad at the beginning and they changed them, they are environmentally friendly now, unless those chemicals magically change everything that we’ve ever learned, travel upward thousands of feet through rock, to contaminate… That’s the only way, unless some idiot… They have tailings, ponds, things like that. It just takes a lot of that water which is recycled and used again for fracking, because you need a lot of water pressure. But unless they take it in a truck and dump it in a river, that’s different. But otherwise, fracking doesn’t cause contamination.

Frank Curzio: Why was everybody saying this? It’s crazy when you think about it… Or fracking causes earthquakes, and those earthquakes are dangerous for you, and you saw tremors or whatever. There’s a couple of reported cases, but how many people do you know died of an earthquake caused by fracking?

Frank Curzio: I don’t know. Let me know if you know anyone. I mean, tens of thousands of wells have been drilled over the past 10 years, at least. And everyone’s okay, right? We’re doing okay. I mean, not to mention that with hydraulic fracturing, right, and horizontal drilling, the success rate of finding oil is close to a hundred percent in places like the Eagle Ford, the Permian, because many of these areas have been drilled on for decades. So, they know where it is.

Frank Curzio: However, it used to be vertical wells, and vertical wells are just straight down, and it was difficult to get to different areas. You have to drill straight down. Now, you drill straight down. It could be 3,000, 10,000, 12, 15,000 feet, and then horizontally, right directly into the pay zone, which they see, and they fracture it, right? They blow it up. And that’s how they draw the natural resources in there. They could drill vertically or horizontally and right into that what they call the pay zone.

Frank Curzio: So you look at Texas, close to an unlimited supply of energy, yet mandating 25% of energy come from alternative sources. That would be like Google or Facebook saying, “Hey, if you have a problem with our services, just write a handwritten letter and mail it to us through the post office. And we’ll give you a response inside of two weeks.” That’s what it’s like saying. It’s insane.

Frank Curzio: The US is responsible for 45% of nuclear, and you’re saying, “You know what, we’re going to bring that down to 20% and you know, just for the hell of it, to save the environment or whatever.”

Frank Curzio: But it’s crazy when you think about it. So my point to you, what you’re allowed to do as an individual investor, right? If you’re a business right now, you have to come out with ESG and I’m supporting the Black Lives movement and all that. You have to, right? It’s the writing on the wall. You’re a big business. You have to do.

Frank Curzio: Individual investors could speak for themselves. That’s where you have an advantage over Wall Street. You get to question everything. And you know what? When you do that and challenge things, it’s going to lead you to being on an island by yourself, which has happened many times.

Frank Curzio: Security tokens, people laughed than me. Our whole company is based on that. People laughed at me about fracking when I came back. People laughed at me about Northern Dynasty, saying, “You know, this is all bullshit. There’s project. And you know, taking two planes, a helicopter in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska, helped my investors generate 9X, 10X returns in seven months, because I did the research and homework and I questioned everything even going there. I was skeptical.

Frank Curzio: I thought Northern Dynasty was a stock I was going to short at 40 cents. When I came back, I was like, “This is complete bullshit.” I mean, they’re worried about environmental concerns, 150 miles away because you have rivers running. They don’t have rivers running through that land. There’s no streams or nothing. There’s nothing. I’m like, what are you talking about?

Frank Curzio: Doesn’t matter. Whatever you read, you’re going to be conditioned to believe. And a lot of people become followers, and you don’t even realize it. But that’s where you want to be on an island by yourself, investing in things when nobody likes them. That’s when things are cheap, dirt cheap usually. They’re out of favor.

Frank Curzio: But challenge everything. Questioning the status quo. Again, that’s not easy. You want proof? Here’s proof. This has been a… Forget it. You know, I always, when I talk politics, everybody goes crazy. Let’s talk a little bit about politics really quick.

Frank Curzio: Look at Donald Trump, and hear me out first. But why do you think every Democrat and person from the left, the media, the largest tech companies, are labeling Trump as a domestic terrorist. As a domestic terrorist. You could say he’s an arrogant… I won’t say the P word. The least humble guy around, never admits when he’s wrong. You could disagree with many of his policies, but anti-American? Really? Did he need to become president? People say, “Well, he wants power.” He already had power. He’s a billionaire. He’s a billionaire. He brought jobs back to the country, lowest unemployment rate in history. None of that is mentioned. The biggest turnout for a Republican candidate in history, seventy-five million people. And most of these people have jobs, own their businesses, and made more money having lower taxes from some of his policies.

Frank Curzio: Again, there’s tons of reasons to hate Donald Trump, but there’s a few to really like him, which are never, ever allowed to be said. I bet you some people are cringing right now listening to me say that.

Frank Curzio: But the anti-American thing is very interesting. Anti-American. I mean, the guy loves America probably more than almost any president out there. He wouldn’t have run for president, because he already had power. He’s a billionaire. But the anti-American message is interesting, right?

Frank Curzio: Trump is a danger to your safety. And this rhetoric started when he campaigned on going after China. No coincidence. He went after China. Why would Trump go after China? He has operations in China. He’s a billionaire. He could expand his operations. Even as President, not going after China benefits him when he comes out of office tremendously. He’s going to be so much more wealthy. Why would he go off to China for?

Frank Curzio: But the funny thing is everyone got on Trump. Why? Because every politician, every politician is on the take from China. It’s that simple. You want proof? China has the biggest black market in the world. They steal everyone’s technology, right? Resell it to whoever. The least environmental country in the world, by lightyears.

Frank Curzio: When I visited China, I’d go to Beijing, go to Shenzhen one day. Good luck. When you could actually go to a car and wipe your hand and wipe the muck off of the car, that’s how bad it is. And that’s how much people are complaining. This isn’t all China. I’m talking about the way China is structured as a communist country. But it is a communist nation that won’t even allow anyone to investigate COVID-19, where they closed down Wuhan and when was this? In November? December? They closed down Wuhan. Nobody could travel anywhere in China from Wuhan. You can go international, though. That’s okay. Which caused what? The spread of COVID, everywhere, killing millions of people around the world. And they’re not going to get punished for that. No way.

Frank Curzio: China has totally different policies than America. It’s totally different. It’s exactly what we don’t believe in. Communism, black markets, more government, less freedom. Doesn’t give a shit about climate change or the environment, right? Those are facts, right, that I’m saying?

Frank Curzio: Yet we import more from China than any other nation. Why is that? Why are our ports completely filled right now, where everything is on backorder. Chips, golf clubs, you name it. Wait. Wait until you see next quarter earnings come out and how many people say, “Well, we’re going to push these earnings out further because you can’t even mail things at the post office. They’re not going to get there in three, four weeks right now.” That’s how crazy it is. But those ports are filled right now. Many of these goods are being shipped out of China to here. And of course, we’re not going to say this administration or anything, right?

Frank Curzio: We need someone in there that benefits technology companies. All these companies benefit by being friends with China. They become richer. They become more powerful. But in the meantime you’re making China… China is going to be more powerful than the US pretty soon. They’re a communist nation. What do you think is going to happen? Crazy when you think about it.

Frank Curzio: But we’re going to see this administration keep some tariffs on there and create… By the way, tariffs are nothing, nothing. It’s very, very tiny. And you know… But they’re not going to pay for killing millions of people. No way. Absolutely not. So, that’s what we must label trump as dangerous and an anti-American. We need to get him out of office immediately. Don’t ever say anything good about him.

Frank Curzio: Again, there’s plenty to say that’s bad about him. Plenty of reasons why you don’t like him. You like some of the policies. I like the fact that he’s not a politician, which is cool, because I’m just so used to this bullshit and people telling, “Hey, vote for me and everything is going to be great for 40 years.” Look at the major cities. Look at them today. For 40 years, and they’re sadder than they’ve ever been. Promising all this stuff to you because you’re followers and you believe in all this.

Frank Curzio: You’re conditioned a certain way. But challenge the status quo. Again, not easy to do, but that’s where you disrupt markets. That’s where you find so many ideas, so many things that people dismiss. “Oh, you’re crazy. Why are you nuts?” I’ve heard that so many times in my career. I made a lot of money off the fracking boom, for me and my subscribers, because I went there. We made money on the roll of the dice because I went there, because people were telling me, even in the mining history, “It’s a shady product, project, it’s the environmental code, whatever.” And now they’re still going through environmental concerns, which don’t even exist, which is sad. Because no one’s going to go out to Alaska and really see this thing.

Frank Curzio: Ted Norton for the Pebble Beach project. But I took the time to travel weeks through dozens of counties in Texas, North Dakota, find the real story, the one nobody was telling, when nobody believed in fracking and they were going to end. We made a lot of money on fracking stocks. These guys just… New technology, lower the cost of drilling, a hundred percent success rate of drilling. The profit surge. Look at those, the fracking stocks from 2010 through 2013, ’14. Forget it. Where oil prices are in the nineties. It took off.

Frank Curzio: I traveled it again through those county, even North Dakota. Miller, North Dakota. It’s like dirt roads. We landed and it’s an airport, which isn’t even an airport. It’s like you just land and you come out of the plane and there’s a couple of cars there with a little booth. You just say, “Okay, I want a car.” Here you go. They give you a key and everything’s like dirt roads there. That’s how you find the real story, the one nobody’s telling.

Frank Curzio: And when it comes to investing, we’re seeing the same thing right now, right? We have young investors making a lot of money in the stock market, which is awesome. You love to see it. But I have to tell you, I’ve seen this movie several times. So in 1998 and ’99, everybody went all in. I remember talking about… We tried to get accounts through Schwab, and Schwab wasn’t managing money and they push it out to independent money managers at the time.

Frank Curzio:

And just talk to this kid, Oh, I can make 200%, 300%. Yeah. You can’t pitch something that’s going to go up that you think could double in three to four years, especially even right now. Nobody wants to hear it. When you see companies like Tilray going up seven, 8X in a couple of weeks. And some of these companies, these stocks going up four or 5X in weeks. It’s crazy.

Frank Curzio: Also, I saw it 2006, 2007. And then what happened? Those markets? That was before amateur investors really got smoked, thinking they knew more than Wall Street. Today, it’s GameStop. The same thing, just a couple of different variables. It SPACs, ESG companies that go up 5X in a month that get… It makes it impossible for a guy like me to almost teach a young investor anything with the gains that they’re making right now. And how could I explain that Virgin Galactic should have a $12 billion valuation when it generates $4 million in revenue? How can I explain that SpaceX, based on our latest funding round, is worth $74 billion? How can I explain that you should be buying Tesla based on valuation? You can’t. The things we learned have changed. And it’s tough right now. Right now. But it’ll go back to normal.

Frank Curzio: You know why? Because Wall Street always wins. It takes some time, but they do. Last night, I went out to dinner, took my family out to celebrate three different birthdays. My nephew, my daughter, and my mom, all a few days apart, and we went to a place. They have a hibachi grill, kind of like a Benihana, right? So, the guys cooking in front of us. It was really a great time, a great, great time. But you know, he started talking. He said, “Hey, I own Bitcoin. And I own GameStop.” And he said, “I’m never selling GameStop.” That’s what he… “I’m never selling GameStop.”

Frank Curzio: And it’s kind of crazy when you think about it. I mean, why aren’t you selling it? Is it to prove a point or whatever, because you’re holding a company long-term. You’re never selling it, where its business model is close to obsolete. And its stock should be trading $4 a share based on the fundamentals and slowly dying a slow death.

Frank Curzio: Everybody downloads their movies through their PlayStation, their X-Boxes, online. No need… That’s why they closed so many stores. But it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. No matter what I tell him, it wouldn’t matter. He believes in the movement and the whole WallStreetBets movement. He said, “I’m holding on forever.” Not a good idea.

Frank Curzio: Take Tilray, if you’re buying marijuana stocks. So take Tilray in general, because you look at Tilray and you look at charts of Tilray, it was in December, they announced that they’re merging with Aphria, another marijuana company. And, again, that was December. The stock was eight, six weeks later, it went to $65. $65. And you know how many people bought that at 45, 50, 55, 60, 65? A ton. A ton of people. But no one ever looked at the deal with Aphria, which was trading based on whatever 0.8, the shares at whatever it is.

Frank Curzio: But Tilray had to come down based on the deal that is going to close. It’s basically a done deal at merger. It had to come down from 65. It had to come down tremendously. Nobody cared. Nobody cared at all. It was inevitable.

Frank Curzio: Wall Street shorted the crap out of Tilray in the fifties and the sixties. They couldn’t even get… I have a friend in the industry that couldn’t even borrow. So many people shorted. They knew it was going to come down, and it did. It crashed at 30, $33, wherever it is today. But a lot of young investors that own Tilray had no idea about the math, or that Tilray was even merging with another company. They don’t know. They don’t know any of this.

Frank Curzio: And for all of you that own GameStop, saying that you beat Wall Street. Listen, we beat them. We beat them at their own game. Look at what we did to Melvin Capital. Melvin Capital is a little tiny micro dot. Yeah, it’s a $12 billion fund in an industry that’s trillions of dollars. One idiot decides it to overleverage himself and got wrecked. You didn’t beat Wall Street.

Frank Curzio: Do you know how many hedge funds made an absolute killing shorting GameStop at $250 a share? $300 a share? It’s $50, today. Nobody talks about that because it’s not a story. Nobody cares. They want to hear about a bunch of young traders putting a $12 billion fund out of business, or to the point where it needs fresh capital, two, two and a half billion dollars. That’s a fun story. And that’s my point here. I’ve been where you are right now. I made money at an early age. I thought I was God. I was the smartest person on the planet. I know everything. IPO was all this. I think SPACs was even popular in 1999, back then. And my story is similar to many of the experienced investors who have been doing this for decades, where they made money early and got crushed and then learned those lessons.

Frank Curzio: Now I’m asking you to try not to be that person, which is almost impossible, and most of you will fail. That’s in your program. You’re going to continue to buy options, which puts a time value on things, which is crazy. You could be writing a thesis and lose all of your money, lose everything. You’re betting against computers that are trading millions of trades a second right now. But you think you’re smarter, because you made some money on some companies, which is good. You deserve it. You did great. But you’re going to buy companies that you have no idea about when it comes to revenue, earnings, management teams, whatever. Just, “Hey, this company is an electric vehicle space and it’s going higher.” You need to be smarter than that.

Frank Curzio: And it’s not easy. Again, it’s just your control and you have your ego. I was there. I understand it, because when you look at Wall Street guys… And I’m going to tell you something about Wall Street, because I’m trying to change that. I’m even trying to change the entire structure of Wall Street through security tokens, which I think will happen. It will eventually happen, where you don’t need Wall Street to be middlemen. Every business in technology has been disrupted through the internet, except for investment banking. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, those guys are great to do lots of things, but when it comes to these deals, what do they do?

Frank Curzio: “Oh, here’s your company. We’ll invest in it a little bit. And then we’re going to do a roadshow for you. We’re going to introduce you to investors.” They’re just a middleman. Imagine if you go directly to the investors, like I did? You bypass all the garbage. Instead of paying the 6%, 10% fees, whatever it is, and then giving them 6% of the shares outstanding. All that. And I tell you, when it comes to Wall Street, they always win. They always win. They do. They won during a credit crisis. They used everyone’s money to get filthy rich. And they got a slap on the hand. Even now, who’s winning? Wall Street is winning from COVID. Big businesses. Oh, you know what? Walmart? Target? Home Depot? You’re allowed to stay open. The local shops? Nope. Closed. Mandated. You have to close, no matter what. Think about that for a minute. How crazy is that?

Frank Curzio: Want a good example of Wall Street? Look at SPACs. Look how many are coming out. Why are you seeing so many billionaires and wealthy people start them? Why do you think? Just challenge it. Challenge the status quo. Why is that happening? Because it’s a no-risk way for them to generate tens of millions of dollars in weeks. They create these things, getting in under a dollar share, all those investors together. The holding company then trades on the exchange, right? At $10, where they’re supposed to look for this fantastic company to buy. Retailers try to jump the gun, pushing this holding company. Again, no underlying business, but it’ll go from $10 to $15 to $17. No underlying business, just anticipation that we know that they’re going to pick a great, great company, which isn’t really so great. It’s just happens to be in the perfect industry. The right industry.

Frank Curzio: It’s EVs, environment, cloud, AI, sports. That’s why they fit. This is what we’re looking for. And they brought it out to every single growth industry, because it’s got to be exciting. And once they announce that merger, the stock goes to $25, $30. Then, what happens? Your retail investors high fiving each other. You bought at $17 and $18, and maybe cash out at $24, $25. That works now. That’s why it’s working for SPACs. But what do these guys do? They cash out and move on to the next SPAC. They don’t give a shit about the company’s long-term potential. No. You really think that’s why they’re starting SPACs? That’s why it’s going crazy?

Frank Curzio: They can’t believe that this is actually happening, these guys. And they’re like, “Hey, if you’re going to just put this on a platter for us, we’re going to take it.” And that’s what they’re doing. I mean, taking over a private company that, two weeks before taking over was valued at a billion dollars, and now they took it over, just through a SPAC, it’s valued at 10 times that amount. Again, practically overnight, because it was bought by a SPAC. Market is going to blow up. The SPAC market will blow up. Not sure when, and it blew up in the past. The reason why SPACs used to be the biggest thing and they went away. But now you look at these billionaires going, “Holy cow, really? We could just structure these things, make a fortune off of them? No risk?”

Frank Curzio: You’re going to take over a company, probably it’s going to be… I mean, how many SPACs do you know are trading below $20? Because usually they come out for some reason, which is not explained, at $10 as the holding company. And then they get to cash out right away. Sometimes within months, sometimes within weeks, but you need to be smart. You know how many great investors made money early on and then lost it? And then when they look back and they said, “Wow, if I would have did something differently.” That’s where you are right now.

Frank Curzio: Fast-forward to me. I’m an old, ugly guy now, but fast-forward to me. And say you’re 20, and I’m pushing 50. 30 years. If you took that money and invest it in the S&P 500, you would have earned 8% annually. You know, say if it’s 20,000, 50,000, 100,000. You know what that turns into? Your life is set by the time you retire. But unfortunately, again, 90% of the people listening to this who are young, who made money, they’re not going to do what I’m telling you to do. They’re going to just follow those people, follow the blogs, follow the people on YouTube, follow everything. And it’s good for now. It’s great. Make as much money as you can. But again, we’ve seen this play out time and time again. And what sucks about it is when Wall Street eats you up, again, they always win.

Frank Curzio: They’re going to take everything from you and then make sure you can never succeed again. Take your sneakers, your socks, everything. Okay? It’s greed. It’s how cutthroat it is. I worked on Wall Street. I know how it is, and you have to learn to play that game. Because at the end of the day, you’re sitting there on really a lot of money that you’ve made, and I’ve seen this playbook before. And the reason why it sucks is because… It’s a bull market right now, but it’s not going to be a bull market forever, where stocks with no revenue are going up 10x, 15x, and anyone can make money. And I know so many people who own stocks, they don’t even know what they do. They don’t know. They have no idea.

Frank Curzio: “Oh, I got this from a friend. That I know this, and I know that.” That’s cool. That’s great. Definitely have exposure to that, a little exposure to that. But going all in and going on options? I mean, what happens is, now the younger generation gets wiped out. And it’s why so many young investors in 1998, ’99 period, 2006, 2007 period… There’s a reason why they got completely wrecked and they never came back to the market. And that sucks, because there is something different about this movement. There is something different where… I’m talking about 13, 14 year olds have come up to me and talk about Bitcoin and stocks, which is great, but it’s not about making a million dollars in two…

Frank Curzio: Because even if you make a million dollars or five million dollars… In the market, if you make that in a year, you really think you’re just going to stop? You really think you’re not going to try to make that 10 million, 100 million, and try to be the great? That’s what your ego tells you as a young person. Doesn’t say, “Hey, holy shit. I just made a million dollars, man. If I put this away and just earn like five, seven percent through stocks” or whatever… That might be a high rate because everything’s so high right now. Maybe you get lucky on low interest rates and we continue this stuff for a while, but since the 1950s, S&P 500 was created into 500 companies, it’s over 8% returns, annualized. Pull up a chart when you get a chance.

Frank Curzio: It’s the greatest secular growth trend ever since the ’50s. Goes up and up and up with small periods of going down. Pull it up. It’s amazing. Just see it low on the left, all the way up to the right. But for, 66, whatever years… When you’re playing this game with Wall Street, who is smart, they’re cutthroat. You have to be careful. You have to find a way to check your ego at the door. You have to find a way to question everything. Not be part of the status quo, which most people are. And they’re comfortable. And they’re going to repeat everything that they see or they read. They’re not going to do their own research or whatever. That’s why we have a pretty big following, because you hear opinions that you don’t really hear any place else. Because we do the homework and the research.

Frank Curzio: And we get into a lot of these trends, and a lot of this shit, before everyone’s talking about it, like Bitcoin. People talking about Bitcoin at 45, $50,000? It’s kind of crazy, when we were saying to buy it at $4,000. Ethereum at $150, $170. And it’s 15, $1,600. Or $1,800, even. You want to get into these things early and be smart. But you do that by doing the research, checking your ego at the door and being smart. It’s not easy. It’s not easy when you’re conditioned a certain way. Going on a diet, how hard is that? Where it shouldn’t be a diet, you have to change the way you live forever. It’s very difficult to change your habits. Smoking, drinking soda. How hard is it to get off of that?

Frank Curzio: It’s the same thing when it comes to investing. You’re programmed a certain way. You’re programmed to fail, and you have to get out of that. At least try to get out of that. And it’s not easy, but that’s how you disrupt markets. That’s how you become part of that 5%. And again, very difficult to do. But for me, that’s how I made most of my money and my career, by questioning things. By not following everyone into anything. Being a contrarian, questioning everything. As a young investor, that’s how you become wealthy when you’re 30, when you’re 40, when you’re 50, when you’re 60. That’s how you have to think. And if you could think like that, it’s great.

Frank Curzio: Because right now, it’s tough to think like that, when you’re just seeing everything go up 5x, 7x, 10x, just simply because of an industry it’s in. Or if you have an Elon Musk, tweet about Dogecoin and all kinds of crazy shit like that. It’s insane, but it’s not going to last forever. I’ve seen this playbook before. It happens a lot. And it winds up, Wall Street kicks your ass and everybody else gets destroyed. Well, try to turn the tables for once. Try to be part of that crowd that does the right thing. You look long-term, and you’re smart. You don’t go on margin. You don’t go crazy with options, where you’re risking your whole portfolio.

Frank Curzio: And continue to own assets in a world where assets are going to continue to inflate for many years. Because the Fed needs to keep interest rates at zero. And as long as they’re doing that, and printing money, absolutely like crazy, assets are going to continue to inflate. And you want to own them. You don’t want to get wiped out. Speaking of young investors, I have an awesome interview for you today. It’s with my buddy, my friend, Jason Raznick, who is the founder of Benzinga. And Benzinga is one of the fastest growing financial media companies.

Frank Curzio: They cater to young investors, have all kind of live things, and you don’t see me promote a lot of financial media companies. And all those advertisements, all this crazy stuff. I mean, these guys are doing a really, really great job. They have a lot of free products and stuff like that. Again, I don’t get paid a dime from them, but he’s a good friend. I’ve worked with him at TheStreet.com, along with James Altucher, Doug Kass back then. I mean, we had a really, really cool crew.

Frank Curzio: And he decided to start Benzinga in 2010. Pretty amazing, because now it’s one of the fastest growing financial media companies out there. And again, it caters to young investors. Jason and I are going to talk a lot about what I just mentioned, the mistakes we made as young investors. And hopefully, many of you will learn from our mistakes. That’s why we do this. It’s not like we’re geniuses, but we made mistakes in the past. And you learn from your mistakes and you get better, just like with everything. But we see this, which happens after every single Super Bowl market, where a lot of people get killed. And maybe you could learn from our mistakes that we talk about.

Frank Curzio: And also Jason, he counts David Portnoy, Kathy Wood, Mark Cuban, as friends. Very, very big names that share ideas with him. And he’s going to share a lot of those ideas with you, including several high growth names. As I said, you have to be careful a lot of these things, but you want to be invested a little bit. Where if you lose it, it’s not going to get killed. But if you win, you can get 10 X, 15 X your money. I’m not telling you not to invest in a lot of this stuff. I’m just saying, don’t go all in, where it’s absolute “Yes or no. I’m going to make money or I lose everything.”

Frank Curzio: Because some of the ideas that he’s going to mention towards the end of this interview, these are ideas that I haven’t even heard of. And I follow markets every single day for the past 25 years. And lots of names, and one of those names, you’ll see show up in Dollar Stock Club later on. But first, let’s get to this great interview. And here’s Jason, right now. Jason, thanks so much for coming on Wall Street Unplugged.

Jason Raznick: Thank you for having me, Frank.

Frank Curzio: We go back a very long time, ’97, ’98 or 2007, 2008. Pretty crazy times, right ahead of the credit crisis, we’re working at The Street. And you came up with this amazing idea for a new media site, right? Benzinga. I mean, did you ever dream it would become the platform it is today? And talk about those times too, when we were at The Street, because we had amazing talent there. Not me, but you were there. We had Altucher. There’s so many great people there, and it’s just amazing just to see where everyone’s going now and how great and how successful they are.

Jason Raznick: Yeah. I remember James Altucher brought me on. It’s a real money, and I helped him like run some things, write content, et cetera. And it was exciting days for sure. And you know, it was the days of FinTwit, you, Doug Kass, Aaron Task. It was busy days, those days. And I came up with the idea of small cap content. There wasn’t a small cap content wasn’t covered at much and no one was using Twitter back then. No one. And so I was doing work for different companies. I said, Twitter can be a resource, a strong resource to come up with ideas. And so that’s what I started doing. I started using Twitter and I said, there’s a better way to deliver small cap information. And so that’s how the genesis of Benzinga started.

Frank Curzio: Wow. That’s great stuff. Even better. I love the view in the background. It looks like they’re playing music. Are you jumping into a pool? I mean, everyone in Texas is freezing right now.

Jason Raznick: Yeah. Is the music annoying? It just turned on so should I-

Frank Curzio: I love it. It sounds perfect. I think people got to be jealous though, especially those people in Texas and it’s freezing.

Jason Raznick: Yeah. So, we’ve been stuck in Michigan, freezing cold weather and zero degrees, snowing. I’m here in Florida with my family. It is rainy. It is overcast right now, but it is like 70 degrees. So I’m happy.

Frank Curzio: That’s great stuff. Did you ever a dream Benzinga will become the site that is today, where it’s… I believe it’s one of the fastest growing financial media sites, and it is incredible. You know what you guys are doing over there.

Jason Raznick: Well, Frank, did you ever dream how big you would become? I mean, look at your setup. It’s freaking amazing. Frank was doing podcasts before they were popular. He was doing it before… He was a game-changer. You know, everyone’s a disciplined investor, Andrew Horowitz thought, you know the whole thing. So, did I dream Benzinga would be a hundred team members today? No, I really didn’t. What I looked at, to be honest, Frank, was solving a problem. I didn’t think it was fair that small cap investors didn’t get access to the same small cap information that people on Wall Street did.

Jason Raznick: So I, at one point, had a big following in small cap stocks in the defense sector. And I said, “Why isn’t that crowdsourced? Why isn’t there more news outlets?” So, Benzinga started as a place where we looked at Twitter, and we covered small cap stocks. Literally, our competitors weren’t using Twitter as a resource. You know what they said? They said, “F- Twitter, Twitter doesn’t have much stuff on it. It’s all fake people posting.” That’s what they said. I promise you. And it’s hard to go back then, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I had screenshots of conversations and why I was asking why they weren’t using Twitter. There are smart minds on there. And they said, “There’s no smart minds. Who’s going to waste their time on Twitter?” That is why I started Benzinga.

Frank Curzio: So, we’re looking at a different market today, right Jason? Where the Reddit crowd has really changed the game, in terms of giving a voice to retailing young investors. I think you and I have seen this before, maybe in the late 1990s and the pre-credit crisis, only for these kids to really get their head handed to them, because they realize Wall Street is a tough place and it’s very ruthless. I feel like it’s different this time where these kids want to be around for a little bit longer now. How do you feel? And what can we teach these kids about this? Well, it’s just not about trading and making quick money, but staying in the market long-term and maybe owning these assets long-term, because I wish someone explained this to me when I was very, very young. My dad tried to pound it in my head and everything. It took me to my twenties to realized it… Mid-twenties… But you know, it seems like even younger investors, they’re all in on your platform, they’re just investing right now, which is pretty cool.

Jason Raznick: Yeah, no, Frank, there’s a lot of things you just said there that definitely… Like your dad trying to educate you to learn what’s really going on in the market. Frank, I blew up an account in ’99, 2000. My grandma gave me some money, and I got that account to triple and then I got to see it go down to zero, including signed Amazon stock at $10. And I keep that as a thing in my wallet, so I never forget no matter how good the market is… Which is really good right now, making a lot of money. The market’s going up. Everyone’s the smartest guy in the room. I have the stock certificate of me selling that Amazon share in my wallet, so I remember, listen as good as it is now, there’s going to be times when it’s bad.

Jason Raznick: I mean, what I was doing was buying stocks at 48, they’d go to 78. I’d buy more. This was back in 2000. And then they’d start falling, and I would hold them. And they would go down 50%, I would hold them. And so I had my hand handed to me in 2000. And the market… I don’t want to say it, but its seems easy right now. And so when that happens, there’s going to be a day… And I don’t want to call it a day of reckoning… But it’s going to be a day where the air is blown out a little bit. And my hope, Frank, is that it doesn’t go out too fast, because I don’t want to lose a generation of investors. I don’t want to lose it.

Jason Raznick: And like we see at Benzinga, we used to cover just long-term stuff, analyst, ratings, all that. And now there’s a lot more trading ideas. I published my trading ideas. I have people that like literally text me, email me, ask me for my trade ideas. It is a whole new frontier. I mean, such a new frontier. Frank, go to this page, if you can. Can you pull up another URL?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, sure.

Jason Raznick: You’re on benzinga.com, which is good. It’s slash… Slash-trade-dash-ideas. Some of my picks are on this page. So it’s a new page that we haven’t marketed, and I didn’t tell you prior, so that’s just my fault. Slash-trade-dash-ideas, not slash-ideas. So it’s a dash between trade and ideas. You’ll see it. It’ll come up.

Frank Curzio: I like this, getting this proprietary information from you. This is really cool. I haven’t seen the stuff either, so this is great, guys-

Jason Raznick: So, if you scroll down, you’ll find Jason Raznick somewhere, or do a command-F, and you click on my name and then it has 70% of my ideas all there. Any trade I make, I write my idea. Why? Because people kept saying, “Where’s your trade ideas? And where do I find it?” Well, there I am. So click on my name. It doesn’t look like you can click on it, but you can. There you go. That’s all my picks-

Frank Curzio: This is great. This is so great.

Jason Raznick: It was so hard to find people’s picks. There’s so much noise everywhere. So, I’m like, “Here are my picks. And I’m up at work. I’m up over 65% this year, but I’m up over 500% over the last three years.” And so I just thought, okay, here is stuff. And I get different information sometimes, that is before the market, because Benzinga. I don’t trade those things because people will say, “Oh, well, he’s Benzinga, he has access to stuff.” I don’t trade those things. I give it to the audience first, for sure. I never want to be doing stuff ahead of people or have news… We are at the crux of it.

Jason Raznick: We’re like a Reuters for the millennial investor. Robinhood, Ameritrade, TradeStation, Interactive Brokers, Lightspeed, Webull, Public, and 25 other brokerages use Benzinga as their pretty much main source of news and data. And so we are a full service, financial news and media service. We have over a hundred people, and we have to provide news, and then give people actionable ideas off of it. The difference maker between us and most people is that…

Jason Raznick: So, let’s say Apple has a new iPad. The iPad can dance, or the iPad can go in the air. I have no idea. New iPad, write the story. But what we try to do is we try to give a hedge fund type ideas to the average investor. We don’t go buy this stock, because it’s hard to come up with a stock every day. It’s hard to sell the idea every day. We say, if you believe this, Frank, then here are some bullish ways to play it. If you believe that, then here are some bearish ways to play it. ETFs, options… That’s how Benzinga has differentiated itself versus just providing the straight news.

Frank Curzio: Now, you know what I like about it most is the accountability. Because so many times we see people go on TV, and they’ll recommend something, and you won’t hear from them for two years. I love the fact that even when our site, Curzio Research… Everything’s archived. You’re going to learn from the mistakes you make. And I want people to see them, because obviously, you and I have to be right more than we’re wrong, or we need to get into another line of business. But that’s what you learn the most. And I love people like that, where here, this is exactly what I’m doing. Here it is. And it holds people accountable to their picks, which is exactly what you want, and-

Jason Raznick: It’s a great point, because you look at my page on me of my picks. One of them was I bought SAVE, S-A-V-E, which is Spirit Airlines. I bought it two months ago, I’m up 18, 20%, but I bought options before earnings, but I didn’t have a reason to. I didn’t have a reason to, because the earnings are not going to be amazing right now. It’s the forecast that I’m hoping for. So, I bought options, but I bought June options. Those options will be a winner, but in the short-term they’re a loser, because the earnings weren’t strong. That was obvious.

Jason Raznick: My lesson there is, I shouldn’t have bought the Spirit options right before earnings, because I didn’t have the catalyst yet. The catalyst is in the future, when people start traveling a lot more. So, it’s a good learning lesson for me. Don’t try to be so early on the options, wait a little bit, let them come to play, because I had a chance to buy them 15% down. So, I got to look at my history and see what I did wrong there.

Frank Curzio: Now I’m looking through this, and you see Kathy Wood, you see Gene Munster, who’s a great analyst. And also David Portnoy, who came on your show, and I think that you’re pretty good friends with. Some really good company and some good stock picks. Talk about that. That network is incredibly powerful and it seems those people I just mentioned are on board with, “Hey, you know what? There’s a younger generation coming in and let’s try to educate them.” That’s got to make you feel great, just to have people that are coming to your site. And David Portnoy, how big he’s gotten. He’s pretty amazing.

Jason Raznick: Kevin O’Leary, Dave Portnoy, the CEO’s of Weebly, all these guys that want to change investing. And when we started Benzinga, I thought it was unfair that people on Wall Street got information before people on main street, and these people are thinking the same thing. So Dave Portnoy… That day when the stocks were halted, we were going back and forth. He came on the show again, but he’s a guy that… I went to Michigan with him, but I didn’t know him in Michigan… He’s changing the way people are getting information. It’s not the same way of a one-way message. It’s not the suits, as he calls it. Well, we met… Because he actually called me a suit many months ago. He called me a suit and I was like, “I’m the anti-suit.” And so we met that way.

Jason Raznick: We remembered, and we met four months later, because we had an earnings data on Activision. We had a small mistake, but then it was corrected. But we didn’t talk about the fact that stock… And he didn’t know who we were. He thought we were traders. I’m definitely not first as a trader. I’m first an information guy. And then I do some of the trade investing that I host the show every day at 12:10 called Benzinga’s Power Hour. And you can go to youtube.com/benzinga. And I host it at 12:10, and that’s where I bring on guys like Portnoy and other traders.

Jason Raznick: Frank, we had you on. If you go… It’s on youtube.com/benzinga. But we had Frank on, and we bring on guys all the time, who move the markets, who are smart, and who have a big following. And today, we have a couple big followings, and it’s our thing of live programming that we think should be two dimensional, where it’s us talking to people, talking to the community, I’m reading the chat. People know how to irk me and do stuff. And it’s kind of funny. But Dave Portnoy… It’s a lot of guys like that that have a lot of reach, and why do they have to go to just CNBC? Why isn’t Benzinga an outlet for them?

Jason Raznick: And that’s how we’ve been doing that. We do a lot of education on our YouTube channel, lot of… ‘Cause Frank said, guys, there’s a lot of new investors and it’s easy to go by, Sundial, SNDL. But do you really understand why you’re buying Sundial? I would say probably not. And there’s still good fundamental investments out there. I recently bought a stock. Ballantyne is the symbol of BTN, B as in boy, T as in Tom, N as in Nancy, and I bought it because the valuation is very fair, and it’s one I hold for a long time. But more importantly, more importantly in this day and age of a work network. I didn’t talk to Frank for a few years, but now I’m sure we’ll talk about the times where, networks are really smart person about BTN. He put the financial model together to the valuation. He buys it, I’m in it and that’s it, you trust your leverage your social connections. And that’s pretty important.

Frank Curzio: I was just going to say, how important is that? Because people say, Frank, you do a free podcast for 13, over 13 years now. But every week, I interview someone that’s brilliant, that’s smarter than me, that I’m learning from. And as much as you cover so many different ideas and I cover different… We can’t cover everything, right? And from my network, the ideas that I get from people that I trust, and not all of them are right, but they have great track records. I explain the importance of that to a network. And how could somebody young… What was the easiest way for you to build up your network? For me, I talked to everybody. I made myself available. I did things for people without asking for anything in return. How do you build up your network? I get that question the most and you have one of the biggest out there.

Jason Raznick: Just what your last part that you said is you gave more than you received. That’s another, it’s another way to say it. Give, give, give, then receive, give, give, give, and then, then maybe receive it. Don’t expect it. What I do is I have like a tickler file that it’s in my phone and every like three months, I want to make sure I reach out to my tickler file, but that’s less so a science it’s more awareness. If I see something that, I don’t know, okay, I’m a small investment company called stock X. If I see something that’ll affect the shoe market and resell, I sent it to the CEOs and founders of stock X and they love it. And they may have seen it, but it’s me thinking of them. When they think of Jason Resnick, which I’m saying myself, another person, just so you understand why I’m saying it.

Jason Raznick: When they think of me, they’re like, Oh, that guy says, send us helpful stuff from time to time. There’s no, “Hey, that guy’s out.” When he reaches out, he’s always asking for a favor. You don’t want that. I mean, you don’t want that. People like reach out to me that I haven’t talked to him six years and say, “Hey let’s catch up. You know, what’s going on?” I know at that time, yes, we’re going to have a conversation, but I know there’s going to be an ask. I know they’re going to want something. I really try to give, give, give, and then receive I’m friends with, and I’m dropping names now, but I’m friends, many basketball players, many like celebrity type people. If they, if I called them every time and said, “Hey, can you do this? Or can you do that?” They’re not going to answer my calls. They’re not.

Jason Raznick: I really try to give, give, give, and then receive. And it’s to the point now that I know if I call and ask for something, I know for certain they’re going to do it. That’s crazy to me. I know that, I think of it like a credit and debit, and I don’t necessarily in that sense. But what most people do is they ask for favors right away. Do you know how many people Frank have hit me up on date, port nine? I’m going to say over under 20 people asking me to connect them the day. I’m not kidding. And David, by the way, he’s not going to go do stuff for me. It’s not like that.

Jason Raznick: And so, and I’m not asking it for day for any favorites because David is the Howard Stern of this day and age. And you don’t just go, well, why would you want to just do favors for me? And then, people are asking me for favors from him. And I it’s just, and that’s the opposite of give, give, give, or receive. You have to give, give, and maybe receiving you don’t necessarily have to receive. But if you, if one thing I would say is it’s really easy to be angry and mean and upset, or it’s really easy to be nice, funny and chill. It’s just a decision in your head. It’s a decision, it’s a decision in your head.

Jason Raznick: My thing is, I want to give and be as nice to people as I possibly can. I’m sure there’s a couple of people that maybe haven’t been rubbed the wrong way, and I would love to make up for that. But the biggest thing I think we all need to do better in this world is seek to understand, seek to understand, because you never know where someone’s coming from that day and chill out. And I think that things come from that.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. I mean, chill out. It’s a very good thing, right? Especially with everything political, or would it get crazy? Let me switch this around. Now, I’m talking about your network, but I see that through your site and even I’ll bring it up here when you’re looking at a lot of these videos, there’s one thing that’s in common, which I see with all of them is young kids. And I don’t mean that to say kids like disrespect. I’m saying, it seems like in their twenties or early thirties. How important is that to you to surround yourself with that kind of… It’s just, is that to keep you young? Because when I see these guys talking, it’s not… They don’t even feel like they have a job. They love this. They’re passionate about it for me. I have young people around me, a young analyst as well. It does keep me young. And just to see how important is that, because I know that your site, especially on the video end is fill a lot of young, very, very smart, talented people.

Jason Raznick: Frank, what, I’m fine. I don’t know if you find this at Curzio Research or not, but what I’m finding is younger people like to experiment more and try things. With our video, Frank, I have to be honest, there was no real strategy and tactics. What happened was the game stop thing. And I may be jumping, but I’m sorry, is it okay? Hopefully.

Frank Curzio: Absolutely.

Jason Raznick: Okay, GameStop. People don’t really know this, but we’re the room where it happened. The WallStreetBetters were out there, but we had Andrew Left from Citron Research on two, three Thursdays ago. He couldn’t get on his Twitter feed. He came live on our show. We had 800 listeners at the time. He shows up within 10 minutes, 15,000 WallStreetBetters were there and took over the show. And it was insane. And the stock went from 40 to 75 bucks over two days.

Jason Raznick: But if we were the room where it all started, like a hundred percent, it’s not even a debatable fact. Yeah, it was crazy. But then the next day, we went for 11 hours straight. And so we’re like, wait, maybe we should do more of this. And we need more show hosts. I will hire anyone, not anyone, but need more shows. What I find is the younger crowd is more willing to do some experiments. I’m all about doing experiments and seeing what happens. I think the older crowd also has a lot of intelligence and things that in part, the younger crowd is easier to like to get to do experiments. This entrepreneur, Dan Gilbert, he’s the owner of the Cavaliers and Quicken Loans, Rocket Mortgage.

Frank Curzio: Trainer, wasn’t he? When did he start out as trainer or something before owning that team? I think. Yeah, but go ahead.

Jason Raznick: A trainer? No, maybe another… No, Dan was Cavaliers. I mean, Quicken loans. He was slinging mortgages out of his trunk. And now he’s like, I think he’s the 15th register in America, or like 15 versions in the world, something like that. I don’t know whatever. But he always said money follows it. Doesn’t leave; money follows. It doesn’t leave. It’s like you build stuff. And then the money will follow.

Jason Raznick: On the video stuff, I’ve reached out to me. I’m like, “Hey guys, I don’t know if this will work. I have no idea. There’s a good chance it won’t work. Probably the odd shape, history that won’t work. If you want to give it a try, let’s go give it a try.” The younger folks that I’ve talked to are more willing to get stuff, tries. Older folks, sometimes, I need to get 5,000 a week. I have this. And I’m like, well, we don’t have that. We don’t know if that was a real thing. That is one of the differences. And by the way, it will be a real thing. It will be, but I knock it. I don’t have the money to go put 20,000 a month into one post right now.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, no. And even with the young people that we hire, one of the things I realized is that’s where the innovation comes from because they think about things differently. We’re conditioned, right? There’s so much influencing us that, they’re going to do things, and I’m like, what are you crazy? And that’s how you really disrupt things, right? You don’t disrupt by, by doing what everybody else says. And that’s kind of what you get used to as you get older. But the younger generation and just the social media and how we’re expanding our presence there, things that I won’t even think of doing it, it’s pretty cool. How smart. They’re much smarter than me than I was at their age. I can tell you that.

Jason Raznick: I hear you, but you know it’s… Frank, you have a lot more years. As do I. And we’ve seen markets go up and down. And what I’m afraid is that most people have not, they’re just been in a bull market, and that’s what I’m afraid of. They’re not used to this. What is that thing? What’s it like? That’s what I’m afraid of.

Frank Curzio: No, I’m definitely afraid of it too. Because it’s not going to always be like this and stops going up. Like Tilray, seven to 60 and in five weeks or six weeks. It’s usually not like that.

Jason Raznick: Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of CMGI, and those stocks that went from CMGI, and then I… There was another one, I can’t think of the name of it right now, but that’s what reminds me of. And there’s going to be blow back and it’s just… It is what it is. And at the time, you don’t know… Remember in March, when the market basically took a beating, and it made sense to buy stocks? That’s the same thing right now. You’ve got to be able to get in when people are fearful and sell when people are greedy. That’s the game.

Frank Curzio: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that you move it around. Just starting to rain over there. You’re getting a little wet.

Jason Raznick: Starting to rain. You see?

Frank Curzio: Oh, I can see it as perfect. That’s awesome. I think people are going to be happy that it’s raining. You can jump into pool when it’s minus five-

Jason Raznick: I have to move, I have to move. I have to move. It is downpouring, downpouring. It just started raining. You have no idea or back.

Frank Curzio: People love, like, just two guys sitting down and talking, and just… Nothing’s formatted or anything like that. I’ll send you a couple of topics I want to touch on. That goes very, very well, even with your power and things like that. But let’s get to some of the things that you would talk about now, like the sectors and everything. ‘Cause we’re seeing Bitcoin at 50,000. You’re looking at marijuana stocks really, really catching a bid.

Frank Curzio: What are some of the things that maybe the investors on your website or your audience is… What are they interested in the most? Is it just those sectors? And maybe, what’s the next sector? Or even, a better question is, are they worried at all? At these things may be overheating, like marijuana stocks, or just even targeting these stocks that have huge short ratios, like we saw with the Reddit crowd.

Jason Raznick: Some people are cognizant of the market and going up, but most people are looking for the next trade and not looking at risk aversion. I always own some long-term puts on the spy. Those right now, I’ll be done a ton. But I always like to have some… I like to have some hedges in place, long-term puts or whatever, something. You can do a lot of different hedges, but that’s what I like to have.

Jason Raznick: But I would say silver is one of the sectors heating up. Another one, which I’ve been invested for two and a half years, is lithium graphing. These are things that go into an electric vehicle, graphing lithium, I’ve owned LTHM for two and a half years. It didn’t move for a year and a half, and then it took off. But… And I’m seeing a lot of people looking for like the new metals in battery and the innovation on our site: What’s going to be next? What’s going to be next? There’s a company, FUV, it’s three-wheeler vehicles, fun utility vehicles, are… We’re seeing them in rows. A lot of electric vehicle stuff. That’s what I would say is probably the most red stuff now.

Jason Raznick: Cannabis is definitely big, cannabis. There’s definitely several companies that get Cronos, which does a lot of the backend stuff. I don’t know on that one. The two that I… Well, the two that I own that… I do want a little Cronos, but I own TerrAscend and Curaleaf. I’ll probably do a little Cronos, now that I’m thinking about it, but it’s a lot of like, what’s going to be the next? What’s next? Who got next? That’s what they’re trying to think of now. Tesla is definitely one of the most widely owned stocks on our platform by far in terms of valuation wise, it’s the largest. But they’re trying to find the next Tesla, and it’s our job to try to find the next Tesla. One of the reasons Benzinga exists was, there’s so many scams out there. I don’t know if you remember, but maybe six years ago, every single company was attaching crypto to their name, these small caps. And they put up crypto, their valuation went up like 30%. We try to find out what’s real, what’s not real, some other things.

Frank Curzio: It sounds familiar, right, with the dot com ever. How many changes? I mean, companies changed their… Put dot com into their name, or created a website right before the blow up. But let me ask you a question: How many of you have access to many ideas, many stops? How many do you have in your portfolio at one time? I’m sure you have a trading portfolio. I have a lot as well. Is it, again, you don’t have to answer exactly how much, or if that’s too… Yeah.

Jason Raznick: I will answer. I would show my holdings. One thing is if I just tell the truth and put it out there, it’s a lot easier than the double thing stuff. And I know that’s the same thing for everyone. I probably go a little too personal, but so far, it’s been okay. But I probably own… In my active trade account, I used to own like 15 stocks in it, guys. And this just shows you how extended the market is. I only have 40 stocks in it. If you asked me every single stock, what they do, I don’t know. And that’s very odd for me, friends. I usually… No, I don’t usually keep treatments, just letters. But then I just… You see Sundial for 60 cents and $3 when people are telling me nonstop.

Jason Raznick: I bought a dollar and I sold it at $1.80. I was like, all right, I’ll buy these. I give. You guys are right. I’m wrong. I only like 35, 40 stocks. If the market takes a beating today, yes, I’ll be down a lot. But I want some really strong stocks that I like. And so, it’s just what I do. And I own about 35, 40 stocks in my active trading.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And I saw even David Portnoy on investor hour or one of those. I think it was one of the ones that I was on with you, where you said, “Hey, he texted me, this is a name that he likes, look.” And I forgot what it might’ve been… It was an ammo is something, I forgot what it was.

Jason Raznick: POWW, that was an ammo play. The market’s crazy. Right now, we’re open right now. I own a stock, KMPH, I bought it at $6 and 90 cents that $10.92 today, I trimmed some. And this lady who gave it to me, Viv, she’s like, “Don’t sell any, Jason.” I sold a very small amount, and it’s up a ton on Voyager Digital. It’s a crypto play, crypto. It’s a dollar. It’s a dollar. And that’s… The CEO of is Steve Ehrlich. So now, we go back to the Benzinga days, Lightspeed was one of our first clients. He was the CEO of it. I met him. I maintained… We’re good friends. Upwork, it’s a big stock. I own a stock right now that I don’t know why I own it, but everyone kept telling me to buy. I bought it.

Jason Raznick: AMYZF, it’s recycled for battery materials. AMYZF, it’s up 30% today. I gave BTN at $2.50 last week. It’s at $3.05 today.

Frank Curzio: The power of your network.

Jason Raznick: I bought eXp, eXp Realty at 34%. And there’s GAN, GAN. I mean, it’s… I don’t know. I haven’t seen markets like this. And then I… I do margins from time to time. And then, I lower the margin. I lower it quickly. I lower it faster than I raise it, that’s for sure. When I feel stuff extended, I’ll go back into it. But this KMPH, in about three weeks, it’s up to 60%. Is that overextended? I don’t know. I don’t know. All I know is I did sell some shares. I guess she was right. I should’ve never sold any, but I’m just thinking she’s wrong. And she’s been right. This girl, Vivian, she’s been writing all this stuff. So, we had GMBL, Frank, on our small cap show. We had GMBL, it’s an online gaming platform, entertainment something. GMBL, the stock was at $4 and was on our small cap conference today to 1600 for up another 7%.

Frank Curzio: Wow. Well, just one that we had in our portfolio under a dollar. And we sent it just to crypto stocks in general, if it’s MARA or Silvergate, another one that people are familiar with, and that one is through the roof now 140, $50, wherever it is probably higher today with Bitcoin touching 50, 50,000. But…

Jason Raznick: What about BNGO? The BNGO is a Kathy Wood play, but this guy, Tom Nash, gave it to me at a $5.70. It’s at 14 today. But, yeah, let’s say Bitcoin hit 50,000 today. Is that what you’re saying?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, you’re seeing a lot of these, pure play, Bitcoin. Voyager is sub-link to stocks that are related to those, right? Hive Technologies, people don’t realize that those are the pure plays instead of buying the other ones that aren’t pure plays. Those things have really, really taken off, especially… We think it could be a hundred thousand, which a lot of people do, and more institutions are coming in. MasterCard and BofA, BNY Mellon. Anyway… But I wanted to end with this, right? Because I know you’re a busy man. You’re doing this, thank you so much for doing this. I know you’re away.

Jason Raznick: Thanks for having me. I always appreciate it.

Frank Curzio: Why don’t you take us through your site? Because I know people are going to definitely click on it. You’re one of the people that I love even promoting, because I know you do the right thing for the small investor. And that’s what we’re about as well. It’s bringing Wall Street to main street, leveling that playing field, and giving them the same thing that we’ve had access to, right, all of our lives. And it’s really, really, it worked out for us. It’s worked out for you. But take us through some of the things here. Because you also have like a pro, or Benzinga Pro, here, right?

Jason Raznick: Yep. Yeah. If you go to premium, on that orange link there.

Frank Curzio: Okay.

Jason Raznick: For the orange link, it’s the right side top, right? Yep. So, there’s trade. There’s like the different newsletters we have, but Benzinga Pro is probably our flagship property. There’s tons of investors, maybe 10,000, that pay maybe a $100 a month or something like that. And it’s real news data. There’s a 30 person newsroom, there’s scanners or signals as the top link, on the top. And it has everything in there, Frank. We’ll get you an account. But it’s like it… What’s the two week high breakouts option alerts, unusual volume signals, scanner, chat rooms, the news desk? And then, it has press releases, where you can divide by a sector as your watch list. And it has everything that you think of with Bloomberg, which is a naked version of Bloomberg, it’s not as intense.

Jason Raznick: It’s really easier. It’s like Bloomberg meets Apple. That’s the idea for Benzinga Pro, and there’s a lot of different things we have. And we’re always hiring right now. If we find driven people that want to impact the outcome and democratize finance and change how we invest for the future, then we’re a place for you. And you can apply at cooljobsbenzinga.com, cooljobs@benzinga.com. And I’m on Twitter @JasonRaznick. But then, if you’re on Benzinga, we have small cap sections. We have ideas. Chris Ktje is one of the most read writers, K-T-J-E. He’s really good at SPACs. SPACs is… This guy, he’s just the best. He has a show called the SPAC Attack. He is the guy who… He is the guy, when it comes to SPACs, Chris Ktje, he is the guy. And he is amazing. I don’t know… I don’t know anyone better.

Jason Raznick: And so, Benzinga has trade ideas, has news, has everything. You can look up a symbol and see… And we cover everything. We have a hundred people, and we’re trying to change the way information is delivered. And it’s hard. It’s not easy. What we’re doing is not easy. We get ripped, that we didn’t cover this stock, or we’re trying to pump this. No, we’re just trying to get the news out there. I don’t care if I own a stock that we cover. I don’t. I don’t want to be responsible for moving anything or being… I just want to inform, let people decide, and that’s it. And if we can do a good job with that, then I think… I think we’d solve problems for people, and that’s all we try to do.

Frank Curzio: Last question here, too. You guys do a great job, where you have like a pre-market prep video. You have the power hour, which, you know, I’ve been on. And yet, you host with other people. Other people have come on and given ideas, but also the free webinars. You did those once a month, where you have people… I don’t know where you get the people from, if they’re from Benzinga or if you have guests come in and… A lot of that’s free. But I’m sure that’s doing great for you too, those webinars, because it seems your staff has given me passwords to log in. And when I’ve logged in, they were very, very good. Actually, they were really cool. It was very educational.

Jason Raznick: We think if we can educate the future of investors, America, it’s a good thing for everyone. And, yes, we do those free webinars. And there’s 10 to 20,000 people that attend each one a power hour, you were at the pre-market prep every day for the last five years at eight to 9:00 AM. When the market’s open every day, I think the best way to get your day started the webinars you can go to. In Bezinga.com, there’s a place to sign up for newsletters in the top right corner. And you’ll get in the funnel for those webinars. But we are not just trying to sell you. Yes, we want it through subscriptions. But if we can educate the future of investors, we think it’s a good thing for everyone.

Frank Curzio: No, this is really great stuff. I guess we’ll leave it there.

Jason Raznick: Go to Benzinga.com. Now, go to type in “pre-market.” This is a new page. We just launched benzinga.com/pre-market. Watch this. I know Benzinga has to be easier to navigate. We will get there, where we have a new site rolling out, because there it is. If you ever, in the morning, you want to see everything… That’s moving. We have a nice little graph. You can expand it. And if you go down, it’s all pre-market news related headlines, then there’s the biggest losers. Here’s all the data’s range today. This is the way I start my day, every day.

Frank Curzio: This is great. This is really great at the beginning of the day, absolutely. We’re going to end on this now. How long are you in Florida for? Hopefully, for a couple of weeks. And hopefully, you’ll jump into a pool pretty soon with your family. I mean, how long are you here for, buddy?

Jason Raznick: I’m a flag football coach. I’ve got to be back on Saturday, because there’s a game Sunday. If there’s no flag football, I would be here for two weeks. But flag football, that’s… I’m a first-time coaching… I love it… Passionate about it. And, I’m here until Saturday.

Frank Curzio: No, that’s great stuff. Well, Jason, listen, thank you so much for doing this. I had no idea you were on vacation, he came on. I wouldn’t have told you… Not on vacation… But even out in Florida-

Jason Raznick: Do it Frank. You’re the man. You’re a Curzio, you’ve been always a man of integrity, man, who gets it? Just passionate about what you do. They don’t make them much better than you, Frank, and anytime, anyplace, anywhere. Thank you for having me on. If you want to follow me on Twitter, guys, I’m @JasonRaznick R-A-Z-N-I-C-K. And Frank Curzio, if you don’t follow him, that’d be fine. Frank is @Frank’sTheMan!

Frank Curzio: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. And hopefully, you’ll join us again soon. Take care, buddy.

Jason Raznick: You too.

Frank Curzio: Great stuff from Jason. It was so funny because he was debating whether he was going to do the interview outside or inside, then it started raining. But it’s funny because he’s kind of like me, a lot of other people, where he’ll get out, he’s in a t-shirt, and you’ll see, like, his gym shorts. ‘Cause right now, I’m wearing gym shorts because I worked out in the morning, and then we did this podcast, and I’m usually wearing shorts through the office. I changed my shirt. I remember Dan Fitzpatrick, I used to interview him a lot. He used to go on CNBC and would bring his dog with him, his dog. He used to wear shorts and had his dog at his feet and stuff. But just to see that… And he just gets up and walks away. It’s just cool because it’s unscripted. It’s awesome, and I’m a big fan. I’m a big fan of Jason’s,

Frank Curzio: Lots of great ideas that he provided. One of those is going to show up in our Dollar Stock Club portfolio, where we take one stock from our guest each week and write it up. Sometimes, we have guests that’s not an analyst or give us a stock, but most weeks, I’d say about 45 weeks, 45 picks a year, you get. If you’re a new to this podcast, we’re getting lots of new people come in. You don’t know Curzio Research, you should be skeptical of us from the start and do your homework on us. But one way to find out more about us is not just by listening to podcasts, but subscribing to The Dollar Stock Club. It’s $4 a month, right? You’re going to get lots of trading ideas from brilliant people.

Frank Curzio: We talked about the performance has been very, very good. And these guys going to get you in things that maybe I’m not getting into, right? Which is really cool. I use is marijuana ETF. There’s an energy ETF. And I didn’t agree energy a few months ago, and look where that went. We’d done well on a lot of other things, but it really opens the door to just so many ideas, and you get to see really our research, cause we create a one-page report, give you a buy-up-to price, a stop on it. And it’s like a trading portfolio, but it gives you a good idea. And then you go, people like to listen to the podcast and try to jump the gun and think what stock they’re going to be. But it’s just really, really cool.

Frank Curzio: It’s really, really cool. And that offer is available on our website, curzioresearch.com. But again, it’s $4 a month. We want to provide something where, I start a newsletter where you see our stuff and hopes that, hey, these guys, you say Curzio Research, these guys have great analysts and… Our other products are more expense.

Frank Curzio: That’s how we build our business. But I always believe in showing you first and just telling you how great everything is and you should subscribe to a very expensive product. No, build that, do your research, learn. Like I said before, ask every question, everything. Really love Jason coming on, and definitely take a look, because some of those stocks… Because I started researching them again, high growth industries, names that he’s getting… What I was most interested in is that GameStop… Things started on his platform, which I was surprised at. I didn’t know. I actually started his pilot to try and research, that he explained where all these WallStreetBets guys got on, and he just blew up the platform. And I remember him canceling that because he’s going to talk about why he shorted GameStop, and it went to 40 to 70, that all started there. And then, you see the powerful of the network and the people that are coming on. But yeah, and I really like what they’re doing, and those were really good guys over there. Thank you so much, Jason, for coming on. Guys, the podcast is about you, not about me.

Frank Curzio: Let me know what you thought, frank@Curzioresearch.com. That’s frank@curzioresearch.com. Now, lot’s going on in the market. So let’s bring in Daniel Creech, senior research analyst at Curzio Research. Daniel, what’s going on, buddy? How’s everything?

Daniel Creech: It’s good. Shout out to everybody in the crazy winter’s way from Texas to the Midwest to everywhere. That’s nuts. Hey, you ever been to a Mardi Gras? That kicks off today.

Frank Curzio: No.

Daniel Creech: Did you see the front page of the Wall Street Journal?

Frank Curzio: No, I’ve been there, I think a couple of weeks before or something. And it was crazy, but no, I know that they’re basically open it up though. I saw, right.

Daniel Creech: It was just wild because the Wall Street Journal had a cool picture because it just did a side-by-side and last year, it was crowded as hell. Which, if you would ask me that, I wouldn’t have guessed… I would have assumed it was either cut way back or canceled, but it wasn’t.

Frank Curzio: Nothing happened. This is February. I mean the market didn’t start crashing, people didn’t realize like-

Daniel Creech: That’s true. That’s true. I guess it is. Time flies.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to see the comps in late March, then April, when everything starts locking down.

Daniel Creech: That’s true. I guess everything didn’t start shutting down right away. But then this year, they did the same side-by-side picture. And of course, it’s just empty as can be, so pretty wild. But yeah, I’ve never been either. I’ve always heard good stories, but it looks like I missed my chance.

Frank Curzio: Well, no, I think things are going to start opening up now. I mean, I mentioned earlier COVID cases down tremendously, hospitalization rates are down tremendously. Hopefully, we start opening everything up. Vaccinations are taking place. It’s pretty incredible to see where we are right now. And I think people feel a lot more comfortable and again, we still have to protect the people. If older people didn’t get the vaccine and stuff, but you’re going to see lots of things open up the next three, four, or five months. And I’m telling you, it’s going to result. Like, I talked to you today, and I say this all the time, it’s going to result in an absolute explosion in demand, especially for travel, people getting away. They are dying to get away. Casinos are going to be open, fully open. It’s going to get really crazy, with the amount of money they’re just handing people, and they just dying to spend it right now. It’s going to get nuts when this opens up, and it’s going to be a lot sooner than I think people believe.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. The scary thing is that everybody’s expecting this blow up top or blow off top. And it’s hard to argue that. We were joking about that Bank of America report about the only reason to be bearish is to be bearish because there is no reason. And that’s interesting because you know what’s coming. I mean, if you dumb it down to my level, you basically are throwing so much more water through money, stimulus into a pot. It’s got to overflow, and it’s just going to be amazing. So, it will be interesting to see where the money goes. But you know what’s going to counter that is rising prices with food and energy that’s not counted in the inflation targets that the government does. The usual-

Frank Curzio: Nothing is counted in inflation. We have zero inflation. This is all based on the Reagan Era, how he changed… Which I learned recently, did some research and talked to a few people I know, how he changed the system. When it comes to inflation, where he just changed the way we look at, he changed the formula, and now it’s, hey, the CPI is good. We’re under 2%, and that could be three, three and a half percent. It’s not going to matter. They are still going to be pedal to the metal, low interest rates. But it’s just funny how everything that we pay for across the board, is higher than what we paid for probably even yesterday. And look back over the years, whether it’s food, tuition, I mean, everything, electricity it’s absolutely insane, but it doesn’t matter from an investment point of view because what the Fed looks at is the CPI and a CPI is showing that there’s no inflation or very little inflation. So, therefore, they’re going to keep rates low, and you going to see a lot more stimulus dollars come out and that’s how you have to invest.

Frank Curzio: I understand back America’s point saying, “It’s hard to be bearish.” It is, it is hard to be bearish. But sometimes again, if you’re not following the status quo, we talked about earlier, you want to be careful here and just protect yourself a little bit. You might be wrong, and you’re not going to pick the absolute top, but at least protect yourself if you buying puts or something. Because if you’re right in the put, it’s going to result in five X, 10 X returns. And if you’re not, maybe it’s 2% of your portfolio, whatever. But it’s definitely where to start hedging yourself and being smart here because, I mean, look where we are with Bitcoin, right, Daniel?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Bitcoin. Yeah. It’s over 50. Is it’s still over 50? I don’t know what it currently is.

Frank Curzio: It’s 51,000 right now. And I’m going to show you. Yes. So, I bring it up to the chart right now. So, a market cap of 951 billion, but this is the chart, right? Look at this chart, this is just a year chart, if you’re looking at it, where it was under 10,000 a year ago. And yeah, it’s just an incredible, incredible move, just unbelievable and just keeps going higher and higher. Yes, 51,000 now. But I mean, you could argue, Daniel, that it’s not done going up with all the institutions buying… And then you talked about MicroStrategy, a company that you follow very closely. And what did they just announce? This is the other day, like yesterday, I think.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. The last couple of days, they’ve had to up their offering. So, it just fascinates me on the market reaction. So, you kind of think about, you got to be more careful. How do you do that? What do you pay attention to. MicroStrategy offered again, or announced that they were raising convertible debt that pays 0%. So, they’re going to take in money today. Those are going to convert to shares or get paid back later, and they’re buying Bitcoin with it. They were going to buy 600 million worth. They upped it to 900 million, and they already have over two billion in it. So, you got to give that guy credit for leading. I mean, he’s putting his money where his mouth or his company’s money, where all their vision is. And yeah, it’s wild. But when they announced that, their stock went down.

Daniel Creech: And that’s kind of an interesting tale because lately everybody that announces or puts Bitcoin or blockchain in their name, or you see a lot of mining companies coming out, crypto mining, people were switching their business models. I’m not blaming them, I’m not saying good or bad, but when the stock starts to not react like it has been, that’s just another data point to pay attention to, and just understand the shit is volatile. So be prepared.

Frank Curzio: It is pretty crazy. I’m trying to bring up a chart here, if they allow me to.

Daniel Creech: MicroStrategy from February 9th has gone from over 1200 to under 900 a day.

Frank Curzio:

Over 1200?

Daniel Creech: Mm-hmm. Now, I could have been an intraday price. But yeah. I mean, I’m looking on it on seeking alpha. So-

Frank Curzio: Yeah. So, I mean, I’m trying to punch that up here and see if I give you a chart, because if you’re looking at, MicroStrategy and where it was, holy cow, I mean, this is a stock, that’s just incredible. So, it is below 900 now, right? And it did go a lot higher, which is interesting, but I’m bringing up that chart right now. Here you go. You can take a look at it again on the Curzio Research YouTube page. We’d like to show a lot of this stuff, or it could be listened to iTunes, but we have all this for free without interviews. And you can see Jason’s beautiful face and my ugly face. And Daniel’s beautiful face on YouTube. But really quick, this, I mean, you’re looking at this chart of where it went and just three months ago, I mean, you look at a stock that three months ago, MicroStrategy a little bit before December was $200.

Frank Curzio: It went to close to 1300. It did intraday high of 1315 now a pullback, but I’m not even too sure, Daniel, if that’s an indication of, hey, this isn’t working anymore. Or if it’s, okay, I think that 5 X premium is built in. And even though, over that period where you saw you’re the Bitcoin, you bulk up and value, maybe double, it’s still in the scheme of things, in terms of your market cap and everything, I mean, their market cap is now eight billion. So, way to go, it gained six billion in market cap and made a billion.

Frank Curzio: Probably, maybe a little bit more than of two billion on it yet. But the market cap increased three X by the amount of money they made in Bitcoin basically. And I’m not doing perfect math there, but you can get the point. So, maybe it’s just like, all right, enough because you where’s this thing going to go? It’s going to go into to 10,000 of five, whatever, but it is interesting to see it did pull back significantly. I mean, 1300 to under 900 is significant. And let’s see if that continues, right. Because we’ve seen a lot of stocks continue to do well as Bitcoin goes higher.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. And it’s great to see Bitcoin. It’ll be interesting to see how it trades going forward. Over the next few months in 2017, when it ran up to 20,000 hell, it went all the way to under five or four. I think even for a little bit, I don’t think the odds of that are very good at all, but would it surprise me to see it go down 50% from here and then hang out at 25 or 30,000? I don’t think that’s out of the question either. That’ll be the interesting thing going forward. The fun thing for us personally, and then subscribers are going to be the poll, the follow-through of the amount of money flowing in to all coins right now, we were talking the other day, Binance. So, not all cryptocurrencies are good. Not all are bad, just like stocks, just like every other profession. But what’s going to be interesting is that you’re starting to see this huge bull market and altcoins, right? I mean, these stocks are moving a hundred percent in the last two weeks, not stocks, but coins

Frank Curzio: Your data, this portfolio, our crypto portfolio. And guys-

Daniel Creech: I told you, I was, oh, I did it last week. And you’re, no, you haven’t done since the first. I was, oh well, I thought I did it.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. So, I was just updating it, really quick. Because I want to see, well, we have, and this really happens in my 25 years of investing. You had a couple of 10 baggers, 20 baggers, everyone will highlight their biggest winners. We have 14 positions, three of them are 10 X plus one of them is 16 X, another one’s 13 X, 10 of those positions are up over a hundred percent with out of those ten five or between 300 and 700%. I mean the gains in this stuff, seriously, if you are risk averse investor and you’re looking at things and say, “I can get into these crazy energy companies, electric vehicles, whatever, all these companies that you can get into.” And I understand it’s nothing compared to what we’re seeing in crypto, which is crazy, but there are some good names which we’ll be able to navigate. Like Litecoin, we recommended early. Ethereum, we recommended early, up tremendously on it.

Frank Curzio: Holy cow, just try to get familiar with it because also, we have security tokens coming down too. And I’m just glad that our subscribers it’s, that never happens gains like that. You know, I’m not going to lie. I mean, you need that, that crazy bull market. And I just love to see that, hey, you know what? We did the right thing. We only put a small amount of cash to work in 2018. So we said, listen, to be careful, it’s going to get a lot worse. And then really invested in some of the best ones that got crushed. And people have sent me pictures, which is the greatest compliment you could ever get. He’s in Cabo right now and saying, “This is because of Voyager Digital,” which is up tremendously. We recommended it at 84 cents and it’s whatever, 15, 16. And that’s why you listen to people, right? That’s what you want to do. That’s what it’s all about, man. It really is.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely. I just think it’s going to be a great ride. It’s just another great story of capitalism, but it’s going to be neat to see these coins do well and blow up. And then that money and that same tailwind and enthusiasm is going to shift to the security token market because people are going to realize eventually as the products are built out, it’s easier to buy and sell. It’s easier to trade. They’re going to realize, hey, these are legit companies, they’re trading good valuations, and anybody can get in, and everybody’s going to be flushed with cash for a little bit and that’s going to rotate. So, that’ll be really good. So, I mean, that’s forward-looking but that’s an exciting adrenaline to have.

Frank Curzio: And you’re looking at a lot of these like, look at Square, look at Tesla, buying Bitcoin. Of course you have MicroStrategy. He talked about Mass Mutual. You see more and more companies, and 6,000 people signed up to the MicroStrategy conference. I was CEOs of companies looking to buy this. So maybe, they’re not fortune 500 companies, but companies that have maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars on the balance sheet, maybe a couple of million dollars that they may look to buy it, but waiting is going to happen. If the thing comes down, I mean, these guys are committed to this. They really believe it’s a store of value. So, they’re going to add more as it goes lower, maybe you see a 15, 20% decline, but these guys are going to come right in. You get to see MicroStrategy, which by the way, I find it interesting.

Frank Curzio: Because people like, it’s the end now when you see a company raising debt to buy Bitcoin, because we heard the same thing, Daniel, what all these companies, the past four years when interest rates super low, we’re borrowing money to buy back their stock and everyone was all over them and saying, “This is going to end, turn out to be an amazing decision.” Because they borrowed at super cheap rates. They bought back their stock, and almost every stock you’re looking at right now with the markets they’re at all-time highs. So, I don’t know if that’s saying that’s a sign of a top or not, but probably not.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. I mean, well, like I said, when you consider the environment we’re in, with interest rates and stuff, it’s silly not to take advantage and use money as best you can. And just like Apple doing that, you take out debt to buy back your stock at next to nothing interest rates. You also pay back dividends. You carry that forward right at all off. It’s brilliant. So, no, I don’t think that’s the top. It’ll probably get ahead of itself. Like everything else does. And you’ll see some people get burned on it. And probably some management changes here and there at different elections of boards, but that’ll be it.

Frank Curzio: Now, I want to talk about something that’s very important guys because, and people still don’t understand this, especially young investors and investors, no new people to the market. If you imagine over a hundred million dollars in assets, I believe it’s on your million dollars. You have to report your holdings every quarter and not your shorts. But if you have options, you do not. And that’s when Mellon Capital got in trouble because everyone knew they were completely short and highly leveraged and they were easy target for the short squeeze. But these companies it’s called 13 F, and they report all the companies, that the new positions, the ones that’s still holding, and the ones that they decrease, and the ones that they got rid of. And it’s a great list. And remember, this is going on the past quarter. And if you’re looking at Renaissance, don’t even bother.

Frank Curzio: And somebody is high frequency trading firms, because all those stocks have they go in and out of stocks within minutes, right? It’s all program trading and stuff. But you have these value investors, long-term investors, very smart people. And I’ll talk about a lot of these stocks that they own. And let’s talk about that because it comes out just after earnings hearings, season guys just ended, and then all these companies have to report again is did. Regulation requires it and you can get a lot of ideas and look at things where maybe it’s a new position this quarter, and then you keep an eye on it. And then next quarter, it came down a little bit in. They’re adding to it.

Frank Curzio: Now, you could say, wow, these guys are committed. They really in for a long-term, and sometimes you could buy it 15, 20% cheaper than what these managers are getting in. And you kind of know they’re in a long-term because they’re adding it, but there’s different ways to play it. And you’ve been looking at that. I didn’t get a chance to look at it too much, but I’m going to bring it up when you talk. There’s different sites that you could use. I’m going to use a paid site when I show you this. But it’s very interesting, right? I mean, you found a couple of good things.

Daniel Creech: Just, I was curious, I’ve been stupidly bullish on oil. And I say stupidly because we haven’t recommended any haven’t. We just been talking about it, watching it go up. So, that’s been frustrating. So, I was looking to see who, what these hedge funds were looking for, and anybody was taken some oil positions and they have. And like you were saying, it’s cool because you see, well, wisdom is a free site that people can go to. And they track a lot of good 13 F information, 13 F filings. The big one Buffett got into oil, he bought Chevron. So, that was a new position. And these come out 45 days later after the quarter ends. So, they’re all reporting and stuff they had as of December. So like Frank said, it could change a little bit, but David Tepper, who always liked paying attention to gazillionaire awesome hedge fund manager, he took an eight million share position in OXY. And that’s interesting because Carl Icahn has been an OXY for how long?

Frank Curzio: A long time. I don’t know if he sold the position, but-

Daniel Creech: He’s maintained it. And that thing is coming back. I’m sure a lot of that, or some of that is probably through debt and different things he has. But yeah, Buffett’s big deal was, hey, trimmed a little bit of Apple. We bought some oil. He bought Verizon, the oil stocks are just interesting. And then guess what? Disney, Microsoft, and Facebook, or either attitude or new positions were maintained a lot in these hedge funds, which really isn’t surprising. But somebody and I wrote it down, I don’t have it in front of me. I’m sorry, but somebody bought Square. And that shocked me because it’s had such a… Even if you bought at any time last quarter, it’s been on such amazing move. So, that was good to see. So yeah, you always want to look for what they’re selling, what they’re doing. But it’s interesting to see what the rich guys are thinking about.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And let me bring it up here because I’m looking at again, this Bill Ackman, you can see all these positions and this is a briefing.com. I don’t get paid a dime from these guys. I wouldn’t tell you to use a site though, because it used to be like three, $400 and now they’re charging them. They make it more institutional, it’s a thousand dollars now, which is insane, but it was a great, great site. And you see, George Soros, I’m highlighting here all the picks. And again, one of the greatest investors, I don’t care what you think politically about George Soros, but it just unbelievable investor, incredibly smart, Bill Ackman. But just how would I look at this? Like his third point, dime low. And again, I haven’t looked at this yet because it’s been crazy. I’m going to just, probably look at this all day today and tomorrow, just to see if I could find ideas.

Frank Curzio: What I noticed about third point a download, where the great investors is. He’s getting out of a lot of technology stocks, Alibaba, JD, and as Chinese stocks at know Salesforce, he did decrease the position in Disney and Adobe. He did Chris in position, but, and now it looks like he’s going to a couple of a bought Nike, but Intel. He started a position in Intel, which I think is interesting, but it seems he’s going a little bit more value, a little bit more safer here, in terms of he maintained his position in Facebook. He still has technology, but just things like that. David, I… What does he buy? So, I’m telling you, you’ll see small companies on here too that just makes sense. But these are all assembles, all the names, what they’re doing to decrease their position, that closing their position, they maintain their positions or they’re increasing.

Frank Curzio: But what gets the most attention is the new positions and the one where they’re closing. So because that music completely out of them, you see ValueAct, those guys are huge as well. It just some of the things that the big players in KKR, shareholder’s data starting to trims on a trim Morgan Stanley. What I’m realizing is there’s not a lot of companies I’m seeing adding, or having financial exposure, which I think is great to me. It tells me that’s a cyclical industry. It’s going to up as the economy reopens, right. It just, they do very well. And you’re not seeing a lot of companies going into these names at all, which means that once they do like you see what a Disney, when everyone starts going, that’s really pushing the price on these guys. These guys are massive people. These funds are huge. David Tepper is probably my favorite guy of all. I just, I admire him again. That OXY position. Is that the one you talked about David Tepper.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, because he bought it. That was a new position for him. Carl Icahn owns over 88 million shares of OXY still.

Frank Curzio: This guy is just ahead of everything and it’s just, it’s unbelievable.

Daniel Creech: Seth Klarman, how do you say his ball post group or whatever.

Frank Curzio: Ball post group. Yeah.

Daniel Creech: He took an 18 million share position in Intel. So, I wonder if him and Loeb are chatting

Frank Curzio: Yeah, but I didn’t know. Highlight here at Berkshire Hathaway, guys. So pay, tell this is important. You’re getting lots of ideas from this guys. I mean, if I could educate you again, you can see this on our crazy research YouTube page, we’re going over it I’m explaining in detail if you listen iTunes, but Berkshire is what I they’re at gold. G-O-L-D, right. That was so big. Like every sing because of the resource guide buffets in it. But I even know what’s up profit thick in these stocks anymore. It’s portfolio managers, but they’re out of it. They’re out of that. And I don’t know if it’s a good measure because these guys got out of the airlines at the absolute bottom. And I think they’re incredible buys right now. And there are easily doubled, almost tripled from their lows, but just going through this star board value, Jeffrey Smith, very great investor.

Frank Curzio: And it’s a great firm. Just these guys have amazing returns, but look at all, these stock picks that you can go through tiger global as well. Just you’re buying dash that’s into a new position in dash, really at this valuation. That’s interesting. So, this allows me to really look at this and find new ideas, which is awesome. And you’ll see a lot of those ideas show up in the newsletter. Now, remember, these are things that they purchased. They could have purchased three months ago, two and a half months. So, they could be out of these positions right now. Actually, they could have sold them last week, but they have to report them as of two weeks ago. I think whatever’s on whatever it is, but they could add, they could have more positions in it, they could have more shares that will build up those positions, but you want to look at it and not just say hey, call icon just what, whatever.

Frank Curzio: He’s maintaining the position OXY, or he sold LNG the position, LNG shiny your energy. You want to look at it and say, okay, what is it? What is he doing? And a lot of times are they adding to their positions quarter? If the quarter they building it up the Buffet’s a call. I because they like to bill up their position. Some of them take a full position right away. And a lot of times you’ll see a bad quarter report and it’ll come down 10, 15%. Now, you’re getting a 15% lower than Carl Icahn. Who’s buying this name, isn’t it long-term because it’s usually a long-term for what? Like, you still have Xerox.

Frank Curzio: I see Salons, Herbalife, some shares. I know he did. He maintains the rest of the position or Herbalife. Remember that with Ackman, how crazy that was. But all these guys Bridgewater, again, don’t pay attention to Bridgewater. These guys are out of these positions immediately. It’s just really cool and I think it’s something where you could find lots and lots and lots of really cool ideas of the best investors. And it’s not that difficult to find. You can just Google it.

Daniel Creech: Well, wisdom is a great free site. You can get a lot of good information on that. They rank different hedge funds and different family offices and things. So yeah, if you’re not looking at him, you ought to be as an investor, in my opinion. And you can get a lot of good stuff. So Yada, take advantage of that and check out what those guys are doing.

Frank Curzio: Yes. And also check out what Elon Musk is doing. Because when he said buy Dogecoin is up tremendously and now it’s space X valued at $74 billion. So this is how they value companies, guys. They value the companies based on the investment round, how much people are coming in. So, once you do an investment round, that’s how you’ve added the company. That’s the Swedish good value a private company was based on. So, the latest raise value is at 60% higher compared with the previous round and August, which is $46 billion. So now, it’s $74 billion. I mean, look, maybe this guy just finds a way where guys like you and me are going to space and stuff like that, but just the value of 74 billion for evaluation for a company like this it just shows you the power of Elon Musk and how many people believe in him. But that is absolutely incredible people in that valuation in this world. I mean, I don’t know Daniel, it’s a pretty crazy time.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. That guy, I mean, everything he touches is gold right now. So, good for… He drives me nuts, but good for him.

Frank Curzio: So, we’ll leave it there. There’s always a lot going on and I love having you come in, Daniel, and talk about all this stuff. It’s really cool. And again, we break down the markets all the time. We’re talking in our office and things like that. And we’ll post videos, and I’ll do live videos as well. And Curzio Research YouTube page, which you guys could see. And Dan is going to be doing a lot more video too by himself, which is awesome. Looking forward to that. But Dan, thanks so much for coming on discussing. And again, there’s always lots of things that we’re talking about that we’re going to bring to you and ideas, and as much as we can try to make you money. So Dan, thanks so much for coming on, buddy.

Daniel Creech: Absolutely, have a great week.

Frank Curzio: All right guys. So, that’s it for me really great podcasts, great guests, lots and lots of ideas, but we’d like your feedback. I do this for you. I don’t do it for me. It’s free podcasts. It just let me know, frank@curzioresearch.com. That’s frank@curzioresearch.com. I know I say it a million times, but our YouTube page is getting a lot of traction because that’s what people like to watch, these interviews, and just see a lot of sites that I’m bringing up and helping you and teach you and stuff like that, of the things that I use. And it’s just, it’s really cool just to see the feedback and we started really get some traction now, which is awesome. And yeah, if you want to take advantage of The Dollar Stock Club, again, it’s $4 a month guys. It’s our cheapest product that you pay for.

Frank Curzio: And I’ll give you a good idea, give you lots and lots of ideas, but give you a good idea of our research, to what goes behind these companies. And what I’m talking about, because some of those ideas that we get from our guests may not come from the interview. Because I talk before and after and we discuss ideas then, and sometimes I’ll throw that in there and say, hey, we talked about this and he likes this company or this person likes that company. And you’ll see show up in a newsletter it’s every week, it’s called trading newsletter. So if you’re interested in that, just go to our website, curzioresearch.com. If not, no worries. Just keep listening to the podcast and yeah. And enjoy. So guys, that’s it for me. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate all the support and I’ll see you guys in seven days. Take care

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