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

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s February 10th. 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. It’s Thursday, and I have an incredible guest for you. The handsome, great fisherman… I don’t know, I keep going and going, going here. I don’t know if I want to go too much further. Andrew Horowitz, founder and president of Horowitz & Company Money Management, host of The Disciplined Investor podcast, and if you are watching on our YouTube and watching the video, someone who looks very, very sharp. And it looks like you lost some weight, buddy. You look great.

Andrew Horowitz: Thanks. Working hard on it, sir. I wanted to do it all because, of course, you asked me a couple months ago that we got to do a show again. And I figured, you know what? I better look good for your audience.

Frank Curzio: And you’re also the host of The Disciplined Investor podcast, but how did you lose the weight? As someone that was… Who lost the weight, I don’t… People say, “How’d you do it?” And I think it’s kind of funny, because it’s kind of easy. You can’t eat anything that you like anymore.

Andrew Horowitz: Well, it’s interesting because I was eating what I thought was light, which it is. I’d eaten proteins and salads, and things of that nature. Of course, on the weekends, taking down a lot of whiskey, fireballs, all that good stuff, right? And then switching over to whites. So, vodkas and some wines. And then I was running, kind of jogging every day, nothing crazy, but doing that. And I’m like, “I cannot lose weight.” So I decided on January 1st, “Okay. Listen, let’s just see if there’s a dysfunction with my body or something.” I just pretty much cut out food and it’s worked pretty well. So, instead of three eggs in the morning, an omelet or something else, I don’t have any… I’ve really cut out carbohydrates. That’s the trick. Let’s be honest. Cutting out carbohydrates-

Frank Curzio: It’s carbs. Yeah, it’s carbs. That’s it, because even when you eat carbs, you’ll see. You’ll gain like five pounds like that and you become bloated because your body just can’t break it down, but listen, if you’re going to eat salads, you can cheat sometimes and eat. But there’s really no formula. There’s a million different diets, but man, that’s the key. If you want to lose weight, it’s really focus on the carbs. I agree with you-

Andrew Horowitz: Totally.

Frank Curzio: I love that. I love carbs and Italian… Oh, that pasta and everything. Anyway, let’s get the important stuff here, because you know, you and I always talk and before we come on each other’s podcast. I was on yours a couple weeks ago where I was like, “Hey, send some topics that you like to talk about.” And we’d have little bullets and some of whom we get to some we don’t, but one of the things I noticed with the bullets that you sent, it sounds like you’re really pissed off at a lot of things, especially the Fed. Fed up with the Fed, full of you-know-what, they have no clue. Why don’t you talk about that? Because we see that they have no clue, where it went from three rate hikes to four rate hikes to now five, six, seven, we’re hearing. And you’re seeing Goldman Sachs just raised the 10-year forecast from two to two in a quarter. Just everyone keeps raising and raising and raising, and yet, we’re still waiting for the Fed to actually start doing something, but what are your thoughts there?

Andrew Horowitz: So first of all, obviously, I have a significant amount of hunger going on right now, because I’m not eating. So, it makes me even more angry, right? So, my anger for the Fed and obviously, Fed is like feed. So, the whole thing about food, it’s just not there. But the Fed is full of crap. Let’s be honest about this. The fact is that they’re one of the worst forecasters out there. Just look at recent history to know this. It’s all about their inability to really do anything to provide good guidance other than the fact that they’re using their calculated methodology for providing information to try to provide confidence for the market. So, an example would be, and the problem they have right now is when just a few months ago, they were talking about transitory inflation. We all knew that was not the case.

Andrew Horowitz: We all knew that inflation was not transitory. It was here for a while. And in fact, the whole misnomer about once inflation drops, maybe prices will drop. No, there’s going to be a very sticky amount of price hikes across the board. Well, now all of a sudden, they pivot and they’re freaking out because they’re just… it seems like amateurs. “Oh my God! We’re going to have inflation now forever.” So they go from, “Inflation’s going to be here for a couple months,” to their inability to project where it’s going to be, now to be hearing that inflation’s going to be here forever. So, the markets freak out along the way. For some reason, the markets still think that the Fed has the ability to really know what’s going on. The only thing the Fed has and why they should fall along what they say is because they have the power to add liquidity, take away liquidity, to increase rates, etc.

Andrew Horowitz: So, what I think right now, and Raphael Bostic talked about it just yesterday, was the idea that probably about three rate increases seems about right to get us through where we need to be, whether or not inflation in fact is going to be a problem longer the term, because the disruption to the markets, the inability for higher rates to… Or the ability for the higher rates to really cut down on growth and to be a major point of problem for government paying off debt and loan service debt service, I can’t see it happening. Already, I’ll finish on this one point, just the commentary, the pivot, the discussion from the Fed about potentially raising rates and about bringing down the balance, at least stopping the quantitative easing, possibly going into quantitative tightening, has already tightened financial conditions significantly.

Frank Curzio: Andrew, it’s funny because we’re used to saying over the past 10, 12 years, because the Fed, and even on fiscal side, our politicians throw money at every single problem we have. This is the one problem they can’t throw money at. So, even when you’re saying, ‘Well, I don’t see it going to this.” Or, “I don’t see the Fed…” I think the Fed is backed up into a corner here for the first time in a very, very long time. We haven’t seen inflationary pressures and we changed the way the CPI is calculated. I think it’s 13 times the past 30 years. So, they’re saying that inflation, if it was calculated the same way in the 80s, would be even higher with double digit inflation. They’re saying, “Well, it’s 7%, and…” But let’s look at it from a personal point of view, right?

Frank Curzio: Where we have different companies. We’re seeing these companies come out. They’re reporting earnings. Chipotle had good numbers, but the costs are rising across the board. The way that climate change policy is, “Hey, let’s go to…” And again, I don’t care what sides you’re on, if you believe it or not, but you’re saying we need to go to alternatives and renewable. We have to stop drilling, but we don’t have those replacements. So now, we have energy skyrocketing, natural gas skyrocketing. Skyrocketing so much as seeing coal go through the roof, because electricity companies are like, “I’m not using natural gas. It’s through the roof. Let’s go back to coal.” Right? Even France said they’re going back to coal. Right? In China, extending. It’s supposed to be zero carbon emissions, 2025. Well, let’s go push it out to 2030, right?

Frank Curzio: So, you see all these negative effects. How does this end? Because it’s either you’re going to result in people stop paying these higher prices, where you can only raise prices, certain amounts. Some of them have had pricing power because everyone’s been giving checks. Now, you’re turning off their faucet. But we’re seeing a lot of companies say, “Look, this inflationary pressures, our cost are higher. We’re okay to pass on those costs.” But what happens once the consumer’s like, “Okay, we’re seeing much higher rates. Our portfolios are down now because maybe a little aggressive with a lot of stocks, but that’s going to change the outlook”? But how does inflation slow down without the Fed actually being aggressive here and going more than three rate hikes?

Andrew Horowitz: They say that the only thing that doesn’t corrode salt water is salt water. Okay? The fact is the only thing that will provide a cure for inflation is higher prices. And the fact is that when we look at the run on food issues, on supply chain, cost factors, when we see clothing, energy prices, name it. Everything across the board, right? Lumber prices are back, going up again. We’re seeing all this happen in real time and almost to this fascinating degree of, “Oh my gosh. How could it be moving there?” Oil’s going to be a hundred. Where’s that coming from, right? When just a few days ago it seemed it was negative 40.

Andrew Horowitz: So, I think that the higher prices, though, will in fact start slow things down. There’s a limit. There’s a ceiling to where people can spend and are willing to spend and that will be a natural process of leveling off the prices over time. And if the Fed’s not careful, what’s going to happen is they’re going to do what they did before. What they did before, which was a big policy mistake is they kept rates too low for too long with massive stimulus coming out. Now, that the stimulus is being withdrawn, savings rates are dropping significantly, prices going higher, if they start really poking that too hard, they’re going to cause a major downside move, and they’re going to cause a recession, which is, by the way, what they do all the time. They let it go on for too long, then they pop the bubble and then it turns into a disaster and they’re like, “Oh, we thought we cured the economic curve. We thought we were never going to have these cycles anymore.” But wonderful Fed and their way they do things is just the same thing over and over again.

Andrew Horowitz: They work from a very scared and a very slow process, but the pricing factors that you’re seeing right now, I totally agree. I was talking about this months ago. I’m the one said that the Fed was full of crap back then about the transitory, but I think they’re a little bit wrong with the fact that there’s going to be… Well, with the caveat. If we see some of the supply chain issues resolve, if, if, if we see the port open in China, if, there’s a lot of ifs there, we could see that there would be an opportunity, but markets are efficient. They’ll look for other alternatives, cheaper ways of doing things. You can’t put up with wage increases like this, because companies know it’s very sticky.

Frank Curzio: And you’ve seen those wage increase. That’s why the Fed’s really scared here, and a lot of the investment banks too, right? It’s not just price of commodities, but just the wage hikes, but we’re so in tune with a recession where it’s yes or no, where recession is divided by two straight quarters of negative GDP, yet if see GDP go from seven, 8%, which it’s a very, very high considering we’re coming off of COVID, which you know is negative. But we see 0.1 gain, 0.1 gain for two quarters. It’s not a recession, but when you’re looking at certain industries, aren’t we in a recession here? It’s amazing to see moves like Facebook, and then on the next day, be so nervous that you see Amazon go up 17%. We’re talking about $250 billion market cap move in two stocks, which there’s only 24 companies in the S&P 500 that have greater market caps in 250 billion. Those stocks move that much in a day, right? In consecutive days.

Andrew Horowitz: Right. The greatest drop in any one day of market cap followed by the greatest increase in market cap of any company the next day.

Frank Curzio: Is that telling you that it’s a stock picker’s mark, or is it telling you that this is a sign of the times? Because, excuse my language, shit like this doesn’t happen in normal markets.

Andrew Horowitz: I think it’s amateur hour. Total amateur hour out there. This particular issue, Facebook. And I hear you about the drop. And maybe Facebook was overdone. I never really was a big fan of Facebook. We don’t hold it in our trading portfolios. A couple clients to have it because they want to have it. They have a cost basis of two. So, we’re not really selling that for them, but other than that, it’s not a position we’re putting on or want to put on. Never really liked the company for years. Was wrong about that, but there’s plenty of alternatives we had that did just fine. What’s interesting is when Facebook dropped 20% that day, what else happened? Snap, which was reporting the next day, was down 25% in sympathy. Why? Because there was a big concern that the Apple privacy issues, the shutdown of some of the flow through information was going to be flow through.

Andrew Horowitz: What happened when Snap came out with the first positive quarter ever on record? Stocks up 60%. So, there’s a lot of lean on the area of the short side, of the long side. People are getting offside about a lot of things, and I think that’s a big issue right now with the markets. And then once again, we saw people get very off-sided and push into the shorts. Look what’s been happening in the last, I don’t know, week and a half ever since, really, since Google and Microsoft provided an update. Things have been a little bit more towards the bid side. Don’t you think?

Frank Curzio: It has been, but for me, when I look… Facebook wasn’t lying that they said that this was going to impact them, those apple changes to privacy, but they said it for three quarters and they still put up good numbers. Then you go into a move for Meta, which is a massive change. Even change your name, right? For the Metaverse? And then you’re talking about TikTok being a risk. So now, people are like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Did you really see this coming?” And it’s a reflection of not a change in business, but it’s a change where when you’re in advertising, you can see every single piece of data.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. You have pricing power, right? And Facebook, you know exactly where these people are, where they are, at a store, at that moment, right? It’s unbelievable, but what happened? You saw money come off of that platform. So, it’s not an industry concern, because look at Google’s numbers who blew them out. So obviously, the advertising came off of that because they can’t see the data because of those policies, when now, Google has free reign to follow you wherever the hell you want and you saw that in the results. To me, it kind of tells you it’s a stock picker’s market here, but-

Frank Curzio: Snap bounced back what? Was it 55% went up the next day, right?

Andrew Horowitz: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: Crazy.

Andrew Horowitz: Yep. In the one day. I agree with you a hundred percent. I think that for too long, it’s been this passive market that people say, “Let’s just throw it into an index fund.” And what happened is it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. What happened is you put the money in. What were you buying? Well, 20% was the top stocks and those would just go up no matter what. And you kept on dollar cost averaging in the pensions, the 401ks, the hedge funds. Let’s just put it in there. And Facebook’s numbers weren’t so bad. It was their outlook that was a real problem. And it was the communication about their numbers and outlook with the analysts who really screwed it up. I think there were three analysts that had either sell or hold on Facebook. The rest of them were all buyers with much higher price targets. So, there was a miscommunication there and I think that was a big problem, but when you look at Microsoft, you look at Google, Netflix aside, there was a problem there, but you look at Amazon, just terrific numbers.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Apple too.

Andrew Horowitz: Amazon had the Rivian numbers in there. Amazon also did good with AWS. Amazon had a few other things that were iffy. They did raise their price for the prime, which I’ll gladly pay any day.

Frank Curzio: I’m not talking about ordering something you get in the store. You could order something random. How do they get into your house in one day?

Andrew Horowitz: I don’t even know. Sometimes, I think of stuff and it shows up. I’m like, “How does that work?”

Frank Curzio: They are amazing. They’re amazing. Listen, you can hate them, whatever, but they are amazing. It’s just, wow. It is incredible. And they did a good job. I love when companies do this. Last quarter, I always see this. When you see expenses go up, that scares the hell out of Wall Street. You see the stock come down. When you look at why expenses went up, they say, “We have to pay our employees more.” I love that, because you’re in the industry where you need to make sure those… There’s a lot of choices out there. There’s a lot of competition out there. That ensures that, “Okay. We’re not going to have a problem on this front when a lot of people may. Maybe at the Walmarts or the Targets and stuff.” And I love that.

Frank Curzio: And then, you see one quarter later, it’s not a coincidence to see these numbers really, really take off. And man, the trend just looks like it’s going to go a lot hard. It seems like a dirt cheap stock here. Now, another thing that you sent me that you seem pretty off about, was SPACs. And this is something that I’ve been going crazy on because the amount of money and breaking it down and what these guys do and how they… This all happens because you have an enthusiastic retail investor willing to buy this crap at 10, 13, 15, 17. And these guys promote it and they’re selling to you who are in a dollar, $2, $3, even much lower than that with free warrants. They don’t have to disclose. You’ve seen this industry really start to disappear. What’s your thoughts, because I know you are mad as I am. And I love that little bullet you were like…

Andrew Horowitz: First of all, we paint a very wide and a very dense brush when we talk about SPACs, right? The Special Purpose Acquisition Companies that are the old reverse mergers, where they do a pipe, which is a public private deal. They put it together. They promote it with a one pager. Chamath Palihapitiya, the SPAC barker, what an idiot. No, I shouldn’t say. I take it back. He’s brilliant. Really smart guy. Really smart guy. Sorry I said that. That was the wrong word. He just how to make money on the backs of retail and make it look like he’s doing you a favor. So, the truth is that these deals came up. There were some really interesting ones. I bought a few of these personally and for portfolios, did really well in the early days. Big numbers, right?

Andrew Horowitz: Then they all started to come down and cave in. There’s still some good ones out there. There could be good companies out there that are involved in this. The problem is the transparency. The lack of transparency. The problem is that when there’s a time when you can come out and come to the market and say, “We do not have, necessarily, a path to profitability.” That was a big thing that we heard, right? The path to profitability. And to start putting a napkin drawing, “Oh, this is how we’re going to make money doing this.”

Andrew Horowitz: Or my favorite. They’re going to take an industry that needs to be disrupted that really doesn’t need to be disrupted and says, “Well, if we just make an app out of it, it would be worth billions.” Really? Stamp collecting on an app is worth billions. How is that? I don’t understand. So, what we have is that many companies, the very basic nature of them was a problem. They got a lot of names behind them and look at what’s going on in crypto world. Look what’s going in some of these others. They had a lot of celebs behind them, right? They had a lot of athletes behind them. Everybody’s like, “Yeah, I want to get into that.”

Frank Curzio: Robinhood had Jared Leto, and also Snoop Dog, invest in that company at a 13 million dollar evaluation. So, they were up like a hundred thousand percent even at today’s price, which the stock is down 50% off of its IPO. That’s when you want to get in. Unfortunately, you’re not going to get in. It’s a retail asset. They’re going to sell this thing to you at 12, 13, 15, whatever it is. And even for Robinhood’s case, would’ve come out at 36, 37, 38 billion evaluation. These guys win at 13 million valuation. Incredible. You’re right.

Andrew Horowitz: And the problem is that, since when do we follow athletes into any investment?

Frank Curzio: Listen, we’re not talking about… We’re talking about the masses, right? And that’s what we’ve seen with the red crowd. And we were like, “Ah, it’s not a big deal. It’s not a lot of money.” Until you saw that Dow thing, when… When was it? The constitution. These kids together raised 45 million dollars. Now, they’re going to buy stuff and not even look at a number. They just going to say-

Andrew Horowitz: Frank, I got to tell you something. Frank, I got to tell you something. This is important. I want everybody to focus on what I’m about to talk about, because we talked about this on the podcast. I think two podcasts on The Discipline Of An Investor a couple weeks ago. They didn’t care about their money. Do you know why? Because it came free. They didn’t care about what they invested in. They didn’t care about the price, the fundamentals. They didn’t care about anything more than the intent of hopefully making some money, having some fun at doing it. It was chips at a casino with no value. They didn’t care. You don’t care about your money, in the end, your money’s not going to care about you. I know that’s kind of this content like, “Oh. Well, that makes sense.” But think about it. That’s exactly what happened. And that’s why this blew up to a point. Look at any chart and you see these crazy moves on the upside, and then the downside is just as crazy.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Andrew Horowitz: A lot of them out there.

Frank Curzio: There is. It’s a way of taking advantage. And I wanted to move on to talk about some of your ideas, which I love to do, and you throw some of them out there. And you mentioned Roblox and Paramount was another one, but just Roblox is a name that I’ve been wrong on. But I like it because it is up and running in Metaverse platform, Nike signed with this. This isn’t like Rivian. This is a company that’s generating billions of dollars in sales. Yes, came out of a pretty high valuation, but to me, the future of the Metaverse, this is the company that everyone can sign up to now where Facebook has to do their own thing internally with their own people. But this is the avenue that I think if anyone wants to go, this is what they do. And my daughters are on this platform. They love it. Have safety measures in there. This is a really good company, and that’s growing. Just to see it really crash along with the Rivians and all the other companies that have crazy, super crazy valuations, I was surprised.

Andrew Horowitz: Yeah. I was surprised too. I like the company. We own it. And I think that there is an opportunity here if in fact there is a Metaverse in the future. If in fact, just simply, kids want to learn how to code and code gaming, right? That’s a big issue with Roblox and the fact that they are earning money, they’re earning money in terms of revenue. They’re losing money, let’s be honest, but that could turn around very, very quickly for them once they stop the expansion. The opportunity for other players, whether it’s the NFTs that they’re going to bring on board, the payment processing of things in the metaverse, the games, the land ownership, the buying of places and utilizing the functions of shoes and clothing and gas stations and cars and games. If it does take off, and there is something to be said about it, they are very well-situated, I think, as the number one player in that poll position.

Frank Curzio: And another company you mentioned in what you’re talking about is that the streaming companies, right? You see a big difference. I think Netflix, a lot of companies don’t even let you binge, right? They’re coming out after the week, but you get Paramount, NBC. Who’s going to lose NBC content? I’ve never seen so many companies jump into a business model where it’s almost impossible to make money off of it other than Netflix, but Netflix was in debt for 15 years before they made this happen and spends 30, 35 billion a year on new content. All these guys with libraries think, “Oh, we’ll just start this platform.” You can’t start it just with content. People care about new content, right? And I think Disney’s learning that the hard way, but even Paramount-

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Paramount, yeah, but talk about that. Is there any value to these because a lot of these companies continue to lose billions and billions of dollars.

Andrew Horowitz: They have one show, two shows. Let me explain something. Let me ask you a question first, Frank. If you put Paramount plus and Disney plus and Netflix and Hulu together with ESPN, what do you get? Cable.

Frank Curzio: Pretty much. Yeah.

Andrew Horowitz: We have cable deconstructed. Now, we’re going to pay more. The whole idea was to do a skinny bundle over the top, all that stuff, right?

Frank Curzio: Mm-hmm, news and sports and stuff.

Andrew Horowitz: It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s this whole idea of young people and people thought, “Hey, we could do this better.” They screwed it up royally. Yeah. For a long time, it was great. You had basic cable with some HBO, Showtime movie channel, and you added a Netflix and maybe a Hulu, right? That was the whole deal. Now, you got to buy all these different components. And when I watch 1883, which is the precursor to a wonderful series called Yellowstone, which has the debate about chili with beans are not meat or not. But 1883, if you take half of it and look at it, it’s just people wandering and looking off into space, looking into the fields. Half of it is just gazing at cattle. I’m like, “I feel like I’m watching a discovery channel.” The content, it’s average at best.

Frank Curzio: I signed up to Paramount. I have Disney and because I got it for free, which I’ll have a free for life they said, because I have a Verizon. That’s where I think about probably 60 to 70% of their customers, I would guess, are for free. That’s why the average cost per revenue per user is like four bucks, right? Compared to Netflix, so much higher. But everybody wanted to see more subscribers. They didn’t care if anyone was paying for that. That’s what was-

Andrew Horowitz: You called that. You called that great.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Those numbers actually mean something now, right? But yeah. So, I signed up to paramount and wanted to watch Yellowstone and it didn’t work. Right? So, I put in the password, signed up, it didn’t work. Then I tried in on my phone. I tried to mirror it to my TV through the Apple TV, that didn’t work. And I’m like, “Why is this so difficult? I’m pretty tech savvy.” But I was just surprised that why is this so difficult when everything else was easy in terms of Disney plus and having all these other services and even prime.

Frank Curzio: But it just goes to show you that not all these are created equal and even so, you’re looking at these things. There’s just so much competition in this space that I just… Netflix is lightyears ahead of everybody else. They really are. It’s starting to show. The amount of money that these companies have to spend for new content where they just could sit back and everyone’s in dire need of content. You could license this stuff out and make money doing nothing. Instead, you want to create the platform, create… I don’t know. I just don’t get it. And it’s going to come back to bite a lot of these companies asses. It’s already starting.

Andrew Horowitz: The Paramount processes and everybody… I know a few people that are all shock about Viacom after that major debacle. I think they’re just buying because it’s low. I don’t understand the business model of this Paramount Plus and this whole fact that you just put all your old junk on there, make it look like it’s something, with a terrible interface, by the way. And then at the same time, just put a couple of new shows. Then do what everybody hates, which is put one out per week. The whole idea of the streaming service was the binging. Was put it out there, let people just absorb it.

Frank Curzio: The whole thing. Yes, the whole thing. That’s what we want to see.

Andrew Horowitz: The whole thing.

Frank Curzio: Just go through it. That’s what we love. And we stay in a platform, but that doesn’t work for them. Now, let’s get to some other ideas. I know you’re saying valuation is great outside the U.S. I’ve heard this argument for 12 years and the U.S. has always been the best place to invest. Since the credit crisis, it’s cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. Should invest in Russia, should invest in Europe, should invest in all this stuff. And the U.S outperform every single time outside what you could probably pick a period of three to nine months or whatever period, but it’s better off saying the U.S… I know you said that you’re excited. Better valuations, China is stimulating compared to us, which we’re tightening. What do you see in there? Do you have any ideas to share, and is it on the international front?

Andrew Horowitz: So, I totally agree with you that it has been a better valuation play for many years. That is a truth. That doesn’t mean it’s a better returning investment over that period of time. It’s a better valuation play, which therefore leads you down the path of if it’s a better valuation, that maybe during rough times, it’ll act as a nice buffer. That also has not necessarily played out exactly right. But I do like the idea that it is probably a minimal view of point of many people. And it’s a smaller majority of people that would think this, that China, for all of the bad things that are going on, they are stimulating their economy, and that is something significant. I’ve found that in the past, when they were tightening, and we’re a few months down the road, and we start tightening, and then they start loosening up again, it’s oftentimes a pretty interesting time there.

Andrew Horowitz: If you look at something like the K-web, K-W-E-B, which is the China internet, all the Alibabas and various internet players out there, they dropped significantly, mightily, over the last year. There’s some bottom picking that can be going on right now for a really good opportunity. I think that also you look at EM, the one caveat to EM emerging markets is that you have to be careful because if the dollar does in fact move up very dramatically, if with the fact that the Fed is going to be in an aggressive rate tightening mode, that could play havoc to what we see inside of emerging markets. There’s various ways to do that through either ETFs through, through user funds. What are we looking at here? What is that?

Frank Curzio: This is K-web. This would be the greatest shot in the world if it was upside down.

Andrew Horowitz: Upside down. That’s what I’m-

Frank Curzio: If you watch it on a YouTube, have the chart up here, a lot of you listen to iTunes, but all the way to left side a year from that, it’s like 103, and steadily goes down, down, down, and it’s 30 years. You have seen this since January though. It’s really like leveling, right? Which is what you want to see, before you actually buy and try to catch a fallen knife here, but yeah, I hear you.

Andrew Horowitz: Yeah. This is a falling knife, and there are some reasons to think about the falling knife, as when it’s finally on the floor, is it time to pick it up? And that’s what it looks like. The knife is on the floor right now, although there’s still a lot of blood around it. The fact is that that’s an interesting place to be, I think. I think that right now, another thing we talked about on The Disciplined Investor, two things, one, last week or the week before that, after we talked about the caring about your money and loving your money and the money will love you was the idea of diversification. I think it’s extraordinarily important right now, has not been over the last 2, 3 years. And the other thing that’s really important is watching your concentration risk.

Andrew Horowitz: Everybody was piling into this, into that, into the areas, right? Everybody’s moving, shaking into energy now this year. Everybody’s piling in there. Pile into tech and mega cap tech for a long period of time. And oftentimes, that is a recipe to do one of two things. A very high concentration will either create great wealth or create great poverty.

Frank Curzio: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Horowitz: So, think about that when you are setting up your portfolio, that it may be a good time that diversification is kind of coming back into the fold as we’re seeing this various markets around the world. Some are tightening, some are loose, some are doing a lot of different things. We have headwinds. We could sit here for the next hour, talk about all the headwinds, and there’s not a lot of tailwinds.

Frank Curzio: You say diversify, and it’s such a crazy world where we saw this market pull back, where it was a safe haven. It wasn’t gold. It wasn’t Bitcoin also pull back. Even some pulled back, a couple of them, but it’s amazing when you think-

Andrew Horowitz: It’s value side and alts. That was pretty much the safe haven. Reits kind of came in, but not terrible. But it was clearly the value side. The banks didn’t pull in at all. A little bit, but nothing major. What really pulled in was all the stuff… They’re off their highs, but they’re not down 15, 20% like some of these other plays.

Frank Curzio: No. No.

Andrew Horowitz: But yeah, I agree with you. It’s either all in, all out.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. It is amazing how everything’s… That’s why Bitcoin was such a, at least from an investment bank perspective where they’re forced to get in, because there’s two trillion market and their clients want it. So now that everyone’s getting it and hiring like crazy, and crypto within these banking divisions, but yeah, it was supposed to be something that’s not correlated to everything else. And then, you sort of really come down along with everything else. So, it’s kind of… Diversity, it’s not the easiest thing, but you gave us some ideas. You always give us ideas. Love having you on and go anywhere. The economy, sports, whatever you want, but I will ask you this, what is your Super Bowl prediction with Cincinnati in the Rams, before we go here. But yeah, do you have any prediction there?

Andrew Horowitz:

Yeah. I’m the wrong guy to ask. My steak will be medium rare, go Frank Curzio, go. How’s that?

Frank Curzio: That’s perfect. And you might be the best guy to ask because I do this thing every year and saying it’s the greatest trade of all time, because I am wrong. I’ll pick it, I’ll analyze it, and I’m wrong every single year, so.

Andrew Horowitz: Yeah, I’m not the right guy. I’ll enjoy it. I will drink. I will eat a little bit less this year than usual. Have some good time, good barbecue with friends, and I’ll enjoy the game and halftime. Okay. And it’s going to be a lot of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on the halftime this year. That, I’ll give you.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. That, the commercials and halftime show should be pretty good with…

Andrew Horowitz: And we’ll be disappointed with the game as usual.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Hopefully, it’s not. The players have been good so far. Hopefully, they carry over. So, if someone wants to get in touch with you, learn more about your business, how could they do that?

Andrew Horowitz: So, go over to thedisciplinedinvestor.com. Just look up Andrew Horowitz, which you’ll find me all over the place. You can just do that on that thing called… I think it’s called Google something, or something-

Frank Curzio: I love the way you say, “Just look me up. You’re going to find me everywhere.” I love that.

Andrew Horowitz: Just look at my name.

Frank Curzio: Even though you didn’t say that-

Andrew Horowitz: Oh, there you go. Oh, there you go. That was a good one.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Andrew Horowitz: That was a good show, actually. Shallow Hall Investing. But yeah, just go over to The Disciplined Investor, you could go on to Apple Podcast or any of the other podcast, places that are out there, Spotify, Amazon, etc., find the podcast, The Disciplined Investor podcast, the books. The audiobook on audible as well-

Frank Curzio: That good looking guy. Yeah.

Andrew Horowitz: Beautiful.

Frank Curzio: He’s a past podcast guest. I like the way you display this though. It’s pretty cool. Very easy. Yeah.

Andrew Horowitz: Thank you.

Frank Curzio: That’s awesome stuff. Andrew, as always, thank you so much for coming on. Love having you on. I always say this after every one of our interviews, think we both say this, we have to get together soon. I am going to be in your neck of the woods in the next couple weeks. I’m promising that I’m going to stop by.

Andrew Horowitz: Come on. We’re going fishing this week. Coming up for Saturday, is a fishing tournament for sailfish. Come on down, Frank.

Frank Curzio: Hate him. So, I definitely will. Thank you so much for coming on and listen, but we’ll talk to you soon.

Andrew Horowitz: Thanks, Frank. You’re the best.

Frank Curzio: All right. Take care, buddy. All right, guys. So, great stuff from Andrew. Love having him on. And now, here comes the fun stuff, which is my Super Bowl prediction. So, the Super Bowl prediction. I just mentioned it with Andrew, that it basically me breaking down this game. I’m the biggest football fan in the world. Did fantasy football leagues for, man, 35, 40 years. That’s how old I am now. Had Abbot Smith. We used to look at box scores and the newspapers, that’s how long ago. I used to wait for the paper to come out to see, especially used to see the stats on Prime Time and stuff, but not all of them for all your players. Right? So, we used to look at the paper and the daily news and the posts and look at the box scores and then add them up by hand to see if you want.

Frank Curzio: So, that’s how long I’ve been here. But the long standing joke with Super Bowl is just bet against me because usually, I’ll break it down and make a lot of sense. And then, I always lose. So, I think out of last 10 years, I lost twice. I would say, really, nine times. The other time, I think it was two years ago, when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, I had that one and this is with the spread as well. And before that was the Eagles, but the Eagles are my favorite team, and I actually went to that Super Bowl. It was great Super Bowl ever, ever. I’m not being biased. Ever. That was amazing though. It was. I had great seats. I was right there in a 30 outline for the Philly special right there. Oh, that was amazing, especially being nervous that Brady was going to wreck them.

Frank Curzio: They were under by five and a half that game and they winded up winning, which is unbelievable. Unbelievable. But here we go. Okay. So, you have the Rams playing Cinci. Ram’s favorite by four and a half, over under is 48 and a half. Cincinnati Bengals, big surprise, they were 25 to one to make the Super Bowl the beginning of the year. The Rams, one of the favorites, especially signing two superstar players, which was Von Miller and Odell Beckham. You could argue Odell Beckham’s not a Super Bowl superstar player anymore, but he’s been playing like it lately. Right? He’s really picked it up. He’s got lots of touchdowns, did amazing in the second half of the year. The Rams are playing at home. Right. It’s a big advantage considering you don’t have to go anywhere, right? Which makes sense. You’re at home last game. Now, you’re sitting there and yeah, that’s really big.

Frank Curzio: The traveling portion. You’re familiar with the stadium. That work wonders for Tampa last year. And Tampa, I think was the first team to play in the Super Bowl at their home stadium. And this is the second time it’s happened two years in a row. I will tell you an interesting stat though, which I found funny, that the Rams, even though they’re home, they’re going to be the visiting team. Ah, little trivia at the beginning of the day. Well, maybe a little bit later after a couple drinks, but they’re the visiting team just simply because AFC and NFC rotate every year. So, they’re playing at home, but they’re going to be the visiting team, which is weird. Let’s break it down. You have Stafford, quarterback of the Rams who’s great. Interesting stat. They say he had 34 fourth quarter comebacks in a regular season and fifth, most in NFL history.

Frank Curzio: However, he played for the Detroit lions and they were down probably in 85% of those games. So, I really look too high on that stat. Getting into the fourth quarter, they probably downed almost every one of their games. So, he had plenty chance to come back compared to Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers or Brady at New England who… That team’s mostly up, right? Going into the fourth quarter, because they win a lot of their games, but he did throw close to 5,000 yards this year, 41 TDs. Those are amazing numbers. On the other end, Joe Burrow, basically a rookie. Got hurt last year, amazing talent. I think he’s going to be the next great quarterback in the NFL. And you could say that for a lot. You say that for the quarterback for Josh Allen.

Frank Curzio: Man, there’s just so many great, great quarterbacks right now. Of course, you got Kansas city with Mahomes. Even the guy for it from San Diego is great. So, you have a lot of really great quarterbacks upcoming talent right now, but I think Joe Burrow just has something special, but yeah. He is the guy that won on every level. Cincinnati has a great offense. They got Ja’Marr Chase, most electrified wide receivers, most reception yards, TDS by rookie and Bengal’s history. They also have T Higgins, who’s an awesome receiver. And then they got Tyler Boyd, who’s amazing, who’s unbelievable wide receiver. And he’s the third best on their team, which tells you how good that wide receiving core is. And then, you have Joe Mixon running back who has always been pretty good, but this year, really, really good. Really solid. Doesn’t fumble the ball much.

Frank Curzio: Just great, great ear. Offensive line is okay. I’m lying. Their offensive line actually allowed the most sacks this year in the NFL. So, Joe Burrow could be blamed for half of those because he is a guy that doesn’t really get rid of the ball too much. You never really see Brady get sacked often, right? Because he just gets rid of it, gets rid of it, gets rid of it. Joe Burrow tries to create a little bit and it results in, again, this the NFL, you can’t hold the ball longer than three and a half seconds, four seconds. You’re done. Right? So, it’s more like three seconds. On the other end, you have the Rams, who also have some firepower and offense. Cooper Cuff, best receiver in the world right now. Unbelievable. Won the triple crown. That’s the most receptions, yards, TD catches as a wide receiver. Very hard to do almost had 2000 yards receiving this year.

Frank Curzio: That’s an insane number. I think it was Randy Morris, I think, is the only person to ever do that. It’s either him or Johnson from Detroit, but unbelievable. Just 2000 is incredible. Odell Beckham really playing his best football right now. Confident, amazing. And then, Van Jefferson is a huge deep threat. One of the most underrated wide receivers in NFL. Cam Akers is the running back. He is good, but he had some fumbling issues. And then, you have Sonny Michelle who was on a Super Bowl team for new England. That’s the backup. I wouldn’t say that’s his strength of running game, but they have such good wide receivers, good quarterback and pretty good offensive line that they do a good job running the ball, but just not their special. If they’re going to run the ball, it’s going to be a long day for Cinci. Let’s see.

Frank Curzio: I would give the slight offensive edge to Cinci. Slight, maybe a tie. Defense though, different story. Rams are superior. Aaron Donald may be the best player in all of football. Then you have Van Miller, who they just saw and just amazing pass rushers. They’re just great. Jalen Ramsey, one of the best covers in the world. He said he wants a guard. Ja’Marr Chase, he’s probably going to be on Ja’Marr Chase. Eric Weddle, solid, older, used to be lights out playing safety. Actually, though, they needed some help in injuries and he just came out of retirement. So, I think they might be a little bit weak there. The Bengals do have Trey Hendrickson, Sam Hubbard, and just a great line. They have Jessie Bates, one of the best safeties, and Hawaii predicts is going to have an interception in this game.

Frank Curzio: Great past rushers, also solid corners. Those guys are great past rushers, but the Bengals D hasn’t been electrifying this year, but they really, really played well against the Titans. One of the best games, defensive games I’ve seen. They really shut down Kansas city in that second half. They were down like three touchdowns. So, they’re coming in red hot with a lot of confidence. When I look at this game, everything, everything points to a Rams blow out. I’m hearing that from everybody. “Ram’s going to blow them out. They’re going to blow them out. They’re at home. Cinci is lucky to be there. They shouldn’t have been there. They’re young. McVay’s a better coach on the Rams.” You’re hearing that a lot. Look, the offensive line is better for Rams, D is better, more experience at quarterback. Top 10 in some of the most important statistical categories like ninth in total offense, eighth in scoring, fifth and passing offense, 10th and takeaways, third in sacks. Those are stats that are meaningful that usually win championships; however, if you’re looking at the Rams, they were also seventh in giveaways.

Frank Curzio: The Rams and Stafford are really got lucky to be here. They were winning games, and I felt like they choked at the end of those games and they got lucky. And I know Stafford came and scored that touch down at the end, but they gave the game to Tampa. Tampa just didn’t take. If that would’ve went to overtime, it would’ve been crazy. You’re looking at the San Francisco game. Stafford threw just a duck up a lob that seriously, my daughter would’ve caught very easily, and the guy just dropped it. That would’ve gave the 49ers the fourth quarter with the lead. Instead, the next play was a 35 yard pass to Beckham. And then, he got hit in the head and that was an extra 15 yards. And then, they wound up scoring.

Frank Curzio: So, a lot could have changed if a guy could have caught a lob that just fell on this guy and he missed it and he dropped it, because Stafford threw a bad pass and Stafford has a habit of throwing lots and lots of bad passes. He’s good for one to two inceptions a game. He should have gotten intercepted a lot more, and he did. He did get intercepted a lot this year. So when I look at McVay, great offensive mind, but I’m not sold on him either. I feel like he’s not that great of an overall coach. He has great offensive minds, his great defensive minds, but as a coach, I have no idea. Even watching him in the past couple years, but especially, even the last game at San Francisco, they used all that time out, they had no timeouts going into the fourth quarter, which I’ve never seen in NFL game in a very, very long time. And it was a tight game.

Frank Curzio: It was a tight game that San Francisco was leading. And again, they could have got that ball. If they got the ball, they had no time outside. They would’ve ran off a ton of clock. And if they could just run the ball over, that game would’ve been over. Rams would have lost. They got lucky. And it was because you challenged two plays that were absolutely ridiculous that everyone knew that you shouldn’t have challenged. And I don’t know if his coaches halftime challenge or whatever, just I’m not sold on him, but that leads me to Joe Burrow. Joe Burrow last year in a game against the Eagles, which they tied, which is sad, Tying in the NFL, he got hit by one of the Eagles after throwing the ball and thought there was a flag. So, he looked, no flags to complain, but he went to, I think it was Graham who hit him.

Frank Curzio: And he looked at him and one of the refs hurt as well. And he goes, “You know what, when I’m the GOAT, greatest of all time, I’m going to get that call.” That’s when he was a rookie. And then he got hurt, right? And he was out now, this year, unbelievable year. Burrows is one of those guys that doesn’t know how to lose. How he won that Chief’s game was absolutely incredible. And they were done right. And yes, the D was great, but they were down three TDs and he had to come back and score for them, and he did. He got sacked nine times against the Titans, nine times against Titans, which is a record in playoffs. He still drove for 350 yards and won that game. He has to be smart, no stupid turnovers, throw the ball away instead of being sacked, because Donald and Miller are going to be in your face.

Frank Curzio: So, three step drops, quick throws, but unlike the Rams who crawled into the Super Bowl, the Bengals actually went out there and won that game against the Titans, which had their full squad, right? Their running back came back, the full squad. The Chiefs, they won that game too at their stadiums, away, which is really hard to do. Right? So, the Rams had that home field advantage all the way through, and they still have it now. I feel like the Bengal are coming in with nothing to lose, much more relaxed. Much more than McVay and Donald who were predicting the last game, “We’re going to win. We’re going to win.” And they almost blew that game. They actually should have lost that game. That guy intercepted the ball. It’s just you’re winning, and you look great and you came back, but San Francisco was up a lot.

Frank Curzio: And then, again, for me, when I’m looking at the Rams, they don’t know how to be dominant. And you need to be dominant. You need to put your foot on their throat, which New England does, right? When you have the ball, two minutes left and the other team has three timeouts, you’ve got idiots that hand the ball off three times and then you’ll give it back to Brady, and Brady will score touchdown. Or look at New England, where they had Brady. They’ll throw the ball once or twice because they know one first down automatically ends a game. Right? You put your foot on the throat, you end it. You don’t give the shot. And I don’t see that with the Rams. I’m also looking at Stanford who is… I think he’s going to throw at least two picks in this game.

Frank Curzio: I’m pretty sure he led the league in interceptions this year because he just throws a lot of crazy passes, which I think he’s going to do and forcing the issue. If they play conservative, they could win. If they’re running the ball, it could get really ugly. I admit it could get ugly, but with the four and a half, I like the Bengals. I actually think the Bengals have a shot to win outright 31, 24. So, take the Bengals with the four and a half points. I have Jefferson, some other bets, Jefferson, wide receiver for the Rams, scoring the first TD. I also have Stafford throwing at least two picks. Again, those fourth quarter comeback stats, very, very overrated statistic when you’re playing for a team that’s always, always behind the fourth quarter.

Frank Curzio: But when you look at the interceptions, that’s what scares me. One last thing here, other than make sure you watch the Super Bowl halftime show, because I have a feeling that’s going to be one of the best halftime shows where you have Snoop Dogg, Dre, you going to have Eminem, and I think they going to bring on so many, so many great people. So yeah, that’s going to be really exciting, but the last thing I’m going to say, which by the way, with my prediction, it means that you should definitely, definitely, definitely put your house, put everything you can on the Rams, that’s why I do this and poke fun at it. We’ll poke fun in it next week when I do lose, but Mattress Jack, Mattress Jack is a Texas furniture salesman who bets Super Bowl. He bets millions dollars Super Bowl. He won last year. I’m not sure what he did the year before, but he bet on Tampa Bay with the points and he won this year.

Frank Curzio: He put a four and a half million dollar bet, record bet on Cinci to win outright, which will net him 7.7 million, because you’re getting odds on that because he’s not taking the points. He places at Caesar’s sports book where he said Caesar’s the only one with big enough britches to take that kind of bed at a single time. So, he runs Gallery Furniture located in Houston, and he’s running a special promotion for his customers who spend $3,000 or more on furniture. Again, very successful company, very successful guy. And he said, the Bengals, when he wins his bet, “Mattress Mac will use his winnings to reimburse the full amount of all the customer’s purchases.” That’s pretty freaking cool. That’s a very, very big bet. Again, he won last. I’m not too sure what his record is before that. I think like two or three Super Bowls I’ve seen in bet, but that’s a lot of money. A lot, a lot of money to put on Cincinnati to win outright.

Frank Curzio: So, he did win last year. That was a bet of 3.4 million that he won. And this time he’s going 4.5, one of the biggest bets. And it’s going to say one of the biggest betting Super Bowls of all time. Like Andrew said, you’re going to see lots of commercials when it comes to cryptocurrencies. I think there’s three or four different companies that have taken out commercials and stuff. So, it should be pretty cool, should be overall a fun suitable, but I do have the Bengals winning outright 31, 24 of the Rams, which means you should take the Rams. So, that’s my prediction. Take it for what it’s worth and that’s it from me. So questions, comments, email frank@curizoresearch.com. Want to thank Andrew again for coming on. You guys want any information on our security token, which we launched, Curzio Equity Owners, on Monday, which is exciting event for our company.

Frank Curzio: You can go and trade that token only in the tZERO exchange, but there’s other exchange that open starting to trade security tokens. We’re very early into this trend and again, these are reflections of equities stake in our company, which we’re very excited about. So, I know I’m still getting lots of questions on how to do that. You can go to tZERO again. They don’t pay me to say that. It’s just the only place where you could trade our token. On day one, was a huge success for us. Again, I can’t talk about the stock price, but I will say that we had more volume on that day than we had almost an entire year on the foreign exchange that we traded on. So, really exciting stuff. And that’s what I want to do. I want to be able to bring this to… This kind of service, this equity, it’s something different, but I think it’s going to change the future of finance.

Frank Curzio: It’s going to be the future of finance. It’s going to change the investment banking industry. It’s just great for us. Great for investors and get in early on small companies and lots of things. There’s hundred trillions of assets that could be tokenized. You’re going to see a lot of that come to fruition over the next decade starting now. And that’s why you’re see places like Gemini, major platform, Winklevoss twins, getting into security tokens, launching a platform. You’re seeing that Coinbase has those licenses and more and more of these are going to open up because there’s going to be more stringent rules on these utility tokens, which are absolutely securities. And the SCC will rule on that sooner or later. When they do, that’s when you really see a boom in security tokens, which provide much more transparency and also like ours, you get an actual equity stake, just like you would be buying a stock in our company.

Frank Curzio: So, it’s based on me and growing this company. And hopefully, we can continue to do that, thanks to your help and word of mouth and stuff like that and doing a great job. Love the team. And I just want to say, appreciate everything. Enjoy the Super Bowl, have lots of beers, drinks have fun. Whatever you do, smoke a joint, I don’t care. Just enjoy it. Don’t talk politics, and hopefully, you get to spend time with your friends and family. And I’ll be here for you analyzing stocks, busting my ass, and I’ll see you guys next week. Take care.

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