Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

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

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

What’s going on out there? It’s March 19th. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast. We’re bringing you the headlines and Tell you what’s really good with these markets. We’re going to bring in Daniel Creech, again senior analyst at Curzio Research. Overall great guy, Smart, good-looking, decent golfer. How’s it going, man?

0:00:38 – Daniel Creech

Go on, Frank. How’s it going, sir, happy?

0:00:40 – Frank Curzio

Wednesday no, don’t I love giving you compliments, man. No, no, no, no, accept them, because you’re not always going to get them. Frank@CurzioResearch.com, I don’t get them. You should get older.

0:00:47 – Daniel Creech

You know I don’t get them as often. I love it when you leave town, because I always piss everybody off. The two things that happen is the market tanks because you leave and then I piss somebody off.

0:01:01 – Frank Curzio

She just cut you off when you said no, I do. This weekend I think I’m going to be here, but I’ve been traveling. A lot business, a lot of stuff going on. Speaking of traveling, sorry to interrupt.

0:01:10 – Daniel Creech

you. Go ahead who got back.

0:01:12 – Frank Curzio

Yesterday. The astronauts got back. You see it, did you see? When they landed in the dolphins it was almost like staged.

0:01:17 – Daniel Creech

That was awesome. That was cool. Real, was it? I don’t know the dolphins, it’s just so perfect, right? Yeah, well, damn, I don’t know. I thought that was a cool shot. The crazy thing is I always forget about this. They went up there. I’ve read it and I’ve heard different things. Did they go up there for three days or a week? Obviously, they went up there for a short amount of time, whether it was three days or a week, and it ended up being nine months, right, something like that. I mean just try to. I mean it’s like, oh you know, can you imagine? I can’t fathom what they went through emotionally, like like to get back for them, like I would be in tears, like that is the cool. Like can you imagine the ups and downs that you go through? Granted, they’re astronauts, they I don’t want.

0:02:00 – Frank Curzio

Obviously they are more aware and adapt to those situations and all that than your average Joe like this loser.

0:02:06 – Daniel Creech

I’m just simply saying holy cow. Can you imagine that I mean take a moment and just be grateful for all that Holy shnikes.

0:02:12 – Frank Curzio

I know, and you know they’re trying to make it political and all this stuff. And I get it depends what channel you listen to. To me I just thought it was funny because it’s like you know, I’m like damn those Nazis like Trump and Elon Musk, you know, I mean for them to be doing all this great stuff. They bring these guys back. They’re trying to stop the war in Ukraine and Russia. I’d say if I was a Nazi I’d be really pissed off at these guys. I mean, we’re told like he’s a Nazi president. It just shows how, over the top, when you hate someone either on both sides too is what you’re willing to say. You know, just it’s. It’s pretty crazy. I want to listen to some of the stuff in the media heading into the election regardless. But listen, I’m glad they’re back. I thought it was a really cool event. It’s pretty amazing that they would go up there and get them. I just don’t know why we couldn’t get them sooner.

I mean, is it so political where? I don’t know? I mean, no matter how much you hate the other side, we’re know you go. There’s certain things that you know it’s like even with children, like out of bounds, like usually, like, okay, hey, you know, I remember what was it with Obama, and I think it was who was he running against McCain and Sarah Palin? Sarah Palin’s daughter was pregnant as a teenager or something and he came out and said listen, if anyone talks about that, you’re done, you’re fired, you.

There’s just certain things. You just, you know, with something like this, it seemed like they were going to come back quicker. You know, you see, on both sides, I mean, listen, you can say what you want about politics or whatever, but there’s just certain things that used to be out of bounds but now they’re not. I just, you know, getting these guys back If you country as someone else on the other political side, I mean, just freaking, do it right. Anyway, very nice event, regardless that these guys are back and we have the best time of the year ever, which is the ncaa tournament, which I love, which is all over the place because of, yeah, nil, and people leaving and kids going to college, four different colleges and four years for money and stuff like that.

0:04:03 – Daniel Creech

It’s like, like coaches are leaving. It’s kind of crazy. Get your negativity out of your voice.

0:04:06 – Frank Curzio

No, I think it’s good because you’re seeing more parity. You’re seeing more parity across it. I’m going to break down tournament. I’m going to give you my sleepers, like I do every year, even though I’ve been way off. I had Kentucky win it last year and it wasn’t a first round, so this is a market podcast, right. So let’s get to the Fed.

The Fed is meeting today. By the time you listen to this, you’re probably going to know everything that’s going on, but it has you know they’re not going to touch interest rates, but there’s certain things that Powell could say today that could really drive the markets, because his projection for 2025 was inflation at 2.5%, gdp at 2.1%. As of now, with the data that we’ve got from the last meeting, he should be raising inflation expectations a little bit 2.7, 2.8 at least and he should be lowering GDP expectations based on the length of Fed. However, if he decides to say that in the same sentence, we’re going to see the market come down, because that indicates stagflation. That’s a negative right. So seeing slower growth, higher inflation.

But yeah, I think overall, we have to look at this market, Daniel, and say listen, there’s a lot of positives on the macro event, on the macro front, and when I say that I mean positives in terms of bullish catalysts for equities. When I say that I mean positives in terms of bullish catalysts for equities, and if we start with interest rates, we’re at 4.25 4.5 percent, which means there’s plenty of room to cut if things really slow down and we go into the recession. And that’s very positive, because we were supposed to have six rate cuts last year, right. And then we’re like, okay, that’s off. This year they’re like, oh, we’re gonna have a bunch of more. And now it’s off the table. Where there was zero, there’s one, there’s two, they’re projecting two, maybe three, but we’re seeing rates actually come off their highs. They’re up a little bit today, but they’ve come off their highs. They’re pretty much at the same level. As Trump got elected, they went a lot higher.

I think the 10-year went to like 4, but you have the tariffs. We’re going to have reciprocal tariffs, which is really great for the US. I mean, countries are going to bitch and complain about it, but hey, you charge those tariffs on someone. We’re going to do the same thing reciprocal tariffs. It’s going to result in more money staying in our country, more jobs, more money coming into our economy, which, when you want to talk about lowering deficits, everyone’s like oh, you got to cut spending. No, yes, you got to cut spending, don’t get me wrong. Okay, because we never, ever, spent trillions of dollars like it was nothing. Okay, I get it, but a lot of that shit’s not going to matter because you can cut spending.

But where interest rates are, the fact that we’re paying so much a trillion dollars, just an interest expense alone on that debt the only way to get out of this is economic growth. I mean, it’s economic growth coupled with lower rates. And we have a shot based on what’s going on with tariffs, what’s going on with Doge, where this is money that is probably going to result at least $1,000 or more. This ain’t up to $5,000. I don’t think it’s going to get there. Right now. It’s $700 per taxpayer that they saved that they’re probably going to send back to every taxpayer. That is the ultimate, because now you’re not saying, like what Trump did last time, okay, we’re lowering taxes, which Like what Trump did last time, okay, well, you know. Just, we’re lowering taxes, right, which which hurts the government? Right, that’s less income coming into the government. You got to find out, you know different ways and you can simulate the economy Again. I want to get to you know.

0:07:11 – Daniel Creech

You mean lower tax receipts. What do?

0:07:13 – Frank Curzio

you say, well, he lowered tax federal right, he had tax cuts right. And he basically and that’s that AT&T come out and say, hey, we’re going to give like a special stuff like this because they had tax cuts.

But that really, you know, tax cuts hurts the economy. This is money already spent. This is money that came out of our pockets as opposed to go someplace that you know we’re realizing. Okay, a lot of this is going to shit that we don’t really, you know it shouldn’t be going to. That could come back to the taxpayer. No-transcript To me. Those are huge positives on the macro environment that I see a couple of years from now, which is how to play it.

But I wanted to get your thoughts on the economy, what you think. Because right now I see, look where we are right now we’re expecting kind of slower growth, inflation to be a little bit higher. I think Powell comes out today and says, hey, you know what, we could lower rates. I mean, we have the ability. If shit really hits the fan, we have the ability to lower rates at least by 1%, at least by a full 1%, not at one time, but we’re only going to be at 3.5, 3.25, 3.5, which isn’t crazy, right. I mean, we’re like at 1%, we’re at 0% not long ago. So the fact that we still have that tool, which is huge, and interest rates coming down as they are right now, we could see you know. Maybe we see you know right now he’s probably going to hold the line. But we could say, you know, maybe we see three cuts this year. You don’t know. I mean, we’re already in March, so who knows? March madness Frank.

0:08:42 – Daniel Creech

Madness it is. Yes, here’s some interesting things about old Fed Chair Powell. Later today he’s in a tough spot. There’s no way he moves today and I think he plays the political game of saying, hey, we’re in the right position to do things as needed. They can either raise rates, which he’ll walk softly on that, because you don’t want to spook the markets anymore and then you can’t say that you’re going to save the economy either. You got to act like you’re. You know, got this dual mandate.

But, Frank, what’s crazy here is that the new dot plot comes out this week, today. So but here’s the thing they’re going to show how political they are. And this is why you listen to this program, because you’re going to watch this and you’re going to enjoy it, because you know what’s coming. These assholes are going to get on TV and lie to you about how they don’t take tariffs and they don’t take political sides and they’re neutral and all this kind of stuff. And if they don’t raise their plot, dot plot today, then you can almost say that they’re going to be serious. But then you have to couple that with his answers and in Powell’s defense he’s going to get a lot of just pathetic, terrible questions and they’re going to be wrapped around. Well, if Mr President Trump, who thinks he’s a dictator and wants to take over the world, fires you, are you going to get in line? If he tells you to go bomb Iraq, are you going to do that? Mr Powell, I know you’re just a Fed chairman, but you have all powers. Of course it’s going to be ridiculous and it’s going to be bad. They’re not going to do anything on rates. I take the under on rate cuts unless. See what I’m worried about is we have this race between who’s got the bigger and stronger spine. Is it Powell or is it Trump? And if you want to dumb that down to Daniel’s level, it’s who wants to be the bigger prick. And unfortunately, I think President Trump wins that race. And what I mean by that is they keep telling us they, the administration. There’s no Trump put. There’s definitely a Fed put. There’s no stopping this train, Frank. What’s the business cycle? The business cycle is pedal to the metal, life is good, and then hit the brakes and slam through the windshield and life sucks until you repeat.

And the only bone I have to pick here I don’t know if you caught any comments from Ray Dalio, big time hedge fund manager, smartest guy, unbelievable. The only bone I have to pick with him is he’s been out touring on Tucker Carlson. He was on CNBC a few days ago and he keeps talking about this history, rhyming with past regime changes and big empire falls. And I respect him. He’s right spot on, Except for I think he’s glossing over the biggest factor.

He keeps talking about how we have this debt problem and this interest problem and all that, and he basically says we’re on the verge of a civil war. Well, that’s nothing new. You don’t need anybody. You know, a poor guy like me can tell you that. You don’t need a rich guy to tell you that. What I get upset with Frank is he acts like all playbooks that have led to this point are going to be thrown out. So the next time the debt hits something level, oh, they’re not going to do anything.

The real key and I want you to listen to this the real key to panic is not now. It’s when the Fed tries to save the world and nobody buys it. It’s when they say you know what, Frank, we’re going to print money during COVID and we’re going to save everybody’s ass and the stock market rebounds. What was that recession, Frank, three weeks, something like that, and I’m not listen. Good, bad, right or wrong.

That’s not what Daniel’s saying.

Daniel is saying the Fed steps in every single times because that’s the monetary system we were in, and to ignore that is foolishness. And so the point there is do not worry about debt in the end of the world unless you see the Fed step in and do something, whether that be yield curve control, which they’ve already done in the past. Whether that be outlawing the ownership of precious metals, which they’ve done in the past. Whether they manipulate about said the real F word there, Frank, you’d be proud of me whether they screw with interest rates even more, which they did for the last decade, artificially keeping them low. The point is, you really want to get nervous when the Fed does something, like China, when they do their big bazooka and it doesn’t work. But until then and we’re a long way away from that so that’s a little mini rant there, Frank, I need your comments because then I want to ask you about current inflation, because I came across a few things that I think are going to put Powell between a walk and a hard spot, my friend.

0:12:35 – Frank Curzio

Yes, I mean when I look at, and Daniel’s a little fired up today, by the way.

0:12:39 – Daniel Creech

Oh, that pisses me off Holy cow A couple of curse words in, I know.

0:12:42 – Frank Curzio

I know I’m going to try to eliminate the F word from my portfolio, even though of curse words, even though I don’t say just to say it, sometimes it comes out. But yeah, anyway, I’m going to say F you. From now on I’ll keep it simple, but you know, I agree with a lot of what you said. I mean, you know Dalio has been talking about this for a while. I get it and I love when he compares the history because, like, 100 years, that could be 10 years, that could be 20 years or whatever this happens. I get it, but I know when those regimes failed, they weren’t talking about it five years before and preparing for it. Right, which is a big factor in the markets and I think from what I’ve learned in 30 years, and especially the last 15 years is when people are talking about risk, it’s usually going to be priced into the markets. I mean, we’re talking about tariffs. Tariffs is very much priced into the markets, right? We’re looking at Doge. Oh, my God, it’s going to result in less spending, right? You always want to see more spending without inflation coupled with that, and that usually is great for the economy. So that’s going to result oh, that could push us into recession Again. Factored in, we’re seeing stocks down 20%, plus here, a lot of names down 20% and you can’t tell me you’re doing great in the markets right now because a lot of good names are down and they’re just down because of this massive rotation we’re seeing. I mean so much so with the rotation. When Bank of America came out I don’t know if you saw that report and I get this. We get a lot of these reports and access to this, but this is amazing. So they have, like the flow show which they produce every week of whatever it is, a trillion assets and they also have these manager surveys and everything. But this is amazing, right At the top of their page it came out I believe it was today. So their March fund manager survey shows the biggest drop in US equity allocation on record. On record.

You want to talk about a contrarian indicator and everyone running to the exit. So don’t tell me tariffs aren’t factored in. Don’t tell me a lot of the stuff isn’t factored in. It is factored in because we’re talking about it, we’re worried about it, which means if those risks reverse, you’re going to see a rip your face off rally because a lot of this money is going where it’s showing Eurozone, massive amount of UK and emerging markets, and then money into cash and again those cash levels go higher and higher, which is also a contrarian sign because eventually, when stocks go high, you have to see that money go to work. A lot of these fund managers they’re not going to generate those huge returns. They’ll generate some return because of interest rates and stuff, but they need to put that money to work to generate the fees, which is what they make a fortune on. You don’t want to manage money and just keep it in cash. It’s not going to work because people are going to flow. Well, it’s flowing to areas that are working right now, but let’s see how it works going forward, which should be interesting.

But when I’m looking at this market overall, I’m looking at the economy. To me it seems like a lot of this stuff is factored. You know what Ray Dalio is talking about. When you see the risk coming. That’s not a big risk, it’s the black swan events. When the credit crisis and you’re like, wow, we think we got it contained. And you’re like, what the hell is AIG and GE? What the hell is? Wait, what’s going on, holy cow. You leveraged 35 to one. We had no idea what the subprime, we didn’t even know where it is.

You know COVID, a complete lockdown of the United States of the world. A lockdown Every place locked down, except the place it originated from, which is Wuhan. They didn’t lock down that place. They said no, no, no, you guys fly out of everywhere you want in every other country. You’re good, you can’t come into any other area in China, but for Wuhan, you can go anywhere you want in every other country. Which freaking spread COVID Again. How pissed off I get. But when I’m looking at how to play this market, a lot of the risks are factored in here where you didn’t see.

You saw NVIDIA put up good numbers. We’ll get to NVIDIA in a second because they’re having like the Super Bowl of AI conferences right now. Kramer’s actually doing a good job. He’s there, he’s interviewing Jensen and stuff like that. It’s pretty good. He said a lot of great things are pulling back. A lot of companies reported good numbers. Nvidia put a very, very good numbers. Yeah, margin’s a little light, but they said they were going to be light six months ago and said they’re going to make it up in the second half of the year, all their product announcements and everything you’ve seen a stock down 20% plus on really no bad news or earnings. Like they didn’t lower earnings. They came up with guidance and said, okay, we’re slightly lowering guidance because there’s so much uncertainty out there. But I can’t tell you how many names are coming across my plate. I mean we just had a new recommendation for an AI newsletter which I did yesterday and it’s an industry leader. Like usually I’m recommending small niche companies and I mean it’s an industry leader.

Has under $10 billion market cap. It’s down 45% from its highs. Has a billion dollars in net cash on its balance sheet, generating another $700 million in annual free cash flow. Just from the cash flow and the net cash on its balance sheet, it’s almost 20% cash trading at 12 times earnings, yet still growing sales and earnings in the double digits. You don’t see that Just names like this.

There’s so many names out there that are getting hit just because of a rotation and saying, hey, we just got to get out of the market right now and put it someplace that’s working. That money is going to flow in because the risk that we’re seeing in the economy mostly short term, mostly things that are going to subside, like the tariffs and stuff like that. We’ll figure that out. We’re going to figure out the Doge thing. It’s going to be really good to the point where a lot of this money is probably going to be given back to taxpayers and that’s going to be an ultimate stimulus to the economy and we have interest rates that are kind of staying low. So let’s see where the economy goes. If the economy falls into recession, we have plenty of room to lower people, including us.

I just think there’s a good opportunity going forward because a lot of the risks that are in the market could really not exist or at least subside over the next two, three months. And I think it pays to just look at some of those names that reported good earnings that are down 15, 20%. And now you’re seeing some of the big growth names that was super expensive are down 40, 50% from their highs. Look at the software companies and if you can pick up some of those things at a cheap discount right Under 15, 17 times forward earnings, a discount to the S&P, and they’re still growing those earnings and sales double digits, those are really good stocks.

If you have a 12-month horizon or longer, don’t go all in and say all right, I got $5,000 or $10,000. I’m going to put it into position at once buy 2,000, buy 2,500. And then, if the stock comes down, you buy a little bit more. Again, you want to build your position in a good company, right? We’re not talking about trading back and forth and adding on the way down, but we’re adding to it and slowly putting money in to the point where, if it takes off, you own it and if it comes down, you can add more and you build that over the next six, 12 months. There’s a lot of positives that we’re going to see in this market. I think it’s going to drive equities a lot higher from where they’re trading right now.

0:19:06 – Daniel Creech

Frank, you Florida optimist. You Look at you building a good picture there. I like it.

I’m not trying to be optimistic, it’s just something I like. No, it’s good. Hey, one other thing, two things quickly. One from the Bank of America and then a word on inflation In that same Bank of he say his last name yes, anyway, he’s excellent. The cash levels they monitor several things. One of the cool things from the FMS fund manager surveys that they do, Frank, is they highlighted the cash levels and I don’t know if you saw this, but the cash levels hit less than 4%, which triggered a sell signal for Bank of America’s research, and that was back on December 17th.

0:19:49 – Frank Curzio

Now December 17th.

0:19:51 – Daniel Creech

If you would have sold out and followed this, you would have watched the market, and this is just great because of how emotions play in the market. In my opinion, if you would have followed these gentlemen and it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback, we’re looking back and congratulating them If you would have sold and followed this or lightened up your portfolio, you would have been absolutely upset. For a few months you would have been feeling like you got kicked in the teeth and what were you wrong, because what happened after December 14th? Frank markets continue to rally higher. Now you fast forward a couple more months, though this looks genius because, as you can see, since they’re and all they were doing is looking at fund manager cash levels and this is what’s cool Since their sell signal Magnificent 7 dropped 20 percent, nasdaq was down 14 percent, s&p down 9 percent and International down five or up 6%. Now the reason I point this out is because the cash levels fell so abruptly to where it ends the sell call. Now they’re not saying go in and buy, like Frank said. We’re not saying the signal is all clear, scale in, but it’s just need to see. This is a great contrarian indicator on how quickly and how emotions drive stock prices and this is how you’ve had these massive volatile sessions and such. The second thing, Frank, that’s just a contrarian data point I like.

The other thing is regarding on inflation and, Frank, have you ever heard of trueflation? So T-R-U-flation trueflation? I’ve seen this on. You know, I try to read all different types of stuff from all different types of sources and I’ve seen these guys referenced on X in different social media platforms. Frank, what they do is they try and you’ll like this because they use a decentralized platform I know that was a swear word for a long time and they have they try to just get real economic data for inflationary and different indexes and I have to say, just looking at some of these, their data sources are from small companies like McDonald’s and Hyatt Hotels Little bitty guys. If you go through their sourcing and their ideas, it makes a lot of sense. They’re just trying to get real time data and use technology and they talk about how their feeds and they have to get sources from different or, excuse me, more than one source on different products. But these guys are talking, Frank, about tons and tons of data on across 15 million data points and all that kind of stuff.

I say this because, Frank, what do you think? Us inflation right now, today, in real time, led by decentralized finance, says inflation is, Frank, I don’t know what, what is it? 1.72. 1.72%, that’s what inflation is. Yeah, that’s what it is. And if you go to trueinflationcom, if you want to pull it up, it’s got a great chart.

The point is is that these guys have been pretty accurate on looking back and saying, hey, this is where inflation is going to come in, and blah, blah, blah. The conundrum here is we have the Fed saying inflation is working in the right direction, but when you look at what the Fed pays attention to, it’s not the last couple of months. Inflation is going up, but it’s also rear view looking. It’s also past data. So you’ve got to keep that in context.

These guys are saying these trueflation guys are saying, hey, this is real time data across all kinds of different hundreds of thousands of data points and millions of stuff. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So the idea is who’s correct? And if the Fed is this far behind, you’re going to see plus three rate cuts because stuff is going to hit the fan as you see more employment and more economic data come out over the next coming months. And remember Trump, in my opinion, is on hold because there’s no legislation passed. A have you ever heard a true flation, Frank? And B what do you think about 1.72 right now, today?

0:23:24 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, not right now, today.

0:23:25 – Daniel Creech

I don’t see it.

0:23:26 – Frank Curzio

I mean, look, if you’re accounting, if you look at, I would say real estate is probably has come down, like generally, but there’s still very hot areas, right, that that hasn’t really come down. Okay, you have energy prices are going back up a little bit, right, if you look at the gas pump, they’re definitely up over the past month. You know so if you’re factoring a lot of stuff, but if you’re really factoring the things, the actual costs, I mean, if you look at electricity, eggs have come down a little bit but they’re up tremendously, right. So we’re seeing all these costs that are still up and 23% in the past four years, 27% in the past four years on average. But if you’re looking at the direct line where, okay, not everyone’s going to rent their home, everyone really doesn’t care if their home value is up or down over a month or two or a stretch, right, it’s been up tremendously for most people who own a home, but that’s not a direct cost for them. Where you know electricity bills, you know food prices. I mean, if you look at Coca-Cola and Pepsi, they’ve raised prices pretty much every quarter. I know Coke, every quarter, 40% in the past year Coca-Cola’s raised prices, right. So you’re seeing it when you go out to dinner. You’re seeing it when you pay with your credit card. You notice that every company now says, oh, if you use a credit card, you’re going to pay 3%.

I mean, I just went to an event with my daughter and I got really pissed, really pissed. I mean this thing. I mean it’s set up as the biggest money grab ever. These gymnastics tournaments, right, which is fine, you know, everyone takes their daughters and stuff like that. There’s I think they select eight for the team and there’s a million girls right that do this stuff for the olympic team. Maybe you get a scholarship or whatever, but you know, most of them, I think, are doing it as a hobby. But the amount of money that you’re paying for something like this, and now you’re traveling, I’m going four hours, you stay at a hotel, whatever, but when you walk into the these are regular gyms. This is like your gym that you play basketball at, that they would basically design for these four events and gymnastics and they charge you like $20, $25 to get in. And then you know.

So I had a credit card and I had cash, I didn’t pay attention and it was 20, it was 20 bucks to get in and they charged me an extra I think six or $7. Cause I use my credit card. I was like. I was like, and I use it. I said, are you out of your mind? I said, are you really out of your mind? And there’s a bunch of kids and families. I’m like, seriously, are you out of your mind? Like really. I mean, come on, I’m paying more than I’d go to the Mets game Freaking, sitting the nosebleeds for this freaking thing.

It’s bad ago. I mean it’s holy cow. But the price and people, I’m telling you, the parents out there they’re taking their kids to these events and stuff like that. I get it, but it’s mostly a hobby for these kids, but they actually now she’s going to states and they let everyone go into states, pretty much regionals and all this stuff. But I’m like, really, so if you’re going into my point, there is Carry cash.

Cash is going to make a big comeback, guys. I mean, remember, cash is disappearing. Cash made a comeback, cash is with me all the time. Now I freak with these fees, but a lot of businesses are like oh, we’re going to charge you 3%, we’re going to hit 3% if you use a credit card. So you know they’re making you get charged that fee.

So when I see inflation, of the bills that people pay, I don’t see it subs below. I think you need it like 2.5%, 2.7, below 3%, because we’re going to see slower growth, which gives the Fed the green light to lower rates. And when they lower rates, it’s going to be great for housing. You’re going to see that market take off. I think there’s a lot of demand there.

But people are like I can’t move sideways. I can’t go from New York, from, say, a million dollar house, to Florida for a million dollar house, because my interest rate was 3.2%, my mortgage rate, and I’m going to have to pay 6%, 6.5%. So you know they can’t really do that right now. And lower interest rates, I mean they’re a lot higher. 2022, Daniel, I think we’re on the mortgage rate. I think we were at I think we were just at 4.2, 4.25%, you know, and now we’re at what, like you know, 6.8 or something. I mean massive difference, massive difference, right? So anyway, to get back to your points here, with inflation, I still see inflation.

Let’s see what Powell says. I don’t think he’s going to announce oh well, we’re seeing higher inflation and slower growth, because I think that will push the markets down because that’s stagflation, it’s definition of stagflation. But I think he’s going to say hey, the economy we had Moynihan come out, which is the CEO of Bank of America very positive. He said consumers are definitely spending more than they did last quarter, he said so you know that looks positive right now and you know we’ll see there’s a lot of companies that are disagreeing, that are saying you know we’re not seeing it, that have warned and you know, again, let’s see going forward and, yeah, go ahead.

0:27:35 – Daniel Creech

I don’t want to lead to a big rant here. I did see. Are you talking about the Bank of America CEO today?

0:27:39 – Frank Curzio

on CNBC.

0:27:41 – Daniel Creech

I didn’t think he did a bad job. He didn’t do a good job by any means, but I didn’t think he did a bad job. But I appreciated him saying hey, we’re not falling off a cliff here. I think he did pull that back. He said listen, the consumer isn’t going great thing because his bank actually did it. And he acted. And you know what? Here’s what I’m going to take a shot at, because this is absolutely awful and I saw that happen with stress when you kick especially small companies.

The bad thing about where we are in the world is if you’re too big, nobody cares because you got money and you can afford everything, and if you’re a small company, nobody cares because you’re tiny and it’s not that big of a deal.

So in order to complain and get any satisfaction or anything empathy from anybody else, you got to be in the middle. Oh well, the point is is that Frank was debanked from Bank Curzio kicked Curzio out on the street like a homeless, redheaded stepchild no offense to redheads One month to open other accounts, exactly, and then. But what he did say on the interview was he tried to sidestep it and act like they don’t do it, and he knows. But what he did say was hey, we were getting those letters because the CNBC anchors actually said hey, there’s proof, like the last administration told you guys don’t do this. And he said, yeah, we did so, we did that and we’re willing to do that. He basically just said they have no floor to spine at all and they’re going to screw you every chance they get. So vote with your feet, people. I need to move out of Bank of America for my little bit of money.

0:29:00 – Frank Curzio

You know how much I hate banks and stuff like that, but I’m going to side with him for this reason. Nice, the banks are funded and are controlled basically by the government. It’s the reason why they have the United States as a monopoly, because it’s one company. There’s four major banks and no one can ever penetrate that. That’s the way the laws are. You can’t penetrate that. Bank of New York. What is it Not Bank of New York? Community Bank, right, which? What was it? The Community Bank of New York which basically had over got 100 billion-.

Signature Bank of New York. No, not signature, but it was the New York Community Bank, I think it was. So it got over $100 billion in assets because it got assets from one of the banks that were forced to shut down right, illegally forced to shut down because they said you can’t have any crypto custody or whatever and no one could do anything within crypto. But they got some of those assets. They went over a hundred billion and then their capital ratios increased. So when the capital ratios increased, they had to take money, basically off the bottom line of Philo’s ratios. And now they have. They warned and people like, holy shiz, this bank going under. And then it fell to the point where it almost went under. Right, it had to get bailed out.

And for the New York community, when I look at banks like that, they have it as a monopoly, but the laws are set and it’s not again, I’m using the wrong word monopoly, because there’s four majors here but you can’t penetrate that market. So they have to be very careful with Brian Moynihan. They have to be careful of what they say because, especially if they need bail, you always have the Fed there that bail these guys out. Now you had the Fed or whatever Justice Department or whatever, say listen, this is what you’re going to do and this is what happened, because I’m into this. It’s called Operation Chokepoint 2.0. You could see it, obama went through this and the people that sued them because they closed bank accounts for a whole bunch of sites just porno sites and a lot of other sites, which they illegally did and they wanted to win that suit against the government. Now this is Operation Chokepoint 2.0. And what the government said is if any of you guys do anything with crypto, you’re done, we’re going to come in, we’re going to audit you and you guys are going to get effed. Okay, and there’s letters showing that. And they had the list of people to bank. If you see anything crypto related, whatever.

We had a payment going out to pay for the Metaverse, like just like Nike did, just like Walmart did, just like a lot of the majors did, right, because they’re like, oh, the Metaverse is a big deal and that investment, I think, is going to work out fantastic, as a company invested in is coming out with unbelievable. Their whole entire fricking site, the whole portal is coming out TCG. But once they saw we made that payment, they debunked us. So you got to remove everything. We couldn’t talk to them. They said I don’t care what you say, right, we couldn’t talk to them. They didn’t allow me to talk to them. They said provide a phone number as an answering machine.

It says nothing’s going to change your decision. You got a month to remove everything, which is hard to do as a corporation. As anhan it’s not so much him, it’s the people on top saying you bet you have to do this. You have no choice and you have to follow the guidelines. And that’s why you’re seeing, why you think you’re seeing the big shift.

Guys from tech companies liking Trump. You have to be on the right side. You’re going to support who’s ever in office. You’re going to donate to both parties more to the party you like and less to the party you don’t like. But there’s a reason why all these people like oh, look at these tech companies and look at you have to do that. You have to be on the right side of politics. It matters. It matters, Believe me it, lot of these companies and matter for the past four years with biden. It matters now with trump.

But you know, when it comes to these guys, even a guy like barney Frank, who created, you know, dodd Frank laws. He was on the board of signature when they closed that bank and he had no idea it was coming. He had no idea. He’s like what’s going on? They closed that bank. He’s like what just happened? Well, we’re paying you a shitload of money to be on the board to tell us this was going to happen. And he didn’t even know what was going on. You really think that’s why he was on the board? Oh, what else? Why else would he be on?

0:32:42 – Daniel Creech

the board. He was on there to get a license. He wasn’t on there. I mean, he’s a great name.

0:32:45 – Frank Curzio

He had no idea what was going on well, he should, because that’s what else is he getting paid for? I mean why would you pay a? Why do you get paid for? Who are the highest at the SEC, who make nothing? Why does Goldman Sachs go out there and hire these guys and give them millions of dollars? Because they have access to the SEC and they’re going to tell them hey, be careful of this, be careful of this, be careful of this. And that’s why they all have slush funds set up.

0:33:11 – Daniel Creech

This is the way Wall Street works. If signature bank really thought Barney Frank was going to warn, I could even imagine I don’t know why else put that guy.

0:33:16 – Frank Curzio

We can disagree, it’s fine. Why would you put the guy on the board for?

0:33:19 – Daniel Creech

Because all the privileges that led up to that have met, which is one of those the privileges is his contacts.

0:33:24 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, exactly, but they’re not expecting him and they didn’t come through. With the contacts, right, you can disagree.

0:33:42 – Daniel Creech

I’m just saying, like it’s all corrupt and politic, political connection, yeah. And for them to think yeah, I just, it just shows you what a what a terrible show it is, it’s, it’s, it’s not funny.

0:33:48 – Frank Curzio

But it is. I’m watching narcos right now. Again, I’m seeing it. Just, you know, all those guys have all the government officials on why? Because they know exactly when something hey, the da is coming, they phone call. Right, I was just like he might get a phone call, but he didn’t. And if he’s not, then I just think there’s no reason to have had that guy on a board of anything, just like why would you have a Fed chairman on your board? Why would you have that guy from the SEC on the board, unless he doesn’t have that kind of access. But anyway, that’s the way it kind of is going to do.

The best this year is Boeing. Boeing’s popping today because the CFO went on and said, hey, our cash burn is finally easing. Yeah, this is a company that I mean. Just, I don’t think you could see a company that has more negative news in terms of crashes and parts that were defective and all the stuff that’s gone on. With Boeing, the bottom line is, when they were rocking and rolling, they have the best plane right, which is, you know, the 707 max, and when you have that max plane and you had 5500 orders five years ago, before covid, you’re still going to need those orders I know you’re seeing. You know some of the airlines get hit. They still have to. I mean, their fleets have to be replenished, right. So, and you’re going to see these orders come sooner or later, because airbus can’t really fill them all and they don’t have a better plane. They don’t have the better plane, which is the Aero 321, I think it’s called which is comparable, but this is a great plane that saves them money. It’s less weight, faster, more room, more space. The margins are much greater. So it’s going to happen eventually. It’s just so much happening between there.

But you’re seeing, like cash burn easing. The stock’s popping today 6%, I still think, listen, boeing is a necessity. Okay, it’s the place out of two places that you could buy planes and that’s it. And they’re going to get this thing rocking and rolling. It’s been a while and where the stock is, I just think it’s going to be the best performer in a Dow. The biggest part is we’re seeing cash burn easing, which means you’re seeing more orders come in, which means you’re going to start seeing more money going to the bottom line, especially the top line, but it’s going to fill the down to the bottom line. That’s a big deal that the cash burn is easing. That’s why the stock’s popping. I think you’re going to see that a lot going forward into next year and the year after, as long as we don’t have any craziness or plane crashes or anything that we’re not used to seeing that we saw in the last two, three years.

I think this is a great stock pick here. I think it’s going to go a lot higher because the demand is there and there’s no one else who you can really buy the planes from, except one other person, and one of that other person, which is Airbus, which is the company, is at full capacity right now. So you know Boeing is going to see massive demand. It’s up to them they get this thing right. But I’m glad to see it popping today because that was one of the ones that I said. It’s going to be one of the best performers in the DAO this year and hopefully that means it goes up a lot more from these levels.

0:36:30 – Daniel Creech

Yes, I hope so, just because it’s your pick.

0:36:32 – Frank Curzio

NVIDIA I like that.

So much news on NVIDIA right GTC event started yesterday. It’s a Super Bowl of AI and I thought that you can watch in so many different outlets. I think there’s 25,000 people in attendance. I think that what would they say? $1,800 hotel rooms per night.

This doesn’t sound like a trend that’s dying out anytime soon, although you would think so if you have any AI stocks, because a lot of them have come down, especially the bigger names, but released a whole bunch of news and stuff. I wanted to get your take on it because, look, I mean not too many surprises in terms of releases. Blackwell Ultra chip it’s going to be available the second half of this year. It provides 1.5 times the performance of the original Blackwell. But then you had this Vera Rubin, which is their next AI chip and it’s going to deliver 14 times the performance of Blackwell. I mean, no one’s even near Blackwell yet. And then they had the Blackwell Ultra that’s coming out second half. I mean they’re light years ahead of everyone else and you’d think this is a hardware company, but the software wrapped around it, the systems right, the developers that they have it’s amazing because you’re going to have the four, five, six largest companies in the world that have trillion dollar valuations, some of them two, three trillion dollar valuations in market caps. They need to continue spending because they can’t fall behind each other, because it’s going to result in a half a billion dollars, a half trillion dollars in market caps switching, going back and forth. They really need to get this right.

And now you’re getting into the next step, which is inference and the predictability. And that’s why I thought he had a lot of things to say. But the chips and announcements no surprises, but optimistic. He’s always great. I saw him at the CES, at Jensen Wong. He’s just charismatic. He really feels like he’s talking directly to you. He’s a great speaker and the excitement you could see it. I just think NVIDIA being down where it is it fell yesterday, it’s up a little bit today I still think it’s an incredible buy because now it’s actually a very cheap company when you’re looking at the growth. It’s the cheapest by far to any hyperscale in almost any company in the NASDAQ right now, when you’re factoring in the massive growth they’re going to see over the next couple of years.

0:38:31 – Daniel Creech

I think the price action just yesterday, and I know I’m going to take a snapshot. But when you look at financial media, everybody snapshot. But when you look at financial media, everybody is talking about and I mean everybody, just the big dogs, Yahoo and CNBC and all those guys about how NVIDIA fell three or 4% yesterday during this. And I want you to ignore that, because that does put me in a bad mood, because everybody focusing on one thing and Jim Cramer, I get it, he’s out there, he’s doing a show, he’s probably a shareholder in his event and stuff. But the idea that buy the rumor, sell the news it happens all the time. So don’t you know, don’t get so caught up in that that drives me nuts.

What I thought was impressive from NVIDIA is Jensen did a good job of breaking some stuff down. Some of the things they deal with are just absolutely incredible and I don’t even understand them to the point where I can give them enough credit, as they deserve. But just showing him or if you watch it I watch some of it as the live stream and such but he’s on stage and he’s showing the different computers they’ve built and how they stack them in different things, and it’s absolutely amazing. And they say, hey, we started with this and look how big it is and we’ve shrunk it down and we get better computing power. So all that is amazing. And I don’t know if you saw Frank, but he put up a chart at one point showing the current chip, which is just head and shoulders above everybody, and then the newest chip, and it’s basically I’m rounding Frank, but it’s basically one point three million Do you know what slide I’m talking about Trillion transistors.

0:39:55 – Frank Curzio

That one I don’t know what’s like you’re talking about, but I saw the ones that were from the CES. I didn’t get a chance to look at everything, I just saw the highlights of this conference and the interviews and stuff like that. But I mean a lot of it was a repeat from what he was saying at the CES.

0:40:09 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, and he talks about a couple and what I was impressed with, he just showed how the new chip coming out is going to dwarf the shipments of this other chip. And the point there is, it was just so much larger. It was hilarious. It was two or 300 times times. And what’s wild is when you think of the growth NVIDIA has had over the last couple of years and then you see this chip and this expectations Now the craziest thing outside of the price action he said something and and I’ve looked back through this and I’ve gone through um, chat, gdp and X and Grok and all that, Frank, he said something about and I couldn’t find the quote, so I’m not.

I’m not trying to pin him down here, but he said something about um, the AI data center could be a trillion dollars within a few years. Now I don’t think he was talking. Some people have said, well, the total spend from hyperscalers and stuff is going to be over a trillion dollars. If some say, well, what if the data center revenue could hit a trillion dollars, did you see that by 2028 and 2029? Any analysts saying that?

0:41:14 – Frank Curzio

I mean, I expect that because it’s already at 300. I mean, just the top four hyperscalers are spending $325 billion on it. Amazon alone is spending $100. So I could see that. I mean, we’re not even talking about Alibaba, we’re not talking about any Chinese companies Baidu and everything in there.

0:41:27 – Daniel Creech

And to your point, that is absolutely incredible because on February, you got to go all the way back to February 26th, Frank. Last month, when NVIDIA reported earnings, data center revenue for fiscal 2025 was 115.2 billion doubling from the prior year. That’s impressive. Data center revenue in the fourth quarter was 35.6 billion, up 16% sequentially and 93% year over year. Frank, are these guys telling us that they’re going to go from 35 billion to a trillion dollars in revenue from data centers?

0:42:00 – Frank Curzio

Probably. I mean, listen, you have the biggest companies in the world. Don’t think of all the rest of the companies that have to spend on this stuff. You have to realize that the companies that we’re talking about, when you look at the Mag7, I mean these are like countries. They, they, they, they.

The market caps of these countries are bigger than the GDP of some of the isn’t what’s Mexico’s GDP? And Canada Isn’t like 2 trillion or something like that and ours is like 27 trillion. I mean you know some of these market caps from video. I think it’s below 3 trillion, apple’s 3 trillion. You know Google. I mean they’ve come down, but a lot of these three or four of them hit $3 trillion valuations where we just saw Google spend $32 billion, their largest purchase, by the way. Remember when $32 billion was a lot of money, like, oh my God, that was so much money, holy cake. That’s Google’s largest purchase in history $32 billion and they just spent what was it on? Wiz as a company that’s generating $700 million in annual revenue, recurring revenue, holy cow. That company better, better grow. I mean it really better grow, holy cow. But it just goes to show you of how important it is to these guys where we’re not just looking at, we’re just scratching the surface on AI. I need people to understand that, because they look at, oh, the chat, gdp and Claude and these models. That’s just the beginning, right, that’s just the beginning where now it’s agentic AI, and this agentic AI is basically having these AI bots with less human interaction and now they could almost feed off each other. And he’s talking about I mean numbers that he threw out there when he talked about agentics and AI. He was talking about these AI agents expecting 10 billion AI agents 10 billion, I mean, holy cow, you know, feeding off each other, learning off each other. And then you’re looking at the inference part, which is what all these mega companies need to get right. They want the predictability. They have a lot of it. They’ve had it 10 years ago Now.

It’s so precise that they know exactly what creatures of habit, what you’re going to do, that they could sell this data to advertisers and they increase their return on ad spend by a factor of 5x to 10x Instead of their your return on ad spend by a factor of 5x to 10x instead of you know, putting a commercial on the golf channel. You have no idea who kept tv on, who’s in the bathroom? Who’s here? Maybe the guy I mean. Now you have people like we know exactly where these people are, we know exactly when they’re going to spend on your product and here it is. You want to put it in front of them. Here you go and this is why you’re going to charge them. You know so much more to advertise because your results are going to be that much greater and these guys need to fight and jockey for position because they’re going to take market share from themselves. So I don’t see the trend in terms of the Mag7 and what they’re spending AI slowing because Amazon can’t slow, because they’re going to lose their competitive advantage. You have Meta that can’t slow, right. Well, llama was a billion downloads on that site. You can’t have these companies slow their spending because they’re going to lose position, which could hurt them tremendously, because in technology, you need this to happen before you go from the greatest company in the world like AOL to nothing, right To BlackBerry inventing the smartphone, to gone right Now they do automotive crap and the stock’s been a single digit stock forever, right? So these guys really have to stay ahead and stay in position here, which is key. So I don’t see that stopping anytime soon.

A couple other things, Dan. They said that he said the industry’s easily, the needs easily. Easily. A hundred times computing power than anyone thought this time last year Easily. That’s how much computing power. Now, just for reference, we talk about zettabytes. I remember zettabyte was a big deal. We’re going to be using over 200 zettabytes this year, which is insane amount of Just for reference. We’re likely going to use more power over the next two years than we used almost in every other year combined.

You may look at and be like I don’t know if we’re gonna get there. There’s a very strong chance we’re gonna get there because everything is gonna be so fast computing and the next generation of this is agentic ai, which he’s talking about. The next generation of this is the inference part, which he’s talking about, because now you have these systems set up, how are they going to predict which is going to require even more power? And now what else you’re going to have is the robotics part, and that’s what he was talking about a partner at Google to speed development with AI and robotics where he sees, two years from now, you can have robots in your house that are going to do exactly what you want them to do and say do this, do that, cook for me, clean laundry, whatever. You know they’re saying two years from now. Daniel, I don’t know if it’s going to be two years from now, but you know this is the stuff they’re talking about right now.

0:46:18 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I think Jensen did say in two years you could rent a robot to Kramer this morning, if I heard him right and quickly. If and here’s the point I wanted to make on NVIDIA if because I love the hundred times if you think AI infrastructure is going to a trillion dollars, given NVIDIA’s what 90-some percent market share, so data center revenue could go from $35 billion to what? $100?, $200?, $300? That’s not out of the question. I didn’t mean that they were going to earn a trillion dollars. I just want to clarify that.

On the computing power, my biggest takeaway there was he Jensen has gotten flack, in my opinion, and fair criticism. There’s plenty of that to go around About his and I’d like your point on this financial media. I think was quick to say that he was slow to respond to the deep seek and the impact and the volatility around that. Whether he was or not, you guys can make your own opinion. The computing power comments he made at the event or his keynote yesterday and then talking with Kramer this morning about DeepSeek.

I need to know what I’m missing, Frank, because it sounds like Jensen is saying yes, deepseek did these things that are impressive, but if you need more computing power, which you still need. Deepseek still needs GPUs from NVIDIA. They’re still the clear winner which you still need. Deepseq still needs GPUs from NVIDIA. They’re still the clear winner. So I don’t know how you can say we need more computing power and everybody, I guess, just assumes that that’s going to come from everybody else other than NVIDIA. I mean, how do you tie DeepSeq? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say the reality is they’re spending all this money and B that’s an overkill because you got DeepSeek. Well, if DeepSeek runs off of NVIDIA stuff, how is that not a benefit? And I thought he did a good job of saying listen, this is all beneficial to us because it requires the AI infrastructure build out. What am I missing there, Frank? How can you have it both ways?

0:48:07 – Frank Curzio

So DeepSeek only exists because of all the other companies doing the work for them, right? So basically, it’s a copycat system. When they first tested this system, it actually said it was chat GPT, right? So it’s a complete copycat. There’s a reason why China’s not letting anyone inspect this right and go through it.

0:48:20 – Daniel Creech

There’s a reason why, Like oh you know, we see it, China doesn’t ever do that.

0:48:23 – Frank Curzio

All right, so it’s fine, but could it use does it use less computing power? Yes, but it’s totally different. Right? Maybe you could use DeepSeek for Curzio Research. Maybe you could use it for a company generating $1 billion, $2 billion, in sales. We’re looking at companies generating $30 billion in free cash flow. So these companies are on a different level of the point that they need more computing and power because they’ve got to be better than each other. They’ve got to compete. It’s almost like you have four billionaires living on the same block. You know that they’re going to redo their houses every year to make sure that they have the best house on the block. They have to do it right and you don’t want to fall behind. That’s what these guys are doing. They cannot fall behind on this because they’re risking their companies. They’re risking everything, their legacies. So when I look at DeepSeek, it’s something that’s totally different. That’s going to be great for a lot of other companies and maybe AMD gets that kind of market share of the big guys, of what they’re paying, this massive amount.

It’s totally different. That’s why we told you to avoid it. We tried to pick it off because the stock was down a ton and then the market came down because I was like, well, you know, this finally started to see more AI revenue and a lot of their other divisions are crap and they’re declining significantly and I figured that downturn was done and it went down even further. But you see, separation, where amd has been, you know, not even close to what nvidia’s doing, and down a lot more than nvidia’s down. But that’s where you’re seeing, like, the difference in it. Yes, they’re still going to require nvidia, maybe less power, but that’s for something totally different compared to what we’re seeing with these big guys. What pretty much the 10, 15 largest companies you throw oracle in there, you could throw baidu in there, you could throw alibaba in there.

You, those companies, in terms of their scale and their cloud and how they need AI to filter into all of these systems, that spending I don’t see slowing anytime soon, which is going to require more power and you’re seeing it. You’re not seeing companies spend less on power. They’re just saying, hey, maybe it might not be nuclear, maybe it’s more natural gas, and you see natural gas prices really start to surge because you’re going to see a lot more demand from that. But the power requirements, even from the sources that I see they’re not really cutting this back right now, which I’m not seeing. When I do see that I’ll let you guys know, but we’re not seeing it right now.

So, yeah, nvidia, good stuff all around. I don’t see any Kingston at armor right, I mean it’s a company that put up really good numbers. The future looks bright for them. Yet you’ve seen the stock come down A little bit of a re-rating here. But still, if you’re really going to buy and you’re looking at all the Mag7 stocks, if you really take into account growth, nvidia is a screaming buy right here.

And I’d be a little bit worried about Apple in terms of pushing out their AI phone demand kind of slowing. Yes, they have a monopoly on the app store, basically, and they could raise prices from 30% to 40% and make it on a services revenue. That’s fine, but they really don’t have innovation going on and that stock’s trading at a much, much, much higher valuation than NVIDIA right now, just straight up. But just accounted for the growth where we’re seeing this amazing growth in earnings and sales and expected over the next year or two. For NVIDIA it’s a dirt cheap valuation.

Again, said this earlier if you have a 12 month outlook, very good name to purchase and then hold pretty much for the next 12 months, because it’s going to be a little bumpy next couple months as we deal with all those tariffs and doge and macro crap and interest rates and stuff. So, uh, with that said, I wanted to turn to the ncaa tournament, because I usually give my picks. Dan, I don’t know if you really go in. You used to play play basketball for college, right, but I don’t think you really. Do you really get into this stuff?

0:51:38 – Daniel Creech

A tiny college. I have not looked. I saw the bracket on TV. I’ll look at it one later. I usually don’t fill them out, though, I just enjoy them. So have it away, take it away.

0:51:52 – Frank Curzio

It should be pretty cool. So I’m going to do. John’s didn’t make the tournament last year. They made it to the final. They had, I think, 12 or 13 games they won at the end of the season. They lost to Connecticut in the final by five and they didn’t make the tournament. They had five other teams get in there, which was a joke. And then if you look at Connecticut, they won every game by double digits. Nobody was even close to them. They wound up winning Connecticut’s winner this year.

Uh, but a lot of parity. You’re gonna see a lot of one and two seeds. I think there’s a big separation there. But let me go over the sleepers first, because north carolina actually bet three hundred dollars on them yesterday. Because north carolina shouldn’t have made the tournament. They shouldn’t have made the tournament based on the record. But north carolina is better than another 20 teams in that tournament very, very easily. I’m telling you they could make. They could make the final eight because one they they played a team. Yesterday. They were favored by four and a half, which is a joke. They’re favored in the next game in Ole Miss. If they push forward, they’re going to have Michigan State right because they’re going to play an Iowa State team. That’s not healthy and if they beat that they’re going to go Michigan State. Everybody’s on Michigan State. I don’t know why. I understand Izzo and he always does great in a tournament and he has a very, very easy bracket. If North Carolina meets or I don’t think Iowa State beats Michigan State, I think Michigan State goes to the finale. But North Carolina against Michigan State, they have a shot to make a run because, yes, they shouldn’t be in there.

But there’s 25 teams that are really not good, that just win their tournament. That North Carolina is much better than right. They’re power conference. They almost beat Kansas. They started the year with Kansas was pretty good. Yes, duke didn’t have a Cooper flag, but still they came back. And this is a team that when they hit their threes, they can compete with anyone. They just really look bad and, plus, they’re not supposed to be there. And when you go to that team and say, hey, you want something that unites you Because they had no continuity the whole year, just like Kansas doesn’t, and it doesn’t just come back. But when you have someone where they’re like you shouldn’t even be here now they’re like, oh yeah, we shouldn’t be here. I mean, they have the talent. It’s not like this is a team that doesn’t have talent. It’s like Kansas doesn’t have the talent. It’s just they didn’t have the continuity with their players.

Byu which one of my investors is going to hate me for I just think everyone’s jumping on the BYU train right now and they’re very good. Yeah, they played a big 12, so I’m familiar with them. They murdered Kansas this year, but everyone’s really high on them and they’re great at making threes. And I think if they’re not making those threes, they have a shot to lose over VCU, which is a good team. I think Michigan very hot right now, right when they’re torn in, but they could lose first round. They turn the ball over a ton and they’re playing a team, uc San Diego that I believe, I’m pretty sure, leads the league in steals. It’s not a good matchup for Michigan. Michigan could lose the first round.

Lastly, if you look at the sleepers, illinois is a really, really great team. They’re really good. They should make it to the final eight where they play Houston. If they make it to the final eight and play Houston, they could beat Houston. Houston is at the top of a lot of people’s brackets, even mine. That’s a team Houston does not want to see. They just match up really great to them. But let’s see, you’ve got a ways to go before you get there. They’re a really good team. They struggle a little bit with injuries. They are a very Again. They could beat anyone. It’s just a matter of they’re going to come together now. If they make it to the final eight, they’re going to play Houston, watch out.

So my final four is going to be Auburn, st John’s, bama and Houston. Not full chalk, but it’s pretty much with St John’s and Bama two seeds. I have Houston versus St John’s in the final and I have St John’s winning it all, st John’s win it all, st John’s win it all. I just I’m not. Listen, I love it, I love it.

I wanted to go to Rhode Island because Rhode Island, I couldn’t believe this. This is where they have the tournament. Yeah, what a place to have the tournament. I told one of my friends I’m like I’ll pay for the tickets, I’ll pay for the hotel, but he couldn’t go. But you, it doesn’t get better than that, because Kansas is my all-time favorite team, but I grew up in Queens. I played on St John’s Court all the time Players and Chris Mullendays and stuff like that. I just you know it’s so close to me and it’s been 25 years since they’ve been relevant. You know they should have made a tournament last year.

They have a really, really, really good team and they’re connecting, they’re gelling Patino really good. Unfortunately, they’re going to have to run against Florida. The whole world loves Florida and thinks Florida is definitely going to win. Florida’s been playing great lately. But let’s see, I mean I don’t see any weaknesses in Florida’s game. I just think St John’s defensive wise man, they really get after you. They have a shot to beat Florida. I wouldn’t be surprised if Florida beat St John’s. Most people are going to have Florida in the bracket and winning this thing. That’s the upset there that I see with St John’s. Let’s see, they’re just very confident right now. They have a great team. I mean the team’s playing great together. You could see the energy. They love each other. They’re just everything. It’s a team that I follow and I’m really happy for them. But they’re really, really good this year. They’re really good and they play great in a tournament no-transcript.

And you have Tennessee as well. But Tennessee too, I just think they’re in Houston’s bracket. Tennessee is just a good team. I just don’t like the coach. The coach has never really won anything in his life, which is Barnes Again, I Texas, when Durant was there.

Yeah, he’s just not a good big game coach and there’s nothing. I hope he wins because we saw that with Jay Wright, we saw that with I think it was a guy from Virginia that won. You see that sometimes, right, roy Williams was in that category before he won. So I hope he wins I really do, because Tennessee does have a very good team. But the matchup with Houston I just think Houston’s a better team than Tennessee and Tennessee’s very, very good. But let’s see, let’s see what happens. I mean, the SEC is insane this year, insane. It should be a really good tournament. It should be a lot of fun to watch. But yeah, and those are my sleepers and my final four, let’s go, johnnies. Let’s go, johnnies, please. Kansas, don’t think you can go any further than that and I think St John’s can go a lot further. So it’s going to be torn a little bit watching that game. But Kansas lose against Arkansas. I have nothing to worry about Nothing to worry about at all. Anyway, all right, guys. So that’s it for us.

We covered a lot today. Tomorrow, Daniel and I are going to be back. We’re going to talk a lot of stuff different stocks and stuff like that. Our Sugarfina deal is going to close in two weeks week and a half now. We’ve raised a lot of money for it and we’ve got some hedge funds looking at it right now who are on our list that are talking to management. So if you’re interested in coming into our Curzio One membership, let me know FrankCurzioResearchcom. Send me an email. I’ve talked to probably 20 people and probably about more than 15, I think, have come in because we have a really good deal for curzio one now. Uh, you know, especially where it’s a year trial type thing which is really discounted compared to the high price, because that means you get all of our products and services, access for our annual conference and stuff like that that we’re having first time this year in, uh, september, october, and I’m glad because one of our I never I didn’t think about this and now I’m glad he brought it up.

But I have a lot of Jewish friends and one of them who I spoke to said, Frank, do me a favor, please look at the calendar. We have so many holidays and some of these conferences. I will be looking at the calendar. I’m going to make sure it’s available for everyone and thank you for saying that because I want as many of our one members to come as possible so you get to meet me in person, great people in person. A lot of people owe me favors to speak at these events, since I’ve been speaking at conferences forever for them and I got to make sure they stick around and hang out with you guys and have fun and talk and have some wine, have some cigars or whatever. This way there’s a lot of interactions. Not, they’re going to speak and go out the back door on a stage, no, they’re going to hang out. It’s going to be a really good conference, seen all of you, meeting a lot of you guys in person.

So if you’re interested in that membership, Frank@curzioresearch.com, because the Sugarfina deal and a deal behind is very good. We usually don’t get two great deals within a two-month period. Sometimes I’ll have three deals a year, five deals a year, sometimes one deal a year, but we have back-to-back deals that are really, really good that I’m putting a lot of money into both of them. I don’t get paid by those companies. Companies, if you’re into one membership, you could go into those. You don’t have to go into those. It’s up to you. I’m just going to tell you how much money I’m putting into those deals. But if you’re interested, Frankcurzioresearchcom. Other than that, Dan, I’ll see you tomorrow, Dan. Any final thoughts before tomorrow?

0:59:44 – Daniel Creech

Negative.

0:59:45 – Frank Curzio

Negative and enjoy the playing games today and then tomorrow. We’re going to make sure to tape podcasts early so I can watch the games, which start at 12 o’clock. March Madness. We’ll see you guys tomorrow, Take care.

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