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

Frank Curzio: What’s going out there? It’s June 3rd. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break that headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets? I had a conversation with my daughter on Monday. And she asked me, she said, “Daddy, why are people burning cars in the street? Why are they beating up police officers?” I said, “Where are you seeing that?” She’s like, “On videos.”

Frank Curzio: And I have a lot of the things in place where she’s not supposed to be watching them. It’s just absolutely everywhere. And it’s hard to filter a lot of that stuff out. Whether it’s an iPad, a phone, whatever. Even on TV, just watching it, it’s everywhere. It’s in your face. So, I told her, “Something really bad happened where a White policeman has handcuffed a Black person, held him down by putting his knee into his neck. And that Black person died.”

Frank Curzio: And she saw that video. And she’s like, “Why does he keep his knee on his neck for? And he was in handcuffs.” And I said, “Because he’s an idiot. And not all policemen are like that.” And she asked me an interesting question, she said, “Why are people hurting other people? And why do people hate all police officers?” I said to her, I said, “Well, that’s a great question, but I have no idea.” So, having this conversation with my 12-year-old daughter, and I explained to her about protests.

Frank Curzio: And said, “Our people unite for a cause to try to make people change, make society change. It’s usually done through peaceful protests.” That whole conversation alone shows how f-ed up our country is right now. Because our kids are watching us. These are the things they’ll remember growing up. Not the fact that people came together to protest for change, but how we couldn’t go as a family to Jacksonville in a park that we like to go to.

Frank Curzio: Because we may get beat up. We may get bottles thrown at us. Because we’re scared. And you think about that for a minute. Because everything going on, I know you’re in tune with it, I’m getting emails on it. But we all want to speak out here. Because this is no longer about George Floyd. Because there’s not one person that I’ve seen, that I know of, any color, race, gender, that doesn’t believe that when a police officer uses excessive force, which resulted in a tragic and horrible death, should go unpunished.

Frank Curzio: Nobody. We’re on the same page. But now, let’s turn to income and racial inequality. And that’s fine. I understand it, and I get it. You look at Wall Street, Wall Street got bailed out in 2008. And I saw this firsthand. I was working on Wall Street right across from New York Stock Exchange. And when I say I’m working on Wall Street, I mean, actually working on Wall Street, not downtown. Protesters everywhere.

Frank Curzio: If all these companies, they got bailed out of taking on excessive risks with other people’s money, lying, cheating, paying off people, rating agencies, nobody got arrested, and the companies that took part in those legal actions are 10 times bigger today than they were back then. Fast-forward to today with the coronavirus, tens of million people out of work. Sure, probably half are making more money now than they ever have, but the other half are really struggling.

Frank Curzio: And watching more bailouts, six trillion plus now we’re in, and these bailouts target corporate America. They target middle class and the wealthy, because a lot of these policies, lower interest rates, these are policies that result in the inflation of assets. And a lower income family does not own as many assets. Assets are owned by wealthy people. So, I love the fact that we’re seeing so many people speak out on this.

Frank Curzio: There’s Sean Penn on TV speaking out, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar speaking out. I love that CEOs, professional team owners, everybody’s speaking out against this. It has to be equal, this is society, the wealth gap is incredible, racial injustice. I get it. I love it. What I effing hate is, why is nobody speaking out against the violence taking place across every major city in America? It’s almost to the point we’re speaking out against the violence.

Frank Curzio: It almost means that you’re speaking out against racial income inequality and everything. It’s two totally different things. You’re looking at our politicians, actors, musicians, famous athletes. These are people who have huge influence in the media. None, zero. None of them are condemning the violence. And when you don’t condemn it, it’s almost that you support it. But where is the outrage for that?

Frank Curzio: I mean, did you ever believe that we will see a time in this country where you couldn’t walk down the street in any major city because you fear for your life? Yes, we’ve seen protests like this before, but it’s been isolated. Some city says, “Not like this.” Every city, every major city, and this isn’t just peaceful protests. It’s incredibly dangerous, curfews. Here, you see businesses in minority neighborhoods that are getting looted and burned to the ground.

Frank Curzio: Or police officers have to live in fear because less than 3% of the entire force happens to be a bunch of racist assholes. I mean, compare that to my industry and finance, and I bet 30% of the people are crooks. And nobody beats the crap out of these people. Yesterday was the icing on the cake for me. I mean, I saw a video that literally put tears in my eyes. It was a Black police officer who’s trying to stop looters for stealing merchandise from a store.

Frank Curzio: And one of those looters shot and killed him. He was a retired 77-year-old police officer. He was laying in the street, taking his last breath. People were videotaping him for eight, nine minutes. There was a guy who supposedly called 911, just talking, “This guy is shot,” or whatever. And then, people just looting and trying to steal stuff. No, he was in the street taking his last breath with someone sitting there just videotaping him, while those looters still stealing stuff.

Frank Curzio: They don’t even care that this poor guy was dying in the middle of the street. It’s in the middle of the street. He’s lying there bleeding, taking his last breath, died. And this story is not even newsworthy. Instead, we have so many civil rights leaders attacking Twitter, Facebook, to take down stupid comments posted by the president. That’s more important than this. But I’m going to say what a lot of people want to say but maybe are afraid to, because they may be deemed a racist.

Frank Curzio: They think they’ll get fired. They’re not going to get a job in Hollywood anymore. But if you’re Black, if you’re a civil rights leader, if you want change, it can’t just be about trying to change White people’s minds. It has to start within your own communities. This is a Black 77-year-old police officer, retired, shot dead, left in the street for trying to help a small business from being robbed. And now, one civil rights leader, actor, athlete said a thing. I mean, think about what these protests are.

Frank Curzio: We want to raise awareness, that racial inequality. We want to show people because we’re White, we don’t understand this. We live in a different environment. We’ll never understand it. But we only understand what we’re watching and what we’re hearing, and we see that. And it’s not just that one thing. I mean, some people have been murdered. I’ve seen videos of innocent people getting beat downs. One video, some a-hole, who grabs a young girl.

Frank Curzio: She’s maybe about 30 years old and told her, “Get on your knees and apologize for decades of slavery,” and just started insulting her. And she was on her knees like scared, and he’s taking the video like, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He’s making fun. I mean, if you really want to make a statement, if you want everyone on the same side here, want to protest in an effort to create change that we truly need, you have to speak out against all f-ed up people.

Frank Curzio: You have to contempt with some. And it’s not all and it’s not most, but some of these crazy people are doing right now, which are using Floyd’s death as an excuse to be violent and hate on everything. But this is the time. This is a chance to make a statement, to bring change to America. And a small percentage are burning buildings, stealing from stores, destroying other people’s property that they worked their whole lives to build, and everyone is fucking okay with this.

Frank Curzio: Man, I would never pretend to know how a Black person feels or lives his life. I can only attest to how I feel. Man, I grew up in Queens, New York. All I did was play basketball my whole life. I mean, I happened to get really good. So, we played in the White neighborhoods. We were better than everybody, it wasn’t fun anymore. So, we drove places like Jamaica, other Black neighborhoods to play Black people, because they were by far the best basketball players.

Frank Curzio: And we wanted to beat the best and play against the best. We got those parks. I’m not going to lie, I was a little nervous. But once we got on that court and they saw we played, it was all respect. I mean, everyone was the same color. And now that I run a business, I never looked at race or gender when hiring someone. That was me. It’s just the way I was grown up. I always hired the person that have the most drive. I don’t care about even resumes.

Frank Curzio: I tell people, “I don’t want to see your resume. I want to meet you in person. I want to know if this guy’s going all in or this girl’s going to go in, regardless of race, color, anything, that I know that I could teach. I don’t care how smart you are. I need to know how hard you’re going to work.” Because if you give me someone that works hard, I’ll teach them anything, and they’ll make a lot of money in this business.

Frank Curzio: So, for me growing up, and now being a business owner, I treat everyone the same. With that said, there’s a huge problem in racial inequality and wealth inequality, which the wealth part comes from our government who was on call to lower rates to zero, and provide free money to the world. Whenever times get tough, we didn’t see that during the dot com bubble. We didn’t see it during the ’87 crash. I mean, this is a new thing.

Frank Curzio: 2008, throw tons of money at it. Look, everything’s fine after 10 years. Coronavirus, throw tons of money at it. Everything’s fine now. But what they’re doing is you’re bailing out businesses that took on excessive risks that should have went under, and not all businesses, I’m talking about. A lot of us are forced to shut down because of this, and I get it as small businesses. But these measures are going to continue to increase this gap in income inequality, because it makes the rich richer, who the biggest owners of assets.

Frank Curzio: That’s the way things are now. Bail out everybody. Give money to these people. And if you look at every crisis, every crisis, the people who survive are the people in a position of strength in those crisis get 10 times bigger. Look at the banks in 2008. Wait till you see America after this. And when I say America, wealthy, rich, where we were okay going into this, and everybody else. China was seen slower growth. Europe was basically in a recession, all this pre-coronavirus.

Frank Curzio: Now, everyone wants to invest in us. Again, something that benefits the wealthy, the rich, and it’s not filtering down. I’m not going to sit here and tell you, “I know how we’re going to fix this problem.” Because I’ll be honest with you, nobody has offered that. Everybody wants to complain. That’s all they want to do. They want to complain. And they want to come up with a statement. “We need change.” It’s not good enough. It’s not good enough.

Frank Curzio: I know you’re an actor, and you haven’t been in a couple movies. So, you want to get on TV or whatever, I get it. It’s not enough, man. It’s not enough. And for major companies, politicians, actors in Hollywood, can’t do that politically correct thing, speaking out on this. Well, the best is targeting anyone who doesn’t agree with them, right? Like James Dolan, New York Knicks owner. Mark Zuckerberg. Those in America, we have free speech in this company, no.

Frank Curzio: We have to get them off these platforms. I mean, that’s the concern. That’s the top story on these sites, not that some police officer got killed, regardless of race. I mean, he is Black, regardless of race. A police officer getting killed and dead in the streets, trying to help people, and someone filming him for nine minutes taking his last breath dying. It’s not even a headline. It’s nothing. Again, I don’t know what the solution is.

Frank Curzio: But I know it’s not to burn freaking buildings down, drag people through the streets, and murder innocent people and police officers. That’s not the solution. That’s not going to create change. It’s going to create more anger. Also, a solution is not to give reparations for slavery, or what Robert Johnson, the founder of BET, said our government should do, which flies in the face of every reason of why that guy has been so successful and beat the odds, and worked harder than everybody else.

Frank Curzio: And I know he’s talking in his book, I get it. But do you really want to give money to people who incite violence to benefit themselves? What do you think that’s going to lead to? But this is a time for change. It’s a time for business leaders to speak out, to really make change. Not just say you’re going to do it, but do it. Let’s do it the right way. Let’s not do it by using violence. Let’s do it by providing opportunities to educate people who didn’t have the resources that someone like I had growing up, which is two great parents that pushed me.

Frank Curzio: And I lived in a really good neighborhood. A lot of people who grew up in those communities, they don’t have the opportunities. We have to be able to give them that opportunity for people who want to work, which is not everybody, which is not every Black person, which is not every Spanish person or White person, but people who do need to have that opportunity. It’s got to be available for everyone, regardless of color, gender, everything.

Frank Curzio: In here, my business, those opportunities are always going to be available. Why? Because I grew up like that. I mean, my company is about bringing Wall Street to Main Street. I worked on Wall Street, I hated it. I worked there for half of my life, I hate it. I see the greed. I see how people screw other people. They don’t care about anything. I see how I had access to so much stuff nobody else had access to. And that’s what my podcast is about. That’s my company’s about.

Frank Curzio: Wall Street Unplugged, Curzio Research, I say it all the time, it’s bringing Wall Street to Main Street, sharing opportunities with you that… what’s only available to wealthy investors. Anyway, that’s my take on things, getting emails about it. What do you think? How it’s going to affect the market? It’s more than the markets. Man, those in investment podcast, but what’s going on in the world, in America right now? For businesses, we all need to do the right thing.

Frank Curzio: But it has to come from everyone. You can’t choose and select. You can’t say, “Oh, we want this equality.” And then, you have these people in the streets. I mean, we need everybody to speak out, such as civil rights leaders, not just businesses with everybody. We need to speak out, and we need to stop the violence. I mean, what’s going on right now? If we don’t have a solution for this, this is going to be a civil war. This is going to get worse.

Frank Curzio: Because what’s going to happen is you’re going to get the military out there. And they’re going to find a couple guys that are shooting something or doing something bad, and they’re going to, by accident, kill an innocent person. And then, that’s it. That’s it. This country is going to go crazy. How could you kill an innocent person when you’re trying to stop someone else from murdering someone, drag them through the streets? It’s not going to end well.

Frank Curzio: But even the people who are protesting, they need to speak out against the people who are doing all this violence, because we’re not really seeing it. And we’re definitely not seeing that from Hollywood, athletes. Again, these are the people that have the greatest influence on social media that can reach the most people, make it peaceful, that’s how you get change. Yet, I’m not going to pretend that I could walk in anybody’s shoes. I don’t know how it’s going to be.

Frank Curzio: But I do know that killing cops in the street, man, come on. People fearing for their lives, can’t go on out, can’t go outside in major cities. Man, this is in America. And it’s pretty crazy right now. So, hopefully, we can all come together, businesses come together. And again, we have to tackle this problem of racial inequality, wealth inequality, racism. But hopefully, we could do it in a peaceful way. That’s almost impossible to segue here, but we’re going to get to an interview with educational segment.

Frank Curzio: But the interview, maybe a little bit of segue, because this is a brand-new guest. His name is Arash Adnani, who’s a founder of a new site called PrivatePlacements.com. Arash, a close friend I’ve known for close to 10 years. I went to Brazil, World Cup with him, see semi-final game. It was unbelievable and a great time with him for a week. Arash was from a digital agency in Canada called Blender Media, and he works specifically with lots of publicly-traded Canadian companies.

Frank Curzio: So, working with them, listening to them, he decided to create an amazing resource where anyone can have access to private placements and warrants, or see these deals to where they could participate or invest in them. And now, you’re going to have access to this tool, and it’s going to be absolutely for free. I don’t get paid by anybody. I don’t get paid by Arash. I don’t get paid by any company, their recommend stock, services, anything.

Frank Curzio: This is just a great tool, another free resource I want to share with you to bring Wall Street to Main Street, because I listened to you. I answer my emails. I know a lot of you would say, “How do I get to these private placements? Do I have to be a credit investor?” Right now, you have to be an a credit investor, that’s going to change with crowdfunding features, which is coming up. So, here is Arash Adnani explaining his new venture. It’s called PrivatePlacements.com.

Frank Curzio: Arash Adnani, thanks so much for coming on Wall Street Unplugged.

Arash Adnani: Thanks for having me, Frank. Good to be here.

Frank Curzio: So, people may be familiar with the last name because I’ve had Amir on the podcast plenty of times. But we’ve been friends for a long time. We’ve actually went to the World Cup together in Brazil. It was like 10 years, I think, right?

Arash Adnani: 2014.

Frank Curzio: No, the World Cup, we’ve been friends for a long time.

Arash Adnani: Oh yeah.

Frank Curzio: So, you created this site that’s amazing. And I know you’ve been working it for a long time. And now, it’s launched. It’s called PrivatePlacements.com. And I love sharing my resources with my guests because they don’t know about sites like this. They don’t know how to get into private placements, and all of them want to try to get into private placements. Explain PrivatePlacements.com.

Arash Adnani: Sure, yeah. Listen, PrivatePlacements.com, as the name suggests, is the ultimate research tool for private placements investing. And what the site does is, it aggregates every private placement by Canadian list of companies on a daily basis. We add every financing that’s being announced and closed in the Canadian markets. That’s by Canadian list of companies. It’s the only tool of its kind. And best of all, it’s free. So, investors are really using this for their research.

Arash Adnani: They’re using this for deal flow. And the website, it was really built by investors for investors. When we built this, we looked at the question of, how can we create something that we can use ourselves? And as your listeners are familiar, private placement investing is one of the best ways to become a shareholder in these companies. There’s major upside, and there’s great sweeteners through the exposure through warrants.

Arash Adnani: And so, PrivatePlacements.com allows you to research all those points in great depth. It’s consist of five main elements. And the main one is the financings database. And that’s the one that gets updated every day. The financings database is very granular. So, you’re able to go on there and actually research the listings by sector. So, if you’re interested in precious metals, which a lot investors are right now, you can just look at precious metal’s financings.

Arash Adnani: If you want to only look at financings by those that have warrants attached, you can do that. You can select warrants. Whether it’s full or half, you have the option. And you could look at financings by brokered or non-brokered. As you know, a lot of companies are raising money basically directly to the investors from management team, which is a non-brokered deal. And sometimes, that makes it a lot easier for investors to get involved with that.

Arash Adnani: So, the name of the game here is really the access to the data and the timeliness of the data. With a lot of these private placements, once a company announces a deal, they’re on the clock. They’re trying to close the financing. So, if you’re an investor and you’re trying to participate, being able to see what’s available the day that it’s announced, is really valuable because it gives you enough time to follow up and get in touch with a company, if you do want to participate.

Frank Curzio: You’ve run a very successful digital agency for a long time with Blender Media, and you’ve worked with public companies in Canada for a very, very long time. Is that how you came up with this idea? Because having everything on one site is really cool, and it’s absolutely free, which I love. And I love bringing free tools to my listeners and subscribers. And one of the biggest things is they all want to get into private placements. And of course, most of these as you know, are very dangerous, right?

Frank Curzio: Every company wants to raise money, but some of them are incredible. Some of them are great deals and with the warrants and, again, incredible upside. But talk about how you came up with this idea. Is it just by talking to so many companies, you know you’re in Canada, of how many companies are raising money? And maybe you have access to… your brother does, or some of the insiders. But most people don’t have it, especially in the US.

Frank Curzio: So, how do you come up with the idea and all of the data for this site? Because this is pretty amazing.

Arash Adnani: It really was a natural evolution. So, Blender Media as you mentioned, we’re a digital agency, and we specialize in creating websites for publicly-traded companies. The company’s been around since 2005. So, we’ve worked with thousands of companies, from large companies like Goldcorp, all the way down to very small startups. So, working closely with companies, the one thing that we realized that companies need most, is access to investors, and the ability to articulate their value proposition, their investment proposition to investors.

Arash Adnani: And some companies are great at it because they have management teams that are very active and they’re very charismatic, and they’re great presenters. Other companies struggle with it because they might have management teams or CEOs that just aren’t as visible, and they might not be able to command a room, but they have fantastic deals. And so, what we realized is having a tool or a platform for companies to be able to tell their story to a targeted audience, something that is immensely important for the companies.

Arash Adnani: Now, on the flip side, another thing that we realized is that for investors, having access to these deals and knowing what’s going on with these deals, is as important. And one thing, Frank, that I think you do a great job for your audience, is being the guy that’s out there, going to all the conferences. We’ve been to some conferences together, going through what’s out there as far as the upcoming trends, who the A+ teams are? What’s happening in the market?

Arash Adnani: And what people should be paying attention to. A lot of people don’t have that luxury of knowing what’s going on because they don’t have access to the teams or the conferences. So, they might subscribe to a newsletter or other people out there. And so, PrivatePlacements.com is another tool for investors from anywhere to see what’s going on in the Canadian capital markets. The Canadian capital markets are extremely well-followed and popular globally.

Arash Adnani: Not just in Canada and the US, but overseas. It’s a market that’s well-known for its venture space and for its regulatory strength. So, I think having this tool and creating it as a gateway for investors to really see what’s going on, and having that access to that information on a daily basis, it was a no-brainer. Once we started thinking about it and drawing up the plan, we knew this needed to happen. And we knew that there was a real need for this.

Frank Curzio: Now, when did you actually launch the site?

Arash Adnani: It was earlier this year with their soft launch in January. And we announced it right before PVAC, which is basically early March, late February.

Frank Curzio: And how many people do you have signed up to it already, if you’re allowed to say that?

Arash Adnani: We don’t disclose those numbers, but—

Frank Curzio: I know there’s a lot because you’re getting a lot of demand. I don’t know if you’re allowed to disclose them. But it’s leading to some of these questions, because I wanted to take people through this. And guys, if you’re listening to us on iTunes, we also have this on Curzio Research YouTube page. So, you can see the video. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to see our faces. But luckily, Arash is a good looking guy.

Frank Curzio: But I want to bring up your website to show people. Because again, it’s absolutely for free and it’s such a good resource. So, why don’t you take us through, and I’m going to bring up the page in here. And take us through here. Because the first thing, and I try to always bring myself in my listener’s shoes, right? And they’re saying, “Okay, Canada private placements mining stocks.” But when you really go to the first page, it’s not even mining.

Frank Curzio: I mean, you have cannabis here, right? So, I guess we—

Arash Adnani: Hold on. Let’s do this. Let’s do this. Okay. So, this is the financings page on the website. Once you’re on here, if you’re actually looking for opportunities, the first thing you want to do is to, at the top bar there, is go to status, the top row, second from the right. No, sorry, in the gray box there.

Frank Curzio: In status. Okay.

Arash Adnani: There you go. Yeah. So, you want to go with announced. So, announced means these are financings that are currently open. Let’s pick precious metals because there’s a lot of activity right now with gold and silver.

Frank Curzio: Right here?

Arash Adnani: Yeah. So, select that. And let’s go under warrants, two columns over there. And let’s click both full and half. I really feel like if you’re investing in private placements, you should be getting exposure to two warrants. Now, let’s scroll down. So, this automatically sorts all the available deals that meet the criteria that we just selected. And as you can see, these are deals that were announced on June 2nd.

Arash Adnani: So, this is from yesterday. And you can see right here, the name of the company, the ticker symbol, the price of the financing. So, you have Tectonic Metals here. Tectonic Metals, 20 cent raise, 15 million shares, three million total proceed. That’s a non-broker. So, Tectonic Metals actually is a client of ours on the agency side, the CEO, Tony Reda, used to be with Kaminak, which was a big exit they sold to Goldcorp.

Arash Adnani: So, that’s actually an interesting deal. If I was an investor, you can click on it right now. And it takes you to the term sheet. It gives you a little bit more information. So, it tells you the region. They’re in Alaska and Yukon, great jurisdictions. It gives you the warrant information.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, this is great.

Arash Adnani: Yeah. So, I mean, heck, I would pick up the phone right away and then talk to Tectonic, and see if I can participate in this financing. This is how easy it is, Frank. And I’m laughing because someone asked me yesterday, how would I describe private placements in one sentence? And I said, “We put investors one degree away from wealth creation.” And really, that’s how easy it is, is you can look at it day-to-day, every morning. You can see what’s happening in the last 24 hours.

Arash Adnani: And the ones that look interesting, you can pick up the phone, call the company. You can talk to them and get more information, and see if it’s something that fits your criteria.

Frank Curzio: And this is pretty amazing because when we go back to this and I look, it’s non-brokered. A lot of these are non-brokers. You can really call the company, if you’re a credit investor and get investments, guys. But what I noticed is, this isn’t just like BS companies. You have hundreds here listed. Again, we picked something that will list these many companies, but it just shows you the half of the full warrants. But there’s—

Arash Adnani: Yeah. Look, you got Air Canada down there. You have, great there, another great story. You have the real estate REITs there. This is everything. Every Canadian listed company will be featured on this. We don’t curate or… yeah. So, our job at this is to show you everything that’s available. We take that the investor will then, based on their preferences, will decide what direction to go from there. So, we don’t play favorites or we don’t have any filtering or bias about who gets featured.

Arash Adnani: We have companies calling us, asking us how they can have their private placement featured on the website, and we just tell them, “No. Issue a press release. It will get picked up.” I just saw this announcement. Go on there.

Frank Curzio: Everybody’s looking for publicity. What I like about this is you have everything in one spot. But even when I look at your website, like I said earlier, you would pick base metals, precious metals. But it’s energy, healthcare, cannabis, finance, industrials, technologies. I mean, you list everything automatically. Now, here’s the big question. This is Canadian, and a lot of my investors understand Canadian stocks. That’s the mining industry. Great exchanges there, much better than buying some of these things which you trade on, like over the counter exchanges.

Frank Curzio: So, what about you as listed? Because is that a little more difficult? We’re not talking about the ones that are like Goldman Sachs coming out, but there’s a lot of small cap companies I cover that raise money. Is there any way you can cover some of these in some of the site, or is it just really hard from you being in Canada and covering? Because that would be really interesting.

Arash Adnani: Yeah. Well, I mean, listen. We’ve looked at US, and we’ve actually looked at Australia. We’ve looked at the ASX, and we have done some testing on tracking the data. The way that the data is tracked, as you can imagine, it can get pretty complicated. And each country with their requirements, with filings, is slightly different. So, the system that will apply to Canada will have to be modified for US and modified for other countries.

Arash Adnani: So, right now, Canada, for us, was the first market that we wanted to cover, and it’s such a big market that right now, there’s a lot more to achieve just in Canada. We haven’t decided on any other countries or markets yet. But like I said, there’s still a lot to do in Canada, and especially, especially with precious metals being in such demand right now. And Canada, being the Silicon Valley of these precious metals, juniors and startups, I feel like the timing is perfect to have this service for the Canadian markets.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to say something to you. Why are you giving this all away for free? This is more information. Again, when it’s investing, it’s all about having access. And it doesn’t mean having insider access. This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what I’m going to conferences, we just recommended a company that would do very well on cold wrap technologies. In this environment, what’s going on, we all know with riots and stuff like that, this is a nonlethal device that wraps people up and the stock is taken off.

Frank Curzio: I’ve filmed police that I interviewed, retired police chiefs, the whole entire management team that got shot by this device over a year ago. I was introduced to this guy who runs this company from someone who I know in the industry and have a deep contact just like you do. But talk about the importance because having access to this, and people don’t know this is available, where they could actually see every financing going on with every company in Canada, basically.

Frank Curzio: And how important is that, and is this thing always going to be free?

Arash Adnani: Listen, the freemium model, which is a well-known model for a lot of SaaS companies, it’s something that we’ve explored. So, right now, the data that we’re offering is free. And to set up an account, it’s free. And don’t forget, a lot of this information is publicly available. What we’ve done is we’ve built a tool that aggregates all this information and allows for the research, sorting, and filtering of this information to be simplified.

Arash Adnani: So, if you wanted to do what we’ve done but do it on your own, it would take you a few hours a day probably to track everything. So, we see our service really as a way to empower investors. And right now, the data that we provide is really valuable. I think it’s a no-brainer to use this as part of your toolbox for researching opportunities. Sorry, I just had to silent that call. There’s no plans to change it. So, we’re going to keep providing data for free.

Arash Adnani: There’s going to be more premium solutions provided down the road. But this data that you get right now, which is so valuable, will continue to be free. And right now, another thing that we just added recently that you can actually see if you go back to the website, and this is really important because this allows you to have an easier time tracking these deals. If you go to my watch list in the top right corner. So, as you can see, there’s some deals that are already added here.

Arash Adnani: So, you have Bluestone Resources gold mining, Great Bear Resources below our metals, and WELL Health Technologies. So, you can actually create your personal watch list. And what this does is it notifies you anytime one of these companies is raising money, anytime one of these companies has closed the financing, anytime the stock from the financing becomes free trading, that’s really important. As you know, these shares that you purchased through private placements, have a four-month hold on it.

Arash Adnani: And so, knowing when the stock is free trading and then whether it’s in the money or not, is extremely important. And having this tool to be able to track that keeps adding to the overall value of this tool and resource. There’s also the warrants calendar if you go to the navigation there, warrants, right there in the yellow bar. There you go. So, this shows you all the warrants that are becoming free trading.

Arash Adnani: MX exploration, that’s actually a crazy one that warrants at 15 cent strike price. I think their stock is trading at a dollar tenth right now. Whoever’s owning those warrants, they’re very, very happy.

Frank Curzio: Well, there’s like hundreds and hundreds of companies on this list.

Arash Adnani: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: Wow, that’s cool. So, basically, tracking all the data. This is incredible site. And the fact that all these are free, I just love sharing the resources with everybody. And the watch list is important, because I mean, even the companies that you own, sometimes you want to own more. But you can put them on your watch list. And when they actually announced one of these, now you could probably get in it. You’re a shareholder. If it’s a broker placement, it might be a little difficult. You might have to have an account at that specific brokerage firm. But—

Arash Adnani: There’s still a way though. Yeah, there’s still a way even with broker. If you don’t have an account with that firm, just contacting the company and letting them know you’re interested, most companies aren’t going to say, “No,” unless it’s really oversubscribed. They’ll try to facilitate if they can. At the end of the day, companies and issuers see the value of adding new shareholders and bringing on new investors. So, they’re not going to say, “No.” It’s more so a matter of if the timing is right and if there’s still any financing paper left.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, this is great stuff, Arash. Congratulations on this site. And I really thank you for coming on. I mean, look, I don’t get paid for anything. I just try to bring resources. And this is a free resource where I get this question asked all the time, “How do I get into more private placements?” Here it is. Because I don’t even get to see all of them. I see some of them. I could share some with my newsletter subscribers who are credit investors. But you don’t have all this in one spot.

Frank Curzio: It is pretty amazing. So, a really good job, buddy.

Arash Adnani: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. And if your users and audience, if they have questions, feel free to email me. It’s just my first name, Arash, A-R-A-S-H @privateplacements.com. We’re adding new features all the time to the website. And really, we want this to be the one-stop shop for private placement investing.

Frank Curzio: All right. And before I go, this is much more important than anything we talked about. The World Cup, where is it? Where’s the next World Cup? It’s in Qatar, right?

Arash Adnani: It’s supposed to be in Qatar, yeah, 2022. But yeah, I mean, it’d be interesting to see what happens. But either way, that would be a fun destination to go to if it’s obviously safe to travel and all of that other necessary requirements.

Frank Curzio: Well, if they’re right about the coronavirus that doesn’t travel well in the heat, it’s probably going to be 120 degrees there. So, that’s a good sign, right?

Arash Adnani: So, maybe it’s the best place to be there. We’ll have to just move the operations to Doha.

Frank Curzio: No, it’s definitely… So, listen, thanks so much for coming on. And yeah, I’ll talk to you soon. We’ll get together soon, buddy.

Arash Adnani: All right. Thanks, Frank.

Frank Curzio: That’s great stuff from Arash. He’s just a great guy. And his site right now is not for credited investors, but crowdfunding is going to open up, okay? And he didn’t really want to get to it through legal process and stuff like that, but because he couldn’t provide a timeframe. But the goal is to have this not just for credit investors, but for everyone. Open up these investments to opportunities, where you can get warrants. Warrants are just like free options. But just going over that site, and again, this is a video you can find at Curzio Research YouTube page.

Frank Curzio: We went through it. We’re doing a lot of these interviews in video format now. We’re going to be doing a podcast in video format pretty soon too. So, it’s going to be really, really cool. But I want to continue to bring you these types of resources. Because it is narrowing the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and having regular people have access to these. And I’m not going to lie. Most of these, I’d say more than 85% of these are bad. It’s difficult. I mean, I have access to a lot of this stuff.

Frank Curzio: I’ve always had access to it, but I never had one place that I could look at every single deal in cannabis launch. That’s pretty amazing. And again, it’s all public information, but he created an algorithm with all these filters down, and you could see this. And I know because I saw it and I was amazed. And now, you have access absolutely for free. If you want to sign up for it, sign up for it. If not, don’t sign up for it. Again, it’s free.

Frank Curzio: But crowdfunding, up to this point, has been a complete scam, not a complete scam, but 90%. I’m not talking about the GoFundMe pages for people where they have tragedies and stuff like that. But a lot of the products and services of what these kids do is they’re like, “Hey, we started Kickstarter. We want to raise a million dollars, and we’re creating this brand-new supercomputer. It’s amazing,” and you invested in it. You’re not investing in it.

Frank Curzio: All you’re doing is funding this guy’s company, and if they’re successful, you’re going to get a free computer and a pat on the back. If they get taken over for 55 trillion dollars, you get zero. You have no equity stake. That’s crowdfunding. Or you could just wait till this product comes out and you buy the product. How about that? Instead of funding this person trying to launch this new site? Because obviously, it’s not that good of an idea because he couldn’t get any money for investment bankers.

Frank Curzio: I mean, you’ll hear those stories about Oculus Rift that a couple of them, I’d say less than 1%, really can go on to be huge, successful businesses and multimillion dollar businesses. But crowdfunding is kind of a scam. A lot of people don’t know that. They’re investing in things where they think they’re investing. They’re not. They’re giving people money to create their company, and these assholes are too selfish to give away a piece of their company to anyone.

Frank Curzio: This is different. This is average investors. You don’t have to be the credit investor. That’s coming soon. Again, Arash don’t want to talk about it. I understand it from a legal standpoint. He’s like, “If I had a timeframe, I’d do it.” But they’re working incredibly hard to make this happen. That’s why I just didn’t want to throw something out and say, “Hey, for all you credit investors who are listeners out there, this is for you. Everybody else, shut this interview off.” No.

Frank Curzio: This could be a couple of months. It could be a year, but this is going to happen. And now, you have a free resource that you’ll have access. And that’s what I love to do. If you see my daily videos, not really daily anymore. I’m doing a couple a week. I slowed it down now that the market is in much better shape. I wanted to be there for everybody and my following, and doing daily videos in the middle of the coronavirus.

Frank Curzio: But just, the goal here is for me to just provide these resources to you, to give you access to so many of the things that I have access to. That’s why when we become subscribers to our products, it’s really cool. And you can access that. You’re really not going to see in too many places because of our contacts, my contacts. And there’s couple stock picks that are doing incredibly well for us where we were first to the party, and it wasn’t just me recommending the stock.

Frank Curzio: It was me taking a flight out to New York City, testing a device… I say testing, well, you guys probably know the stock I’m talking about where I got shot by it, interviewing the management team, retired police, well, everything. I mean, that’s the research we do to try to get ahead of it, and that’s where I use my contacts for. It’s not insider information, just having access to information, which is very, very important. And this is something that’s going to give you access to every single private placement, and it’s not just mining stocks, guys.

Frank Curzio: It’s not just mining stocks. So, check out the site again. It’s free. If not, no worries. But I just love providing you guys with free tools, again, which I do in my daily videos, I’ll get into before. I share a lot of this stuff with you and always use free sites when I share my screen. This way, everybody could follow along. Now, let’s get to my educational segment real quick. So, I’m getting a lot of questions. We have a newsletter called Moneyflow Trader.

Frank Curzio: And Moneyflow Trader is based on buying put options and betting against stocks, market, ETFs. We saw a lot of these subscriptions are in the coronavirus. A lot of you made money when the market came down tremendously. But now, the market’s on fire, right? S&P 500 is up 12% in 13 trading sessions. So, a lot of people got an email. A subscriber said, “Frank, the markets are down, and all of these positions are down. What do you think?”

Frank Curzio: And just questioning performance. And I wanted to do a quick educational segment on this because this is going to help you become a great investor. So, our Moneyflow Trader product is a premium product. It’s based on buying long data puts, right around a year on average, betting against a stock that it’s going to go down. Well, markets have gone up. So, while these options are worthless right now, but you do have a year, right? So, at a year’s time.

Frank Curzio: None of you are going to be surprised if the market falls from 15% from these levels after this massive run. Nobody would be surprised. But there’s a huge bit under this market. We continue to flow it with money, but just even the racial riots as more and more stores are closing, even that is not affecting the money coming into the market right now, but it will. We’re just canceling China… Travels to China back and forth, right?

Frank Curzio: The US, you’re going to see that heat up tremendously in China’s the growth engine of the world, and China needs the US. But there’s a lot more at stake than just tit-for-tat trade wars. This is 100,000 Americans that have been killed because of something that could have been contained, that wasn’t contained, from China. Okay, those are the facts. You find out you have this virus, pandemic spreading, and you close your own country, right?

Frank Curzio: You’re just, hey, close everything surrounding Wuhan, but let people fly to Wuhan to everybody else around the world, and you spread this thing everywhere. And you weren’t upfront. We had no data. You didn’t let anybody in there, any scientists, nothing. Okay. So, that’s going to be a major risk. Lots of risks, we’re looking at valuations not seeing… forget about 20 years, it’s more like 30, 35 years now. It’s incredible.

Frank Curzio: I mean, companies are saying, “Oh, sales aren’t going to decline by 80%. They’re only going decline by 40%.” And they’re trading it all-time highs. Think about if a company said in our normal market that our sale is going to be down 40% and their stock was all-time high, what would that stock do? It would get cut in half in a day. Here, that’s good news. It’s great news. It will happen. You’ll see the market come down, but we have a bid under it.

Frank Curzio: We have a lot of money coming into. Every other country is terrible, more money flooding in. Even from bond markets, where interest rates are so low, it makes sense to buy dividend paying stocks instead of going to 10-year, you’re paying point 6.7, wherever it is today. But the average yielding S&P is, what, 1.8? You can get 3%, 3.5% from some of our banks. I don’t know if that’s a great investment over the next five years. Even if they underperform the market and they’re flat at 3% annual yield, it’s pretty cool, compared to keeping your money in the bank CD, 10-year, right?

Frank Curzio: So, that’s why we see money flooding into markets right now. So, Moneyflow Trader, here’s how I want you to use it. And it’s important to understand this because this should be used as a hedge for your portfolio. This is what the grace investors do. This is why I created this product. It’s why it’s different from anything out there. So, say if you have $100,000 portfolio, most people along, you take $10,000 of that and you put in some of these positions. These long data puts.

Frank Curzio: Okay. You only get to lose the amount of money that you put in here. So, you have $90,000 is long. So, if the market goes up, you’re pretty happy because your portfolio is doing great, and you’re hedging it a little bit. So, it would be great if you had a whole $100,000 going long, but again, using $100,000 is hypothetical. It could be $10,000, whatever. But now, let’s say the market falls 15%.

Frank Curzio: And you have $10,000 in some of these long dated puts. And you need one of those things to work to cover that $10,000 investment. And when I say one of those things to work, I’m looking at a 30% decline in some of these stocks, which can happen in a day from where some of these things are trading. Listen, Zoom put up amazing numbers. It deserves to be trading where it is, yes, crazy valuation. I’ve never seen a company beat by that big of a margin, beat consensus estimates by that big of a margin ever.

Frank Curzio: They’ve put up a number. It was unbelievable, unbelievable. I mean, you’d never see a company run 200% into the quarter, report numbers, and the stock didn’t really go down after the report. That’s how great those numbers were. These businesses are going to benefit tremendously, especially in technology, but there’s other businesses that aren’t going to see business go back to normal for a very, very long time. So, why are you trading at your all-time high?

Frank Curzio: And this is the first market I’ve ever seen in my career, ever seen in my career, where earnings are declining and stocks continue to surge higher. Think about that. That didn’t happen during the .com crisis. We saw a growth. These sites are growing crazy, people just getting onto the internet for the first time, .com bubble. There was growth across the board. Earnings were small back then, but they were still growing in terms of users, in terms of revenue.

Frank Curzio: They just weren’t making money and trading with billion dollar evaluations when they had 100,000 people looking at that website compared to maybe the previous year, there was 10,000. So, you saw growth there, and then the market crashed, because of evaluations. This is a market where you’re seeing earnings decline incredibly, sharply. I’m talking about the whole S&P 500. 95% of the earning is going to be wiped out this quarter for the Russell 2000 companies.

Frank Curzio: Think about that, 95%, stock is going higher. But it will happen. You will see 30% declines in some of these names. Now, what happens if the whole market comes down, right? So, now you have 90,000, you’re long, but that 10,000, you invest in some of these long dated puts. They’re going to be a 5X, 10X. That part of your portfolio could turn into 50, 60 win. That’s how you head yourself in this market. That’s why I created this product.

Frank Curzio: Listen, you’re going to lose money if the market goes up every single day. Okay, fine. But it’s almost like insurance. So, if you’re in this newsletter, Moneyflow Trader, and again, Jenny’s doing a fantastic job here. You don’t want to put everything that you have in stocks into this. I’m talking about your equity portfolio of $100,000. You should have money in bonds. You should have money maybe in C’s and cash, of course.

Frank Curzio: But if you have $100,000 dedicated to stocks, take 10 grand out and put it towards some of these positions. Because if the market comes down as a whole, most stocks are going to get nailed. And even the risky ones go down much more than the market. So, you’re going to see huge declines. Would you see a 30? A little bit more than 30% decline in S&P 500, how many companies do you know are down 50%, 60%?

Frank Curzio: Even in the S&P 500. Look, more than half those companies are still down more than 20%. I know you think that’s crazy. It’s just if you take an equal weighting of every stock, just look at it. It’s still down a ton. Because it’s being driven by the biggest names in that sectors that have trillion dollar market caps: Google’s, Microsoft, Amazon’s. And don’t forget Apple. That’s another thing with Apple. Did you see Apple?

Frank Curzio: The great analyst that covers it said due to these challenge checks, they were expected 25 million iPhone 12 units to be produced. Now, it’s 10 million, 10 million. And if you noticed with iPhone 11, AT&T is selling it for half. They got this inventory, they’re selling it for half, trying to get it off, because they weren’t able to sell it during the coronavirus. Twenty-five million units to 10 million units. In any normal market, if Apple said that, that stock would have fell 15%.

Frank Curzio: Today, it’s not even a blip on the radar. Nobody cares. “Oh, they’re going to sell plenty of them in 2021, 2022,” whatever. And again, we’re in a market where the bull market, all news is good news, just like in a bear market. Look at mining. I mean, how many companies in mining, if you’re really into mining over the past 10 years, and maybe over the past seven when it was really, really terrible, right? From 2012 to 2018, the most part?

Frank Curzio: I saw companies report amazing drilling results, and it was used as a selling opportunity for people to dump the stock because they were highly leveraged, or they have a margin. You’re looking at bear markets, good news and bad news is bad news. In bull markets, good news and bad news is good news. That’s what we’re in right now, but it’s not always going to be like that. And I don’t know when it’s going to change. But I do know that this is the most dangerous market I’ve ever seen in my career.

Frank Curzio: And for someone who cares, I want to protect you. Am I going to be wrong? Yes, but I’m not telling you to short the entire market. No. I was money-shorting this. I mean, was wrong. But I made money in a lot of other stocks that I’m long on. You’re overall long with your portfolio as long-term holders, but you need to protect yourself in this market, and this provides a way to do it. And it’s easy to do where it’s not too difficult. It’s not just crazy options, straddles and stuff like that. It’s almost as easy as making a stock trade.

Frank Curzio: But it will work out. And again, if you’re losing right now, it means the rest of your portfolio should be doing great. Because I know a lot of you are subscribed to that product. I think it’s a fantastic product, but you have to use it the right way. And it’s going to result in so many positions. You’re going to lose money on them if you see a market that’s going up the way it is, but the rest of your portfolio should be doing very good. But if this market turns, you can be very, very happy.

Frank Curzio: Buy me a beer next time I see you, and that’s what we want to do. We want to protect ourselves. We always want to worry about the risk. I know it’s hard when the market is going up. I just recommended stock that’s up 120% in two weeks. You guys mostly know who it is. If you’re subscribing, you know the stock. I mentioned it. And even if you’re listening, you probably know it as well, because we had the person on anyway. And the questions I’m getting is, “Should I buy more?”

Frank Curzio: It’s your normal reaction. “Should I buy calls on it? Should I buy it?” It’s up 120% in two weeks, no. No. This time, maybe take a little bit off the table. Maybe, depending on what price you got in. But that’s your mentality, when things are going high, you’re always looking at, “Oh, man, what could have happened?” Trying to think that way. I mean, you always have to look at your risk. Because once you lose some money, it’s gone. You can’t invest.

Frank Curzio: That’s why in bear markets, it’s great if you’re prepared. We were prepared, we have a lot of money. We were on the sidelines, we still had a lot of positions to be able to get well ahead of this. And now, we can participate in the move higher, and that’s what we’ve been doing in the newsletters, not as aggressively as I wanted to, because it’s very dangerous out there. So, if you’re investing, definitely, you stop seeing positions.

Frank Curzio: The Moneyflow Trader, that’s how you need to use that product. That’s how the greatest investors in the world invest. It’s what the billionaires, they’re always hedging themselves a little bit. This way, if they’re wrong and if you’re wrong, you got to make a little bit of money, and you’re not going to get crushed. In this world of the government bailing out the world, it doesn’t matter. People take on excessive risk because they know if they’re wrong, the government’s there, and they’ll give them a check.

Frank Curzio: I mean, that sucks. But for you as individual investors, always, always, always worry about risk. The reward will come. Look at the S&P 500. Just look at a chart from it from the ’50s, right? When it became 500 companies. It’s the most secular growth chart you’ll ever see. It’s straight up. Yeah, you got 2008. Yeah, you got the coronavirus, a couple ’87, but look, it goes straight up. You want to be long-term in this market, but there’s going to be times where it’s going to get crazy like the coronavirus, like 2008.

Frank Curzio: And you need to protect yourself. Moneyflow Trader is a way to do that. So, hopefully, I addressed your concerns. Not really concerns but just people saying, “Hey, I’m down on this, what’s going on?” Here’s a newsletter. That way, you should be okay because you’re long most of your portfolio. But when this market turns, or when some of these stocks turn, because not all of them are going to do great, we know, not all the sectors. Some of it are going to thrive in a new world, New World Order, and some of them aren’t.

Frank Curzio: These are the positions that can get you 5X, 10X, just by going down 3%. And you want to have that hedge insurance on your portfolio. Okay, guys, you want to see more of me? Hey, you could sign in to our free email list, curzioresearch.com. We send out so much free information, that’s really cool, even the free podcasts we have. But also, feel free to tweet me @FrankCurzio and also Curzio Research YouTube page, because we’re doing lots of videos.

Frank Curzio: Really cool. We do a little bit of a demonstration on PrivatePlacements.com and how easy it is to use. Again, I’m not getting paid for it. If you don’t want, you don’t want it. But it’s really, really cool when you see interviews. Plus, we’re using amazing technology that’s being used. It’s similar to CNBC, all the stations. We’re going back and forth in screens. I could share the screen at the same time during the interviews, split screens, amazing stuff.

Frank Curzio: We really spent a lot of money to upgrade this to provide the best experience for you when it comes to video. And that’s why we’re doing lots more videos, even in our newsletters now, which is really, really cool. So, any questions or comments? I’m sure I get a lot for my opening segment, again, just speaking from the heart there. I know we need change. Hopefully, everyone stays safe out there. If you have questions, comments, feel free to email me, frank@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio: Thanks so much for listening. As always, I appreciate your support. And I’ll see you guys in seven days. Take care.

Announcer: The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility. Wall Street Unplugged, produced by the Choose Yourself Podcast Network, the leader in podcasts produced to help you choose yourself.