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

Hows it goin out there. It’s January 22nd. Hello, I’m Frank Curzio Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where we get the headlines and I’ll tell you what’s really moving these markets.

Daniel Creech. You have to be a happy camper with Ohio State.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad that you’re keeping Ryan Day. I could tell you, though I was a little nervous, because you know I bet. I said I bet $500. I went up. They went up by eight. I thought it was like you know, all right, this is the best bet ever. It’s an easy bet and all of a sudden, freaking. They get two touchdowns, two point conversions in the fourth quarter, and they got. Yeah, they were going to get the ball back right and I was like, if this guy loses this game before he’s fired tonight, like he would be fired tonight if he would have lost that game. He really would have, and it’s it’s not sad. He knows the job he’s getting into, he makes good money and everything. But again in Michigan. But congratulations, man. It’s nice when your freaking team wins right yeah, well done to the uh buckeyes.

0:01:16 – Daniel Creech

The only thing on that is I was thinking about you and that because the line was eight and a half. Now forget if it’s all fixed, because it would ruin our sporting lives. But the line was eight and a half and you’re right, when it was eight I thought it’s going to end at eight, and just that side of the line. The only thing I was upset about was the period you’re talking about when you get the ball back and you’re up and you go into this prevent offense. Everybody knows the prevent defense term. You run, run, run. Thank goodness our freshman bailed us out on the wide receiver stuff.

But that kind of play calling, if you just it didn’t happen, so let’s not get crazy. But if you completely change your play calling, give the ball back and then something bad would have happened. That just compounds the air. But hey, national champs, congratulations, did a great job, very good to watch it and happy. I only won a medium little cigar bet because a guy just a buckeye hater wanted to bet a cigar, so I gave up the line too. But you won the real one, so that was good.

0:02:10 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, with the field goal, but I could tell you it’s they were playing, and I hate when teams do this. They were playing not to lose and this is why the belly?

check is the greatest freaking coach ever. Whether you like him or not, he sticks your, his foot on your throat and brady. Instead he play fakes and does these five-yard passes and if a guy breaks it through, he gets first down game over. Right, that’s what they do. They do very, very. Yeah, it’s not let me hand the ball off. Hand the ball off, hand the ball off. And it’s just now you’re losing momentum and I’m like and I was yelling at them they didn’t have eight guys in a box, they had. I’m like you have two great works. I was like first down, play fake, you can lob it. I was like, just please throw it deep. It’s wide open, throw it deep. And then you know what? They made a pretty big mistake in Notre Dame by blitz. They didn’t have to blitz there. It was third and 11, right, they didn’t really have to blitz there.

0:02:58 – Daniel Creech

They should have played like a little bit of a. You know, let’s be careful, yeah, but that was there and then they kicked the field goal and I got lucky.

0:03:03 – Frank Curzio

But everyone says that everyone’s pissed off really quick about college and how the new format sucks and every game was a blowout. Not every game. It was like two good games. I think Arizona State was a great game and so was Penn State.

0:03:13 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, that was crazy.

0:03:14 – Frank Curzio

But I tell you, you could say this format doesn’t work and this format sucks. But I could tell you there’s not one person that could say this without fact that the best team won. Okay, the best team won, and without this format they wouldn’t have got the chance to win because they lost two games. Yeah, you know and that now you’re going to open up the door where a lot of teams don’t like scheduling, because there’s a lot of weeks in college football where college football sucks, there’s no good games. Seriously, there’s like two or three weeks where there is no good games, there’s no top 10 teams playing each other. It’ll be like’ll be like a five playing like a 25 or whatever. There’s like two or three weeks that go by and it makes sense because if you used to lose one or two games, even one game, sometimes you were out of it. Now, look what Ohio State did? I mean Tennessee. What was it? Tennessee? They played. Who was the first game that they played?

0:03:58 – Daniel Creech

Tennessee, Oregon, Texas, Notre Dame.

0:04:00 – Frank Curzio

I mean Tennessee was a good team. Yeah, Oregon’s a great team. Right, they beat them. I mean, even the schedule that they had to go in to beat all these teams is really, really incredible. Four games they won, but good for them, congratulations. Great for Ryan Day.

But the best team went to one without this format. Yes, a lot of the games sucked. You can’t control that. The NCAA tournament sucked the last two years. Connecticut won every game by 25 points, every freaking game they were winning by an average of 20 points. Right, so the best team won. It was chalk. It was terrible.

You’re not going to say the NCAA tournament is terrible, so give it a chance here. There’s a lot of things you have to do. Don’t give buys to Boise State, please. I mean, oh my gosh. But you know the format resulted in one of the things you really want to get right.

But going from there, I have to make a quick announcement, daniel, so we’re going to do a big crypto event. Right, we’re very high on crypto. As you guys know, we were really excited. Part of our crypto intelligence newsletter a couple of weeks ago was saying listen, trump’s going to have executive orders coming in and you know the rumors going out and we’re buying and people are doing very good in that newsletter. It’s not just Bitcoin, it’s everything else underlying these technologies. They’re innovative, they’re disruptive, and they’re disruptive to the biggest industry, the biggest boys club, which is financials, and now you’re going to have a regulatory framework. It’s going to result in so much money coming in. We were going to do a live event this Thursday, but we’re pushing out to next Thursday. Okay, so it’s not going to be this Thursday, we’re pushing out to next Thursday.

I was debating if I was going to tell you why I’m doing this, but I am going to tell you this because I think there’s a lesson to be learned here that I think a lot of businesses sometimes don’t understand, especially if you open up your own business. But there’s a lot of times when you see us, you see me, you see my name behind the scenes and when we do these live events several people we wouldn’t be able to do them without these people when it’s the design, it’s the stuff that you’re getting, it’s the emails, it’s controlling the questions. We do this live right, and a lot of people I say this say they do it live. We do it really live, and everything has to go right and if it fuck up, but you know one person that does it great is someone that that we have here, who’s uh, you know, a great employee. His name is Jan. Uh, he probably hate that I mentioned him right now, but, uh, he had a uh, you know, a death in his family and he had to go overseas, um, and he was going to work overseas to get this thing done and I was like there’s no way that’s happening. So you know he’s such a big part of this and he loves to do it. I said listen, you know, take your time, whatever. And you know we push off a week, which is okay because it’s not going to really make a difference.

We’re very, very high in crypto. We think it’s going to be, you know, just an amazing opportunity for a brand new industry five years. But it’s over 100,000, 105,000. We said it was going to go to 100,000. A lot of our predictions have been correct. We’ve helped people make a lot of money in this industry. There’s another 200 cryptos, not the Trump meme, not fart coin and stuff like that. If you want to buy that, buy that, because I’m the idiot for not buying it because it’s up so much, but I’m just saying very speculative, risky Without that. If you take the next 100, 200, these are great technologies that I’ve researched for seven, eight, nine years that a lot of money hasn’t poured into them institutional-wise, because there was no framework around it where the SEC was allowed to go after any company that they wanted. They basically were like oh, we don’t like that guy, we’re going after him because it was so broad, it was so vague the rules, and now that’s changing. We’re trillions of are going to flow into this industry and it’s going to be very exciting.

And the point I wanted to make a few things here is one is we’re going to have our crypto event live event next Thursday at 7 pm, so that’s January 30th. If you want to register, go to curziocrypto.com. You can put your questions in there. We’re going to answer questions. We’re going to have a live Q&A, so probably like a 10, 15-minute going over catalysts that you haven’t heard before that are going to blow you away. I’m going to make this very easy to understand why. It’s inevitable that Bitcoin is going higher, but you’re going to see these underlying technologies with the new framework around it. It’s really incredible what’s going on in this industry. Seriously, it’s going to be of money. You have to have spec of money in this industry, money you can afford to lose because the returns are so much greater than you can get any place else, any place else, in terms of the risk reward. And yeah, so Curzio Crypto to register January 37 PM. I just you know, I don’t want to forget saying that to you guys, because next week.

But I’m telling you this and why I pushed it out? Because a lot of you own your own businesses and listen to this podcast and you need to remember that your employees are your backbone and when you look at your job, think about it, of how long you’re at your job. You’re basically awake on average, maybe 14 hours a day, maybe 15 hours a day, maybe 13 hours a day, and most jobs you’re working. You know pre-COVID, non-government jobs. You’re working. You know 40-hour weeks, sometimes 45-hour weeks, sometimes 50-hour weeks. Of course, when you’re in your business, you work even more, but your employees are working. They’re spending more than half of their lives that they’re awake at their job.

If you have a shitty job you don’t like, please try to get one that you like, because it’s most of your life that you’re there, I think, as what I’ve learned and what I’ve learned from other people, like some of my mentors that have helped me when I ran my business, is taking care of employees and making sure that they’re appreciated and sometimes I could do even more on that front. But just make sure that you do that. Make sure that they know you respect them, because they’re the backbone, life, blood and the company. Without them, you’re not going to be able to grow. You need employees to grow.

It’s always hard small business. You want to have hands-on, do everything yourself. You’re going to have to let go of those reins and get people that you trust. And of course, you know money’s a big issue and stuff like that, but sometimes it doesn’t really come down to that. It just comes down to calling and deal.

But don’t forget that, because you’re not going to be able to grow your business without great employees. You might be able to have a really cool business and sometimes you could generate five, ten millions of revenue with a staff of five or three or four or whatever. Not often that happens. But to really grow and really scale you need the right people in the right place and good employees and stuff like that, and sometimes that goes, you know, sometimes I think even for my sake or whatever. Sometimes you know, not that you forget it, but you just want to make sure that you know you take care of your employees and stuff like that, because it’s such a big part of your business and again they’re there like most of their lives. So try to make that environment very cool, nice, fun and yeah, hopefully it is.

For everyone else other than Daniel, but yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.

0:10:29 – Daniel Creech

Which Daniel Creech? I love Daniel because we always do very nice.

0:10:30 – Frank Curzio

I hope I got this. I don’t think I got this, but I’m going to play this. This is we do a sound check really quick. The real business. All right, dale, let’s do a sound check before we actually come on. So yeah, we always try to be creative and funny, but but this is this is daniel’s sound check. I think I’m going to be able to get this. If not, I hope I can get this, because this is going to be pretty cool, happy winter.

Let me see if I can get this. Okay, here we go. This is our sound check. So this is the real Daniel Creech that you guys know.

0:10:52 – Daniel Creech

The real Daniel Creech. Here it comes 22nd of January, snow in the border. Frank Curzio, I’m bummed. People sent me there I wish because, man, I would have gone to the beach. I’d be awesome to go to the beach and see snow birds.

0:11:07 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, a lot of people do, but you fucking moved the ejector guess what? No snow there. I love it. Testing one, two, three, testing one, two, three, testing, testing. So that’s our whole testing and everything, which is pretty funny, but you.

0:11:22 – Daniel Creech

More than one place right now, which is great, people are listening to this. After your nice words about employees. Frank Curzio people are going. I can’t believe some people get paid to do this. This is fun.

0:11:33 – Frank Curzio

So, yes, I wanted to start off with that. Just listen, the event’s going to be next Thursday, guys. So it’s going to be next Thursday, it’s going to be awesome, it’s going to be live and, again, we really make this interesting and you can ask questions and stuff like that. So feel free, if you register now, you can ask questions on a first come, first time See them. So if you register, it’s absolutely for free and we’re going to probably offer a nice special price for our newsletter, which we always do, because we have lots of good ideas and we just recommend a really good idea and it’s only up a little bit. I think it’s going to go up a lot, lot higher. So you know, or you can just listen, but usually when people go on that it’s pretty. We make it entertaining. We have a couple of beers, have fun and answer lots of questions.

And yeah, so if you want to join, go ahead. Go to Cryptocurrencycom. The register is January 30th at 7 pm and that is next Thursday. And also a couple of things for crypto. I don’t know if you saw it. We’ll get into davos a little bit more, dan, but did you see brian morenhan’s comments from bank of america davos? Well, I just the payments comment you’re talking. Yeah, I mean he goes that us banking industry will embrace cryptocurrencies for payments. Um, if the regulators allow which they’re going to allow it. He goes, but the us banking industry will embrace cryptocurrencies for payments.

Guys, this is like you know trillions, like all this is opening up right now. We’re just talking about like all this stuff is opening up incredibly. Uh, we’re just talking about like all this stuff is opening up incredibly and it’s just the beginning when you have a framework and you need the framework we haven’t had that and you can’t throw in tons of money from venture, from institutions. You know these innovative technologies, which these are software companies, these cryptos, a lot of these coins are software companies, and you can’t have that unless you have a framework, because you know, because that takes a lot of the risk out. Otherwise you could throw money in there and they could be like no, we’re just going to come after you and we’re going to close this or whatever for any reason, and that’s why you saw you rarely see Ripple, coinbase, these companies. Usually they settle with the SEC and say, okay, we’re not admitting anything and we settle. They weren’t settling, they were fighting. They were fighting the SEC going F you. We went to you and you told us to do this and we did it, and now you’re still coming after us. Okay, so now a lot of that is removed and, holy cow, these Trump executive orders of Brian Moynihan. Again, this industry is going to open up. Incredibly, trillions are going to flow. Trillions are going to flow into the industry over the next three years and then continue to flow and go in focus. Now we have the framework right Just this brand new industry opening up.

I’m not talking about the memes, but it’s just very disruptive to the financial industry. That’s why these banking CEOs are all kind of saying, hey, you know what? They kind of adopted ETFs because it’s so disruptive to their natural business, which has always had a moat around it, protective through lobbyists, big money boys, club, right, all this stuff. Now you’re unleashing this thing and it’s unleashed. It’s unleashed. The regulatory framework was the last part of it. And, man, you got to be in some of these things Something I’ve been studying for a very long time 16, 17.

And there’s so many names that could generate massive returns for you in this industry If you follow the right people, if you’re looking at the token economics and you do all this stuff, and we’ve had a formula that works really, really well. It’s been doing very good for our investors for a long time and I think now it’s time to really really get in. So I’m doing my own money. I have money in crypto. I’ve had it in there for a long time.

I’m increasing my stake into crypto, but I think it’s very, very positive here, and you’re seeing more and more news come out, which I think with every industry, you always want to have the negatives. It’s kind of like the economy right. If everyone’s like, everything’s great, you always want to have the naysayers right. It’s like this Goldilocks thing, this pull, and it’s nice because it puts everything in check, and when you have the Frank Curzio Gistros and Peter Schiff constantly just making fun of the Bitcoin people for making so much money, it’s good. It’s actually good. I used to get so angry at them and now I just you know, every time they come out with posts, I buy more and I just make a fortune off of them.

0:15:10 – Daniel Creech

So that’s what you do, instead of getting pissed off.

0:15:12 – Frank Curzio

Just use your advantage. I mean, these are guys that are absolutely freaking so wealthy it’s a joke. But everyone that follows them is poor, and that’s what I hate about the industry. I don’t mind if you go down with your ship, that’s fine, I have no problem with that. I have no problem with Dick Fole going down with the ship, with Lehman, most of his wealth tied to that. I have no problem with that. I have a problem where you’re telling everyone that something sucks, but you continue to make a fortune while everyone listening to you gets annihilated. And these two guys have done it again, Instead of me getting angry, ranting about it just whenever they post Buy more. And been doing it for a while. And man, these guys have been bearish since 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 60,000, 70,000, 100,000, 100,000, 5,000. And at $200,000, $300,000 Bitcoin, they’re still going to be bearish and that’s okay. That’s okay.

0:16:25 – Daniel Creech

When Bitcoin drops from a half a million to that, I just continue to think, listen, when you, when you sign an executive order, it gets great attention and that’s what it’s supposed to do, and I love the fact that they are saying, hey, we’re going to try to increase production, we’re going to do all this, we just have to like I hate you know, frank, we try not to be on the fence, because people listen to us, because they want us to take a stand With this situation. I’m sorry to play kind of sitting on the fence here, but A I don’t think Trump’s going to be as negative for energy as a lot of people or the street thinks right now, but, honestly, instead of just guessing, we have to kind of wait and see, and I hate that. It is aggravating, to be honest with you. But listen, it’s the same old story of supply and demand and what’s going to happen. I do think what’s frustrating for me, frank, is I can’t measure this, and I use this analogy because I thought you were correct in saying, listen, when you’re trying to get people excited about AI, you were explaining listen, you’re not going to just see AI as a balance sheet line item and say, oh, look, here’s what AI did for us, plus or minus.

And I say that because Jamie Dimon’s comments, business leader comments, bank of America comments, anybody, Goldman Sachs, anybody that you listen to talks about this change in CEO’s mentality, in this animal spirits. Stanley we don’t know his last name, hedge fund guy has talked about the animal spirits and everything and I am frustrated because I can’t measure that. But I want to tell investors that you know I would look to be a buyer before a seller because I know asset prices, we can argue about valuations and we have to grow and there’s a lot of negativity, as Frank Curzio just said. Don’t ignore the negativity, use it to your advantage, be aware of it. But it’s just like AI isn’t a line item, trump is not a line item on a measurability scale, because the guy can say Florida, anything he can come out tomorrow. And hey, frank, crypto task force, now the SEC, headed by who you interviewed, Hester Pierce or yeah.

0:18:16 – Frank Curzio

Hester Pierce. Is it Pierce? Is that how you say it? Yeah, Hester Pierce, she’s great.

0:18:18 – Daniel Creech

Anyway, she’s heading this crypto task force now and it’s just it is pushing asset markets up. I would still be more bullish than bearish Again, not to just ignore all the negativity, but the executive orders. I don’t know how you argue. These are not positive. Momentum to the upside, not the downside.

0:18:37 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, absolutely. And when it comes to energy, look, you know, we talked oil on our, you know, on our paid podcast, right, which is which is the one we do on Thursdays, which is really cool, which we have a lot of fun with. I think it’s $10 a month, right. Again, that pricing is going to change. We’re going to restructure a lot of stuff within our newsletters and stuff pretty soon, just to let you guys know, make it more affordable for everyone to own more products and things like that, and the prices on the bottom end are probably going to go up. But when we talked about oil I think this was last week or the week before, I think there’s this thing where, okay, you have him coming out saying we’re going to halt offshore wind projects. Good for oil, good for fossil fuels, but it means more production. More production means low oil prices. But remember, there’s all this oil production. It’s all about supply and demand. So if you think all this oil production is going to come online and oil is going to go to 50, a lot of this oil is not going to come online because a lot of oil companies can’t produce and make huge margins of $50 oil. Some of them can, and some of them all have areas that do $35 oil and even $30 oil and some of them tiny bit below $20, believe it or not, but most can’t. You can’t scale right. You can’t really scale like 40, 45. It’s dangerous to scale at 50 because if prices fall right away again you could hedge them and stuff like that. I don’t think you can hedge them at 50. Where we’re at 80 right now, it’s 75, 80. But the point is the data. Another thing is, yes, more production might be bad for the producers, but if you’re looking at more production, the only way to get more production is by the service companies. The service companies are going to get more contracts. They’re going to make more money off of it.

Now you talk about Schlumberger. They just reported Reported pretty solid numbers. Stock popped 7%. It was off its 52-week lows. These are names that have gotten annihilated. And what do they do you think like? Companies off their 52-week low, near their 52-week low, are bad standing? These balance sheets are fantastic. They lowered their cost. The oil industry is so different. It’s kind of like the technology industry and their balance sheets.

People already forgot that a lot of these names almost went under Dotacom and the ones that survived. They lived through that shit and like, oh my God, we almost lost our company. Netflix, this close to losing our company, we’ll get to them in a minute. And when you do that now, same thing. That’s why even you go through the financial crisis and that credit crisis and these companies, even though oil is coming down, they’re very efficient. So, san Brigitte, 52-week low popped 7% decent numbers and they increased their dividend. How many stocks did the 53-week low go up, increasing their dividend? You know, technical analysis would say with that stock right now, if it breaks 45, it’s going to go a lot higher. I think it’s like 42-ish, but it’s, you know, up off its lows. You see a clear trend well off its lows.

Somerje, halliburton you know cheap names and you, you want to see a growth catalyst and they have growth potential here because they’re going to get lots of contracts. If people are drilling more, these are the companies that benefit. There’s different facets to the oil industry. It’s not just these producers, and if producers are going to get annihilated, these guys are going to get tons of contracts to drill more, to use their equipment, and I don’t think they’ve seen this kind of growth within this cycle that’s about to take place over the next couple of years.

Baker Hughes I have to look more into it, but I was looking at a chart of these three stocks and if you look at Baker Hughes, because over the past year Somerje and Halliburton were down 15% each, over the past 12 months, baker Hughes is up 50%. I don’t know why. I’d have to look more into that. Just you know again, better contracts, whatever I know, Somerje and even Halliburton, I think, but Somerje especially is more international. But these are names that I will look at in the oil industry. On that executive order, another thing with Trump’s executive orders is the AI infrastructure deal. So that’s 500 million investments from Oracle, Larry Ellison, openai, Sam Altman and SoftBank, the CEO of SoftBank. I have to say this, and this is so rude I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so powerful that’s so short. Did you see how short?

0:22:23 – Daniel Creech

that guy is. That guy’s like three and a half feet tall. He’s a little bit bigger than that, but I’m exaggerating.

0:22:26 – Frank Curzio

He’s short, yeah, and he was cool and he’s just like. You know that guy’s like oh my God, and I mean SoftBank is-.

0:22:35 – Daniel Creech

Trump’s tall Ellison looks tall.

0:22:38 – Frank Curzio

I don’t know how tall Larry Ellison is yeah, I realize this, but Ellison is a huge donor to Trump and it’s kind of you know, usually when you donate, a lot of times you want to keep it like even.

0:22:46 – Daniel Creech

Bill Gates. Bill Gates is pissed when they send out. They’ve been friends for years. Like he’s been under the radar. Like he’s been a Trump fan for as long as I can remember.

0:22:52 – Frank Curzio

I just was surprised when I saw the numbers of how much he donated and just like with Gates, like Gates was kind of like all right came out and he was a little pissed off. But sometimes they just don’t want people to know. But I was surprised when I saw that and somebody told me that how much LSU-.

0:23:07 – Daniel Creech

Bill Gates is the most homely looking villain On this earth probably. I know you don’t like that guy at all. I don’t. He looks like a who’s that character? Your neighbor Is it with a horse? What’s everybody say?

0:23:23 – Frank Curzio

I don’t know.

0:23:24 – Daniel Creech

Oh, your neighbor, you got me on that one, I’m stumped yeah. Anyway, moving on, not important Moving on Moving on.

0:23:29 – Frank Curzio

But you look at AI infrastructure investments that’s great. So again, ai we cover that in our newsletter. It’s just this massive trend. You’re seeing tons of money get thrown into this industry. It’s continuing. It’s not being lowered. I can tell you that a lot of this is going to be from the biggest companies, who are going to benefit the most and that’s why they throw the most money into there, because even going to a consumer electronics show, you see a lot of companies using it. We’re trying to find companies in small cap land that actually are benefiting from it and using it and have been using it, not just say they’re going to use it because everyone fucking says they’re using AI. Whoa, using AI? Ai is going to be great, it’s awesome, but some people have been doing this for several years and light years ahead of everyone else, and these are the companies that are going to get taken over.

Because now, with the Trump presidency, what do we have is the M&A environment is going to be really, really strong. It’s already strong. There’s already been lots of announcements in the first month, when 2024 has been a horrible year for M&A. We’re going to see this take off tremendously because the current Justice Department. You could be like, hey, a food company is taking over an oil company and totally they’re like nope, no matter what it is, it’s no. The answer is absolutely fucking no, and without even looking at the details. So now it’s going to be different. Of course, you got to worry about monopoly and issues and stuff like that and again, you don’t want two large companies in the world merging and getting together. But you’re going to see a lot more deals, it’s going to be easier to go through that process and a lot more M&A announcements, which makes sense and I think things like that, Daniel not being factored into the market right now, because market is at all-time highs. It has to be hitting an all-time high. The M&A market’s good.

At Davos we had a couple more people talk and say okay to Mark. Who was it? It was the CEO from Goldman came out and he said David Solomon, he’s like the economy is a good place. Hard to dispute that equity multiples are high. He said Bitcoin is a speculative asset. He’s a big believer in the US dollar. Of course he’s going to say that because Bitcoin threatens his institution. Jamie Dimon said that the market’s kind of inflated as the stock’s at an all-time high. He said he hugged out Elon Musk, which I thought was pretty cool. We can get that whatever. But yeah, everyone getting along now. Even Gates had a meeting with Trump and all the techs. Everyone’s kind of getting along right now, even countries and stuff like that.

0:25:44 – Daniel Creech

Japan sent its vice president for the first time. Well, they’re at least doing the right thing in China, or something like that yeah, something that they sent its vice president.

0:25:49 – Frank Curzio

But if you’re looking at everyone talking about, about the economy, and valuations are high, they’re high, but we’re seeing earnings really strong, sales really strong. We’re seeing a much better regulatory environment. You got to throw that into the mix, guys. Are we expensive? Yes, but there’s a lot of positive factors here. I mean, gdp just got raised tremendously, right. So you’re looking at these numbers. Is this expensive? Yes, is everything doing well? No, and we can cover that now because one of the stocks that are doing very, very well. I don’t know if you want to continue on the Trump thing, if you had anything to follow up on that, but I did want to start talking about Netflix, which is just amazing, amazing, amazing company. I mean, this thing is up. I think it’s like 12%, 13% today, going through the roof. They just reported earnings last night and, yeah, I don’t know if you saw those. Those numbers are fantastic.

0:26:33 – Daniel Creech

No, go ahead, we can circle back. You’re on a roll with Netflix. They were impressive. I don’t even care about Netflix. And when I read through it I was like, okay, yeah, and let’s just remember, I’m the one that sold out a dollar stock club a long time ago, so we had a great gain. But boy, if we would have just Florida held onto that, it’d the only two real stocks, that and the S&P 500 I own.

0:26:53 – Frank Curzio

I have everything else in, like 4% yield for my mom, but those are the only two stocks that I have in there other than S&P 500. But reported their first revenue quarter of $10 billion, got in. So you could say, on a negative it was a little bit weak, but it’s easy to overlook that because they freaking added 18 million subscribers. Put that in respect, they’re only supposed to add 5 million, so these guys monetize the shit out of their subscribers over time. They’re great at doing it. They have pricing power, since they have the best original new content right, new content by far than any other streaming platform. And it’s just starting. The ad platform, which is going to be a monster. They’ve been announcing this. Be patient with it, but in 2025, their first full year their ad platform.

New division, daniel, brand new division Again. They’ve been building for like a year and a half, two years, but this is their new division, the first full year of that. Sales in that division is going to be $3.5 billion. That’s 10% of their sales. In five years it’s going to be 25%. This is a brand new division. This is the equivalent of Amazon, google, microsoft starting cloud, their cloud, yeah, or their cloud division, because you have monster margins when it comes to revenue and they’re getting this right. And they’re going to have pricing power. And people don’t mind watching commercials if you have great content, which as long as the commercials are pretty good as well, and not crazy, which sometimes you see on YouTube, and they go over to top liberal and stuff like that and leftish, but you know, and the Super Bowl is a good example of that but you’re going to watch this content and, again, they have pricing power because they have the best content out of any streaming platform.

Kudos to Barclays, because Barclays came out and they upgraded Netflix from underweight to equal weight. And I say kudos to them because they got it wrong. Guys, we all get it wrong sometimes. We all get it wrong sometimes, I don’t care who you are. Buffett gets it wrong, I don’t care Anyone, david Tepper got it wrong. A lot of people get it wrong. But when you get it wrong, just say you get it wrong, I got it wrong, I fucked up, I got to do better, then saying, oh, i’re wrong. Given this backdrop, they’ve clearly been wrong on Netflix, and while the valuation is stratospheric, the premium valuation is a function of the company’s execution quality.

Good job, all right. You’re wrong and you said you’re wrong. That’s what people want to hear in our industry, because everyone’s full of shit when it comes to Wall Street. If you’re wrong, just say you’re wrong and move on. You got to be right more than you’re wrong.

People are not going to listen to a lot of things. You’re not going to listen to this podcast. You’re not going to follow people, but you’re going to get it wrong sometimes, a lot of times, it’s the things you have the most conviction on, because you don’t see it. I’m telling you from past experience but good job to Barclays. The one thing I’m going to disagree you something what I learned from making my mistakes. And people say, frank, you’re so smart when it comes to stocks and stuff like that. Let me tell you something. I’m sorry because I was wrong a lot. Okay, getting to this point in 30 years.

And one of the things I’ve got wrong with Netflix, one of the things I’ve got wrong which allowed us and allowed you you got on Palantir and I’m telling you this stock’s going 100. People are like it’s trading at 160 times valuation. I’m like you don’t understand that. They can help every single company. Their total addressable market is probably 25 times bigger than what people are modeling for right now. Because when you have a company like Chevron and Chevron’s like all in on them, when you got the CEO of Chevron, one of the largest oil companies, a sit-down, palantir with the CEO and just come up for free and say this company’s did more for us than they’ve ever done more efficient, more. Every single company needs that. We’re just talking about a $2, $3 billion opportunity in oil and they’re open to all these industries. So, with Netflix, I’m going to try to explain this to you really quick and, daniel, just give me a second here.

0:30:29 – Daniel Creech

Four years.

0:30:30 – Frank Curzio

When we look on the thesis. This is why I never understood the bullish thesis on Disney. Disney could go a little bit higher. But I’m like, why buy Disney when you can buy Netflix? Because if you look at Disney, they’re going to say Disney’s cheap. We’re trading at a 22 times multiple for the S&P 500. Right now Disney’s trading around 20 times. They project to grow earnings at 11%. That’s a 1.8 price to earnings growth ratio.

You have to look at the growth of a company Because without looking at growth, you could be trading five times earnings and be super expensive if you’re going to lose money or you’re barely going to make money or growth’s going to slow dramatically and you could be cheap trading at 35 times earnings, which Netflix is currently trading at, if you’re growing earnings Very, very fast. Now when you look at Netflix, they’re trading at 35 times forward earnings. Holy shit, sell it, sell it, people. If, based on a pe, you should have sold netflix, it’s at a thousand, you should have sold it at 60. I’m not even kidding you, I’m not even kidding go 68, because back then that p ratio was over 100, 120, 150 and I missed it. Okay, and the reason why I’m not missing it now, the reason why this is my mom’s’s account, the reason why we had it in our account.

0:31:35 – Daniel Creech

I’m not going to tell you who sold it.

0:31:37 – Frank Curzio

Somebody mentioned it, I’m not going to say it. Anyway, listen, you cannot get pissed when you sell at a really good gain. So that’s first of all. So that’s okay. But Netflix traded 35 times forward earnings On that basis. It’s freaking expensive PE. But they’re projected to grow their earnings at 30% annually over the next two years. They’re just starting their ad platform, so their PG ratio is 1.1, okay, which is a significant discount.

When you’re factoring growth to Disney, they’re not trading in this stratified this way. When you’re looking at the S&P 500, there’s earnings that are going to go over and there’s companies. There’s more separation I’m seeing in the S&P 500 than I’ve ever seen. Usually. Again, tide lifts all boats. There’s a lot of companies not doing good right now 52-week lows a lot of them. Not everyone’s going through the roof here, but if you’re looking at the market as a whole, where our economy is growing, and the growth that’s coming in some of these companies, you have to look at the growth. They have an advertising platform that’s going to grow tremendously with massive margins. It’s not even factoring in Plus. They’re still killing it in their traditional business because they’re adding 18 million subscribers compared to 5 million.

So many catalysts. You have live sports. You have great new content for Netflix, probably spending three to four times more on new content than Disney, that ad platform. Nobody’s going to care about watching ads when you have great content. But when I look at Disney, I’m watching a 35 second video on ESPN when only to watch a 25 second highlight of something. I mean I go to YouTube to watch my highlights. Now I never go to ESPN because you only have to sit through what Probably sometimes it’s five seconds, sometimes it’s 15 seconds and then you can watch the highlight, but seriously it’s 30 seconds. You have to sit through an ad on espn. Or if you go to espn right now, you click one of those videos and it’s just like you know steph curry dribbling or whatever. You see a highlight of a dunk or whatever a touchdown. You have to sit through a 30 second ad to watch pretty much sometimes a 25 second, 30 second clip.

And I pounded the table on this during covid, saying that disney is fucking disaster. It was a disaster and people were like it’s going to roof, it’s a great thing. And again they padded their numbers. They said let’s just add people, don’t worry about average revenue per user, let’s just get all these people on a platform, hundreds of millions and, oh my God, and they weren’t able to monetize it. Nobody paid attention. Okay, if you look at since then, since then, since then, netflix is up 210%. I got a chart over here Since COVID right Since January 2020. So this is five years. You have Disney’s down 28% since then. I can’t find I don’t think I think you’d be hard pressed to find any S&P 500 stock that’s down.

0:34:12 – Daniel Creech

How much is Netflix up versus Disney down?

0:34:14 – Frank Curzio

Since January 210% in the last five years. Disney’s down 28%. Okay, I don’t know if you’ll find another stock that’s down since then. And if you look at disney, also, it’s down since pretty much september and that’s when the market rebounded tremendously right, the market started coming back. So september 2020 that’s I don’t think you’ll find another company in the sp500 that’s down since September, Since September, august, september 2020, until now. I bet you you’d be challenged to find an S&P 500 stock that’s down over that time period. Everything’s gone up since then. So when I look at this chart, even the S&P 500 is up 94%. So Netflix doubled that. But when you look at the detail, would have never. You never bought netflix based on the p ratio because it was trading expense per year, but they’re growing much faster than everyone. The best platform. And I gotta tell you, daniel, when I look, when I look at this, when I look at disney, um, what do you think the market cap is for disney? Do you know?

0:35:10 – Daniel Creech

I’m an idea uh, I don’t know 200 billion.

0:35:13 – Frank Curzio

Okay, netflix is now over $400 billion. Ooh, if I was Netflix, I would buy Disney right now. It’s going to get approved easily. It’s going to get approved. You have other streaming platforms for competitors. It would never got approved, but now you’re going to get approved.

And this is why they should, because when you have a competitor buying, it’s easy to break up the company and get rid of the divisions. I like this. Okay, it’s very easy. Break the activist. It’s very hard to do it internally because listen, you’re talking, you know the people who are running these divisions. You go out, you hang out. It’s not as easy to do. I know it’s a business decision. It’s not as easy.

But another company coming in is going to be like Disney. They spin off ESPN, they spin off all the networks, they spin off Pixar, they spin off the betting division. All this shit is probably worth 60-70% of their market cap right now, individually at least. So you get rid of that bullshit which Disney’s just running all that stuff and having trouble with ESPN. Get whatever. I mean easily over $100 billion, probably $150 billion if you spin it off, if you really spin it off and you make these things go public separately, you keep its parks. You’re getting control of the greatest writers and creators in the world, which fits perfectly into Netflix. Okay, these are the greatest writers in the world. That’s the holy grail for Disney, right, they got away from that. And streaming and all this bullshit, and again, all craziness and left liberal stuff right, and you know which families hated, which is their core market. You integrate all the content on their platform. Holy shit, I mean, this thing is a juggernaut, right? And now you, just now, you keep all the theme parks and you integrate all these themes into all the theme parks. Holy shit, because right now you could do that. You could get Disney for $250 million and they again. I don’t know what the structure is. I don’t know if everyone’s going to vote. It’s going to be a lot of shit going on, but Disney will never get streaming. Right. They can’t get streaming right. Their best content doesn’t go on there. They’re never going to change that. It goes out in the movies.

For Netflix, this is a massive asset. And what do you need? What’s the most valuable thing? People that can create? Because we have an unlimited platform that we could just send out new content. But it’s hard to get creative and get great stories and they’re the best storytellers in the world. You’re going to get all that for free. You’re getting all these other divisions that other people want that you could really shed very easily.

Man, I just think Netflix right now. It’s never been a better opportunity for them to buy them. I think that stock will go through. I I mean, disney should be a 500 billion dollar company, but it’s not run right and it’ll never be run right, because it’s just they’re streaming the vision they can’t make money on and netflix can make a fortune off of it, because they’ll do the right thing and they’ll benefit and now you see the benefit of all the parks and everything else. Holy cow. I just think it’s a good. It’s a it. I just think it’s a good idea. Call me crazy. I think it’s a good idea and I think it’d be really good for Disney, because I know they want Apple to buy them, but there’s just not enough integration with Apple and all this stuff and Apple really doesn’t care because 200 billion to them. They made that, like yesterday.

Yeah, I think it, so yeah to them. It doesn’t move the needle. This is really. This turns Netflix into a trillion dollar company. It does within like two years.

And so for me that, do with Netflix and really, like you know, try to work with Disney, because they do have great content, but they have great older content. Maybe that fits well with Netflix, but just, you know, the storytellers, the writers, content creators, I mean it’s so massive for them. I think it just makes sense. To me it really does make sense. And now, when you have the right administration in there that’s going to approve a lot of M&A deals, this will go through pretty easily, especially if you’re shedding off a lot of these other divisions.

0:38:35 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I’ll be interested to see how the live sports unfolds and evolves onto Netflix Because, as a consumer and I’m not in this basket so I’d be curious for you consumers and such out there.

I don’t have any streaming platforms or anything, but I know Netflix raised the lower end pricing tier by only a dollar, I believe, which is nothing that’s not going to hurt anybody.

But they have WWE, they have football, I know they had some NFL games on Christmas, but it’ll be interesting to see how that transition or evolution happens, because obviously, again, I don’t even own a TV, so I’m not the market they’re going after. Again, I don’t even own a TV, so I’m not the market they’re going after. However, when I make a point to go out to places, frank, and watch something, it is what it is live sports. That’s really the only thing that demands you go watch it live, because the worst thing in the world, frank, is to tape something and then have one of your friends or family members text you during something. Or you go to watch the recording and you see the highlight or a quick thing hey, you know the Buckeyes won the national title and you’re burning your house down because you wanted to watch the game, but that when they announced WWE and I know that’s a funny thing and all that, but don’t laugh at the billionaire.

0:39:44 – Frank Curzio

Oh my God, it’s massive.

0:39:45 – Daniel Creech

Oh my God, oh my God, it’s so massive, it’s amazing and it’s entertainment and they Hogan Imagine that Now they were out in California so maybe that has something to do with it, but it was still hilarious.

0:39:56 – Frank Curzio

I kind of had to enjoy that.

0:39:59 – Daniel Creech

And yeah, just to see the, just to see the sports, but obviously, going through that quarter, uh, it was just amazing. I like your. I like your going out on a limb and we should start that. We should get a social media campaign going on about buying Disney.

0:40:11 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I think you know Netflix. I really. I just think it makes sense for them right now because Disney is just it’s a very poorly run company right now. It really is a very poorly run company and I know that they’re doing better in terms of making money streaming because they lowered their content spend. I know they’re focusing on their dividend. I don’t care about your dividend, I want growth here. I can get dividend for many stocks. I can go to Indrived Brokers and park it there and get four and a half percent for nothing, risk-free. So I don’t really care about their dividend. Their main growth engine to them, to Disney, is streaming and they’ll never get that right. They can’t get it right. So for me, when I look at this company, it makes sense.

Netflix could really turn this thing around and you have all these divisions and they’re going to make the hard decisions that Disney will never make. Like get rid of ESPN, like just spin off ESPN. Okay, it is a valuable asset, it is a huge asset. They have tons of users. The gambling thing, the gambling phenomenon I mean holy cow is every single sports franchise in bed with betting, which is a nightmare because nobody, nobody, I would say less than a half a percent of people who gamble make money. Frank Curzio, stop you, just buddy.

0:41:14 – Daniel Creech

I would say less than a half a percent of people who gamble make money. Stop, you just won. Make money. You’re a winner. You just made money.

0:41:19 – Frank Curzio

I made the buckeyes I made money the buckeyes stop the conversation.

I made money horse racing and things like that, but it’s I’m not betting every race and I can’t, but it’s forcing this gambling and most people lose. I mean, I can’t tell you the crisis is going to be like five years from now when it comes to so many people gambling on sports and losing so much money. And it’s a crisis right now that people aren’t talking about but nobody cares because you’re making money off of it. That’s it. They’re forcing it. You know, when you have like Charles Barkley and you have guys like talking about betting while the game is going on and saying, right now, you can bet the third quarter, you know, even in basketball, it’s really crazy how they’re. I remember the day when sports companies were like you know, I mean, look at Pete Rose right For gambling.

0:42:03 – Daniel Creech

Yeah.

0:42:03 – Frank Curzio

They were just like don’t ever freaking gamble, never. That’s that part of sports. Now, as soon as you can make money off it, the whole world changes. You know, and it’s getting. They don’t really give a shit about you. They don’t give a shit about people losing their lives and their homes.

0:42:27 – Daniel Creech

I do think it’s important to point out. I don’t think that civilization would be able to prosper or move on without them. I mean, these geniuses are just amazing. And if you notice Frank Curzio at the bottom of all these bets and slips and advertisements, thank goodness we have the heart to put. If you’re a gambling addict, call 1-800-WE-DON’T-CARE.

0:42:35 – Frank Curzio

That’s amazing. I love that.

0:42:37 – Daniel Creech

I just love that. It’s essential to the wonderful government overlords making sure that you are all clean, because if there was no sign in the bathroom that said employees must watch hands. Think how dirty and disgusting we would be as a nation.

0:42:49 – Frank Curzio

For.

0:42:49 – Daniel Creech

Florida sakes people.

0:42:51 – Frank Curzio

They got to regulate, especially with planes, that they go every single flight. If you crash and you happen to crash and you’re alive in water, make sure you’re able. You have to agree to it. When you’re in right yeah. When you’re in Exit rows the exit rows Okay. You have to actually verbally agree. You got to pull out the door, like every single flight. I mean, you want to talk about it, knowing that they have to do that and put this over your nose and this and that, whatever. I mean, the chance of that happening is probably 0.05% and every single time they get, just because some idiot was like you got to say it.

You got to say it or you’re going to get fined Yep Right, so now they got to say it and you got to get the verbal confirmation that if you crash and you crash into an ocean you happen to live.

0:43:33 – Daniel Creech

Pull this out, so the raft goes out and make sure you help the person, and you have to assist passengers before you get off. You can’t just open the door and lead the way the door and lead the way.

0:43:40 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I’m fucking out of there. I don’t know about you Now imagine me.

0:43:42 – Daniel Creech

I’m tall, yeah, I’m big.

0:43:44 – Frank Curzio

Who’s going to go? I?

0:43:44 – Daniel Creech

take up the doorway. So now I open the door for people. I do sit in the exit row a lot, unlike somebody else over there in first class. I’m responsible for the door. What if I’m blocking? How the hell am I going to get out of your, as water’s rushing in or flames, or some piece of the engine Anyway?

0:44:02 – Frank Curzio

Did you ever see Shane Gillis? Did you see that skit? It’s so funny. If you haven’t seen it I know of him.

0:44:05 – Daniel Creech

I don’t know what skit he’s on.

0:44:07 – Frank Curzio

Just go on YouTube or TikTok which is on, which is back on. Thank God, I’m so glad that TikTok’s back on. I’m just so pissed no-transcript to call your loved ones and he calls someone. He just starts like cursing him. He’s like f you, man, I’m up f you, whatever they’re like, what are you doing? He’s like I’m not gonna call people that I and everyone’s like yeah, and everyone starts calling.

0:44:41 – Daniel Creech

Get my bucket list off.

0:44:42 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and they’re like the flight’s not going to crash and they’re like, oh shit, yeah.

0:44:48 – Daniel Creech

He’s pretty funny. That is funny. I’ll have to look that up.

0:44:54 – Frank Curzio

He’s a big Notre Dame fan. That was a tough one, but anyway, what we said earlier, Daniel, you Trump bump, oh my God. And all these executive orders and everything’s fantastic. It’s not all fantastic out there. Guys Got to look under the hood. Ford no downgrade, no downgrade. Barclays shouldn’t be surprising. We’re seeing a lot of that. Finally, I said the analysts are really bullish on the autos. They’re coming off that.

Now we warned you probably about six, nine months ago. I mean saying, listen, when I bought my daughter’s car, the massive inventory that I saw. And then, right away, when I see something I could be like maybe it’s just the three or four places I went to. So having this podcast going out to so many people, you know just, and people in the industry would tell me like inventories, and I started going over inventory levels, I was like holy shit, you know. I mean inventory levels are through the freaking roof. They were expecting massive demand. They didn’t get it and you’re seeing this among the major order deals, so they’re getting crushed right now. J&j out with numbers today I don’t know if you follow J&J J&J is down 10% for the year, with the market up 26%. I mean it’s been a really shitty stock. The numbers weren’t so great. They were okay but still sold off. It’s down 3% today with J&J. The healthcare industry has not been performing well United Healthcare and I think we took a small gain.

We took a small gain. We could have sold out a little bit earlier to go up like 20-25% on it and then we took like a 7% gain on it. But that fell. And again that CEO. It’s been down since the CEO and that happened where he got murdered in New York City.

But J&J have someone, a friend, a close friend, that’s pretty high up, that works there and they’ve been laying off employees like crazy and it’s the toughest job because he’s laying off friends and they make sure, like you have HR next to you, and when HR is next to you, they’re like you know, you have to just say it and you know. It’s like knowing someone for 25 years and saying, okay, make sure you take your things. Okay, and it’s not you and they’re making them do this, but they’ve been doing this for at least like the last, I think, six to nine months and that’s not a good sign when you’re seeing that that kind. It’s not like the microsoft’s and the metas where they’re using ai now and getting tons of productivity and ai agents and stuff. I’m gonna be talking about that in my uh um uh crypto ai newsletter or our ai newsletter. Actually, actually, I have to talk about it crypto too. But AI agents, I mean, you’re going to see them take tons of jobs and it’s happening. You’re going to see it over the next couple of years, guys, so be prepared. This isn’t like fear just look it up of what these things do.

That was a very big theme from the CEO for NVIDIA and his presentation. I went to live and stuff like that and that was at Consumer Electronics Show a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been traveling a lot, so those guys are laying off employees, but they’re laying off employees and productivity issues. This is different with J&J and different healthcare companies. You’re really seeing them a slowdown in their business, so not everything is doing good. You’ve seen this big separation Stocks that are doing good. I don’t know if you saw Interactive Brokers.

0:47:41 – Daniel Creech

I didn’t. I didn’t dive through it. I like that company overall, but them and Schwab both did, which just is good for markets and individuals in my opinion just shows the excitement from retail investors.

0:47:55 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, interactive Brokers so record high, solid earnings. This is an $88 billion market cap. I was looking at Goldman Sachs and now that that stock went up after earnings, I think it’s just below 200 billion. Yeah, I feel like Interactive Brokers is going the route of the Morgan Stanley’s they’re not a full integrated where they’re doing tons of deals and stuff like that but I could see them going that route because it’s such a well-run company. But this is a stock that’s over $200 right now. But I saw an interesting stat that came across the wire. I want to thank one of my friends, research Analyst, who’s great that worked at thestreetcom. Very, very smart, interesting stat that came over for IBKR, which is Interactive Brokers, yesterday.

0:48:36 – Daniel Creech

Daniel Creech, yesterday was the highest level of margin they’ve ever seen in their accounts.

0:48:39 – Frank Curzio

Okay, yesterday so the risk is on baby the risk. It’s a risk on market. Now, take that for what it is. You’re going to be like holy shit. The market’s going to crash. Everyone’s going on margin Not necessarily, not necessarily it’s. You’re removing a lot of the negatives of a terrible structured economy. You’re going to get more deals flowing through. You’re going to see more growth.

The threats of tariffs not tariffs. Everyone’s worried about tariffs. We covered this subject in depth in 2018 and told everyone stop listening to all the bullshit out there and buy stocks on this pullback, because it’s going to be meaningless, because we have complete control over China. China cannot exist without us. They could exist, but they need us. We’re the biggest economy in the world. Everybody wants to sell to us. They’re going to do whatever we want. They’re not going to say it publicly like they did and they’re fighting us and, oh my God, you’re going to ruin global trade. Remember all that bullshit. It’s all bullshit. Same thing now. I mean, if you look at some of the stuff that’s happening just by Trump talking, it’s kind of amazing. It really is. You can’t deny it, because people are like holy shit. So now that you have executive orders in place, now that he’s threatening with tariffs. Now he’s threatening, saying we could threaten, and it doesn’t mean we’re going to go to war. It’s nice not to fight, but just knowing that we will is a very big, freaking deal.

Don’t worry about tariffs. They’re not going to crush the economy. It’s not going to be a big deal because everybody has to bend the knee to the United States. That’s what happens when you have the biggest economy. Does it make us bullies? Yes, to the United States. That’s what happens when you have the biggest economy. Does it make us bullies? Yes, could you get pissed at us? Yes, if you live outside the US, do you hate us? Probably, that’s not our job to determine that stuff. Okay, you could hold up a sign protest. I don’t give a shit what you do. Our job is to make you money on stocks and it’s going to make it much better for small caps, which has still significantly underperformed. They started catching up towards the end of the year and they sold off again. You’re going to get great opportunities with a lot of these names. You’re going to see much stronger growth within the US. These companies mostly have their sales within the US. You’re going to see that grow even further.

Do not worry about tariffs. Please, don’t worry about tariffs. Yes, they’re concerned. Yes, you’re going to hear about them. You’re like, oh my God, it’s crazy. I’m just telling you it’s not really in our best interest to do that, but when we do that, countries that we do that to, we hurt them 10 times worse than us, to the point where they have to find ways to talk behind the scenes and say, okay, take the tariffs off and we’ll do this, this, this, this and this, which is some of the shit that you don.

And it’s exactly what happened in China in 2018. The markets fell. It was a great buying opportunity. We did very, very well.

We provide free reports sometimes, which Daniel Creech knows about. That was a free report we wrote I think it was like 15, 20 pages of how this is total bullshit. Don’t worry about it. And it was one of the reports that was downloaded the most in our company’s history. I want to say, when it comes to free reports and so many people came in because of that and it was fantastic and we’re probably going to do another report that’s similar but please, when it comes to tariffs, this is more of a threat than anything.

If it happens, it’ll probably be on for just a little while, because it’s really going to hurt China. It’s really going to hurt Russia with more sanctions. It’s really going to hurt all these other countries, especially you’re looking at European, American countries. It’s going to hurt them dramatically, dramatically, and there’s no way they could sustain that to the point they’re going to have to bend the knee. And when they do, it’s going to be better for us, it’s going to be better for our companies, it’s going to be more jobs here and that’s what he’s doing right now. And it’s going to result with these tailwinds in our economy that we didn’t have in the previous four years.

And that’s why you’re seeing everybody get along. That’s why you’re seeing even the people who are far left in technology saying, hey, all right, we get it. We’re going to donate money to your inaugural fund. Okay, we get it. We want to be on your side because things could be very, very great for business, for them, and that’s the biggest thing when it comes to us, it’s the biggest thing for you, it’s the biggest thing when you come to your the people who spend the most money.

It’s not doing great for the bottom third. That’s not who drives the economy. It’s not who drives a lot of these stocks higher. But to make money in stocks, especially right now, not everything’s good. They’re only going to be there for you. We’re going to talk more detailed stocks and we can do that tomorrow on our podcast. Again, that’s our paid podcast that we love and it’s $10 a month, which, if you’re going to do it, do it now, because, again, we’re going to restructure all of our products and make it more affordable for everyone, but the price on the lower end is going to go a lot higher, but we’re going to be offering more services pretty soon. I would say it’s going to happen very soon.

My publisher is coming down next week so we can publishing business and stuff like that, because we’re growing our consulting business tremendously, but we want to make sure we provide value for everyone, that everyone has access to our services. But also we don’t want to be giving our services away for free, for very cheap prices, because we do have quality research and it’s what we love, and you hear a lot of that on our premium podcast, which is every single Thursday, so Day. I don’t know if you wanted to. I think you know what. You mentioned something to me before this which is fascinating, and how to deal with regional banks, and I want to end on that because that was really cool, because I didn’t hear anything about this. I was away for the past two days on business, three days but you’re telling me you heard something with the regional banks. Get into that, because that was really cool.

0:53:32 – Daniel Creech

Yeah, I’ll get into it tomorrow in more detail on Wall Street Unplugged, but just something to take away here and the value you can get out of this administrative change that we’re talking about. And again, can’t really point it out as a line item, but help me out here, frank. I was watching the cabinet hearings. Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Besant.

0:53:54 – Frank Curzio

I think so.

0:53:55 – Daniel Creech

Was testifying and it was over a three-hour, three-hour-ish Q&A, but it was very informative you don’t have to listen to it, because I did and a couple of things that struck me again. I’ll get into more of this tomorrow. But for all the naysayers or worries out there about a central banking digital currency CBDC Scott was quick to point that and say nope, kibosh, on that, we don’t need that. I see no reason for that, so that should get the. That is positive for momentum, in my opinion, because that is a nerve wracking and scary thing. What he really said that stood out to me and I think is valuable for investors is he was being questioned by Tim Scott, who is a representative from South Carolina. South Carolina is where Scott Besant is from, so they had that little powwow there. They talked about regional banks. Frank Curzio, we’ve talked about this because Mr Bessant said the five big banks have gotten way too big. He talked about not only is the Remember this guy is not Daniel Creech Creech walking off the street with a passion for finance, this guy is a billionaire hedge fund banking analysis guy. When he says hey, I have an opinion on the banking system, you ought to floor to listen to this guy. Okay, he is unlike the elected idiots that are questioning him. He is intelligent and talking about this and he says not only is the banking system strong, but it’s probably overcapitalized, which means he, hopefully, will push for reforms to increase liquidity in the banking system for everybody. And it would be absolutely unbelievable and I hate to be rude, I don’t think this is going to happen because I think the forces are too great. But, man, if you can actually get regional banks to grow and the five biggest banks, the JP Morgan we love the big banksters, we joke about them all the time, but if you could actually get their influence and market share down and the regional banking system lifted up, you would see prosperity across more people in the United States than you have in a generation. And again, it’s not just a line item, but just think if you spread the wealth out, everybody that likes to blame the rich follow your own cooking, follow your own advice. If you actually spread the wealth out and rising tide lifts all boats, why wouldn’t you start in the banking sector? The answer, of course, is because they’re corrupt and they’re liars and they’re not really give a shit about you. That’s okay. The reality of it is you actually have a chance. Whether or not it’ll happen or not we don’t know, we have to wait and see but you actually have an opportunity and people saying the the correct things in the position of power to actually implement change.

Home Bank Corp shares HOMB. We’ve talked about this a lot. It was a previous recommission years ago. It is one of the best run regional banks out there. I’m going to go into it in more detail as podcasts unfold over time. John Allison is the CEO. Him and his family are the largest shareholders of that bank. They just announced a huge repurchase. Take it with some salt. The headline is a lot better than what it actually is, but it’s still incredibly bullish. But yeah, frank regional banks, I would look for the most well-capitalized. And yes, I’m not being a goofy politician, but stay to the South and Southeast, because that’s where a lot of the regional banking and momentum is farmland, et cetera, et cetera. But be selective on these guys. But H-O-M-B home bank is one of my absolute favorites.

0:57:06 – Frank Curzio

I’m going to get to it more tomorrow, but I’m meeting with Frank Curzio Trotta and also Rick Rule, so they’re starting a new bank called Battle Bank, raised a little bit of money for it. I wasn’t too crazy about the terms of the deal, but I love Frank Curzio Trotta. Frank Curzio Trotta started EverBank, everbank and that was everbank. Everbank field was jacksonville right. They sponsored the jacksonville jaguars, which is great, knowing him, because you know, you’re able to get very, very good seats and sometimes even sometimes I was able to walk out the team onto the field, which is really cool because of him and he’s a really great guy. He’s brilliant, one of the smartest people I know in banking. He’s been trying to start this bank and I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.

Uh, battle bank for I think a year and a half now, and the regulators just were not allowing him to do it Someone who’s done this already. They just didn’t allow it. They were just saying we need this, we need this, we need this, we need this, and now I’m going to meet with him today. There’s a conference here in Jacksonville which is really cool, run by my buddy, john Knudsen, very, very good. It’s like an industry-wide conference called FMS. It’s like a marketing summit, but they’re going to be there as well and I got invited to their dinner which is really cool to a close friend and I got to meet with them tonight. I met with them at New Orleans and I spoke to Frank Curzio probably for a half an hour about this and he was just telling me how you, they say, just like in crypto, and they’d still come back and say no, no, no, that all changes now. Now this bank’s going to improve and this is a bank that the way he was able to run Everbank into a massive bank and get taken over by TA Cref is because of the structures and the different things they were able to do where they were using gold as collateral and using the mining industry again to secure loans. It was just amazing and creative that other banks they weren’t doing this and he was very creative with that and I think you’re going to see a Bitcoin feature to this as well. Now this bank is going to get approved.

Again, it’s private. It’s probably going to be public in, I would say, six months from now, but I’m going to go meet him. I’ll talk about it more tomorrow, because tonight, after this, I think we’ll meet at like 6, 6.30. They have a whole dinner and everything. I’m going to meet with them personally. I think Rick Rule is going to be there as well. It’s the biggest name in the mining industry. Basically, it’s the smartest guy you’ll ever know in the mining industry.

But I’ll let you know more about that meeting tomorrow on our premium podcast and get some deals no-transcript catalyst that we’ve been giving people for the last year and a half doing these live events. We did two of them, I think, for crypto. We have done to give away two free names. We’re going to have a Q&A. Ask any question, it doesn’t matter what it is. You know, just again, dial down.

People ask about wallets or can I try Coinbase or are these things going to be insured now with these accounts? And you know, should I have to worry, and you know they’ll ask about different cryptos. You know we’re talking to an audience, so we cool and a lot of times it goes on for half an hour. I’m like I want to get out and it’s another half an hour. It goes by because nobody gets off of it, because it’s fun. We’re answering all these questions. So, yeah, that’s what we like to do for you. If you want to register, just go to CurzioCrypto.com and it’s next Thursday, January 30th. It’s going to be awesome, awesome event. So that’s it for us on that, daniel and I are going to see you tomorrow. Daniel Creech, any final, I always ask you and you always say no.

1:00:24 – Daniel Creech

No, maybe I should say Nope, see you tomorrow.

1:00:26 – Frank Curzio

I can ask you a different question now. Okay, questions, comments. I got to think about that one. Questions? Comments? email me Frank Curzio at curzioresearch.com, daniel email.

1:00:34 – Daniel Creech

Daniel Creech at curzioresearch.com

1:00:39 – Frank Curzio

Take care.

1:00:40 – Announcer

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