This transcript was automatically generated.

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

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s April 10th.

I’m Frank Curzio.

This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines and tell you uh what’s really moving these markets.

On today’s show.

Forget cuts a rate hikes on the way after today’s ugly inflation report.

Why the economy may not be as strong as everyone suggests and the easiest way to make money as interest rates are likely to stay higher for much longer.

Let’s begin today’s show with the CPI.

New Price Index was released this morning and it showed inflation is running hotter than expected.

Now if you read the headlines, it’s gonna show that inflation came in at 0.4% and it came at 0.4% on both the CPI and something they call the core CPI, which excludes food and energy.

And a reason why they exclude is ’cause it’s extremely volatile month by month.

And when you read this stuff, it’s gonna say, alright, 0.4%, is that a big deal from 0.3%, one 10% higher? So it’s probably no big deal as you could see with the market today, it is a big deal and we’re down 500 points as I taped this.

Who knows where it’ll be at the end of this.

It could be up, I don’t know.

But 500 points makes a great headline.

’cause 500 points seems like a lot.

In fact, 1987 when the market crashed at Dow Jones fell 500 points that amount to 23%.

I think it was 508 points.

The reason why I know that event so well is ’cause my dad actually called it in writing in his newsletter, which I had on the website.

I’m gonna put back on the website, one of the most brilliant calls I, I’m not even being biased here.

I mean yes it’s my late dad and stuff like that, but nobody called the 87 crash in writing a month before it happened.

And the top, it was headline that crash with a question mark and this crash could be bigger than a previous three combined.

And that’s really what jumpstart his career because there wasn’t a lot of people on CBC or Bloomberg just getting started out back then.

And all of a sudden he was like a rockstar ’cause everybody else was bullish.

And it was about 20 people that you listen to.

Where today it’s, you know, and you’re going to get some airtime.

Like Bitcoin’s going to one and a half million, but Kathy Wood, all the market’s gonna crash or Tesla’s gonna go down to $14.

You see that headline? You know, that’s what they like, they like crazy headlines ’cause it’s entertaining and you’re gonna click on the story and that’s how they make money in advertising.

Okay? I don’t give a s**t about that.

That what I give a s**t is about making you money.

So 500 points today is a big difference because it only amounts to about 1.3%.

Now again, if you’re thinking that the inflation report, that’s just, you know, a 10 to percent, not a big deal, lemme explain.

Inflation is now running at 3.8%.

If you know, if you follow the market, you know this, if not, you listed this podcast the first time the Fed has come out like crazy over the past, you say we gotta get down to 2%, 2%, 2%, 2%.

That’s their inflation target.

2%. So we’re looking at 3.8% right now and it was up 0.4%, which is last month, right? So reports this week for last month, which is March.

So that point for 0.4% is from the previous month.

So that’s what’s up month over month.

But if you go back to October and inflation increased only 0.1%, that’s when the market really started moving and we closed the year much higher.

And that’s when we had Powell come on December and do this massive pivot outta nowhere.

We’re cutting, we’re cutting, we’re cutting rates.

We’re definitely cutting rates.

We’re cutting rates no matter what.

That was December.

Okay? So if you look at October, and even if you look at November and December though, so October happened to be the low month over month increase of 0.1%.

Then November December inflation rose to 0.2%.

But it was okay because that was in line with expectations still coming down a little bit.

Then we had January and February it rose by 0.3% and now it’s at 0.4% month over month.

So when I’m watching TV today and Steve Leeman and all these guys and they do great analysis, they’re trying to tell me that inflation is moving sideways, it’s not moving sideways, it’s going freaking higher.

And it marks the third month in a row with a CPI was really, really s****y.

And by really, really s****y, that’s a big deal because we hear all the time, well this is due to shelter, they tear apart the numbers, it’s due to shelter, right? And shelter’s gonna come down.

It’s such a big component.

Oh, it’s due to seasonal factors.

It’s see oh food ca oh, due to temporary rising jobs or wage increases or whatever, right? They just break it down and say, oh this is temporary.

Three months is not temporary, two months is not really temporary.

Three months is a trend and inflation’s going higher.

And the increases, when you look at the number, I wish I could point to one thing that was wrong, but it wasn’t.

It was a lot.

It was everything.

I mean, almost everything you could take out certain food categories, but prices for eggs, meat, chicken went higher.

Stuff that I like to eat every day rent’s up.

Remember, rent’s supposed to decrease, supposed to come down.

They were up 0.5%, they’re up 5.7% year over year.

Rents are up 5.7% year over year.

That’s the biggest component to the CPI services increased by 0.5%, that’s up 5.4% year over year.

You wanna talk about craziness, look at auto health insurance.

I mean it’s going up by by if like three, four, 5% a month.

I mean it’s just, there’s no regulation in this industry, right? They could, there’s no real competition.

I mean auto is this competition a little bit.

But, but in, in in health insurance, I mean gimme a break.

I mean they just could continually raise prices, raise prices, raise prices, raise prices.

How could this be sustainable? Then we have oil and gasoline prices rising.

But don’t worry, that’s outside the core and that’s only temporary.

Is it? Is it really because I’m seeing raw materials surge, which is an indication that inflation is rising.

You’re seeing the 10 year surge, the 4.5% indicating that rates should be going higher, not lower.

Now over the past 18 months, the Fed has made it purpose to let the markets know how many rate cuts can be expected and over what timeframe.

I don’t know why they do this.

They just do it even though they’re so effing wrong on their predictions.

I mean it’s an absolute disaster to be honest with you.

Considering there was a hundred percent chance that we were supposed to cut rates at least one time in that we were gonna cut several times and then a very, very high probability.

We’re gonna see lots of cuts in 2024.

It got up to six to seven cuts in 2024.

This was just in January.

In mid-January, we’re predicting six cuts in 2024.

This is not a joke, this isn’t something that’s not a big deal where you go to six cuts of three cuts.

It might not seem that big of a deal when it comes to interest rates when you have, you know, a 50 basis point cut.

But that’s a big deal.

Now if you’re looking at six rate cuts, a percentage and a half, that was expected.

And that’s not coming now.

I mean, of course we didn’t get any rates rate cuts in 2023.

And now when inflation rise again, what are we hearing from all these Fed officials? Oh, the economy’s great, it’s fine.

You know what? We might not be getting any rate cuts in 2024 as well.

And this was before the CPI even came out.

Here’s why you need to pay very, very close attention to what I’m about to tell you.

The Fed has absolutely no clue what to do.

If you look at when it comes to rate cuts, they can’t, they can’t cut rates because inflation is starting to move higher.

They can’t raise rates because they could push this fragile economy immediately into recession.

I know what you’re thinking, Frank, fragile economy.

What the f? No way.

Hey, we just saw manufacturing on fire first time.

We’ve seen expansion in two years.

Job numbers are great.

That vent has consumer spending is strong.

Frank, you’re an idiot.

Wages rose 5% year over year.

Everything’s great.

GDP estimates continue to be revised higher.

The economy’s great.

Frank, you’re an idiot.

You have no idea what you’re talking about.

And look at the stock market, Frank.

It’s doing extremely well.

Even though we’ve pulled back from the highs, we’re still up 3% this year.

Plus everyone in the median, everything that I’m reading, even the president himself keeps telling me how strong this economy is.

So Frank, what are you talking about? Well, let’s look under the hood for a second.

Starting with potential rate cuts.

So in January 8th, fed funds futures were pricing in five rate cuts for 2024.

And just three months later, FMC members are now hinting at zero.

And again, this was before the CPI report.

Now if we don’t cut rates, that means rates are gonna stay higher for longer.

Which nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody was forecasting.

Nobody had that on the table at all.

That there would be zero rate cuts in 2024.

Nobody, nobody, not one, that one guy out there went on a limb and said we’re not gonna get rate cuts in 2024.

Nobody said that As far as January and even into February, that was not on the table at all.

So the Fed decides not to cut rates, which is definitely going to be the case.

The negative implications are staggering and when I look at this market, it it’s being significantly underestimated in terms of the negative impacts, especially by the Fed and by most economists.

Now why would I be saying that? Here’s a glimpse of some numbers I are gonna share.

You try not to puke.

The US is sitting on $34 trillion in debt.

This debt is increasing at a $1 trillion rate every four months.

Interest payments alone are going to be over $900 billion this year.

So to put that in perspective, ’cause we go around trillions and billions like it’s nothing these days to put that in perspective, 900 billion amounts to 3.1% of our GDP.

Just from interest payments.

Just from interest payments that compares it used to be or was 1.8% in 2019, right? Pre COVID for the government went nuts and started spending money like idiots on the consumer level.

Okay? The economy’s great, it’s fine, it’s awesome.

But credit card debt, it sits at 1.3 trillion record high ever.

And I feel like this number is often talked about where it’s not a big deal, but let’s provide a little color.

US credit card debt could by 4.6% in Q3 and another 4.6% in Q4 of 2023.

What? Get those numbers pretty soon for our first quarter, of rising credit card debt.

This debt now carries an average percentage rate of 24.6% at 24.6%.

That amounts to $320 billion in interest alone.

Or the amount credit card debt will grow this year.

If everyone makes the minimum payment, which a lot of people do, in other words, credit card debt is almost guaranteed to grow over 20% annually, at least in 2024 and likely in 2025.

’cause even if we do decide to cut rates, it’s not really gonna be that fast and we’re not gonna see those full effects for a little while.

They were supposed to happen in 2023.

Now they’re not happening in 23.

It’s supposed to happen in 2024.

It’s not happening in 2024.

What’s gonna happen in 2025? That’s credit card debt.

Let’s go to auto loans.

Auto loans.

I can’t believe this number is at 1.6 trillion, right? This number’s gone up every year since 2010.

Makes sense? We had 0% interest rates and people taking loans out.

I get it.

And now make up 9%, 9% of all household debt.

I didn’t know that.

That was an interesting stat when I looked it up.

The average interest rate on auto loans is close to 10%.

That’s double what it was three years ago.

Autos, everyone knows normally you’re depreciating the asset.

But after COVID, supply chain concerns ’cause the government flooded, flooded the markets and the economy with trillions in cash resulted as high demand.

We had these supply chain concerns and holy s**t, what’s going on? So due to supply chain concerns for the first time, I wanna say in history, the price for most cars surged, including used ones after you bought them because there was no demand or there was high demand, there was no supply.

However, this trend reversed a couple of years ago and this has caused negative equity to soar over 20% negative equity.

You should be familiar with, remember negative equity had to do with the housing crisis.

People bought homes and everyone’s like, ah, you don’t have to put anything down.

They bought 20 homes.

But when the price of the home collapsed, if they sold it, that means they would have to pay a check or they have to write a check, right? That means they lost money on the house and they didn’t wanna do that.

So they just walked away.

And that’s why you sold massive amount of houses.

Even when I moved to Fernandina Beach, which is a beautiful area, 80% of those houses that were on the water, on both sides, there’s a street call flexion that goes all the way down on both sides.

Were for sale.

And this was in 2010 when I moved down here ’cause a couple of, couple of big firms bought a whole bunch of these houses, put nothing down, and when home prices collapsed, they’re like, all right, I’m just leaving.

I have nothing to lose.

I have nothing in the house.

The price is lower, can’t sell ’em, forget it.

This is what’s happening in the auto industry.

So this means when you see negative equity is at it’s over of these vehicles are gonna have to write a check or roll this payment over into a new car loan at a much higher rate when they sell their vehicle.

In other words, these people are f****d.

Sorry to put it that way.

Now what happens when you keep rates high for longer? You think this is gonna get better, it’s gonna get worse ’cause it’s consistently getting worse and worse and worse and worse.

And it makes sense when you think about it.

’cause when interest rates go higher, it means that the amount you have in debt to service that debt is going to go higher.

And maybe it, you know, you’re paying, you know you have expenses of a thousand dollars a month and all of a sudden you’re like, okay, now they’re up to $1,200 a month.

You’re like, wow, that’s a big increase.

Okay, go three months now go six months, now go a year.

And what does that mean? Now you’re like, holy s**t, I gotta change my spending habits because rates are higher for longer and I can no longer spend the way I spent because I have to pay more to service this debt.

And most Americans are in debt.

Our economy’s built on debt.

What about HELOCs? Remember those surging up seven straight quarters to $360 billion.

So these loans are made on current value of homes.

However, as interest rates stay higher for longer, it’s a double-edged sword.

Especially for these borrowers.

Sometimes they have variable interest rates on these.

Maybe they don’t go much higher if you just did it, but they’re higher than they were last year, six months ago, three months ago, rates are going higher.

So now they’re gonna adjust variable industry.

So, so higher payments, not only you have higher payments, but it’s coupled with a likely decrease in your home price Based on when you first took out that home equity line of credit, which you only, you know it’s there and you only get charged if you use it.

Not a bad option if you have equity in your homes.

A lot of people HELOCs are surging because some people couldn’t sell their houses and maybe they had 50% equity in the house and say, you know what, lemme take a HELOC out this way.

I have some money and then when I sell the house, I’ll pay it off.

That’s fine.

I mean, you know, these loans, even subprime loans, they make sense.

It doesn’t make sense.

It wasn’t subprime that crushed the markets, it was the leveraging of subprime because these a******s on Wall Street are greedy pricks, sorry, sometimes the New York comes out to me and they gotta leverage and create synthetic, outta synthetic, outta synthetic, outta synthetic subprime loans.

And you just need a three, 4% pullback in home prices and you have a massive collapse in entire financial system.

’cause everything is leveraged to housing.

So you have HELOCs also surging.

So there’s no surprise delinquency rates are skyrocketing for credit cards and auto loans has surpassed 2008, That’s 14 years ago now.

And with interest rates now expected to stay higher for longer, we’re likely gonna see both of these things go up into the double digits.

In terms of delinquencies for the first time in history, I think they might have touched there in 2009, Now that you’re know 10, 11, 12%, how do you pay this off with 24% average percentage rate on, on, on your credit cards? How do you pay that off? Does sound like your economy’s doing great? Like everybody says on television, I don’t see it.

I mean couple that with a massive, massive, massive amount of layoffs.

Thousands if not tens of thousands of layoffs in almost any, every industry, including the two best performers, which is large cap banks and also large cap tech names.

They’re laying off employees like crazy.

They say some of that may be to AI or whatever, but they’re finding efficiencies.

But when have you seen an economy be touted as being so freaking strong with delinquency rates are 14 year highs and going higher and you’re seeing still lots of layoffs across most of the sectors outside of services.

Let me know ’cause when I looked, the only comparison I saw was in 2007 when the economy was still going up and then all of a sudden, you know, I think it was countrywide and, and Morgan Stanley, a couple there, you know, Housing related loan funds started crashing and everything.

But the economy’s still doing okay and then you saw delinquencies going higher and everyone’s like, hey we’re doing okay.

And and you know when it comes to a recession, which is funny ’cause recession usually they figure out we were in a recession when it’s like, you know, 12 months later, nine months later.

’cause like, oh we go back and we revise all those estimates.

We were in a recession last year.

I’m not saying we’re in a recession.

What I’m saying is the economy is not strong.

You’re outta your mind.

You think the economy’s strong and now that you’re gonna keep interest rates higher for long ’cause the Fed is stuck.

They’re in a lot of trouble here.

Okay? They got very, very lucky.

They got very lucky that they raised interest rates the way they did and it didn’t hurt the economy.

But their job was to slow down the economy and they didn’t slow down the economy.

So based on their mandate with a 2% inflation target and it need to slow down the economy control inflation, they should be raising rates.

But they’re not gonna do that because we’re in an election year And if they raise rates, it’s really going to crush this economy.

’cause I don’t think there’s a lot of people out there that are gonna be able to take it.

And that’s why you see in delinquencies, not just in credit cards and auto loans across every debt category are moving sharply higher.

So the Fed right now and Powell, they’re in hope and pray mode hoping that current high rates is enough to slow the economy and stop people from going into more debt and spending that money money they don’t have.

But this is not gonna happen.

We’re not gonna see, like none of this works.

You’re not gonna see the economy slow unless you see the government slow down their spending and stop spending like a drunken sailor.

And again, that’s not gonna happen, especially during election year.

I mean Donald Trump’s excited about becoming the next president.

Wait till you see the year after whoever is president.

Good luck.

’cause you’re gonna have to cut back on spending.

You’re gonna have higher rates into 2025, well into 2025.

You really think we’re not going to see a pullback at that time.

You think we’re still gonna be trading at historical high valuations considering where interest rates are.

How do we trade at a higher valuation? We’re trading at 20 times forward earnings on the s and p 500, which is higher than 19 times forward earnings that we traded for pretty much last five years.

Yet interest rates went from point 25% to five point whatever, 25, 35, whatever that is today.

So if you look at what’s happening in the market, Rates are gonna go higher and much higher regardless of what the Fed does.

That’s why you’ve seen a 10 year pop today.

You’re gonna see it go higher.

Jamie Dimon has been all over this, one of the only people that have been saying this.

Rates are going higher, rates are going higher, rates are going higher while everyone’s else, like the Fed’s gonna cut, the Fed’s gonna cut, the Fed’s gonna cut, the Fed can’t cut.

They, there’s no way they can cut.

And if they cut, they lose all credibility.

’cause we’re supposed to go down to 2%, three months in a row, we’re going on higher inflation.

But they’re not gonna raise because we know the Fed is political regardless of who’s in office a Democrat or Republican, it’s always gonna be political during and election year.

So while you see higher interest rates, again, we’re down 500%.

It’s not like we’re crashing.

We could see easily a 10% pullback, which is fine considering how much we’re up in the markets.

You, we get three, four, 5% pullback.

Okay? It’s healthy.

But doesn’t mean that you have to sell everything.

What it does mean is you should be repe repositioning your portfolio.

I know it’s been in large cap tech and great stuff like that, but you should own gold.

Gold is now a momentum play and it’s a demand play.

It’s not a store of value.

It’s not, based on, you know, the dollar in the inverse relation that it has with the dollar where, you know, the dollar is, is weak, gold goes higher, but the dollar’s strong and gold’s going higher pretty much, I don’t wanna say for the first time, but for a very long time the dollar is going higher along with gold.

So defying like a trend that it usually, you know, that it usually follows that inverse relationship.

You can say, well gold’s going high because of deficits.

Deficits were deficits were high forever.

I mean, even if you take the period from a 10 year period from, and I did research on this, I’m not guessing it from 2012, from 2012 to to 2022.

So around there 10, 11 years, when you look at our deficits, they went from 16 trillion to to to basically 30 trillion, no one’s doubled.

$30 trillion.

What did gold do? Gold did nothing over that time period.

In fact, it went from like 1750 to to 13 hundreds and then it went back up to like 1800.

But you can’t tell me, well it’s a rising deficit.

So you gotta buy no, gold is huge because of one major reason.

It’s central banks are buying the s**t out of it.

And this happened, this happened when we took Russia off the Swift system, which was not on the table and scared the s**t out of every country because when we did that, we could do it to any country in a push of a button and destroy their economy but not being on the swift system.

So it was like, you know what, it’s time for us to really wean ourselves off the dollar.

It doesn’t mean that the de dollarization that the dollar’s going away anytime soon.

But the evidence shows and the charts show, you’re seeing the reliance on the dollars less and less where it’s I think 58% and it was high as like 80% not long ago that are doing deals in, in, in oil in rupees and just, they’re like, you know, we just have to have a little bit of exposure outside of this and they’re buying a s**t load of gold.

That’s where the demand’s coming from.

So we get the store value, the negative real interest rates.

Interest rates are no longer negative.

They’re positive.

So it doesn’t make sense to hold gold when you could just put it in a money market account and earn 2%, right? That’s the real risk, right? The the the the real interest rate, you know, minus inflation.

’cause we say, well what about inflation? It’s minus inflation.

So why would you hold gold when you could put it in a bank risk free and earn 2%? Doesn’t make sense, right? So, so the reason why gold’s going higher, I love it.

All the gold people are excited and, and you know, they’re going over world a thesis and the government spending, I told you so a lot of that’s b******t.

It’s nice to see something as a momentum trade, which they’re not used to ’cause gold has never been a momentum trade, but it’s going higher because of demand.

You’re seeing it through central banks, they’re buying it.

Bitcoin’s another great option, especially with the half incoming raw materials.

Wonder why they’re going higher.

Copper oil, gasoline, uranium energy in general.

But one of your biggest allocations when it comes to your portfolio where interest rates gonna stay higher for longer has to be to the big banks.

Holy s**t.

A net interest income for the four largest banks had a record $250 billion last year.

They charge between, you know, interest rates and, and what they lend out and, and you know, they borrow from and interest rates going higher is very, very good.

Now they have an adjustment period as interest rates went higher because it was so used to charging massive fees now that you saw investment banking come down.

So there’s a big transition there.

But net interest, I mean that income is absolutely surging.

And I don’t know if you know how much 250 billion in profits is net profits for these four banks who have zero competitive risk because of the government laws not going away anytime soon and make an absolute fortune.

But even better, if you look at every bank.

So every bank has said this, every rating agency that covers a bank said this.

And every analyst forecasting, right? That covers the banks are forecasting they were forecasting fed interest income that it peaked six months ago and it’s gonna come down.

It makes sense.

Why? Because they’re gonna bring down interest rates.

So that margins gonna shrink, huh? What a difference a few months makes.

I mean we were supposed to come down six rate cuts, six cuts we’re supposed to have this year to zero.

So now these banks are like, whoa, these large banks, yeah, they were predicting like, hey, we kind of peaked.

No, they haven’t peaked.

You’re gonna see earnings absolutely surge for the largest banks in 2024 and probably into 2025.

And all the analysts are on the wrong side of that trade because like expected, like everyone, remember nobody, zero people predicted there would be no rate cuts in January or February.

Nobody had that.

Nobody had that.

They just started saying it recently.

Even the banks didn’t believe it.

The analyst, the rating agencies now, all of ’em on the other side where they’re going to have to raise their estimates, they’re gonna say, well it hasn’t peaked, it’s probably gonna be even more this year.

And now the economy doing okay where you’re seeing more of the Reddits come out and, and IPOs come out now they’re also generating fees.

You should have one large bank in your portfolio, at least one of ’em talking about JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi, one of those in your portfolio And maybe looking at, at, you know, other names here or other sectors.

Be careful because the sectors that have done the best in the past 18 months or past 12 months, they were doing great in anticipation of lower rates.

It got annihilated because we expecting higher rates and we got higher rates, they adjusted, AI came along, they did great, but now they really surged because you thought rates were gonna come down, now they’re gonna be higher for longer.

Does it mean that these big companies deserve the premium? Some of them do.

Meta does not expensive.

Google not expensive.

Does Apple does Tesla, Netflix.

Netflix.

Netflix is a great company.

But you better, you better start seeing lots of revenue from advertising, which I think they will.

That’s how you have to look at your portfolio right now.

That’s how big this news was.

So it’s not this ultimate collapse of the market’s holy account.

It, it’s it’s portfolio adjustment, reallocation.

That’s what you should be focusing on.

So moving on here, no surprise, my inbox at frank@curzioresearch.com, lighting up with questions about AI.

Its a hosted event three weeks ago called the AI Story No One is Telling.

So a lot of people attend and we were on that for two and a half hours or two hours of that.

Were just answering questions and it was great.

And I love that part.

Daniel’s feeding me questions.

I’m hanging out, we’re drinking beers and, and again, it’s 100% live.

It’s cool.

It’s a lot of fun.

And it’s funny how We saw Great Demand, first of all, right? I mean just not only for the call, we launched a Curzio AI newsletter, first newsletter launched in seven years and we saw massive demand for it, which is really, really cool.

But it’s amazing how the questions that we’re getting now and we’re getting those questions because of the news flow and not over the past three weeks, I highlighted that last podcast, but just over the past five, seven days or so, I mean, it’s pretty insane because when you look at, at what has taken place, when you look at Apple and, and people are like, well, is AI Frank? And I got this question during that event, you know, is AI, you know, is it in a bubble? In a bubble? I mean, it’s not even on your, your your your mobile phone yet.

It’s not even on the iPhone.

So this week it was amazing that Apple released its AI platform called Realm, which supposedly is operates better than chat form many features.

Yet Google announced the partner with Bayer Healthcare Company for new AI radiology products, which makes it a lot easier to see, determine, to find different things.

Again, I, I’ve been talking to Scott Erickson who I interviewed his director of AI at the Mayo Clinic, same thing as a company that’s actually doing this now.

He said it’s fascinating.

He just, you know, the whole back office behind that where doctors have to look at things brand new when they’re doing something.

But man, now you’re seeing two big companies partnered together again this week.

Yeah, Bloomberg and Reuters reported that Big Tech Giants, the ones focused on AI, have been buying data like crazy.

So they sign deals with Shutterfly and Photo Bucket, which have tens of billions of pictures and videos, tens of billions.

And why are they doing that? Because of all the, you know, you just type it in and pictures come up and videos come up and you make your own shorts now and make, there’s, there’s movie short movies now that are being made through AI, very, very simple very quickly.

And a lot of this stuff maybe, you know, it’s taking off pictures and the more data they have, but now they’re able to use this and incorporate it with their systems, their AI systems like Gemini Chat, GT four, Claude 3, which is from Anthropic.

But the biggest news by far, by far was just the other day came from Elon Musk saying AI is going to take over human intelligence in one year.

This was definitely the highlight of the event three weeks ago because I put this chart up and if you’re watching this show you exactly the chart.

Okay, lemme throw this up, okay, this is a GI.

So if you’re on a YouTube you could see this and everyone went crazy over this chart ’cause this is from Arc Best and Lemme bring it up here.

So ARC best came out, but this chart and showed from 2000, it goes from 2019 to 2030 in 2019.

Just in case you’re not looking at it, it says this is pre GPT-3 average 80 years.

It’s 80 years.

It said that it’s gonna come out before we reach a GI, artificial general intelligence where machines operate at the same capacity as humans, basically.

Okay? They said it was 80 years away in 2019, this has moved so fast by 2020, it’s 50 years.

By 2021 it’s 34 years.

By 2022 it’s 18 years.

And by 2023 last year it’s gone down to eight years.

Again, it was 80 years in 2019 it’s already down to eight of how quick this is happening.

So when you have Elon Musk come out and say that, Hey, you know what, this is happening next year, it’s pretty crazy.

Probably the reason why my email box is lighting up is it’s true is it’s gonna happen because if it happens, it’s a game changer.

It’s the holy s**t moment for investors where you are gonna see the share prices of companies absolutely explode higher machines learning from machines.

It’s scary when you think about it.

It’s crazy.

I know you can go anywhere you want with it, especially when you have Microsoft just announcing a couple weeks ago, again after our event, people were like, well where the money gonna come from? How’s the money gonna come into this sector? Isn’t it didn’t already come into this sector.

They announced at OpenAI they’re gonna build a supercomputer a hundred billion dollar supercomputer within four years.

What do you think that computer’s gonna do? Holy cow.

So when I see all of this happening, there’s no wonder that I’m getting tons of questions on it.

But it reminds me because when we pushed the Curzio AI newsletter, I was glad to see it, you know, very, very strong demand, which is, which is awesome because I think you can do very well.

And I’m not just saying that, especially if you do this podcast, I don’t b******t people where we started doing these live events and six months ago I pitched it with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was getting, you know, the industry was s****y.

I mean 6, 7, 8 months ago, it was terrible.

It was a hard sell.

So I lowered the price of our Crypto Intelligence newsletter, said Guys, you gotta get in.

Bitcoin’s gonna go a lot higher from here.

And it went a lot higher.

And a couple months later we did another one and said, look, you have to own the alt coins if you own those alt coins, those utility coins, especially the Halving, right? Because the first pitch we had, we said Listen, you’re gonna see all these ETFs approval approved and you’re gonna see news flow everywhere on Bitcoin.

Now you have the Halving coming out, which comes out every four years.

They reduced supply growth in half every four years.

It’s coming out in two weeks.

I think it’s the 24th of April.

So we said after that event, the next 18 months, Bitcoin surges and everybody talks about Bitcoin surges, but no one was looking at the alt coins which go up three to one three times more than Bitcoin when Bitcoin goes higher.

So if you believe Bitcoin’s going higher, which I am, I’m not the one that’s telling you it’s gonna go to 10 million, I think it’s gonna go to a hundred thousand.

I don’t know when.

I would say within 24 months if it does, especially after the Halving, a lot of these companies are gonna do great, recommend five new companies.

Anyone that bought that newsletter is up a lot.

They did fantastic.

And I could tell you those gains are gonna be nothing compared to what you see within AI.

Because when you look at AI and what it’s doing, I’m not telling you to buy the big companies and, and Nvidia, you’re not gonna get rich by an Nvidia here.

You’re not gonna get rich buying, you know, super micro or or or Meta at these levels, you know, Amazon and companies that are gonna benefit, you know, Apple and Google, but to small caps that are learning how to use this technology that I’m seeing in small cap land that allows them small caps to become the next generation of large caps.

And that’s how you make a fortune in the market.

And it’s hard to do because all the IPOs we see, like Reddit, they come out at stupid crazy valuations.

Now all this PAC came out crazy valuations where most of the growth takes place and you’re excited like, well I’m gonna own this awesome company like Lyft or Uber and it’s so cool.

Oh my god, it’s amazing when you’re not really looking at the fundamentals when most of the growth took place already.

You might get lucky with a Meta or something like that that just has this acceleration growth that’s amazing.

But now small caps, especially two that are in our portfolio already are on fire.

You know, they’re great and they all, they’ve been using this technology and not just saying they’re using this technology, which is every freaking company, only 6% are, are really incorporating this right now, as of now into their businesses.

We found two small caps that not just incorporate it.

They started doing this about two years ago and now you’re seeing the results which are incredible and even our next day that we’re gonna come out with next week is gonna change the landscape of the electricity utility energy industry and what they do, and they don’t even call it AI.

So you’re not gonna find the company, I won’t tell you what they call it.

They make sure they don’t call AI, they, they have their own name for it, which is fascinating.

But they’re seeing results already and it’s gonna allow these companies to compete and they’re taking market share from large caps who are late to the party.

That’s where the money’s gonna be made in AI.

So by no surprise, I’m getting lots of questions with all the news and people are getting more excited and they got excited on the call you and we, we spent two and a half hours because people stayed on that live event for a long time.

So with that said, on Thursday, which is tomorrow April 11th, 7:00 PM I’m gonna be hosting a live q and a live for free.

Okay, free to attend.

You don’t have to limit your questions just to AI.

You can literally ask me anything because you know, we know what’s going on with inflation positioning in sectors.

Again, I’m getting lots of questions more than usual, especially on AI.

But we’re gonna have this event because I’m a nice guy.

I give you guys some of my time and say, okay, let’s answer the questions.

And I love this part of it.

I love talking to you guys directly.

I love it being live.

I love Daniel’s here.

Again, it’s fun, it’s cool, it’s not boring.

Uh, and you get to ask anything.

Now you can register for this event by going to www.askCurzio.com.

Once you register, you’re actually gonna be able to post your question right away, which I suggest you do ’cause it’s gonna move you up in the queue.

So you know, we’re gonna see the questions before we go on and we know which ones to get to and those are usually ones that we’re gonna get to first.

Okay? Then everyone gets a chance when you’re attending you can ask questions alive, okay? Then Daniel’s gonna you those questions and then just ask me and we have fun with them and it’s a lot of fun.

Remember, there’s no stupid questions.

Well only a few.

Sometimes there’s stupid questions.

I gotta be honest with you that you could find out with a simple Google search.

That’s okay.

I made it answer your questions.

It’s during this live event and a lot of it’s gonna be ai I’m sure it’s the past 10 days.

I mean the news that we saw is incredible.

Uh, but Thursday, 7:00 PM you get to ask me anything, gonna register www.askCurzio.com.

Uh, also we are going to be closing out our charter membership price on a Curzio AI newsletter that we launched three weeks ago, which is a 40% discount.

Also, we gave an extra year for free.

It’s a really, really good deal.

Uh, anyway, I subscribed to is is I’m sure knows, is a good deal and they’re happy with the picks already.

And again, we’ll get another pick in there, early next week, which is gonna be our third pick and really exciting and earnings seasons here.

So we’re gonna see a glimpse, right? Another look at some of the companies that are not just saying they’re using AI, but you’re gonna hear small cap companies that are benefiting from AI and you’re not gonna find ’em on screens ’cause they’re not AI companies, just like Amazon is not an internet company.

So they’re not easy to find.

It’s not like the names that have mentioned out there.

It takes a, you know, a lot of research just to find these things.

But really to dig in to see what these companies are doing.

And it’s fascinating.

You’re gonna see by the names in a portfolio that really is fascinating, the companies that are doing this and they’re gonna be small cap names.

So it’s really, really exciting stuff.

But we’re gonna close out that offer I think on Friday.

So you got one more day.

So if you’re interested in buying Curzio AI, subscribe to Curzio AI.

You could do it, it’s gonna be the last, couple days you could do it.

And that’s say we’re gonna close that, then it’s gonna go to the full price.

But that price is available for Curzio members.

But anyway, regardless if you subscribed that product or not, we have a lot of subscriptions.

Thank you so much.

We do run a business here.

It’s exciting.

I’m glad you guys trust me with that and I think you’re gonna do well just like you did well with crypto so far.

I think you’re gonna continue to do really well with crypto, and AI over the next 12, 24 months.

I’m very, very, very excited, very, very excited.

Uh, with the names I’m seeing where at least 30% of my own money is going to go into this sector and it’s gonna go into this sector long term.

’cause this is a chance I think that gives mom and pop investors the opportunity to really increase generational wealth, okay? And you do that by getting in companies very, very early, which is so hard to do ’cause they, I pay o at such high prices.

But because of AI you have that opportunity to do it.

And you’re gonna see the next generation of large cap leaders from the companies that are already public that are just starting to use AI and they’re starting to take market share.

It’s a lot of fun research in these things and you’ll see that.

You saw that if you want watch, our last event, we also have that as well online.

I think it’s a CurzioAI.com.

But, we showed exactly how we’re finding these names and everything, which is really, really cool.

But even if, you know, regardless of cur Curzio or not, it’s ask me anything tomorrow, Thursday, Again, once you register, be sure to ask that question right away.

’cause we’re gonna be able to see it.

I’m gonna be able to see it and we’ll be able to answer it.

And it’ll be pretty much at the top of the list and 100% live.

Everything’s gonna be live, which is really, really cool.

So hopefully you get to have some fun and watching me make some mistakes.

So guys, thanks so much for listening and I’ll see you tomorrow on Wall Street Unplugged Premium.

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