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

Frank Curzio: What’s going on there? It’s November 11th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break the headlines, and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Man, so much going on. Election not conceded yet. We have a new vaccine from Pfizer, over 90% effective COVID-19, which has resulted in huge whipsaws in the market. You’re looking at rotations, really. And the S&P 500, the Dow, that early reflection was actually going on. The Dow was just the price way to index. It’s great if you’re in there. It’s not a big deal in terms of being a barometer of the market, and then you have S&P 500, where the top five companies represent, what, 22, 23% of the total index.

Frank Curzio: But looking with within the S&P 500, the individual sectors, what’s going on? The rotation at a momentum out of big tech into cyclicals like travel, airlines, cruises, oil stocks, banks. It should sound pretty familiar to you. I’ll break down a lot of that later, but I’m going to start things off a little different today. I’m going to read a letter to you that was sent to me from a very special person.

Frank Curzio: It says, “Dear Frank, my name is Anthony, and I’m a master chief in the United States Navy with 19 years of faithful service. I’m a hover craft pilot AKA Craftsmaster, and a rescue swimmer. The hover craft gig is pretty funny. Flying around the ocean at 50 plus knots sideways is always a good day. I’ve been listening to you for some years now, and I’m a subscriber to a few of your products. I love them all. Anyway, my reason for writing you is mainly to say thanks. You personally have made a difference out there in Japan for quite a few people. You have taught and advised me in the investing world, which in turn I’ve used to educate my sailors. So for that, a huge thanks to you and your team at Curzio Research.”

Frank Curzio: “I’m a self-taught analyst, well, I try to be, just forcing myself to learn or to educate my sailors has become a mission oh for mine. I truly wish there was somebody in my corner doing the same thing for me when I was younger and coming up through the ranks. These kids throw money at stocks without any idea to why it’s a good buy or not. Most will come to me after suffering losses, and when I pose the question, ‘Why did you buy this?’ The common answer was they thought it was going up. And I asked the second question, ‘Why was it going up?’ And that’s where the pause and hesitation came.”

Frank Curzio: “They didn’t have a clue as to why they were doing what they were doing. This is what motivated me to learn more. Over the years, we have started an investor club group that’s only continued to grow. It feels good to hear the same folks talk about some key ratios, earnings, financial statements, et cetera. I’m sure I get to the point. Now, they’re actually capable on going back and forth on why a stock is a good buy or not. The only thing I’ve inspired these sales in the marines is quite a good feeling. Watching these guys grow is amazing and they’re smart as heck. This is all a direct result of you. The way you tell it, the way you keep it real, the lessons, the advice, the list goes on.”

Frank Curzio: “Honestly, I’m just a dumb dude who grew up poor in the projects of Borson, and only joined the military to find a steady paycheck. I never looked back. I’ve done pretty well for myself. Never in a million years did I think this is where I could be and what I’d be doing, but I love it. If you’re reading this, then our token of our appreciation has arrived. The paddle is a Navy tradition to give a sailor as a special thanks or to see them off as they transfer to another unit. To describe your paddle: There’s a Craftsmaster breast insignia mounted on the top of handle. The insignia is what we get pinned with after graduating nine months of intense training on operating on a 300,000 pound, 20,000 horse power piece of machinery.”

Frank Curzio: “Decorated down the shaft is a boat wing’s mate’s fancy line work. I’ve tried to do it for years and still no joy. It truly is an art. Further down to the wide part is a Master Chief anchor, which is my current rank. Only 1% of people who enlist in the Navy are selected to Master Chief. Below the anchor is our unit’s patch with all of our craft numbers. The American Japanese flag and the Japanese symbol for seven. We are Naval Beach Unit Seven. We refer to ourselves as pirates and cowboys. Additionally, there are three chiefs mess coins. Military challenge coin traditions are another of the many things we do. They’re given to recognize remarkable achievements and are used to reward our sailors.”

Frank Curzio: “That being said, we would love for you to give one to your mother for the remarkable recovery she has made. Lastly, you’ve inspired me to start a newsletter of my own someday. Though they could be better, I’ve already created some letters using wide charts and people are loving them. They are learning. I just recently heard about the clinic that you are holding and would love to sign up when it becomes available.” So it’s saying him and his unit is learning that. “So, I’m dedicated, resourceful, hard worker, and would love to learn under your guidance. The only thing is the time difference due to the fact that I currently live in Japan. But hey, when there’s a will, there’s a way. Once I retire from the Navy, this is a life I want to live. Heck, I even have my five-year-old looking at charts, which she loves by the way. Well, Frank, thank you and your team for all you do.” And that’s Anthony, Master Chief.

Frank Curzio: I got this a couple of months ago, and we now do videos. Every podcast is audio video, and for the video portion of this I’m going to show this amazing, amazing paddle here, and here it is where it says, “Frank Curzio, thank you for keeping it real.” The stitching on this, it’s unbelievable. And as you can see, look it’s … Even when you turn it over on the back it says, “From the cowboys and pirates at Naval Beach Unit Seven.” And then it has probably around 15 of his sailors saying… It has little notes that they wrote. “You share everything. Thanks. Thank you, Frank, for everything. Thanks for all the lessons and stuff like that.” So you could see how much time and effort goes into this and everything I read you, which is pretty amazing.

Frank Curzio: Again, you can go to our Curzio Research YouTube page. It’s absolutely for free, guys. I just think it’s really cool. I like stuff like that when it comes to podcasts when… Even ESPN’s podcast or CNBC’s. It’s cool to watch the video version than just listen, but you have access to both. But if you can hear me through that letter, the first time I read it, I was really choked up, and then I got a little choked up again, where I think I messed up a couple of sentences. But I wanted to read this today specifically.

Frank Curzio: If you look at our country right now, especially in terms of politics, there’s a clear division, and this division is in terms of our beliefs of how America can prosper and continue to be the leader of the free world. And a lot of those emotions run high sometimes. It gets pretty crazy. But if there’s one thing that we could come together on, it’s support for our military, which so many of us take for granted. And these are the people who fight for our right to post whatever we want on Twitter and Facebook, whether we’re angry or not, to protect our constitution, to make sure we’re all safe, while we basically argue with each other on the new iPhones in our new cars while we drink clean water and basically have access to an unlimited supply of food. We take that for granted. We all do. We all do.

Frank Curzio: And for me, traveling, if I could tell you, if you’re a millennial traveler to other countries, you’re going to really appreciate the country you live in. You really will, which is amazing, and a lot of it is given to us because of our veterans. It is Veterans Day, and these people have fought for us, these people should never be forgotten. This is something that is just… Truly honored to just to be living in this country, to be able to do this podcast of Wall Street Unplugged, and this platform exists because of these people. Our freedoms exists because of these people. You can’t understate that, guys.

Frank Curzio: So, I don’t care what side you’re on, we’re going to have emotions when it comes to lots of different things especially politics. At the end of the day, listen, for Veterans Day supporting all those veterans who fought for us, who… Their mission and goal is to protect us, to protect our constitution, to give us these freedoms, and it’s very important that we address that today and not just the veterans, but the people currently in the military, like Anthony, who his pirates and cowboys, Naval Beach Unit Seven… Thank you so much for protecting us. Thanks for all you do. You guys are truly the heroes, and I really, really appreciate that. I can’t tell you that how much that paddle meant to me, and showing my family, and giving my mom that badge it was just unbelievable, and I really appreciate that.

Frank Curzio: And when I do open this up, this clinic, Anthony, you’re going to be first there, I’m going to open up to 10 to 15 people. I said I wanted to launch a token first, I’m going to create a clinic and teach 15 people pretty much everything I know. The only thing I want you to do is pass it on. When you guys get to that level, pass it on. That’s the job. That’s all of our jobs. I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on. Our job is to make the next generation better than ours, and you do that by sharing, not holding things back.

Frank Curzio: And everything that I’ve learned, the teachers I’ve learned from, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate and incredibly lucky. My dad was just into this industry, learning from him at the dinner table, talking stocks when I was 10 years old, all the way to the point where I have Curzio Research, and we launched the first ever equity token, which I’ll get to in a minute. But on Veterans Day, I just want to say to you guys thank you so much for everything that you did, and when it comes to that class, when I open it up, I’m going to do it soon. Probably in January, I’m going to try to do it.

Frank Curzio: I’m going to select people. I do not want your resume though. The letter that you just heard me read, that’s what I want to see. I want to see the passion. I don’t care what you did in the past because you could write anything on a piece of paper and look good, but you can’t motivate people, and this is only for… I will probably be kicking people out of this class if I think they’re not giving it 100%. That’s going to be open to 10, 15 people, mostly young people, who want to learn about the markets, and man it’s going to be tough. It’s not going to be easy, but Anthony, I promise that you are number one to be enlisted in that class.

Frank Curzio: When I start, hopefully I’ll have enough time, I should have enough time to do it in January. So as you know a Curzio Equity Owners token is now free trading on the Merge Exchange. They’re getting lots of questions, which is great, addressing all those questions at frank@curzioresearch.com. So, Curzio Equity Owners, CEO, this is a security token where you’ll actually own equity stake in Curzio Research. It’s just like owning a stock, and we intend on playing a dividend. We already paid a quarterly dividend, we intend on paying it again. I have to say intend, so try to make this a growth in income play. That’s our job. But the CEO token is the first ever security token to trade in a global chain that’s available to retail investors.

Frank Curzio: And I know you probably heard me say that a lot through this podcast, or read about this, since our story was picked up by major media outlets, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, Bazinga, Market Watch, tons of them, dozens more, but the reason I created this token and put my name on it along with my reputation, you could see right behind me. You’ve got Curzio Research. The name is on the door. But the reason why it is because I truly believe in this revolutionary idea. It’s going to make it easier for every company to raise money to grow their business, without having to pay those millions of dollars to investment banks. You don’t have to be part of a club anymore.

Frank Curzio: It’s different. We all have pretty cool businesses. You own your business, you want to grow, you have a growth plan, and maybe investors might be interested in it. And it sucks if you’re doing less than 10 million in sales because you’re probably not going to be able to go public or do anything like that, or doing a private round isn’t so easy. And that’s another thing. Here, when it comes to security tokens because it’s giving investors the opportunity to invests in companies on the ground floor. Not when their IPOs are we’re seeing today.

Frank Curzio: With multi-billion dollar valuations like Palantir or Snowflake, when most of the growth has already taken place. And the best part about what I was just talking about is, you’re not locked up for seven to 10 years, which the average lock up period for private investments, that’s the timeframe. A good example is Airbnb. Founded in 2008, they probably started raising money in 2010, ’11, ’12, started really getting big as a concept when viral. It’s not a publicly traded company yet, and the only way you could really cash out is maybe if you know somebody in one of those rounds when they raise money because you could sell to them, but most people won’t be able to cash out unless Airbnb gets taken over or they IPO, which they haven’t done yet.

Frank Curzio: But your money is locked up. With security tokens, it’s 12 months if you do the offering, if you’re an accredited investor. And after that 12 months, now you have the chance to buy a company like ours, Curzio Research. And it’s a risky company, we’re a small cap, maybe people… We’re doing videos and they say, “Frank, you’re an ugly guy and that’s it. We don’t want to deal with you.” Whatever it is. People that hate financial newsletters, they don’t like my opinion anymore, whatever. It is a risky company.

Frank Curzio: But what happens if magically, I’m able to turn this into a billion dollar operation? You’re in on the ground floor. That’s the benefit of this industry. It checks off every single box. It’s just a massive benefit to everyone, whether it’s issuers, whether it’s investors. It’s really, really exciting. That’s why I chose to do our CEO token. So this is an industry I truly believe, truly believe, there’s going to be a trillion dollars in 10 years. And I’ll do everything in my power to make sure we’re smack in the middle of that amazing growth trend.

Frank Curzio: And why? Because when you look at this industry, it reminds me of the early tech days in the 1990s or the early 1990s. Internet technology really started taking off. Yes, we all know about the 2000 crash in March. The 10 years leading up to that though, it was unbelievable and now look how much further we’ve come in terms of innovation when it comes to the internet, and speeds, and 5G, data analytics, AI. I can keep going here. But I don’t need to tell you what Amazon, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Apple traded back then in the early ’90s. This is an opportunity to do the same. That’s why I’m so excited.

Frank Curzio: Could I be wrong? Absolutely, if it doesn’t take off. But everything right now is going just as planned. The industry is growing, you’ve seen more issues coming out, we’re getting contacted by so many different people now that we’ve launched this thing, and it’s public, and it’s pretty much everywhere. Again, we want to be a major force in this industry over the next 10 years. Now, you’ve heard about this from me numerous times, numerous times. And I get it. I’m excited about it, you’re excited about it.

Frank Curzio: However, now, I’m going to bring on a very special guest. First time I’m interviewing him, and his name is Saum Noursalehi. He’s a CEO of tZERO. If you’re not familiar with tZERO, you should be. It is part of Overstock. Overstock is that division that they wanted to sell a while ago, and then COVID happened, and everybody went to online, and they took full advantage of that with Overstock. But tZERO is a business they own inside of that, which is the largest secondary trading platform for digital securities in the world.

Frank Curzio: Though Saum may be one of the most important and more respected people in the entire industry when it comes to security tokens. And once you hear from him, guys, you can understand why you need to start educating yourself about this industry. Again, the potential here is enormous. The risk is very little. But if this industry does take off, you’re going to have access to a lot of these things through Curzio Research, through all of us. But again, you’ve heard it from me before, I want you to speak to one of the smartest people in the entire industry.

Frank Curzio: Just a heads up here, the audio for this interview, it’s going to be a little different. We had to improvise. This interview is put together very, very, very short notice, which is awesome. Saum is in Utah and agreed to come on the program. So we had to do it through Zoom or usually we do it through livestream, and it would be the same exact sound quality. So just to let you know, the sound is going to be a little different. You’re going to hear everything. Please pay close attention. You’re going to see why this industry is ready to explode. I’m talking to the best, the smartest person, the most influential person in the entire security token industry, and let’s get to the interview right now.

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

Saum Noursalehi: Thanks for having me, Frank.

Frank Curzio: No, I really appreciate it, man. So let’s start with the basics here for people who aren’t familiar. You worked for Overstock for 14 years, holding numerous leader positions within technology, product development, marketing before becoming CEO of tZERO. When did you know this industry, digital securities, had the potential to be massive to the point where you were like, “We really need to get into this market?”

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. It was definitely before I joined tZERO. So we at Overstock as a publicly traded eCommerce company primarily focused on the home space. And at some point, we decided to integrate Bitcoin as a payment method. And the minute we did that, there was a huge explosion as far as media and publicity around that event, and we were actually very surprised how much coverage it got. Once that happened, we started to really study and see what are the various things this technology does, and what’s really behind it, and I started to see what blockchain could do for many industries.

Saum Noursalehi: Our founder at the time, Patrick Burn, started Medici Ventures, a venture group that invests in blockchain companies, and we started to form and incubate tZERO at that point, and that was several years before I joined. I was always fascinated by it and had the opportunity to finally make the switch. So we’re talking 2015, and some of that was even 2014, 2015 was when it was founded. Some of that is even before the term security token or token existed.

Frank Curzio: I don’t like the term security token. I don’t like this term digital securities, only because it’s not easy to explain, I think you’re with me, where we really want this to be scaled, and it has to be easier if people want to understand it. But why don’t we start with tokenization, which I think is something people could identify? Why don’t you explain what that is really quick in a simple form? Because sometimes people get lost in all definitions in the technical jargon, but tokenization is something I think everyone could identify with.

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah, no. It’s a process of creating a digital representation of an asset or a slice of a company or an asset that could be easily traded, transferred, settled using this technology. And so that’s really how we look at it.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And it’s amazing because there’s so many liquid assets where it comes to real estate, where it comes to the debt markets, and even when it comes to private companies like us, which we will take advantage of this doing our own CEO token. But hopefully, there’s a lot of other small companies that can follow suit because the process is very expensive in the traditional route, and let’s go there. On a regulation front, and I know that it’s not easy for you to tell me you’re a publicly traded company, but compared to 18, 24 months ago, it was really difficult to venture into this industry. What has changed on the regulatory front? Because it’s definitely easier, I see you’re news since September, everything whether it’s licenses partnering with so many different firms.

Frank Curzio: Just in September, your news flow is absolutely amazing, and it just seemed like something opened up. Is it right to say that?

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. Oh, I definitely agree with that. It’s taken a lot of effort, a lot of education. I think our firms and several firms have been spending quite a bit of time with the SEC and FINRA , and they’re starting to get it. I think they see how it can make their lives easier. It can automate a lot of things away that are very manual for them. And so, it took some time, and probably more time than I anticipated when I took the job, but they’re really starting to see it, and so there’s recent no action letters around custody and settlement.

Saum Noursalehi: And so, I think you’re going to see faster traction in the space. The last, I would say, year and a half, two years were mostly on build and regulatory clarity around what we’re building, and I think the build for us and many firms is now a lot of that is done and behind us or at least the initial phase of it. And on the regulatory front, we have a fully approved trading ecosystem, and we see that just continuing to progress where we can realize more of the benefits of this technology.

Saum Noursalehi: Right now, it’s been very incremental, so I think we’re getting some of the benefits, but there’s still a lot more that could be captured once regulators are comfortable, and they’re really starting to show they’re understanding of it.

Frank Curzio: Yes. It seems like over two years ago, it was still maybe proof of concept type of thing. It’s here. We’re seeing it. Can you talk about that? And if you can’t, I understand, about the amount of people coming to your platform. Again, I think you just recently announced something about $300 million dollars and working with a company tokenize the asset or assets. But are you starting to see that demand? Because it’s almost over. It checks off every single box to the point if you take it over, you’re not going to take tax anymore. It’s cheaper, it’s safer, you’re going to call the guy. This checks off every single box. Yeah. So if you want to answer that question.

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. I think now we’re in the market fit and traction phase of these digital securities. And I think we’re starting to see where’s the first use cases where it provides the most value? I think private assets is a great example, and there will be others… Tackling public markets, probably not the best idea to start with. And we’re seeing higher quality deals and larger deals with some of the more recent issues that we’re in conversation with, like the one you mentioned, which is Tintin Capital. They’re a venture fund that’s looking to tokenize.

Saum Noursalehi: And so we’re starting to see a lot more good feels primarily in real estate and funds, and then I guess behind that is more growth companies and technology companies.

Frank Curzio: Ah, that’s great news. That’s great news. I think one of your biggest priorities and our biggest priorities that we’re in this industry is trying to get new people to this platform, and making it just easy, and we touched a little bit of it before. But I thought you did a great job of this with the paying Overstock shareholders with dividend and digital security, moved a lot of people to the platform, but how do we get institutions into this industry? And we’re seeing that. You’ve had announcements. But I’m talking on a wider scale. I think that Goldman Sachs or maybe the Morgan Stanleys, J.P. Morgans.

Frank Curzio: The Robinhood crowd, when did they start adopting this? Because this isn’t that far off from utility tokens in terms of trading, where this is secure. It’s totally different. You don’t get an equity stake in utility tokens. It’s a different industry. But it’s a pretty big industry when it comes to trading. I would love to get that over security tokens, which provides much more transparency and compliance, and even mom-and-pop investors. What are some of the things that you’re doing? Because for me, we’re really dialing it down and making it easy for people, but it’s still not an easy flowing process.

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. No, I agree. It’s been challenging. It’s sort of that chicken and egg problem where you have the right assets, the investors will come. If you have liquidity and an investor base, the assets will come. We found that as we show traction on either side, so we now have six brokered dealers trading the securities on our platform, including our own retail broker dealer, which has got approved and went live a couple of weeks ago. So we are seeing traction. We do have, for example, a large publicly traded broker dealer subscribed and trading on the behalf of their clients, which is institutions. So we’re seeing some of that.

Saum Noursalehi: I think we really need to see more quality assets trading and they will come. Once they see the opportunity and the value creation, as you may have seen, a lot of that has shifted more and more away from public markets to private. And so the more investors that can participate in that, the more upside potential there is. And companies in general are staying private much longer up to 11 or 13 years in tech versus three to four years in the past. And so, I think we just need to continue to grow the ecosystem both on the investor side and the asset front. And eventually, the institutions will come.

Frank Curzio: Now you’re talking about high quality deals. I know you guys drew an extensive due diligence on everyone that comes to your platform that wants to do this. How does that process work? Because I’ve seen people call me and say, “Hey, we love what you did, Frank. You’re trading on an exchange with digital security. It’s awesome.” And I’ll get into the details of what they want to do and they’ll say, “We’re looking to raise $100 million dollars.” “Okay. Well what’s the value for the token holders?” “Well, when we make a profit, which is five, 10 years from now, then we’re going to pay.” And for me, it’s a turn off immediately because I’m someone that believes in this industry, we structure on token the right way, so everybody is going to benefit.

Frank Curzio: It’s an equity stake, and we intend. I have to say we’ve already paid a dividend, we intend to paying the dividend. But are you seeing that with that process where people still have those utility token structure in their place, and they still have it in their minds and they’re saying, “Okay. Let’s structure it this way where there’s really not too many benefits.” How does that due diligence process work, and are you seeing some of those or are you seeing really high quality deals right now?

Saum Noursalehi: We’re starting to see pretty good deals, and we’re also looking not at just these one-off deals, but the right kind of partnerships that could just bring potentially hundreds of deals to the platform. And so anyway, I had a call with a firm yesterday that we’re looking for a partnership that has hundreds of private assets already, that could easily be ported if we can come to terms with them. And so that’s what we’re looking for. I do think kind of following utility tokens, I feel like getting maybe a little too creative with the assets where I think let’s just get the fundamentals right and working, and then we could do kind of these very unique type securities.

Frank Curzio: Well, no. That definitely makes sense, and switching tunes here because I started doing a lot of research and I was fascinated. You’re a person that pays very close attention, very important when it comes to culture. I’ve been at places throughout my career, I’ve been doing this for over 25 years where culture has been bad and hasn’t been pretty, and when culture is good, for a company right now and they see a lot of growth avenues, and see the motivational factor, people that will work harder, how important is that and how difficult is to keep that culture? Because we are in an industry that, I think, we both believe, and we’ll go over and we’ll talk about forecast later when we both think where this industry can go.

Frank Curzio: But when you look at an industry that grows so much and has so many ups and downs, so it’s so early in the growth phase, is it difficult to keep that culture always positive? Because I know again, that’s something you work hard and play hard environment. I’m just curious to hear that.

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. Culture has been tough, especially COVID has made it even more challenging where you don’t get as much in-person, and getting to company events and things like that to really pass that culture onto the team. So it’s definitely made it challenging. tZERO has been an unusual culture to form for me, different than what I’m used to because you have this traditional financial, heavily regulated world mixing kind of with Silicon Valley disruption. Just get your code out, and get feedback, and iterate. But generally we like problem solvers, people who are entrepreneurial, are willing to take risks, but it has to be the right kind of risk.

Saum Noursalehi: And also, really understanding the line of what’s ethical and what’s not. And I think in the financial world especially, they’re always comes the opportunities to do things that could potentially be short-term gains.

Frank Curzio: Yes, exactly.

Saum Noursalehi: But we’re all in this for the long-term, and so you got to be careful on that line you work. But generally, we like people out of the box thinkers who are problem solvers, but it has been more challenging particularly more recently.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Now, I could imagine with COVID and everyone not coming into the office, it is a pretty big deal. I just traveled for the first time. I went to Wyoming for a site visit, and I have to tell you, you really need to meet face-to-face. People say you can do everything at home. At that meeting that I met with very high profile, that was important for me to meet them face-to-face than just going on a conference call. There is a difference. People say, “Well we get stuff done, and we invest in companies.” Hopefully, that changes, and we open back up now with the vaccine news, but I think it’s been challenging for a lot of companies in terms of that culture.

Frank Curzio: But you talked long-term. Where do you see this industry? Because I’m very excited about it. I always temper my expectations even for this when I say, “Hey, you could invest in our tokens, but we’re a small-cap company.” Maybe people don’t like me anymore, maybe we don’t sell newsletters. It is risky. I always highlight the risk and reward, but I’m super optimistic on this industry. I wanted to hear your thoughts of where we’re going to be maybe three to five to 10 years from now because we’re really moving incredibly fast over the last, I feel like, six months especially with some of the announcements that you’ve made, that we see Securitize overall globally.

Frank Curzio: This is here now. This isn’t a concept where we’re thinking, “Oh, this could be big.” This is here. What are your expectations over the next three, five, 10 years?

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. I think we’re transitioning out of build to growth and adoption, and you’ll see that continue to get stronger in the next two years. I think you’re starting to see that market fit and traction happening. Longer term, I think you’ll see several pockets where you’ll see this market fit in different niches. So private assets is one, but I think there’s potential to trade many things of value over an exchange. And so, I think our kind of long term vision is trade anything of value in a very quick near instant settlement way, and that could include all sorts of things, and being able to democratize that to anyone, whether it might be an athlete sports contract to early stage startups, growth companies, to kind of mid-stage, and I think just enabling access to all these various assets that we don’t traditionally think of assets or don’t have access to.

Frank Curzio: You said something pretty amazing, I think, people might skip through just… When it comes to assets, where you’re saying we’ll be able to trade any asset of value. For the audience listening to this, watching this, you have to understand that’s millions, tens of millions of assets that can be tokenized. Do you actually see this maybe? Because I think we both agree with this, at least some of the things that I’ve read and some of the statements that you’ve made with the IPO process. Could this really replace that as you know when IPOs come out, like Snowflake, multi-billion dollar valuations? A lot of that growth has already taken place.

Frank Curzio: It’s not a leveled playing field for mom-and-pop investors, early stage investors. Do you think this has a shot? Because we’re seeing it with SPACS really. Just a different form of IPOs almost, and show those security tokens, I think, could be right there as well, but is that a possibility to you?

Saum Noursalehi: Potentially, yeah. I think it’s really being able to participate in anything of value from inception of the idea all the way to whether it’s a public company. Whether this stuff completely eliminates the public markets or not, I think that’s to be determined. I’m not as sure on that that public markets may still have a role. But today, it’s not like when even Netflix or Amazon went public, so much of their growth happened while they were public, and now companies are kind of waiting until the last moment, like an Uber IPO. They’re already have a global presence.

Saum Noursalehi: So, I’m not sure. There definitely isn’t as much upside there, plus you get these IPOs that are completely misvalued. When you have price discovery in a market from early on through whether the IPO or not, you don’t have weird situations like that where private equity firms are controlling the valuations behind the scenes. It’s what the market says the value is. And so, I think it should really smooth out a lot of this weird stuff that happens where the inside bankers get to participate early, realize a lot of gains, and then it IPOs and it plummets.

Saum Noursalehi: But we’ll see whether public markets still exists or not. I sort of see it as have liquidity for everything from the start of an idea all the way to the end of its life.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. If this concept really takes off the way I believe, I’m not going to put words in anybody’s mouth. What you said about assets, I think you have to realize in the debt market we’re talking trillions. We’re talking about a market that’s whatever. It’s five, six, seven X bigger than the stock market, and you’re talking about real estate, which is tens of trillions. And liquid assets that could easily be tokenized, and you’re seeing that now even with some of the real estate deals that you guys are now seeing that out there. That is really incredible when you throw around that number.

Frank Curzio: So, I don’t know if that’s going to happen in five years, 10 years, but I’m pretty happy, and I guess we’ll end on that. Are you excited about the path this is taken in terms of the speed? Because I thought it would happen a little bit earlier, and the last six months I’m very excited now where when COVID came I said, “Don’t tell me this is going to take a step back now.” But I’m pretty comfortable here. Are you excited? Obviously, you’re excited with your company in the future, but it seems like this growth is really starting to kick off, to really take off.

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. We’re very excited. Like I said, I really underestimated the regulatory lift and challenges, but these are securities, and the regulators play an important role. And I sort of just thought, “Let’s just build it and get going.” But we’re seeing very positive signs from regulators like we mentioned, and just in the last few months, I think COVID slowed business development down a little bit in the kind of April, May timeframe, but we’ve really seen things start to pick up now. I don’t know if people are just accustomed to it or not as worried, but we’re seeing really quality deals, so we’re quite excited.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. That’s great. So now if someone wants to learn more about tZERO, learn more about you, how could they do that?

Saum Noursalehi: tZERO.com, and there’s ways to contact us, sales@tzero.com. You could email me directly at saum@tzero.com.

Frank Curzio: Cool. And the most important question here by far have been anything we talked about. You’re doing this from Utah, I know that you attended Utah. I think I’m pretty sure that they’re playing their first game of the year. UCLA. So, I know from people, I know from Utah that football is life basically.

Saum Noursalehi: That’s true.

Frank Curzio: So, I’m curious if you’re excited that’s coming up.

Saum Noursalehi: Yeah. It’s starting up. Well, right now I’m in Utah. I was in New York, but for the time being, I’m out here. It’s actually snowing right now.

Frank Curzio: Oh man. That’s great. That’s nice. So, I’ve been to Utah a lot. Great place. So listen, thank you so much for coming on. I know how busy you are. This means a lot to my digital token holders, and to my list, and people follow us. So thank you so much for taking the time, and I know we’ll speak again soon.

Saum Noursalehi: Pleasure being here, and great meeting you, Frank. Thanks for having me.

Frank Curzio: Okay, guys. Great stuff from Saum there. Just amazing potential, as you can see, for security tokens. Just truly honored that he was willing and able to come on this podcast to talk about it, but there’s something obviously I’m excited about. I know you guys are excited about based on the emails. If you have any questions, comments. One, you can go to the tZERO website, which is pretty easy to find, tZERO.com, and learn about it before even signing up for an account if you want. Or just, again, get educated about it. You’re going to see more and more of these alternative trading platforms being launched because a lot of them are getting the proper regulations or just buying companies with those licenses in place. You’ll see it from the compliance point of view. Everything is starting to ease up, and it’s just a matter of time before this industry really goes mainstream.

Frank Curzio: And it could take a couple of years, but for now, just as you can see, a ton of potential, and I would thank the tZERO team for putting this together. I really appreciate it. And questions, comments, as always feel free to email frank@curzioresearch.com. Now, a lot going on. I discussed right at the opening in terms of the vaccine from Pfizer being 90% effective, resulting in a major shift in allocations here. I’m going to cover it in a second. We have the election results, which we haven’t talked to my buddy, Daniel, about which he said, I believe, that Donald Trump was going to win in a landslide.

Frank Curzio: So, let’s bring in Daniel. And Daniel, I want to hear from you about what happened during the election.

Daniel Creech: Well hello, Frank. I have some friends of mine that are pissed off at me, and everybody keeps saying I’m wrong. And I’ll admit when I’m wrong, if it turns out to be. But what I said was he’s going to win a landslide unless what? They steal it from him through the mail-in ballots and stuff, and I said that on the October 28th podcast, and even before that, one of the biggest… Actually, first of all, happy Veterans Day to all the veterans out there. That’s very important. I didn’t serve personally, but I am so grateful that we have such amazing men and women that do, and I am very grateful for that. And happy Masters Week.

Frank Curzio: Masters.

Daniel Creech: Masters.

Frank Curzio: I know. Ain’t that weird? You’re not going to see the beautiful flowers.

Daniel Creech: Yes. And it’s probably going to rain on them every day. Well, it’ll still be beautiful because the area is nice.

Frank Curzio: They have the hurricane coming up through Florida. It’s not really a big deal. It’s a flooding more than anything, but I think it’s going to go through quick a little bit.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. That will be interesting. But thank goodness that we have a major. And then if it’s on schedule, how sweet would it be if they turned around and played in April?

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: They get back on schedule.

Frank Curzio: It’s going to be like 35 mile an hour wind coming at you, so DeChambeau will only be able to hit the ball 330 yards, sort of 390.

Daniel Creech: Wuss.

Frank Curzio: But-

Daniel Creech: So anyway, hey, that was a rabbit trail. So back to this. So, we talked about how the media and everybody was setting up this narrative of, “Hey, Trump is going to look like…” I think it was Axios that we quoted, “Hey, Trump is going to look like he’s winning on election night. And then once all the mail-in ballots come in, he’s going to lose, and then we’ll have President-elect Biden.” So the disgustingness was everybody was getting into that conditioning of, “Well, we’re not going to know who’s our president.” The greatest superpower in the history of the world was a country who can’t elect a freaking president one evening.

Daniel Creech: That shows you the logistics and efficiency of governments in general. Now what I warned about was the craziness going on, and what is exactly happening is that you still don’t have official counts going although the media is quick to run with the narrative that President-elect Biden, he’s already starting to name some people and all that, which I understand. However, there are some serious lawsuits that have been filed by the Trump campaign, which we told you. Each side was lawyering up. They had hundreds, if not, thousands of lawyers and volatiles on both political parties.

Daniel Creech: But the crazy thing here, Frank, is that the media is so quick. How right was the media again? And I know you talked about this, I think it was last podcast, about the polls and stuff. So if you fire me here from Curzio Research, I was going to go be a weather man because that was the best no accountability job in the world.

Frank Curzio: I bet you there’s Democrats that listen to this that say, “Frank, you should fire him right now.”

Daniel Creech: Oh absolutely. Send your emails to Frank. Don’t send them to me. Send them to him. Love us, hate us, just don’t-

Frank Curzio: You figure it out.

Daniel Creech: …ignore us.

Frank Curzio: We all have a Curzio Research address, and Daniel’s first name. Daniel. You can figure it out if you try, guys. I’m sure you’re going to hit it, so I’m just letting you know. Go ahead, buddy.

Daniel Creech: Unlike Frank, I don’t read all the… No, I’m kidding. But yeah. Weatherman. How easy was that? “Ah, well, we were wrong. Mother Nature changed. We call in for this, that, and the other.” It’s the easiest job, not the easiest job in the world. It’s only the accountability side. I’m having fun out there, weather people. Calm down. Now, it’s polling because in 2016, they were completely dead wrong giving Hillary a landslide, and leading up in late October, I think, RealClearPolitics and everybody had Biden a double digit favor, and the day before they had him in a 7% favor I believe. And we heard nothing but this blue wave, and everything was going to go the Democratic way because everybody hates Trump, and the narrative was beat up, and beat up, and beat up. Buildup. And what happened? How big was that blue wave, Frank?

Frank Curzio: When it comes to the seats in the senate, they were really disappointed. The Democrats were extremely disappointed even though they won the election.

Daniel Creech: They lost seats in the house.

Frank Curzio: There’s a lot going on within…

Daniel Creech: And there’s still how many undecided? There’s still a lot undecided. Now the senate is a whole different animal because Alaska, they must have grizzly bears helping count ballots because Alaska just counted. What’s that population of them? I don’t want to throw shade on them.

Frank Curzio: I went to Anchorage, Alaska once, and it seems like there’s 60 people there. How could that take so long to count ballots?

Daniel Creech: Do we have any subscribers or listeners in Alaska? I wonder if they’ll email us.

Frank Curzio: I loved Alaska by the way. I loved it. I’d love to go back there.

Daniel Creech: Oh it’s gorgeous. I was on a cruise up there.

Frank Curzio: I was just saying, it just seems like it would be pretty easy to count their votes, but go ahead.

Daniel Creech: Exactly. So, they finally called it today. I saw a cross briefing this morning that they called Alaska senate race for the Republicans. Sullivan is jumping out at me, but don’t hold me to that. Anyway, so the big run off in Georgia could decide the power in the senate, and that’s huge because the volatility leading up to the presidential election expecting a blue wave was a selloff. So early January, or even back up before that, that’s when the actual runoffs come in Georgia. So what is it going to look like from here through December and Christmas on the volatility on the market side? Because you know we’re going to see a ton of headlines on how much money is going to be spent in Georgia. It’s probably going to be one of the most expensive, if not, the most expensive senate race.

Frank Curzio: That runoff. Yeah.

Daniel Creech: And all the headlines leading up to that, if you’re a big money manager or even a regular investor, how do you not brace yourself for if the senate goes Democratic, then you have possibly-

Frank Curzio: There’s a lot of major changes. It’s not saying that the market is going to crash here, it’s saying that oil companies are definitely going to crash. They’re mostly against fracking-

Daniel Creech: Well, that’s what I’m saying. You would just think of, “Hey, what’s going to happen if…” Because right now the market is pricing in a balance of powers. Hey, who cares who the president is because you have the other party holding at least one branch. In this case, it looks like the senate. Well, if you get that narrative to change, how in the world wouldn’t you expect volatility in the stock market? That’s crazy to me. So, getting back to how ridiculous the polls are. So, the media is the only one running away with this on how the election is over, and they’re totally ignoring a few big things. And I don’t know, and I know everybody is biased and going to take shots at this, but this is what stands out to me just like the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

Daniel Creech: So did you see any highlights about Ken Starr being on Mark Levin or Levin?

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: How do you say that? And by the way, can anybody else think of Ken Starr without thinking about Monica Lewinsky, or is that just me?

Frank Curzio: Never.

Daniel Creech: Okay. I just figured. Just checking. So he goes on there and he uses some pretty powerful words talking about how it’s a constitutional travesty of what happened in Pennsylvania, with the Pennsylvania state supreme court. So, when I say supreme court of Pennsylvania, and the legislative area, the smaller legislation closer to the vest as you would say. Basically what’s going on, and this is all going to get tied up in courts, and then you even have a US Supreme Court. It’s his name I always screw up.

Frank Curzio: Cavanaugh?

Daniel Creech: No. Alito.

Frank Curzio: Alito.

Daniel Creech: He came out and said, “Hey, they’re going to separate ballots in Pennsylvania that came in after 8:00 PM,” I think it was. Well, Ken Starr’s whole point was, “Listen, the Governor of Pennsylvania didn’t get a pass at the correct legislation side,” the smaller end, of the rules he wanted because he wanted to accept ballots that came in after election day. So he went to the state supreme court. That’s a split vote. That got passed. Evidently, what Ken Starr is saying is, “Hey, that is totally wrong. And if the US supreme court,” with Amy just joining there, Barrett, “Evidently you’re going to have to cancel all those votes out.” Now how do you come to the number of however many that is? Is it 10,000? How do you calculate that out?”

Daniel Creech: It’s like an assembly line. They said, “Well, at 8:00, there’s roughly X amount votes, counts per hour.” I don’t know. But my point is that it’s not an easy thing, and Trump is not going to let that go. We haven’t heard the end of this. I know the odds look terrible for Trump as the presidency, but going back to the last contention, how long did it take Al Gore to concede?

Frank Curzio: I think it was like six weeks, wasn’t it?

Daniel Creech: Was it 36 days? It was over 30. So Trump, he’s sitting back there going, “Yeah, we got plenty of time.” We’re only a week and such afterwards. So, I know I look silly. We’re going to have to really watch the senate race, but there is… Well, you can ask another question, but there is a good thing about the house and senate, and getting down to the details of votes. Investors and people, the capitalists should be excited regardless of who wins the presidency or whose name because there is a lot of positivity, especially in Florida and minority communities, voting for freedom in capitalism versus socialism, and that is a huge tailwind by all these-

Frank Curzio: That was a clear result of people holding to capitalism on both sides, which is great. But I have to tell you, I didn’t believe it the last three, four days, and I feel like that it was over. But I got to tell you, a couple of things here that I think… One of the things that I was surprised at is that the Democrats actually have forces on the ground counting the votes in North Carolina, and believing that they have a shot to win that state. For me, for that to be your goal right now tells me that you don’t think that you actually won yet because you’re ahead in… Wisconsin, called for Biden. Georgia, you’re ahead in. You’re looking at Arizona, you’re ahead in. Nevada, looks like you won.

Frank Curzio: This is a pretty easy win, and yesterday I heard about them going to North Carolina. I don’t know if there’s fraud, it hasn’t been proven yet, so no one can say there is or there isn’t. You can think there is and think there isn’t. If you’re Republican, you think there. If you’re a Democrat, you think there isn’t. All right. Let’s put that aside. There’s one thing that we need to do that’s very important. Half of the country believes that there was something going on here. So counting these legal votes is important because it’s going to put that to rest and say, “Okay. Hey, it was fair.”

Frank Curzio: And I get it because I stayed up until 3:30 in the morning watching Trump’s speech. I was, again, watching CNN because they had great coverage that day, and they had their tails between their legs when they went to bed, basically when they signed off almost at 3:00. And they were just like, “Just keep up the hope. Keep up the hope.” And everything was in Trump’s favor, and just to wake up where… Why did all the states stop counting at 10:00 PM? 9:00 PM? 9:30? 10:00? Why? I don’t understand. Why did you stop and then continue at 3:30 AM? That’s a little weird to me.

Frank Curzio: I’d like to have an answer to that. But again, with all know it’s mail-in ballots and whether they’re harvested or whatever, they’ve all come in. But if Trump is claiming fraud, you have to have fraud. Now you talk about his legacy that could be damaged considerably if you’re not going to concede when there is no fraud. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure all the votes are counted, we want to make sure this is legal, and there’s a lot of shit that happened in these states that just are statistical anomalies, that just every single vote, there’s 110,000 of them that came in, every one of them Biden, and they only voted Biden. They didn’t vote down the ticket.

Frank Curzio: So for everyone that voted here, Democrat, Republican, you didn’t just check off the president and hand in your thing. No. You go down the line really of what party you are. Almost everybody does, and it takes a little while. So if you didn’t just check it off, and in a lot of those votes that came in, I just think there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. And if you’re a Democrat, and if you’re Biden, and you truly believe that, and if you’re going on TV saying, “We need to unite the country.” If you want to unite the country, go through this process, which is fair, and make sure counting all the legal votes, and I think both sides could agree to that because we want to get past this shit, right? I think, Daniel. The emotions behind it-

Daniel Creech: There you go again being too nice, giving people the benefit of the doubt, Frank. No, no, no, no.

Frank Curzio: Well, you know, the emotions-

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Of course, everybody would like to get by. But the Democrats, hey, they won, they’re moving on. They don’t want to anything to backtrack. So they’re going to say, “Hey, count all votes.” Which is kind of funny because words have meanings. So, you have Trump fighting the whole count all legal votes, and you have the Biden and Democrats saying count all votes. Well, obviously, you want to count all votes because that’s what’s going to push you over.

Frank Curzio: I just don’t understand the concept whether it would be better for Republicans or Democrats is how the hell could you vote after the election? I’m not talking about something that’s postmarked before. There’s states that you could vote two days later, in Pennsylvania. If you have main-in ballots, why not have them come in a week before? These people are home. This way, they’re accounted going in, but we should never have this where all these… We’re talking about 600,000 plus votes in Michigan came in on Friday.

Daniel Creech: It’s a lot. I don’t know the exact number, but yeah, you’re right.

Frank Curzio: Come on.

Daniel Creech: So you keep applying too much common sense, why wouldn’t you do it that way unless-

Frank Curzio: I don’t know.

Daniel Creech: Exactly. It’s ridiculous.

Frank Curzio: I just don’t know why. Yeah because-

Daniel Creech: Granted, you got to take everything with a grain of salt. But, again, the media is running away with this narrative, which is fine because they’ve been dead wrong for, now, four total years. You got to take everything with so much salt, it’s not funny. But Giuliani is out there saying they have witnesses. Again, he’s going to be totally biased.

Frank Curzio: It’s been a back and forth. It’s been like-

Daniel Creech: It is. But evidently there’s several-

Frank Curzio: It’s enough. I think everyone is-

Daniel Creech: But the bigger question to me… Actually, the funniest thing to me, and not ha ha funny, more pathetic funny, is that the last four years the narrative has been, “Hey, this looks bad, something is not right here, investigate this.” And they’ve investigated all kinds of shit. Everything from big to little, and mostly they just turned out nothing.

Frank Curzio: Listen, the Republicans are right to call this.

Daniel Creech: Well, absolutely. But my point is that now you have a whistleblower from UPS, I think there’s more than one now, but everybody writes it off because of Project Veritas, James O’Keeffe, “He’s too conservative, so he’s got an agenda.” This guy is literally on record. The Washington Times, somebody came out and said that he went back on his story. He had to come out today and said, “No, I still stand by it.” He heard or saw people. There is just so much crap going on.

Frank Curzio: There is so much crap. Yeah.

Daniel Creech: But the narrative is to not look into it now. It’s, “Oh no.” The New York Times put out a story yesterday saying, “Hey, we contacted officials from every state. No evidence of fraud.” Oh, well hell, that settles it. It’s just the narrative changing on when you go from investigate everything to, “Hey, you know what? We still haven’t called every state, but whatever. We’re good. Let’s move on.” It just shows you what kind of craziness this is, but thinking that Trump is going to go away quietly, anybody that thinks that I think is just trying to… I don’t know what they’re thinking. That’s just crazy.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. Look, if you want unity, even if the Republicans would have won, there would have been half the country that thinks that, “Okay. It wasn’t fair or something is wrong.” And just to get that… You’re going to make the process better by doing what you’re doing right now, and that’s really what we need. We all know this process is broken. It’s terrible. You shouldn’t have three, four, five different days. We’re not just talking about one state, Florida, we’re talking about numerous states. We all know this was coming, we all knew it was going to be very, very tight in these battleground states, which is the reason why they were campaigning so much ahead of the election, leading into the election.

Frank Curzio: But more important to this point because again, we get into politics, we get different viewpoints, and fun emails, and again that’s Dan doing the talking, not Frank. But the most important point that you mentioned, Daniel, one is hopefully there’s a smooth transition regardless, like we figured this out, and the bigger point is what’s going to happen in the senate race? It’s not officially over, the Republicans are leading, both those races are going to be a runoff in early January. Who knows what happens from now until January? I’ve read interesting statistics where there’s, I think, 25 to 30,000 kids that are going to go from seven… They have birthdays, they’re going to be 18 years old by the time this happens and gets to now.

Daniel Creech: Oh, eligible voters? Yeah.

Frank Curzio: And we’re talking about a few 10,000 votes, which is interesting. So it’s not a done deal, and I think on both sides, it’s always pretty bad for the markets if you have that blue wave, or if you have the red wave. It’s nice to have those checks and balances in place in terms of your investment, so that’s really what we’re talking about. And let’s move on from the election here. It’s important that we talk about it because it is related to your portfolio and how you’re going to allocate; and also, speaking allocation, Daniel, the vaccine came out. I’ve done a ton of research on the vaccine. I actually, two weeks ago, I posted on YouTube. I saw a great research report one of the best analysts, and he works for Evercore.

Frank Curzio: The best biotech analyst saying, “Look, there’s a good shot that this is going to have 90 to 95% plus efficacy and be effective.” And I told everyone that the consensus was for 60%. The flu virus is 40%. The MMR vaccine, measles, mumps, rubella, that’s 90%. So this is on par with that, and nobody doesn’t go out because they’re afraid of getting that because of this vaccine. Measles, mumps, rubella anymore. So, it’s game-changing news, but are you surprised in a rotation that we’re seeing? Maybe stay at home stocks, I get it, but this is going to take a long time to develop, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. I would. We’ve talked about this in the past in both on and off camera a little bit, I think, but the volatility is just crazy because you’ve got so much liquidity, a lot of algorithms. So you’re seeing moves that typically you think, “All right. This stock is going to move three to 5%,” it ends up moving 10% or more. So there’s going to be a lot of knee jerk reaction, that’s the new normal. It did surprise me a little bit on how hard some stocks got hit. So when the market was rallying like crazy, housing stock sold off. Toll Brothers and things like that, which did surprise me a little bit, they’ve bounced back since.

Daniel Creech: But yeah. I don’t understand the idea. I understand that market looks forward and you have to price stuff in, but they’re talking about… Not even the majority of people, but when do you think a big enough percentage of people would take that to where somebody is three people away from knowing? And that’s at least mid-next year, right?

Frank Curzio: Look, there’s reports-

Daniel Creech: I guess I don’t know. I understand the market pricing it in. That doesn’t shock me. What shocks me is to them now it’s like, “Okay. From here forward, how soon do you think people are going to have the mindset difference of, “All right. Now it’s safe to go out,”?

Frank Curzio: And that’s a thing where we talk about sentiment here, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: Which is improving. It’s not necessarily like, “Okay. We’re going out there and these are facts,” and we’re like, “Holy cow.” This is about sentiment. Sentiment drives markets. But when I look at this vaccine, I’d be very surprised if anyone outside of the danger zone gets it before June, and I’m talking about people are over 70, the average is-

Daniel Creech: Obviously, they’re going to roll it out to the most-

Frank Curzio: To the people who have the most, which they should.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking.

Frank Curzio: But then they’re saying in another report that I’ve read from Leerink, who’s one of the best in biotech research outfits, that they have the COVID numbers in terms of revenues that it’s going to be generated from… Say Moderna comes out, Pfizer, whatever. They all come out with their vaccines. They’re all 90% plus, whatever. They say that they’re not going to see a decline in sales within this part of the vaccine industry, specifically to COVID, starting at 2025. Think about that. That’s five years from now. So, you’re going to see massive amounts of tests, even more tests now take place than ever because I’ve seen testing companies get nailed here, which is surprising.

Frank Curzio: We have COVID cases at record levels right now. More and more people are getting tested. That’s not going to stop anytime soon. If you want more evidence where, “Hey, it doesn’t mean that we were saying to buy all these stocks, and buy these sectors, and this is eventually going to happen.” But when you see a 40% move in Carnival Cruises in one day, and then you see American Airlines with a 20% move, and Daniel, what did these companies do that very day?

Daniel Creech: We had a good discussion about this. I think it’s brilliant, and not that Frank is taking the other side on how markets work and stuff, but it was great. They started raising money, and so did pot stocks. Pot stocks raised money. They just did an offering and raised a ton of money as their price shot up, and to your point, it shows weakness. Well, go ahead. It kind of shows weakness because it’s like, “Hey, why not?” You want to try to get it as much or how you can-

Frank Curzio: So basically-

Daniel Creech: …You take your first nice pop, I guess.

Frank Curzio: These companies are not sharing the same outlook as everybody else. I think it is very smart for them to raise money. But if they really thought that this was going to take off and there’s no shot of this going back down, they wouldn’t be raising money in the same day that vaccine announcement came out, which is what, Monday and then Tuesday? Monday and Tuesday, these companies are raising money. They were doing it at a much higher price, which tells you that they’re playing it safe. I’m not saying that they’re not doing the right thing. It’s fine.

Frank Curzio: What I’m saying is that these companies do not believe this is over. They’re raising money. They don’t think stocks are going through the roof and everything is going to be great.

Daniel Creech: As they should. You got to look forward, you got to do what’s best in the interest of your shareholders, and it does look… It is a sign of weakness in its short term, but it’s great to see how… That’s how capitalism works. You’re in a tough industry, you get a pop, you want to raise money, you got investors giving you money. It’s all about the surviving and thriving from here. So, I thought it was good to see all that. It kind of brings some normalcy back into our job.

Frank Curzio: It definitely does, and again it’s a big change in terms of sentiment where there’s hope now that maybe in a couple of years, COVID isn’t going to really exist where people are going to be worried about it. But again, we got to go through the testing, we got to go do so many different things, which is… And hopefully there’s no setbacks. We don’t even have emergency approval on this thing yet, and we have Pfizer saying this and that like, what, 1.3 billion doses next year, and something like 500 million-ish… Whatever those numbers are.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. What if there’s a headline that cuts that in half? What kind of volatility is going to happen there?

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And not only that, when I’m looking at the price, I think they’re going to pay $15 per shot or whatever it is, and there’s two shots that you’re going to need. It’s two shots that you need. I don’t know the timeframe in between those, but again that’s included. So you cut that in half. So those doses are basically half the amount of people that are going to get them. I guess you got to get the dose twice, just like you get onto that with the flu shot. Most flu shots, I believe. I’ve never heard about it, but with some of the other ones, measles, they haven’t had a vaccine. Sometimes you get it at a later period.

Frank Curzio: But when I look at the rotation here going on, I still think there’s tremendous opportunity. You’re seeing it in small caps. A lot of these technology these days are going to continue to generate a shit load of money, and cash flow, and recurring revenue, and the balance sheets have never been stronger. But be careful of all the shots you buy. There’s still a lot of names that went up that are still down 20, 30%, but my biggest concern is are we going to get a stimulus were all this nonsense going on? Which is probably going to go on to January. I don’t see Trump conceding before then.

Frank Curzio: Yes, we’re trying to do it on the side, Mitch McConnell is trying to do it on the side, but I just don’t see it coming. And if we don’t have a stimulus, you’re seeing numbers. I’m hearing from my sources, very close sources, I’m hearing that Amazon’s numbers are declining, they’re not doing that good, they’re not giving overtime anymore. For me, I said this a couple of weeks ago, Daniel, that I saw even from emails that I’ve been getting and that I’m reading, there’s just a decline in spending all of a sudden, and it makes sense when you think about it because you had this massive stimulus where everyone was just getting money for free. Checks. Here. Right.

Frank Curzio: You need a business loan? Who cares what you do. Who cares if you need it. Here you go. So everyone was like, “Holy shit.” And what do you do? You spend. You buy a whole bunch of stuff. Now we’re going through the next wave of this, and most companies cannot operate at 80% capacity, which is what the US is hoping at right now. Most companies can’t, and some companies are going to benefit tremendously and some companies aren’t, like gyms and restaurants and stuff like that. We really need this stimulus. If we don’t get it, this market… And I’m going to ask you this, Daniel, we talked about this all the time.

Frank Curzio: Since March, April, May, this whole entire thing, where we were coming back up and everything. It felt like we’ve been ahead of the news on this, when it comes to COVID… We have low interest rates, super low interest rates, it’s going to stay low for a while. If they go higher in the long hand, we’re going to get yield curb control. That’s for a fact. We can’t have these insurance going higher, we just have too much debt. The federal managed that, we all know that. You’re looking at a stimulus plan coming most likely. Say if we can in the next two to three months. I get it.

Frank Curzio: The vaccine announcement is now out. All great news that people are now incredibly bullish, incredibly bullish on the market, even though we’re near all-time highs. This is stuff that we knew about, and stocks are trading pretty much at the highest levels since the tech boom. 21 times with earnings. Do you think this is factored in? How much higher can we go here on news that’s kind of been expected? At least we’ve been talking about it here for months. That worries me a little bit. It seems like a lot is priced in. What are your thoughts?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. I think we’re pretty much, I don’t want to say, perfectly priced or priced to perfection. Even though we have such knee jerk reactions and everybody does know about that stuff, I think that optimism is going to prevail, and I think in general, things are going to trend higher until we get a negative, negative headline. Something on a setback about the vaccine or whatever. But I do think, and Frank has been very good about calling this, what I think is interesting is that I don’t think we’re pricing in anything on the election. And I know I keep bringing it back to politics, but in addition to what you’ve said, what we’re not talking about is what if some evidence that does comes up that’s decent on President Trump’s side? Or what if something comes up to make it look like the Democrats are going to control all three branches of the government?

Daniel Creech: That mixed in with anything that you’ve said, that’s a setback. So, I don’t know why people are running out to buy some of the stuff that they are just because on a recovery. Because again, we’re six months away from people living the lives of normal. And I’ll be honest, I was shocked. I thought there would be another stimulus by now. So, I did get that one wrong. I thought that they would pass something because it was an election year.

Daniel Creech: I think Trump did a few things on the executive order, whatever side, but you also have the fed basically still helping on the lending side. But yeah. If they keep dragging their feet on the stimulus, something has got to give because you’re spending is going to have to crash because everybody that got bumped from the stimulus is still in waiting, and you’re right. Restaurants, all of the service industries are just going to continue to struggle through that.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. I don’t think there’s a license to go out and buy anything. I like the casinos, I think people are going to be traveling a lot, maybe the Expedias. Oil companies, I do like. They’re so depressed. Companies like Devon, which we recommended, they went as high as 40 before coming down. I think we sold it at a loss. We limit our losses on that one. but when you look at it, I think Devon is, what, like $10 bucks? Nine?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Give or take. I think it was at 11 the other day, but yeah it was-

Frank Curzio: No one told you about the pop at Exxon because it’s not really a big stock anymore. $200 million dollar market, whatever it is, that’s not a big market cap anymore. It’s been the highest market company 10 years ago, but today? No. When you have a $2 trillion dollar valuations basically, or we came pretty close to that with Apple and Amazon. But do you think this rotation is going to continue? Because I don’t know if it’s so much where I can tell you, “Look, we’re trading at 200 times forward earnings, and you should sell everything.”

Frank Curzio: I don’t think so. You’re seeing these cyclical themes, and when I say cyclical, and the return to value, and small caps, small caps are starting to outperform, which is amazing to have it outperform on the way up, which they always do during economic recoveries or big rebounds like we saw. Now we’re starting to see that. Do you see that rotation continuing or do you think that, hey, you know what, the AMDs, or Nvidias, or these high flyers, and maybe even like the Pelotons and things like that, are the fundamentals really going to change now from a vaccine? Are people going to order less Pelotons? I don’t know. Maybe.

Frank Curzio: But it seems like, to me, it’s going to be more of a shift in capital than an entire market collapse to me, but I could be wrong. What are your thoughts?

Daniel Creech: No. I think it will be stock-specific. Like SITE Centers is a previous portfolio holding for us. It has great shopping centers, anchors, and locations. They target 100,000 annual income-

Frank Curzio: These are in high-end areas, and-

Daniel Creech: Their stock has rebounded really nicely. Still depressed obviously, but you’ll start to see if the vaccine and things continue to go in our favor, and people are going to go out to “normal,” there’s no reason not to transition into sites like that and into companies like that. That makes total sense. I’m not on board yet with all of the stay-at-home. I go to the gym at my apartment, so I go to a specific gym. I wouldn’t have any problems doing that, but I don’t know that I would rush back into… I haven’t touched Peloton. I think it’s a hilarious story. I missed the move, but I couldn’t imagine everybody just selling their Peloton and going right back to the gym right away. Maybe I’m wrong on that.

Frank Curzio: No. It’s just not new waters that people sell. It’s not going to the gym and stop purchasing.

Daniel Creech: The things outside of Netflix, but your Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, if they pull back, I’d look at that as buying opportunities again. I’ve talked about that in the past from the political side on only threads, but those companies are just so massive and so powerful, and they’re… No. So, I don’t think there will be a huge rotation out of all the popular names, but it will be stock-specific. And a little plug here, the pick in CRA that goes out today is benefiting that.

Frank Curzio: Yes, yes. If you’re a Curzio Research-

Daniel Creech: Oh, I like how I did that, Frank.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. That was actually a good transition. I worked hard on this name. It’s going to surprise you when you get it. It’s a small-cap, and usually we stick to large-cap income generating stocks in some of them and have dividends. But this small-cap was too good to pass up. It has a massive growth profile, and it’s trading much cheaper than the overall market, and this thing, I really truly believe is going to take off. So, I’m very excited about that pick, and I think you’ll be excited. So, we do a video of all those as well, so those are video newsletters, guys, where you see the research, and you see me bringing up sites and stuff, so that’s cool. That was a great segue, Daniel.

Daniel Creech: Thank you.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to be a professional at this already, huh?

Daniel Creech: I’m trying to help us out here.

Frank Curzio: Well listen, man, I want to thank you for coming on, talking all the topics. The politics are going to be interesting, remember? You have to email me frank@curzioresearch.com, but that should be pretty cool. But again, all this relates to your investment schedule. We all have our opinions on politics, and again, sometimes it goes crazy when you talk about the far right or the far left, but I think most of us are in the middle. We want this to play out okay, we want this to be a fair election. It matters. It’s going to matter tremendously for your portfolio, or how we position ourselves, and that senate race coming up is going to be huge, huge, huge in Georgia. Right, Daniel?

Frank Curzio: For me, I have that… Top priority. That’s not factored into where stocks are right now. That’s not factored. There’s like a 0% chance of the Republicans losing both of those races right now based on where the market is trading, I have to say, right?

Daniel Creech: Right. Yeah. Everybody is quick to call the presidency, and everybody seems content to call the house Democratic and senate Republican. And I don’t think that’s the case depending on all the screwiness and the counting that’s going on, but we’ll see.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, that’s great. All right. Thanks so much for coming on. And guys, I want to finish with this. I’m getting a lot of questions and emails about Curzio One. That’s our premiere membership that we open up only once, and that was last year, since we started this company. We only have about 40 subscribers, and it’s our most exclusive membership, getting access to all the product and services that we publish now, and everything we publish in the future, for free. You also get beta issues of our new products, which lets you give us feedback on what you want to see out of these products.

Frank Curzio: It’s a great benefit, it’s a great service, but that’s not really what Curzio One is about. Curzio One is about a network of people. When I look at guys like Scot Cohen from Wrap, who’s basically invested in companies, very wealthy person. Marin Katusa, Jeff Phelps, they all have their group of investors that they get into certain deals, and a lot of those deals sometimes I’m able to pass them on if they’re large enough to Curzio Venture subscribers. I think we’re going to have one or two coming up soon. And other deals are very, very small that I could invest in personally that with this group, I’m able to share because it’s that much smaller.

Frank Curzio: But being able to meet you in-person and having that group, and the ideas that come across my desk, especially now in the security token space are going to be incredible, but a lot of you have been asking about it. We’re sending another offer out again, and I don’t know when it’s going to go out next. It’s not a sales pitch. We don’t do this often. I want to keep this group exclusive because these are the people I plan to out to dinner and meet with when I’m traveling a lot, and you have my personal phone number and everything with this membership.

Frank Curzio: But if you’re interested, let me know. It’s only going out to 160 people. To put that into perspective, we send information out almost on a daily basis to 70,000 plus. I think this podcast is getting downloaded over 125,000 downloads per month. This is only going out to 160 people. If you want information on this, it’s usually for people who already own a bunch of our services, we take their money off of everything that you paid, and then you pay the difference. That’s how it works out. But we’re actually going to open it up in the next couple of days, and it probably won’t open up to next year.

Frank Curzio: Every year that we open up going forward, it’s going to cost more, and more, and more. So it’s a cool service, it’s not for everyone, it is our most expensive service, but it is access, just premiere access to basically all of my contacts. And so far, I’m sure that those people who are already in it really love that membership. It’s really, really cool. And again, you’re going to have access to a lot of pretty cool ideas that are very small, 20, $30 million dollar market caps, and I can’t share it in the newsletters and stuff like that. We’re just not allowed to.

Frank Curzio: These are some of the things I get, and not all of them work out, but some of them have worked out tremendously for me, and this are the ideas that I’m sharing with that group of people. So if you’re interested, send me an email frank@curzioresearch.com. We’ll make sure you’re on that list. But right now, it’s only going to 160 people, that’s it. And I think there’s 40, maybe 43 total members, and I like keeping that group pretty small. So if you’re interested, just send me an email.

Frank Curzio: And last, but not least, be sure to our Curzio Research YouTube page. I’ve been saying it a lot, but Daniel and I, you see both of us here, we got the whole entire studio set up. It’s really cool. Daniel, say hi again.

Daniel Creech: Yo.

Frank Curzio: There he goes. Different camera views, we can bring up everything that we’re talking about on my desktop, if we’re looking at research reports. So this is state-of-the-art stuff. You’ll see the quality of the videos, you’ll see the lighting. We have lights, we have the best microphones, the best cameras, murals every place. We’re going to put up whiteboards, we’re going to have a lot of fun, we’re going to have guests coming in the studio, and we’re being recent, just like with tZERO. Just the guests that are reaching out to us, and we’re reaching out to them as well because of you and how big this podcast is getting.

Frank Curzio: The quality of those guests is pretty amazing right now. It’s really exciting stuff. So doing the video and getting a lot of compliments. We did the last one, which was the first one, but last week with Andrew Horowitz, and you’ll see the video quality is amazing, everything is cool, and you get to see us, and I just think it’s a little bit more engaging. So if you want, go to our Curzio Research YouTube page, be sure to hit subscribe. This way, you know when that’s coming out at all times. It might come out a tiny bit later than the overall podcasts.

Frank Curzio: But hey, you could also be sure to like it or not like it if you want. Let us know what we could change, what we could make different because we’re excited here. We paid a lot of money to build this studio, and I’m excited to finally launch it because it’s been in the works for a while, and now it’s a lot, a lot of fun. So guys, questions, comments, I’m here for you, frank@curzioresearch.com. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate all of your support, you have no idea. Happy Veterans Day. Just amazing, just amazing that… It get lost in politics sometimes, where the people are so pissed off, at the end of the day, we truly live in the greatest country on Earth. So it’s awesome, and that’s thanks to our veterans.

Frank Curzio: So thank you so much, and I’ll see you guys in seven days. Take care.

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