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 September 29th. 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. So, this format, just doing an interview, great interview set up. Coming up today, we have someone very special going to join us, and it is Joe Davide, who is my nephew. Now, if you’re new to this podcast, Joe is a Gen Z-er, which is seeing an explosion in this demographic when it comes to investing, like through Robinhood Crypto, Coinbase, the Reddit crowd, GameStop, AMC.

Frank Curzio: I had Joe on twice, and the last time it was about six months ago, and we were tracking his trades, going over his portfolio, and just some of the mistakes, some of the questions he asked, and we had so much positive feedback. It was just some of the things that he was doing other investors were doing, we had a lot of young investors here, they were like, “I love that interview.” And Joe did a fantastic job of checking his ego out the door and just saying, “How do I get better?” and stuff. And I wanted him to come back. And this way, we could track, see how his portfolio’s doing. And a lot of crazy stocks and stuff like that, but let’s bring in Joe.

Frank Curzio: Joe, thanks so much for coming on, it means a lot. And it means a lot to the audience because, again, they loved those segments, which surprised me. And I said, “Okay, let’s see if we could just break this down, go into your portfolio, see what we can do to make it better,” and it turned out to be a hugely watched segment, because we have this on our YouTube, and also wireless episode. But hey, thanks for coming on, man.

Joe Davide: Yeah, it’s great to be on. I love the feedback. I’m totally transparent, I’m good with whatever. Anything goes, we could say anything. I’m all good. If I have to take some hits for everyone to learn, let it be. I’m good.

Frank Curzio: I could tell you that it’s not just you taking hits, it’s… I take hits, everybody takes hits. Everyone who’s great at anything takes hits. It’s how you bounce back, how you learn from them, and you’re going to continue to make mistakes. I love investing because you can’t be a master at it where you’re absolutely perfect, so it’s kind of like golf. I describe it as golf, where if you shoot a 61, you’re like, “Shit, I missed that putt, I’ve got to shoot a 60.”

Frank Curzio: You always want to get better, but you have to learn from your mistakes, you have to learn risk management. And before we do that, I have a little bit of a grudge to pick with you. Because you told me you were playing golf, and you said you were shooting in the eighties. So yesterday, I had to drop my daughter off, all way in Georgia. There’s a golf course there, so we played a few holes, and I was like, “You’re not shooting 80.” You’re like, “Yes, I am,” and I think you’re right. I think you shot 80, but I think it was on the first nine.

Joe Davide: No, the best I’ve shot was an 87, once. The other times it’s probably-

Frank Curzio: Was that 18 or nine holes?

Joe Davide: 18. 18 holes, it was an 87. Other times, the average is probably like… That’s the first time we played in a while, but it’s probably upper nineties.

Frank Curzio: Upper nineties, no way.

Joe Davide: Yes.

Frank Curzio: No way it’s up there.

Joe Davide: We’ll go, we’ll go.

Frank Curzio: It took us three hours, with no one on the course, to play nine. It’s like, “No.” I was like, “Joe, what’s going on?” But everybody has their days, or whatever. But yeah, so Joe’s… And in all fairness, you just started playing golf. You just started playing, right?

Joe Davide: Yeah, I started. I just started playing with friends beginning of the summer.

Frank Curzio: And you already have a hole in one?

Joe Davide: Yes.

Frank Curzio: On a real hole, like 150-

Joe Davide: A real hole, par three, 155 yards out. Pitching wedge, slammed it. It was a flat green, just rolled right in.

Frank Curzio: And it was the first one in seven years, they said at the course, or something?

Joe Davide: Yeah, it was the first one they had in a while. Everyone was like-

Frank Curzio: He told me this before we played yesterday, so I’m like, “Maybe he is good,” and then I was like, “Oh, shit.”

Joe Davide: I upped my expectations a little too high.

Frank Curzio: Oh, welcome to the world of golf. That was cool.

Frank Curzio: All right. So listen, last time I had you on was in April, and we broke down your portfolio. It was about six months ago. Where are you now? Because some of these stocks are Plug Power, I know the highs was 70, it’s 23 right now, Palantir was 37, 25. It did a fall of 20 in around May. ABML about $4, it’s $1.60 now. HITF, which is a marijuana play, was $11, is $6. UEC was another one, but where are you with these positions? How did you manage them? Did you sell out of some losers, did you buy more stock? What are you doing now, because I know you had about 10 positions in your portfolios, the ones I remember. I’m curious to see over six months of what you do, because I want to get a better understanding of Gen Z, how you got these picks, what you listen to, and let’s start from there. Do you still own these?

Joe Davide: No, I got rid of everything. So everything, Plug Power, that was a huge position I had. I think if I recall, when we discussed that in April, I think I had a thousand dollars was in there. I cut the losses. A few weeks after we had that podcast, I was like, “You know what? Let me get rid of some of these.” I held onto UEC, which was great, because at the time I was at 130% gain when I sold. Which plays into your monologue, as in yesterday, how you took that question with Alex, I should have stayed in it. There’s a whole underlying thesis, next 10 years, I sold it on the pop.

Frank Curzio: So, you sold it. That was one of the ones that you made money on.

Joe Davide: Yeah. I sold on the pop, I wish I stayed in. I was in at $1.74.

Frank Curzio: Where’d you get that one from?

Joe Davide: You.

Frank Curzio: I love it, I love it. Don’t worry, I have plenty of losers, and people will remind me all the time about my losers so when I have winners, I can mention them. I can mention them, I can talk about them, because for this podcast, you guys, I like to talk more about my losers than my winners. Which is hard to do, but that’s how you learn. It’s like what do you get wrong, because everything’s set up perfectly. And you can see through my videos and my newsletters, which are 30, 40 minutes long, I really break down the reasons. There’s always different reasons, but show you the sites that I’m using, what I like about the site, management, change of business model, insider buying. It’s just being mispriced right now, and they have all these catalysts coming off that are not being priced in because it’s been such a shitty company.

Frank Curzio: People look at IBM and say, “IBM, I hate IBM” for 10 years, you have to look at it with fresh eyes. It’s easy to do when you’re not a shareholder, but few people know 50% of IBM earnings are coming from cloud.

Joe Davide: Right.

Frank Curzio: People don’t know that right now, so that’s interesting. And they look at IBM like this old shitty company and getting their ass kicked or their lunch eaten, if you want to be politically correct, but you know what I mean. So, why’d you sell it? You sold out a lot of these stocks at losses, right? How much did you lose in your portfolio from that time? Where April, I know you bought some these, and in February the market really hit highs, it really took off in 2021. And so, in April, I knew you had a lot of these at higher prices. Now, they’re even lower today than what they are. I have a chart up, but what were some of the losses, maybe percentage-wise, that you took on some of these?

Joe Davide: At the time, I guess, looking back, it was great that I sold because I probably would’ve been broke if I held onto these this entire time. I took significant losses. I had probably lost a few grand, which was a tough pill to swallow. But you have to learn somehow, and I’m thankful that I did. It has to happen, you got to move forward.

Frank Curzio: Why? Because when I talked to you, you said that you weren’t going to sell these positions. You said, “I’m holding them. I don’t care, I’m holding them.” But yet, with UEC, you had a hundred percent gains, and you sold that one. So, you sold it and you… Which, one of the things I could tell you, one of the biggest mistakes is if you have a winner, don’t sell the full position. You don’t know… I’ve seen so many people say, “I had Amazon at 60, and Netflix at 30, and I sold it.” Sell, take your money off the table, because if a stock doubles, if it goes from 10 to 20. So, if you put 1,000, and now it’s 2,000, and you take 1,000 out, that means your cost base is zero, without taxes. So, if it goes to zero, you got the money, you got the money.

Frank Curzio: So, everything else is great, and you’re not going to be watching the stock like a maniac every day, which is cool because you want to keep your head straight. It’s the hardest thing, because you want to take your emotions out, and we do that with a lot of stock. You’ll see fluctuations and stuff, but we already made our money on this stock, we did great. So, let’s see how far it can go if they continue to execute. Look how far Zoom went up. Yeah, you’ve seen it get hit a little bit now, but holy cow. Because some of these technology stocks, how high they could actually go is incredible, some of these names. But why, what made you sell your… It seems like you sold your winner and you also sold a loser, but why did you sell your losers for? Because you told me, I think, last time that you were actually going to hold them. You were dead set, like, “I’m holding, I’m holding,” and I was talking about opportunity costs, because now you have dead money, that’s the shit you’ve got to watch the most in your portfolio.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to look at that and be like, “Why is down 5%, why is it down 10%? Holy shit.” In the meantime, there’s a million other things going on with the market, there’s so many things that are cool. There’s uranium that exploded, there’s just new issues coming out, and whether it’s a SPAC or whatever, you’re going to just different things to invest in. But when you have losers in your portfolio and you don’t have stop losses, stop losses is not a perfect science, guys. But what it does is it tells you to sell, no questions asked, and you’re out of the freaking stock. And I can’t tell you, there’s a lot of stocks that have fell below that and then took off again. Okay, fine, you could always get back into them, but there’s also stocks that I know that fell below that, and fell another 60%, and that destroys your portfolio. That’s called risk management.

Frank Curzio: So, what made you sell them? Because last time, it seemed like you were like, “Hey, I’m holding these forever,” and then you kind of sold them pretty quick in May. And that was kind of like when these things really… I don’t want to say bombed out, because they were down a lot, but they really got nailed.

Joe Davide: Yeah, they got nailed. I gave it a week to think it over. I slept on it, and it’s just emotionally draining to see that you didn’t set any stop losses, I didn’t have any share, I didn’t… UEC, I should have literally kept a hundred shares, I just sold the entire thing. I sold UEC to offset some of the losses. So I had said, “You know what?” I just sold everything, just was going to go on a clean slate. I did say I was going to hold it forever. And then after a week, I was like, “You know what?”

Frank Curzio: Forever and a week is a big difference.

Joe Davide: Exactly, it’s a big difference. That’s a… Good thing I said-

Frank Curzio: It’s not like, “Oh, I hold it for two years instead of forever,” but you’re like… So, how did you get these stocks in the first place, because these are some of the names… How did you see them, how did you find them?

Joe Davide: At the time, it was all over my social media. I looked them up, did some basic research, nothing crazy, just put-

Frank Curzio: And social media, like what? Like on YouTube-

Joe Davide: Instagram, YouTube.

Frank Curzio: Just regular kids, giving these stocks away?

Joe Davide: No, larger channels. It’s not like they’re going to recommend this, I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to go buy it.” I would look it up, vet it out. I liked the idea at the time, everything was… It was in a bullish market, and I went through with it, and then I got slammed, months later.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And unfortunately, even in our business, the things that sell the most are the things that are most exciting.

Joe Davide: Exactly. So, I was excited about it, I bought it-

Frank Curzio: Everybody buys shit at the top. Nobody wanted to buy oil two years ago. Nobody wanted buy uranium, even though uranium’s been a really shitty market for a long time. But still, talking about it two years ago, people were like, “Whatever.” Now when it explodes, everyone’s like, “Oh, uranium, uranium, I want to get into it, I love it.”

Frank Curzio: In our business, it’s like when something goes, it’s like space, the ESG. Like people want to just totally go on board when things are exciting, instead of really doing their research and going in when everybody hates them, which is, that’s a big part of investing. If you’re investing in something everybody hates, it’s going to be really cheap, and you’ve got to figure out what’s going to change. You don’t just want to buy it based on valuation, because it’s probably going to go lower. You want to look at the growth catalyst, and what is this company going to do?

Frank Curzio: I love when I see a company that that was a lot higher, so say if it was 10 and it fell the two. I like a company that was at $10, what do they do? They know what they did wrong, how are they going to get back there, what do they need to do? Have they gone through different cycles where they’ve cut costs before and they know exactly where to cut? I know a lot of companies in gold and mining management teams said, “No. If silver goes down to this level, this is what we’re cutting. If it goes down further, we’re cutting more. We’re cutting employees, we’re cutting expenses.” Say manage through those times, because when the cycle changes, that’s when these things explode, because your costs are a lot lower and then you’re seeing prices rise and the cycle changes, and that’s when the earnings just explode, that’s when you see the massive gains.

Frank Curzio: What are some of the things that you own… Do you own anything right now?

Joe Davide: One stock, or SPAC, it is eToro, the ticker symbol is FTCV. They currently have a 10.4 billion market cap. I was actually on their slides, their QT slides, last night, looking everything over. They have 9.4 billion under assets, they have 23.2 million users in 100 countries. But of that 23.2 million, it’s a weird number, they only have two million funded accounts. So, I tried to look at what’s considered a funded account, I don’t know if it’s $100 you have to have in your account or it’s a dollar, whatever it is, X amount of money.

Joe Davide: Last quarter, from Q1 to Q2, total net trade income increased from 123 million to 291 million.

Frank Curzio: Amazing.

Joe Davide: 136% increase. They have great commissions, total commissions rose from 161 million to 362 million, which is great numbers. But Robinhood is obviously way, way more.

Frank Curzio: Do they have the total sales on there, or no?

Joe Davide: Let me see.

Frank Curzio: Because you’re not going to find a lot of information… I’ll bring this up, guys, right-

Joe Davide: Yeah, pull it up.

Frank Curzio: This SPAC… And they announced this deal in March, and it’s not done yet, right?

Joe Davide: Yeah, so-

Frank Curzio: It’s not done. So, they announced this in March, you saw a spike for these things, will trade around 10. They were trading a little bit of a premium because people want to get in. They’re just holding companies, and they’re looking for companies to buy and then they merge them together. And once they announce eToro, which is a very famous name, a lot of people know of it, big in crypto space, trading platform, stuff like that, you stake and earn interest on your cryptos. But this thing spiked to 15 and then came down, spiked, and now it’s kind of been trading in sideways. But now it’s at 10 bucks. Where did you buy it? So, you bought it probably higher than this, right?

Joe Davide: Yeah, I got in at 12.15. $12.15.

Frank Curzio: $12.15 cents, it’s at $10. So, you’re at a loss right now, and… So, you looked at the fundamentals of it, which is cool. Yeah, keep going. So, you bought it, you looked at the numbers and you said, “This is great.” I could tell you, when I did my research on this, there’s a couple things.

Frank Curzio: One, eToro’s a great company. Snickers is a great candy bar, it doesn’t mean I want to pay $50 for a Snickers, right? So, you have to look, you can’t… And this is one of the things. People follow Peter Lynch’s advice, and I disagree with it, when they say invest in what you know. Because sometimes you invest in what… And you’re not even going to look at the valuation. And that could work in a Shopify or something like that, and fine, but you need to look at the online fundamental. You don’t just want to buy something because you just found out about it and you learned about it and it’s freaking exciting, when you got to see the value it’s trading at.

Frank Curzio: Because I know one thing about eToro is that company’s been valued at two and a half billion 12 months ago, not even. I think it was seven, eight months ago, before they announced that in March, that SPAC. That SPAC, I think, was like $300 they raised. So now, they’re going to do all pipe deals and getting everybody involved, and they’re going to get into dollar $2, $3, $4, right? So, they don’t give a share if this thing goes to seven, everybody’s making money. They have to make sure the retail investor buys this. If it doesn’t, SPAC’s don’t work. Retail investors aren’t buying SPACs anymore, that’s why you’re seeing a big crash in these things, because now, they have to disclose everything, their warrants, their positions. Would you really buy the stock if you know that another company came in for $200 million, and they got the stock at a dollar and they got warrants at 1.50, which are already in the money, and they could sell out in three weeks, four weeks? No, they didn’t have to disclose any of this shit. Usually, you have to.

Frank Curzio: So, the SEC came out and said, “Okay, you guys need to disclose, this is important.” Because warrants get exercises, what happens? They get exercised, and you’re seeing massive, massive dilution. Massive, massive dilution. So, you could see a stock go from… It could be $15, and I showed you this too on Capital IQ. When you see some of these stocks, well, you see massive, massive dilution, especially in marijuana names people acquire. It’s okay if you’re buying sales, but you’ll see a company that went from nine to five, and it’s still the same market cap, because you massively increased shares tremendously, which you just basically destroy investors.

Frank Curzio: So, you want to be careful, but what I realize, this is two and a half billion valuation, now it’s 10 and a half billion. What happened in eight months to make a 10 and a half billion? What happened is you inflated… This is why they love SPACs. Because they inflate a company by five X, at least. They come out, they do this whole road show and they get all these invest… It’s fucking eToro, these kids, all the Reddit crowd, everyone’s going to get involved. And that’s why I love what happened with Robinhood, even though it came out at 35 billion valuation and it crashed, but it did go back up again, because all the Reddit crowd just started going crazy and buying it. Which, that’s the people you want to make money, because Wall Street always makes money and they fuck everybody.

Frank Curzio: But why the 10 and a half billion valuation? Because yes, those numbers are great and that growth is great, but that’s why it had a two and a half, three billion valuation. So now, a 10 billion valuation, which you’re buying it at, and it’s even higher than 10 billion because you bought at 12, right?

Joe Davide: Right.

Frank Curzio: And now they just came out a week ago and said… What’d they say? They just came out a week ago, right?

Joe Davide: Yeah, they’re having issues with their F-4 filing, and it’s going to be delayed till quarter four.

Frank Curzio: So yeah, so it’s going to be delayed next. So, this is in March this deal was announced, and I got to tell you something. This is what scares the shit out of me with this company. The SEC came out, and the SEC came out against Coinbase. And they said, “You can’t start your lend business.” Which is amazing, because I’ve never seen the SEC come out and tell someone they can’t create something. Usually, they create it, they make billions, and then they take damages. That’s usually the playbook. It’s like what patents… If someone infringed on your patents, don’t say anything right away. Let them earn $20 billion and you get a huge percentage of it, and you get a check and royalties forever. That’s the way to play, that’s the playbook.

Frank Curzio: So, the lend business is you could make money off of holding cryptos and USDC, whatever. That business is massive, and that business is eToro… How many businesses? I covered this, how many? So, the fact that you’re making a lot of money on something that the SEC is coming after, and forced the biggest company in the world to just say, “Hey, you can’t do this because as a security, we’re coming after you,” and they shelved those plan.

Frank Curzio: Now, what scares me is this company, they’re supposed to merge, and now they’re like, “Well, we’re having regulatory concerns.” Are those the regulatory concerns? Because now, you’re going to SEC, and they’re like, “Hey, you saw what we did with lend, so F you.” Will this deal actually happen? I don’t know. It’s at 10 anyway, so I think your loss, it could go over, essentially. But maybe this deal doesn’t happen. But now, this money may be stuck. Now, you’re stuck in this in the fourth quarter, and why is it going to go to 11, 12, or 13? Especially when you’re seeing crypto kind of decline a little bit, right? It went from 47, 48 to 42, now you’re sitting on dead money. You could sell this thing and then wait, and once they merge, then you could probably get back in at the same price. And now, you have a little bit of an opportunity. Probably about three months, I would guess, if you want.

Frank Curzio: But these are some of the things that I would look at, but remember when you see a company that you love, that is great. And I get it, and it’s awesome. You have to look under the hood. You could see the most beautiful car in the world, if it doesn’t have an engine in it… You know what I mean? So, you can be like, “This is the greatest thing in the world, I’m going to buy it.” A lot of people buy it based on the cover. They look at it, say, “Wow, this is a nice car,” and yet, it’s not going to run, and it’s going to cost you a fortune to get it to run.

Frank Curzio: So, that’s one of the things that you really need to do your homework. You’re fortunate, where you have access to a lot of stuff now, where I didn’t have access to that. My dad, he had to go to the library to research a lot of this shit. He’d get 10K’s in the mail, which were mailed to him three weeks later, and annual reports and stuff. Where now you have access to this, you can get on the conference calls, you can listen to all this. That’s a significant advantage, but what are some of the things that you learned? Have you gone back to those channels and listened to those people? Are you holding them accountable, to the point where have they covered it and said, “Hey, we lost this,” or did they have stops, what was their risk management? Or, they’re just having fun with their channel and saying, “Buy this, buy this, buy this, buy this”?

Frank Curzio: Because a lot of times when I see that shit, what pisses me off is they don’t understand the responsibility that people are listening to you. When I get something wrong, people are fucking losing money.

Joe Davide: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: Right? And when they lose money, that, I take a personal, because they’re listening to me. That’s what they pay me for, to give them freaking good advice and give them good stocks and stuff like that. Broad advice, I got to be careful, not personal advice, but you know what I mean. And I think that gets lost, where a lot of people go on TV, they’ll say anything, and they’ll have a YouTube channel, and they get lots of listeners. That guy’s making a fortune through advertising. That guy’s making a fortune no matter what. So, he wants to cover the hottest topics, but at the end of the day, it’s about you and how is he helping you, how are you making money? But have you gone back to those channels at all, do they say anything?

Joe Davide: I have. They don’t say anything. I don’t take advice. As a broader lesson, this is for me. Everyone has their outlets, do your due diligence, do your own research. Don’t listen to really anyone, listen to someone, obviously, you trust, that you personally know.

Joe Davide: And as you were saying, to answer your point about eToro with the lending with Coinbase, I bought this in June or July. So, I saw these numbers then, I thought it was great, the Q2. Now, all of a sudden all this stuff’s coming out about it and it’s… I’m going to hold it. I want to see what happens. Normally… Now obviously, if I was going to buy, I would not buy it now because I found eToro’s famous because they have the copy trading feature. So, you can open a portal up, select an investor, copy their trades, there’s a whole regulatory thing about it. That’s illegal in the US, which I didn’t know, so that main feature that makes it so popular is literally illegal. And eToro only has 12% of its users in the US.

Frank Curzio: And that’s the thing too. It has 12% of its users in the US, but they’re trying to file in the US, which is a major thing, right?

Joe Davide: Yeah, so-

Frank Curzio: So yeah, you could say, “Well, it’s only accounts to 12% of revenue,” You’re filing here, so SEC may be held accountable, which is why they might be thinking, “You know what? Maybe we do this overseas, maybe we do something else, maybe we do security token type thing or whatever and trade whatever,” but that’s… The reason why even companies that do business here, especially in the crypto space, they have IO addresses. Because the government, just say yes or no. This way you could adjust accordingly. When you’re not saying anything, and you had plenty of time to think this fucking over, it’s a $2 trillion market now, just say yes or no, like what works, what doesn’t work. This way, you’re going to see more and more capital come into it. But when you’re on the sidelines, now you’re worried and you’re like, “Okay, what do I have to do?” To the point where I can’t tell you how many companies that I talk to in the crypto space, that are legit, great people, management teams, and they have IO addresses, and you find out all information on LinkedIn.

Frank Curzio: They don’t have like an IR page, anything, right?

Joe Davide: Right, yeah.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, you can’t really find any information out on them. I’m like, “Okay,” which is crazy. Which, to me, again, more transparency, especially in crypto, is better.

Frank Curzio: Joe, I will say this, man. You coming on this podcast and you going over your mistakes is amazing, it’s incredible. You lost a couple thousand dollars, not a big deal. You’re working for us now… Joe’s doing a lot of stuff, even on the video portion. You want to be an analyst, I said the best thing is if you’re doing video and you’re cutting up these videos and we’re going on TikTok, we’re going on YouTube, just do… Again, this is more of a media company. You could see everything that we do here that I’m saying right now on our YouTube channel, which is really cool. It’s really building a big audience now, but we want to just cut different clips and not make it… Now, it’s 30 minutes each, these segments, but we want to… Two minute clips that are cool, or three minute clips that are cool, just send them out. You’re doing a lot of that stuff, which is awesome, but you’re also listening to everything that’s going on, the interviews, the networking. You’re tied in.

Frank Curzio: A couple thousand dollars, not a big deal. It’s the best thing to happen to you when you get your ass handed to you early on. Because you’re supposed to have this big ego, and, “I know this, I know everything,” and then you realize… And this happens, I’ve seen this. I’m old enough, unfortunately old enough, to see this during cycles with the tech boom, and just even after the credit crisis, whatever, where people just go in on crazy shit and they get wrecked, and on the way up they think they’re geniuses, and you have to go through that process. Being humble is a great thing, and then you start listening to the right people and you understand, but you’re not going to make those same mistakes again.

Frank Curzio: And just to put it in perspective, Joe, when you look at Michael Jordan, he lost to the Pistons twice. He came into the league in 1984, didn’t win a championship till 1991. He got the shit kicked out of him by Detroit, so he knew what he had to do. He had to get bigger, got to be strong, he had to get a good team around him. He learned he, he built, and then he’s like, “This is what we need to do to win championships,” and won six, MVP of all, and greatest of all time. So, it never happens where someone’s just great and they don’t have setbacks, even in our business. Where even I get it wrong, sometimes everybody gets it wrong, Warren Buffet gets it wrong sometimes, a lot of people get it wrong, investments. The biggest thing and the biggest lesson is limiting your risks, because you can get a lot of stuff wrong.

Frank Curzio: So, if you have stop losses on all those positions, let’s say 25% stop losses. Say if you had five of them, boom, boom, boom, 25% losses on all those. So, if you do the math, you could do the math, so if you had 1,000 if you spread out evenly. Now you have UEC, if you held onto that one, it’s up 220, 230%, your portfolio is up because of one stock. That’s why you want to limit your losses and let your winners ride. Some people are greedy, and most billionaires have put all their eggs in one basket and became billionaires. So, I’m not going to tell you not to do that, of course it says you shouldn’t. But at this age, you can afford to be aggressive. Because you’re working here, you’re going to do well here. You’re learning, you’re going to make more money, but you’re just going through that process. What I don’t want you to do is give up, because a lot of people give up and then they start blaming everybody else, Wall Street, when it’s really your fault. You know what I mean? It is your fault.

Joe Davide: I’m never, ever giving up. I won’t.

Frank Curzio: When it comes to debt and student loan debt, everyone wants to blame everyone else. No one wants to touch the colleges, because they’re all connected. It’s not the college’s fault that they’re raising tuition by 10 times inflation. Even three times what inflation, where it is now, no one wants to blame them. They want to blame everybody else, the creditors, whatever. But you have to take some responsibility as a student, or as the parents of these students, in explaining to them that, “Hey, you know what? Maybe you shouldn’t take out $100,000, $200,000 loan if you want to be a sixth grade school teacher. Probably not a fucking good idea or a smart decision, right?

Joe Davide: Right.

Frank Curzio: People don’t want to talk about that, but that’s the parents saying, “Hey, you should know that.” So, if you’re going to go into this, be careful. You’re not going to really make your… I’m not knocking sixth grade teachers at all, or seventh grade teachers, we need great teachers, but you get the point. It’s like there has to be someone saying, “Really? You’re going to go to Ivy League to teach students, teach kids, where you’re going to be paying for debt until you’re 40, 50 years old? It’s crazy.”

Frank Curzio: Doctors are different, and there’s a point where, residency, you start really making a lot of money. It takes a while, you’re going to school, but it’s there and then your life could be set. But making those mistakes and learning from of them and being humble about it, that’s the biggest thing, and also asking lots of questions. We’re in a world where people hate asking questions now. Social media, everyone’s like me, me, me, me, me. My daughters, I even have trouble where she’s going to a school, it’s great now. All the teachers email her all the time and they email us, and they’re like, “Tell her to ask questions.” I tell her and they feel embarrassed, and now the teacher’s like, “Hey, just give me a signal and I’ll cover it a little,” which is cool.

Frank Curzio: But it’s not easy to ask questions, right? Because you might think, “Well, that question’s stupid, or whatever.” It’s not, because obviously when I have you on, every single time I get a ton of emails, which surprised me, but they were like, “Hey, you know what? I made the same mistakes that Joe make, and it was great that you covered that and you’re coming up.” But that’s the biggest thing is being humble. I’ve always been humble in this business, I’ve always been willing to shut up and listen to guys like Kramer, guys like my dad, guys that were smarter than me, and just take everything away from them that I possibly can to limit my mistakes. And even today, I’m still like that, even with my network. It’s like you never realize who you’re going to come across.

Frank Curzio: My electrician is brilliant to me, my plumber is brilliant to me. I can’t do any of that shit. My mechanic is brilliant to me. Everyone’s brilliant in certain areas that could probably help you out, that are going to see trends ahead of you. But you have to check your ego at the door and just be like, “Okay, willing to learn.” You’re going to have winners, but that’s the biggest lesson. Because to make the most money, if you have something that works, you want to really make the most profits possible, and you have to let your winners ride sometimes. Take some off the table, not a problem, especially up a hundred percent, lower your risk. But if you’re holding onto all those losers and taking 70, 80% losses, it’s never going to work out. You just have realize when you’re fucking wrong. And when you’re wrong, it’s okay, because you limit your losses and then you letting your winner’s ride, and then once you stop out of those, now you have your cash. You lost a little bit of money, but now you’re looking at fresh ideas, fresh eyes, and that’s what’s really cool.

Frank Curzio: Now, you get into more new shit, and there’s always an ever-changing market where you can invest in technologies. I covered a bunch of trends in metaverse, security tokens, what we’re doing, climate change, all the money going into. Now, you can really find some really good ideas in those sectors, if that makes sense. If that makes sense to you. I don’t know if it does or not.

Joe Davide: Of course. Yeah, definitely.

Frank Curzio: But I hate when I see this, where I see… especially young investors coming to the market, which is a great thing, and then give up, and it’s really Wall Street fucking you and you don’t know it. You think you know more than Wall Street, that’s why I kind of like the Reddit crowd. But still, the Reddit crowd is being forced to… How do you get back at Wall Street? Well, you got to buy stocks that are at 5,000 times earnings and keep buying and buying and buying, and just squeeze the shit out of them, a short squeeze. But all this works at Wall Street if they get the retail investor to buy. That’s why SPACs works, that’s why all this shit works. That’s why Chamath… And you had Branson.

Joe Davide: Yeah, with Virgin Galactic.

Frank Curzio: Virgin Galactic come out. That guy flew to space for free, and not only did they fly free, they both have made 150 million each because they sold this whole story, “Everyone’s going to space,” and they’re probably not going to get another ship up. They might get one or two ships up there in the next three years, they’re doing like two billion in sales, and it’s what? Billions dollar valuations? Seven, eight billion, last time I looked.

Frank Curzio: Again, they made their money, they’re cool, it’s fine. They’re like, “Holy shit, I can’t believe that many people invested in this,” and that’s cool. But that all works because they sold it to the retail investor, and we’ll see if he goes through on his plans. I can’t see a lot of people going to space immediately, and what is it, you got to take up six, eight people at a time? How many times you got… I don’t even know.

Joe Davide: That’s a lot.

Frank Curzio: I don’t even know the business model. I broke it down, I still don’t know how it works. I know how it works for Richard Branson to go to space, which is great for him, and Chamath’s already out of that company, which he said, “It’s the greatest thing ever, it’s awesome.” Thumbs up, Wall Street, changes stuff, he’s already gone, he’s out of the company, so that’s what they do.

Frank Curzio: But just be aware of that, and yeah, ask a lot of questions for me, anybody else. Anybody else out there who’s Gen Z, millennial investors, guys, hit frank@curzioresearch.com, this what our platform’s for, that’s why I started the company. I see the bullshit on Wall Street all the time, I want to change it, truly want to change it. We’re doing a great job of that, and just… It’s cool, because that’s my personality with New York. I don’t bullshit people, which is good and bad, Joe, right, being from New York? But people are like, “Oh, that’s cool, it’s cool,” until you really tell people how you feel, and then they’re like, “Oh, you’re an asshole,” but that’s the way I am. And if something’s bullshit, I’m going to call it out, I don’t care who it is, and that’s why it’s nice having your own platform with your name on the door. Because you can be true and just say what you feel, and yeah, it’s really cool.

Frank Curzio: So Joe, thanks so much for coming on, I really appreciate it. Guys, any questions, comments about that segment, just feel free to email me, frank@curzioresearch.com. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you guys in a few days. Take care.

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