This transcript was automatically generated.

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

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s November 1st, and I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets.

You know, I had such a great time last night, and trick or treating with my youngest daughter. My oldest is 15. She’s never ever, ever, ever gonna trick or treat again. She’s at that age, no way.

I don’t do that anymore. I’m too old. Or she’ll eat all the candy from my youngest daughter that she gets.

But we trick or treat this really cool neighborhood where, I mean, literally dozens, if not over a hundred homes are decorated.

And when I say decorated, they go hardcore.

I mean, smoke machines, haunted houses, lights everywhere.

Beautiful, beautiful.

There’s tons of kids.

Trick or treat with amazing costumes, and the adults are taking ’em around.

And some stations have like shots and stuff that they’ll do shots for the adults.

Uh, some stations, you know, again, it’s for the neighbor.

It’s not like you’re gonna hop in your car or anything, but, it’s obviously they’ve been doing this for a very long time, but they have other places where there’s like joke stations and you have to tell a joke, whatever joke it is in order to get candy.

But it’s like this whole event, everyone’s smiling, everyone’s laughing, having a good time.

And I have to tell you, it’s really nice to see, given that if you turn on any news channels, social media, it’s like death, right? Wars around the country.

You’re fighting over politics, stores getting robbed, dangerous cities between the, the major media stations, social media.

It makes you believe that the end of the world is near.

I can’t tell you how many people, because I’ve been traveling a lot.

So I’m seeing people for first time in a while, like in a couple years in different conferences and stuff like that.

You guys know, I talked about all the traveling.

I can’t tell you how many like end of the world people I speak to.

I can’t believe my kids are gonna grow up in this environment.

This is terrible.

All the elections and rigged and all this stuff and craziness and, you know, might there be an election? I don’t know, maybe.

You know, some people believe it, some people don’t.

Whatever you believe.

I’m just saying it, it’s, I mean, it, it’s hard to hang out for me to hang out with people in, in terms of when everything is negative and everything’s a worry, and everything is, and when you just take a step back and just get yourself out of this s**t with the media, you see people smiling, everybody caring for each other, just being nice.

There was some kid who broke his legs, a little kid that broke his leg in a wheelchair and, and you know, the parents had to go up and get candy for him.

And then, you know, some of the people saw they have steps to their house and they, you know, brought the candy all the way down and said, Hey, you know what, no, you don’t have to come up here or whatever.

And, and you just make it like, like family.

Like, it’s nice.

And you, you know, again, loving, smiling.

Everyone cares about their children.

What’s the best for them? I mean, it’s what the majority of people I think really want, but yet you wouldn’t know that, right? I mean, it seems like the media wants to bring out the worst in us and everybody.

I mean, sometimes it just touches on a subject that makes, you know, anyone come out and have their own opinion about it.

And then sometimes you’ll separate your audience and be p****d or whatever, because it’s just based on how you’re being conditioned by what media outlet you’re watching.

It’s just really nice to see, and especially for me as someone who has to, you know, pay attention to all this crap, right? Watch the current events, be able to analyze ’em, tell you what’s BS, how it’s gonna impact your portfolios, how to make money from it, right? That’s my job.

I have to do that.

Just wish so many people took a step back, especially with their children and their phones and social media.

I mean, every time I’m, I’m pulling up to someone next to them in a car and, and, and they’re young and some of the times they’re not even that young, but they’re always like, every light, they’re looking at their phone, looking at their phone, looking at their phone, looking at the like every second, every second.

It’s just, and everything that’s being fed to them, it is usually a negative, right? That’s what elicits a response.

All for what? To gain more page views, be on a site longer.

This way they could generate more money, right? So it’s just crazy when you see this whole entire process and how it plays out.

And then you just take a step back when no one’s on their phones.

Everyone’s just hanging out and just having a good time.

And I’m sure a lot of you could share that experience as well.

You know, you see that during the holidays and maybe you went trick or treat with your children.

It’s really nice to just see that where even my old neighborhood put up signs where you can’t trick or treat after 8:00 PM and all these people have their lights off.

It’s just, man, it’s just such a separation that just have a lot of trouble.

Just have a lot of trouble believing that that’s the way it is.

And it really isn’t.

It’s just, you know, you’re made to believe that based on what you’re watching these days.

Now, speaking of watching, you guys probably gonna watch the Fed meeting or read about it when you get home.

I’m doing this before that, right? In the middle of the day.

So the Feds have a meeting and decide whether they’re gonna raise rates, lower rates, or leave them alone.

There’s a 0% chance of them doing anything.

Just saying zero, I think, I think it actually is close to that or 1%.

So pretty much should be a non-event.

And we’ll see, you know, they’re not gonna touch rates, but most expect the Fed to maintain the same tone, which is hawkish, right? Which means that they’re gonna say, well, inflation’s moderating and we like to see it, but it’s not happening fast enough.

It’s still too high.

And based on the data, we could raise rates further.

And then what we’re gonna have tomorrow is everyone is going to overanalyze and criticize Powell’s remarks and twist them and turn ’em and say, this is what he means.

But this is what he means.

This is what he means.

Even though he kind of, everything that he said over the past 18 months, he’s done, we’re gonna raise rates, we’re gonna raise rates.

Ah, he’s not raising rates.

There’s no way he is raising rates.

They’re gonna cut rates.

Remember like 12 months they’re gonna cut rates.

No, you know, we overanalyze this stuff.

He’s done every, he’s like, I’m leaving rates higher.

They gotta be higher for longer.

We still have inflation out there.

So, and yeah, we’re gonna overanalyze it and see, and this is more hawkish and no, I heard one word and it’s not.

This is compared to what he said last time.

And you know, the bottom line, just listen to the guy.

Just listen to the guy as if you’re a five year old.

That’s it.

And would stop overanalyzing and just say, this is what he means.

And that’s kind of how, how we figured the market would be for a while.

And this is of course after he changed his mind, what, over 18 months ago when he said it was transitory.

But then he said we have to aggressively raise rates and he’s done that.

But the bottom line here is what you need to understand, since again, we’re gonna analyze this to death and see, you know, everyone’s gonna have a different opinion.

Try to get on CNBC is far, you know, you’ll get on every channel and, and you know, not picking on anyone here, but you know, the more crazy your prediction, the market’s gonna go up.

The more chance you’re gonna be have to go on these news outlets, right? Believe me, I know I’ve been behind the scenes at all these things.

I’ve been on these news outlets.

But the bottom line is, what you need to know is high rates are gonna be here much longer than most believe.

I mean, not us.

Listen the podcast and we’re saying this for over a year, there’s no way the Fed’s gonna lower rates in Q two of this year, or Q three.

Now in Q four, when you look at 90% of the economists are forecasting for lower rates this time last year, even though the Fed’s like, no, that’s not what we’re doing.

But it was just, it is unbelievable to me to think that in terms of, of the pricing and how they look at the Fed fund’s futures.

There’s just no way where inflation is.

I mean, just to put in perspective, you’re looking at inflation 3.

7, 3.

84% of the core around those levels.

And you’re saying, wow, it’s coming down tremendously.

You are right.

It has come down tremendously over the last year.

But if you’re looking at a 4% number, I mean the last, we’ve never been over 4% since 1991.

Annually on the CPI, we’re still incredibly high.

If you take out last year, COVID go back, we’ll get 1991.

I mean this is crazy high.

It’s just, it feels a little bit better ’cause it’s not, it’s crazy as it, what’s was guys, when the economy slows, which is happening, ’cause rates are high and they gonna stay higher for longer, it means the economy slows, right? The economy’s gonna slow as rates are higher, the earnings slow, right? This was me.

Earnings are going to slow.

Which is why you’re seeing stocks get hammered over the past two months.

And even lately because earnings estimates are way too high.

Something else that, that we’ve been saying, there’s no way they’re gonna be able to meet these earnings estimates.

Why? Because what happens during this event, what happens is usually they’re not used.

We’re not used to seeing a, it’s not a recession, it’s a, it’s a big slow down.

We’re not used to seeing it over a long period of time.

We’re used to seeing COVID v, what was it, a month and a half, 35% losses.

And then boom, the market shot back up 2008 pretty quick, right? For the end of the world financial system, global financial system was gonna collapse.

Feds saved it, injected money.

We all know the story.

By now it was like nine months, right? Nine months.

It wasn’t like 2000 to 2003, it was like three year period when a.com crashed way.

It was horrible.

If you look at past recessions going back before 2008, it was horrible.

So we’re looking at the story where companies who aren’t mature, what companies that have been around, and when I say mature, have been around for less than like 6, 7, 8 years.

And if you look pre COVID or even even a couple years after that, you had interest rates.

Money was free for 10 straight years.

For 10 straight years.

So what do you do? What do you do when you see this environment? Well, we gotta prepare guys.

Okay, let’s cut costs.

We need to cut costs.

We can raise prices, right? It’s inflation.

Let’s raise prices in 2000, 2001.

2002 raise prices.

Great.

Now we see higher interest rates.

Wait, we got kill, but let’s adjust.

Let’s start cutting capex.

What, what Meta did, right? Let’s start cutting costs.

Great, well now you can’t cut costs anymore.

And now you can’t raise prices anymore because people are going elsewhere.

If you’re raising prices, they’re price sensitive.

That’s why you’ve seen very few companies do well.

Chipotle could pass off those costs.

McDonald’s could pass off their cost, but a lot of retailers can’t.

Airlines are having trouble, believe it or not, passing off their costs.

So the big story right now is earnings.

I mean, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to what’s going on right now.

Probably the ugliest earnings season.

I mean I can’t even remember.

I gotta go pay 5, 6, 7, 8 years probably.

And this is outside of COVID of course when, when the government closed a hundred percent of the country outside of Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot.

But outside of that, just going into a regular earnings season where expectations are pretty high, we were supposed to be up in earnings, we’re gonna see this quarter down again, four straight quarters of earnings declining year over year.

And people are saying, well the market, what do you think? Everyone’s bearish.

Well the market is, I mean you look at the overall market is still up and you could blame that on five or six companies, that’s fine.

But even those companies are starting to get hit.

I mean you see VF Corp and that’s a a real brand, great brand.

I mean they own North Face Timberland vans that even $90 a share in mid It was around 30 in January, 2023 before stocks really took off over that five month period, it’s $13.

Paycom Cloud software as a service, HR solutions, huge growth cloud, right? In the right industry.

Holy cow.

The stock was $550 in mid 2021.

It was $370 two months ago.

It’s one 50 Caterpillar, not great results.

COVID came out and defended it.

Stocks we up today after falling us after earnings.

It’s September.

It’s September guys, two months ago, two 90, it’s two 30.

I mean AMD, you know, point to a bright spot up 8% today.

As of now, I don’t know how the market’s gonna finish with the Fed, stuff like that.

We’ll see, by the time you listen to this right now it’s up AMD’s up by 8%.

This stock felt 10% over the past three weeks heading into the quarter.

And even a little bit more than that, it’s more like 15%.

The move hire is based on positive data center growth in AI and stuff like that.

But again, you’re just looking at a stock where you can say, well AMD, but still there’s a stock that got nailed over the past two to three weeks.

I’m not cherry picking names here.

I mean we have, you know, Chipotle was great.

Uh, Generac was awesome, tra Eaton.

But yeah, most of the earnings have been terrible.

We’re not used to that.

They always beat earnings estimates.

But it’s, it’s not just the earnings ’cause some of ’em are coming in a little bit ahead, expected.

It’s the forecasts.

And as ACEO, how do you forecast where the past, look at where we’ve been in the past six months and then one, the consumers slow the consumer now it’s like, wow, we don’t see the consumer coming back.

How do you have we already cut costs.

We already raised prices, which we’re having trouble raising prices ’cause we’re gonna lose business.

You can only cut so many employees, which a lot of these companies already did.

So how is the CEO do you forecast? And again, you’re gonna have to forecast going into next quarter for the next year, right? Q three you’re forecasting for the end of the year, but now you’re seeing people expecting holiday sales to come lower, which almost never ever happens, ever happens.

Holiday sales are always better than expected as far as I can go back since I’ve been doing this all the time.

Whenever you think holiday sales are gonna not be that good, they’re good.

And they may be pretty good.

Not because people are buying more stuff, because prices are still relatively high.

It’s still much higher than they were last year.

’cause we still have inflation.

Not as high, but we still have inflation.

You’re buying less, but paying more.

Just go to the grocery store.

I mean, it’s not like, oh, you’re paying more for the same amount.

You’re paying more and they’re shrinking the product.

I forgot the name of the brand.

That’s actually the supermarket brand that’s actually putting stickers on it and saying how company there’s lower, you know, how, how there’s less in the product than than usual.

Actually I think that’s awesome.

I mean, you raise prices fine, but now you, you’re giving less, right? So you’re deceiving people.

Not as much cereal in a box, not as much as as whatever in, in these packages.

But man, you look at Match group.

Match group is down 17% today Estee Lauder is down 16% and there’s more than 60 companies that reported so far.

And again, we’re, you know, still going through earnings season here, they have cut earnings by more than 10% for next quarter.

And you know where it’s coming from.

It’s coming from the sectors that were working when like six months ago.

Well these sectors had high expectations like airlines, cruises, autos, tech, pharma, food products.

I mean those staples are supposed to be great in this market environment, but they’re not.

They’re getting killed.

Look at the earnings cuts for say streaming.

Yeah, Fox Warner Brothers, paramount.

Disney is gonna report.

And you know, again, you know how I feel about Disney.

I’ll cover that more in tomorrow’s podcast with Daniel.

Wal up a premium.

I’ll just say this.

I mean Comcast is a genius.

They’re genius.

Oh man, they’re awesome.

So basically in 2019 they signed a deal with Disney for Hulu to get that third stake and said, we’ll sell it to you over the next five years.

But it has to be a valuation above 27.

8 million no matter what.

But Comcast could sell it to someone else if they come in at a high valuation.

No surprise, nobody wants to buy Hulu.

Why do you think so? Disney’s like, oh this is what’s valued at.

And notice how you can’t find any stats on Hulu.

You won’t find earnings estimates.

You won’t find how much they generated over the past 15 years.

It’s very, very hard.

Especially when Comcast last three years, they don’t report it.

So now they have their investment bankers looking at it.

Disney’s like, oh, they’re telling Comcast to say, hey, it’s worth more.

’cause they’re saying it’s worth 35 billion as a full stake this way.

You know, Comcast is gonna be happy as hell to sell it at this level, at that full valuation.

27 point half billion.

And now Disney’s gonna be forced to buy it.

I dunno where they’re gonna get the money from.

I don’t know what pelt siege.

But you say, well the stock’s down, it’s cheap, it’s trading at 21 times forward earnings.

The rest of the industry’s trading at the S&P’s trading at 17 times forward earnings.

How do you earn a premium? And maybe he has some pelts believes he’s gonna get a great deal on this, on, on the capital raise that they’re going to have to do.

’cause I dunno what they’re gonna get $8 billion from him outta nowhere.

We’ll see.

But that’s just streaming.

Look at autos.

Ford earnings down 50%.

GM down 35%.

Tesla down 16%.

Pfizer a Merck down over 70% each Energy companies as well, even though we’re seeing oil prices go high, Chevron was not that great.

Marathon cut by or 16% Valero, 18%.

These are cuts guys, these are cuts in earnings.

And you see so many chip companies, holy cow.

I mean Texas interest is down 18%.

I look at all the companies that that, that we’re seeing such growth in the auto sector because there’s so many chips that go into, into the EVs.

And now finally we’re realizing that, okay, Ford and gm, they, they’re, they’re, I don’t wanna say they’re completely outta the ev picture, but they’re just like, okay, w we’re sick of losing billions on this when we could generate a fortune off of just, you know, gas cars.

So let’s, you know, let’s be smart and dial back and now’s the time to do it.

’cause you’re not gonna get too much political pressure on you.

’cause everyone’s realizing, okay, EVs is not this 100% all in.

This is gonna be the whole market in 2030.

It’s not, there’s a place for it.

But for these guys, it doesn’t make sense.

Investment banks, have you seen them? Goldman down 12%.

Again, these are the cutting their earnings.

I can’t remember.

I’ve seen cuts like across the board.

Morgan Stanley down 11%, Blackstone down 15%.

You wanna talk about companies that raise estimates, Intel and Amazon.

’cause they lagged behind the markets for nine months when it comes to earnings.

Intel, you could say they lagged behind the markets for nine years.

Finally, you’re gonna see growth.

Somehow said they gotta go all in on ai, go all in or you go bankrupt and people will buy that stock.

Stop playing in conservatives, stop.

Put your low freaking PE ’cause you’re not growing as much and you’re missing all these massive trends.

I mean, they were, they were the dominant chip company.

I mean they were like really dominant, really dominant.

If you don’t, if you don’t know that, you just, I mean they were huge.

Nobody could touch them.

And now it’s not just Nvidia, everybody’s passing them.

I mean, how can you see this? How can you like innovation, how can you give stock options and get, you know, poach employees do what you have to do, especially in that industry that everybody does it in technology.

But how do you fall that far behind? How do you not see the big trends coming up? How are you not a major player in autos? How are you not a major player? I mean really PCs really and data centers getting ai, it’s so late to the party.

We’ll see how that does.

But we’re seeing stocks get nailed here because they’re not raising their estimates and they’re issuing weak outlooks.

And if you listen to some of these calls, they’re saying that they see the consumer getting weaker in terms of spending throughout next year.

And it makes sense because rates are now expected to stay higher for much longer.

That’s why I thought earnings would come down tremendously the first six months of the year and didn’t factor in the trillion dollars that the government would push into the markets.

Which is why we saw a big drive, mostly in the largest technology stocks, which drove the market higher.

But this is real.

This isn’t like a, a switch where you’re like, okay, even if they, even if Fed comes out today and said, Hey, we’re gonna lower rates next.

It’s gonna take, they’re not gonna lower by any meaningful and they’re not gonna say that anyway ’cause they’re crazy because you gotta see inflation go through the roof again.

But even if they say that, you know, look how long it’s taking for the rates to factor into the markets right now.

It’s still not factored in, but this is how long it takes.

So when you’re looking at this market right now and you’re saying, well, you know, I’m gonna buy, it’s gonna be temporary.

Be careful here.

’cause we’re seeing what are we seeing in stocks up today? Again, that may change when Powell says, and, and, but I, and I do expect stocks to have some sort of rally, and I’m not hedging myself here, but we are more oversold than we’ve been since October lows.

I mean, it’s crazy.

When you look at sentiment indicators, which we look at, if you look at sentiment indicators, holy cow, I mean they’re all flashing green.

Like you should be buying like crazy right now.

At least, you know, getting a nice two, 3% pop in the major indices.

I mean, they’ve been sold off by so much over the past two months.

We should see some kind of balance.

It’s just everyone’s leaning one way that, okay, let, let’s cover and, and you know, we made money on this, let’s go.

But we are incredibly, incredibly oversold right now.

So we could see a rally and I hope we do, I hope we don’t see something that’s just, you know, we’re getting annihilated continually the whole entire time.

But we should see some kind of push higher.

We’re seeing it a little bit this week, which is, you know, not a bad thing.

But if you’re looking out six months, even the next three months or 12 months, eight, it doesn’t change the landscape.

The landscape is not gonna change.

High rates are here.

The fed is doing everything in its power to slow the economy down.

They want to increase the unemployment rate.

That’s their job right now to control inflation.

And it’s not pretty, it’s not a soft landing.

So one thing I gotta, I give Powell s**t for, been pretty good.

Do exactly what he says he’s gonna do.

Yes, I know in the past he was late and transitory and all that stuff, we covered that.

But he’s been very lucky with the government spending.

He’s been very lucky with with, you know, the productivity numbers that we’ve seen, the employment rate has stayed, you know, is looking at unemployment.

I mean still it, it’s, it’s strong and great numbers there, but that’s gonna change the Fed’s.

Everything is about to slow the economy down.

Less lending, higher debt payments.

Look at your credit cards.

The reason why delinquencies are surging everywhere.

Auto loans, credit cards, commercial real estate.

The reason why China and all real estate companies are getting destroyed, defaulting on their bonds.

This is what, this is what higher rates does.

So high rates are here to stay and, and you’re gonna see crazy volatility where, you know, you bought a stock and you’re like, wow, this stock looks really good and it goes up 25% and maybe it goes up 25% in three months, four months.

And you’re like, wow, this is great.

Kinda like what we saw with, with, I mean a lot of the retail stocks, when you look at Dick’s Sporting goods, I always use as an example, right? Did great job on that, getting out of it just in time.

But that’s a stock.

Hey, everything’s working, working and all of a sudden outta nowhere, boom, That’s what happens when you see this shift in consumer spending, consumer sentiment.

And that’s what you’re seeing.

It happens very quick.

It’s hard to see.

You’re looking at numbers and people look at numbers that happen to be past data.

But you talk to your friends, you talk to your family, you talk to people, you talk to mothers and and fathers at schools and stuff like that or whatever.

You see it, you see the slowdown, you see people cutting back and people worried and they should be, ’cause their payments for their bills are still going higher and chances are they’re gonna start making less.

It hasn’t happened now, but you’re gonna see more cut.

You don’t see companies, the S&P 500 earnings declined for four straight quarters year over year.

And you’re not expecting layoffs.

Look at salaries that the biggest expense for every company.

You’re gonna see layoffs.

If your earnings are going down consistently and now after this quarter, you’re expecting it to go to next year, you’re gonna see more rounds of layoffs.

You should worry, you should prepare, especially if you’re making very, very good money working for somebody else.

But get used to that crazy volatility where, oh wow, this is working.

I was really good in this industry.

And then boom outta nowhere a stock could fall and get used to it.

There’s many of the risks in the market in this market in today’s market.

They’re not short-term risks.

This isn’t COVID, this is a government injecting money.

The government’s not there anymore.

They can’t do that anymore.

But inflation, it drove the market for 10, I didn’t think they’d continue to spend through 2023, which is why we have our debt levels going to 33 trillion and keep going higher and higher and higher and higher.

Is it 1 trillion in interest payments now? Holy cow, 1 trillion interest, just an interest.

How crazy is that? But they’re not going away anytime soon.

So now they scared the s**t outta you.

What do you do? Well, here’s what makes the most sense to me.

How about Bitcoin? Pretty remarkable move over the past two months.

Think about it.

The market really crashing.

Everyone’s looking for an alternative investment, something that’s not correlated with the market.

Everything’s correlated.

Even gold’s correlated with the market.

I, when gold goes down, when the market goes high, goal goes down.

When the mark goes lower, gold always goes down.

It’s starting to get a little bit of a bid and they’re excited ’cause it’s going to 2000, which you know, is where it was basically, I dunno why it wouldn’t be 2,500.

I like the fundamentals and stuff like that.

But the whole store of value argument, the whole real in interest rate environment, you know that argument, oh, real interest rate’s negative, you should, they’ve been negative for, for like eight, 10 years and, and Goldstone nothing.

Now they’re not.

Now you can get paid, right? So if you look at the real interest rate, that’s minus inflation of the risk-free rate when you can get 5% pretty easily right now, maybe five and a half percent minus inflation rate of 4% right? Now that’s 1% is a real interest rate.

So why put your money in gold if it’s not generating anything and sitting there and, and when I’m looking at the markets, something that’s not being talked about, this is the first time that I see the markets are getting crushed where sentiment is terrible, right? Tons of risks, lots of fears, wars going on and investors are not flooding into treasuries.

It’s a safe haven.

But yeah, you’re seeing Bitcoin surge, it’s up 30% just over the past month.

You say, well why is that? Well you have ETF approvals coming, right? BlackRock actually filed for its symbol for its ETF, it’s called iShares Bitcoin Trust.

And they started raising money for it.

Man, this is BlackRock, nine, $10 trillion in management.

They don’t do this unless it’s a guarantee.

So it’s pretty much a guarantee, almost a hundred percent certainty they won’t waste their time.

Plus they got great ties to the gum.

They know it’s coming, right? And that brings in a lot of more of these ETFs and Bitcoin ETFs that are coming, right? That’s gonna bring tens of millions of new people that, I won’t say were never able to invest, but it’s gonna make it a lot easier for them to invest in Bitcoin.

We’re not worried about wallets and all this other stuff.

And a lot of ’em could be, are gonna be able to buy us through their retirement plans for the first time.

I mean, you’re looking at the biggest asset managers.

If you look at Franklin Templetonton, you’re looking at, at, at, I mean wisdom tree, right? You all the big guys, I mean trillions and trillions and trillions and you have arc and then you know, along with BlackRock Gray scale, all these ETFs are coming.

So the biggest asset managers with trillions in asset under management now give their expo their client’s exposure to Bitcoin.

And then you have the Bitcoin halfing coming up, which is a big deal.

If you don’t understand, it’s a big deal.

What it does is it makes it harder for you to earn Bitcoin.

And if you put in perspective with, what is it, 21 million total, right? So you have a fixed amount of Bitcoin, the rest of it is gonna produced over what, 10, 20 year span.

I forgot the exact date.

It’s 2040 or 2030, whatever, 2040 I think it is.

But because it gets harder, right? So it’s called a Bitcoin haling.

If you look, it happens every four years, guys.

You look at those numbers into the haling and, and you really can’t deny it.

I mean it really is incredible because you’re seeing the year before and the year after.

And the moves in Bitcoin are absolutely incredible.

I mean, you’re looking at the absolutely surge by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of percent when you see that.

So if you look at the haling, which first occurred, so 2012, 2016, right? 2020.

And now we have April 24 is the next halfing.

But if you look back, say 2012, first halfing a year before there was a 400% increase in Bitcoin and the year after is 700%, you’ll get a hundred percent increase.

Uh, the, in the second halfing 2016 leading up to the haling.

And the year after it was a 280% gain.

Then you look at 2020.

And I could share this on my screen with you guys, ’cause you know, just shouting out numbers, and maybe you’ll listen to this, but here’s, here’s a great Bitcoin haling chart.

You could see for yourself that in 2020 Bitcoin up, what? So leading up to May, 2020, and then the year after 400% increase.

And now what are we seeing in April the year coming in? It’s almost like reducing the supply of Bitcoin.

I mean, this is a major event.

You see massive gains like before and right after.

So if you think 60 thousands of highs, a reason why I think one of the banks called for 150.

Th I don’t know what it’s gonna be or where it’s gonna go.

I really don’t know.

I have no idea.

But what I do know is that what I’m looking at at Bitcoin, it’s gonna go a lot higher than 60,000.

I I’m not gonna give you a timeframe.

It could happen, it could happen in six months, it could happen in two years.

It could happen in three.

It it’s gonna continue to go higher.

And you’re looking at these catalysts, right? Where you see these catalysts and you’re like, wow, you know, you’re right.

The Bitcoin halfing and all these ETFs coming in and, and I feel like, you know, we’re talking about them sort of largely baked in.

What’s not baked in is this is just the beginning and the enormous potential in crypto after these ETFs are approved.

I, I feel like that story’s not being told.

We have a banking system where our largest banks, our four largest banks, it’s only industry that you can’t penetrate.

You can’t have a smaller mid-cap bank go into a large cap bank, right? They won’t allow, do the capital requirements.

Like you can become Facebook and be one of the large leaders in technology.

You could become Tesla and be the dominant player in autos.

Every other industry.

You could start be innovative and have, you know, growth is unlimited.

It’s not like that in the banking industry, right? It’s a boys club.

The government controls it.

That’s why everybody goes outta business.

They give their assets basically to free and backstop ’em to all the big banks.

So they get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

They generated 105 billion in sales and $30 billion plus in profits last quarter.

Holy cow.

Last quarter.

And you wanna know it’s a boys club because what happened when crypto started taking off and crypto is a big threat to the banking system.

’cause the banking system, what do they provide? It’s not like oil.

They provide, you know, you need energy.

They, they provide, they’re middlemen, right? Banks, they’re middlemen, right? They provide a middle and, and yeah, you can say a little bit more than that.

And they have their expertise or whatever, but they provide services and they take a fee.

Now, if you can eliminate that service that they provide, like just putting your money in an actual bank that they’re gonna take money from, they’re gonna provide you a lower interest rate that where you can get elsewhere, right? You see the amount of fees that they charge you, your wiring fees.

Why you, this is my money.

I’m transferring it.

Wiring fees.

And you’re looking at, at crypto markets that solves all of this but’s.

The reason why the banking system, they went after signature bar.

Frank was on that board, right? Dodd Frank, he created the laws and all this guy’s smart when it comes to whatever you think of ’em, on what side? This, the guy when it comes to regulation, had no idea.

They, they basically closed signature and they closed Silver Gate.

These banks weren’t fraudulent, they weren’t insolvent, they were forced to close.

The SEC closed them.

They forced to close them.

Now what happens is, ’cause the banks weren’t really ready for this outta nowhere.

I know top people in the crypto industry that have been talking to these banks, they’ve been talking to SEC all the time.

And the SEC has been good.

You know, these, they’re like, Hey, I know there’s nothing, what, what’s the guidance? What could we do? What can’t we do? We don’t wanna be an offense.

And the SEC was like, okay here and talking to them.

And then all of a sudden it’s shut off.

It shut off.

The beginning of this year, it shut off in February.

They’re like, all right, that’s it.

No nobody Silvergatesignature.

You can’t accept deposits anymore from anyone.

And they told the banks, if you do, we’re coming after you getting audited.

That is true.

There’s proof points, there’s emails.

Go dig.

I have, ’cause I’ve been there.

They shut down our Bank of America account simply because we made an investment in a metaverse company.

We didn’t generate, I mean 95% of our revenue comes from our business and selling subscriptions.

They closed it down and didn’t even allow us to talk to them.

So no matter what you say, it’s closed.

That’s it.

It’s not Bank of America, it’s the government.

But now all of a sudden, what happens now you’ve seen all these banks look at the news over the past couple months, launching their own blockchains, tokenizing their assets.

So they could offer fractional ownership on the more than $270 trillion.

That’s just not just one estimate.

It’s usually between two 50 and 300, $270 trillion in real world assets that are liquid.

And the Financial Times just wrote about this Financial Times.

Now look at, at coin.

cap.

io said this, right? This is the Financial Times.

So why the smartest businesses are getting into tokenization and they’re forecasting that’s gonna be a $16 trillion market by 2030.

So assuming that’s like 10% of the real world asset market that gets tokenized, it’s 10%.

And to put that in perspective, at 16 trillion by 2030, the NASDAQ market, right? With the biggest companies in the world, large companies, Microsoft, Tesla, all of ’em, Amazon, Apple is at 13 trillion, less than 13 trillion.

That’s how big this is.

And all banks are going all in.

So when people ask me, Hey Frank, what inning are we in when it comes to Bitcoin and crypto? We’re in the first inning.

It sounds crazy, but we are, and this is the Wi-Fi stage in in the internet, 1997.

That’s what this is.

It took 10 years later to launch the iPhone.

10 years later.

For what? Social media? Four G Cloud data analytics.

And now what do you have on top of that? You throw AI analyzing all this stuff.

Be able to predict, right? Which is the ultimate, ultimate for, for companies and how much AI is great for individuals like us, but it’s great for companies productivity.

You get to eliminate employees, save tons of money.

Okay? Yeah.

We get to go on and type in, you know, a couple of questions and stuff like that, which is designed for us, right? The reason why you do it for free is ’cause we’re the product.

I mean, how do you get the most information to know exactly what people want? You give it away for free and now you have hundreds of millions of people typing in, Hey da.

And it’s constantly at speeds.

Light speeds.

Learning, learning, learning, learning, analyzing.

And you’re telling everybody what you want.

What do you wanna know? That’s the greatest thing ever that they did with chat.

GBT give it away and everyone could use it.

Now we’re just gonna track all this data, track everything.

Awesome.

Very, very smart.

But this is the Wi-Fi stage.

That’s where we’re on crypto.

I mean the technologies, when it comes to digital transfer of payments, you look at at, you know, Bitcoin, even right now when you’re looking at global transfer of payments for the last three years, just saw a chart on this, which is amazing.

Bitcoin’s like a 15 trillion, which is more than PayPal, it’s more than Visa, more than MasterCard.

That’s now, when you look at open source, what’s open source? None of the technology companies want open source.

They fear this.

It’s a major threat to their model.

’cause they can’t control you.

Okay? It has the power to crush large tech companies, which is why they’ll spend tons of money to avoid it.

So this allows you to own your own content, which the internet was supposed to be created for.

Media, music, royalties, NFTs art.

So we’re not just talking about tokenization when it comes to real estate and, and tokenization of treasuries and bonds.

I mean it’s assets all over.

But open source allows you to go into the internet where you’re not being tracked, where you’re not going to Facebook, where they own all the content.

YouTube owns all the content.

They could cancel you in two seconds if they want, which a lot of people experience.

If you had the wrong opinion on COVID or the presidential election, goodbye, you’re gone.

I don’t care how credible you are, you’re gone.

You don’t wanna take the vaccine.

F you, you’re gone.

You’re a nurse, you saw that the vaccine’s not good for everyone.

You don’t wanna take it, you lose your job.

Bye.

You’re not wearing a mask, which we know masks do not do anything right now.

You’re gone.

They control everything.

They don’t.

That’s what they want.

That’s how they make money.

That’s how they track you with open source.

You are making the money now instead of creating stuff for these major giants, you’re creating stuff for yourself.

You could sell it, you could rent, lease it, whatever you want.

You are looking at defi disruption, especially in the financial world.

Disruption of the entire banking industry.

So you’re looking at real world assets being adopted.

Adopted by what? Real world markets.

And I say the world markets.

’cause now the US is kind of opening up, getting a little more regulated, which is what you want.

If you believe in crypto.

And the technology that I’ve seen in crypto is unbelievable.

There’s a lot of s**t, A lot of garbage.

But no surprise all of a sudden outta nowhere, Hong Kong lifting its ban on crypto for retail investors.

This is May, they published this.

And what happened a couple weeks ago, Binance now launching a new crypto exchange there.

In all recent news, look at Europe, they had the Euro blockchain convention, right? And, and this is a few weeks ago.

So this thing started, um, I wanna say 2018, they have it like twice a year, mostly held in Barcelona and in January 22 they had 1500 attendees.

In February, 2023, they had 2,500 attendees.

That’s great.

2,500 attendees.

I think that was the record.

2,500 in February.

Think about February where crypto was, when the markets crypto was getting annihilated.

Getting annihilated.

This past conference that was held a couple weeks ago.

5,000 attendees, paid attendees 5,000.

Why do you think Europe, Hong Kong, China, why do you think this happened? The US people say first inning.

Really, really, really.

So this is what’s happening when it first, when it comes to crypto innovation, the future.

And right now you go buy the best names in crypto, not the garbage.

The top 50 names are still down 80, 90%.

And that’s what they’re down, that’s what they were trading what, 18 months ago when crypto was a lot higher.

It’s 60,000.

It’s like Apple going from, you know, putting that perspective.

It’s like Apple going from 100 to 10.

So from that level it can go up 500% and still be trading at what a 40% discount to its all time high.

And that’s, you know, you’re looking at Bitcoin going high.

Is is it gonna go to 60 grand? Probably gonna go a lot higher than that.

And it’s a price point likely to be broken given the new ETFs to Bitcoin.

Halfing coming up, tens of millions of new people having access to this.

But you can’t just look at, oh, Bitcoin ETFs are coming.

Oh, the Bitcoin ings coming.

That’s gonna result in so many, there’s a lot of big name companies, and asset managers launching, in the works with Ethereum.

ETFs.

That’s the beginning.

Everything filters down the company have been analyst for five years.

I mean, they’re incredible technology.

That’s why I’m like, man, just regulate these industry.

These people want a regulated industry ’cause they’re doing things right.

And why, is, is there a whole, you know, just push to really, you know, crap on crypto.

Even the Wall Street Journal published an article how, you know, due to crypto it’s funding Hamas and all this b******t.

They were forced to retract that.

’cause a lot of people Bitcoin, a lot of smart people came out and said that’s BS and had proof.

And Wall General said, well okay, well we’re gonna retract that.

I think the New York Times ran it.

They didn’t retract it.

Why? Why is that? Why does everybody wanna see crypto fail when it’s something that’s gonna benefit the people and be cheaper for the people? Why? ’cause the banking institution, that’s the real institution.

That’s the institution.

That’s the boys club.

That’s what really runs the world.

You don’t wanna get disrupted unless you’re ready for it.

And the banks are finally ready for it.

That’s why they’re launching their own blockchains.

They can communicate with each other now transfer payments and they’re launching tokenized assets.

Do you wonder why I’ve been pushing Crypto Intelligence in my product two months ago, even though a lot of those names were down, crypto’s been terrible.

That’s why, that’s why I provide a discount, a one year subscription to that because this is the time right now.

And some of these names, they just have bounced up tremendously from their lows.

What’s also working Uranium, you have plenty of exposure to that in our Dollar Stock Club portfolio, which is for free, for premium members, recommend a stock every week, $75 a pound, 11 year high.

So came go, largest player just reported.

Here’s what the CEO said on the conference call.

In the short term supply chain issues and inflation risks are causing production challenges for current operators compared to previous price cycles.

The market does not have the inventory or secondary supplies to absorb market shocks.

Translation prices are gonna surge from here.

Then they say, they said, we are seeing durable full cycle demand growth across the nuclear energy industry.

These factors lead us to believe that we are experiencing the industries get this best ever Market fundamentals.

Best ever Cameo was founded in 1975.

The best ever conditions.

Can’t argue stocks just offers 15 year high.

That’s working.

And what else is working? Put buying Moneyflow Trader newsletter, Genia buying long dated puts and just closed out several big winners in that portfolio.

October 25th sends an alert sold half of US real estate ETF, which is for 60% gain sold half position for for Roku.

And that put for another 50% gain and a half of Wayfair put for a 90% gain and the next day put option on spider’s S&P 500 Virginia.

She took a 50% gain in a week.

In a week, okay? These gains alone pay for the product for the next several years.

So this is why you hear me pounding the table to protect yourself from the market.

Not go short, you’ll get wrecked going short, guys going short.

I mean, just the timing.

I mean if I went short the market, I would got annihilated and that’s why I probably would’ve did 20 years ago without experience because I thought the market was gonna come down the first five months of the year, six months of the year.

But it didn’t.

But it didn’t really hurt us because when you short, you just, you instead of shorting your hedging like three to 5% of your total portfolio, that’s it.

You could only lose the amount of money you put into these puts.

So when you look at the first five months, 2023, the markets went straight up, okay, you lost 5% of your portfolio.

You know what? But you probably did great with all your long positions and easily, easily covered that.

The S&P 500 was up, what? 15% Nasdaq search, but now look and you see the next 12 months saying, what do you expect happening over the next 12 months? Do you see rates going much lower over that timeframe? Do you, do you see the wars in Ukraine, Israel ending anytime soon? Do you, do you see earnings per share getting much better after most that reported are cutting their guidance? I mean that drives share prices usually without the government and that’s not there either.

So those are the things that are working.

And for us, what we did over two months ago, which I think is incredible service, we set up a VIP team really for subscribers, answer questions about any product services we offer Curzio Research.

And believe it or not, I actually pick up the line on this sometimes too.

I talk to a lot of subscribers, love talking to you guys.

But I wanted to have someone to actually talk to you because what do we see now, especially in our industry in all industries, mostly right? When you wanna contact something, you do it through email and it’s not personal.

In times like this, you know, you wanna learn about our products and services, how you can get the most out of ’em, subscribers that ha for you subscribers to some of our products.

Now we can discounted prices off of bundle deals for you guys, right? And those people again who have current subscriptions.

But that number, which I probably only give on our premium podcast, I’m gonna give it to you now.

It’s 888-287-9461.

Write it down.

I mean this is, it’s an awesome service in some industries.

So many industries.

What do you see? Emails.

And this what you know, it’s a different market and emails are not personal.

Talking to people are personal.

These are people that I trained that I talk to.

They know about our products, they know about everything.

Of course they can’t give investment advice as you know.

But if you like to talk to them again, ask questions about the products.

We had a lot of interest when we lowered the prices for one year, only for three of our, of our services.

And a lot of people took advantage of it.

But you know, we offered a special bundle for all three of those services.

And look, it’s been a s****y market and terrible, but you know what’s working, crypto’s working a couple of names in our small cap portfolio and that’s been really rough.

One of our names, our favorite names really starting to take off on great, great news.

And we have Moneyflow Trader, which has been on fire and it’s on fire in this type of market.

’cause when the markets go down, you know what? You’re not panicking, you’re not selling, you’re not going, holy cow.

What you’re doing is you’re making money and you’re sitting back and going, holy cow, this is awesome.

It allows you to maintain those positions you wanna hold for a couple of years instead of being down 30% on them and being like, holy cow.

Now you look at your portfolio, it’s not down as much ’cause a lot of these things are doing well who do you know that’s booking those types of gains over the past month? Let me know.

’cause there’s not many, there’s not a lot of stocks that have done well.

Even the biggest stocks are starting to get hit.

Now you wanna try to VIP service again, 888-287-9461.

It’s not sales, not anything.

It’s just something I think that is a necessity that we wanna provide for anyone interested in learning more about our products.

You know, Crypto Intelligence, Moneyflow Trader, Curzio Venture Opportunities.

Again, it it’s, it’s just a service I think is really important to offer you during times like these.

And when you really take care of people, that’s when they become clients for a very, very long time.

And I feel like that gets lost in so many businesses where people look for the short term and, and even when it comes to, to different investments and people wanna invest me in different things, it’s okay to lose money, it’s fine as long as you’re upfront with people and you’re honest with them.

But if you do anything short term, just remember you cut every single contact and all your ties, everything, your credibility that you generated and you could never go back to those sources again.

Yet if you’re honest with them.

And that’s why we’re able to raise money for our token, you know, that’s why we, you know, people didn’t really know what, what tokenization was and we’re able to do it.

Why is because they’ve been part of, of our system and our brand for a very, very long time, for many, many years.

And you build up that trust and I just, I can’t figure out the reasons why.

I mean, especially you see this in crappy crypto companies and people contacting me and you know, the short term thinking, oh my god, and I’ll make like a million dollars, right? That’s it.

You’re done.

You net No one’s ever gonna trust you again ’cause you effed them over.

Don’t do that if you’re young.

Doesn’t matter.

You could be wrong if you’re wrong a lot, you’re not, you’re gonna lose clients anyway of course.

But as long as you’re up front, you’re gonna be wrong sometimes or whatever.

And you’re busting your ass to make sure that things work out.

That’s what people respect.

Especially in this industry.

I get so many questions, younger people, you know, Hey, I wanna be a research analyst.

It’s, you have to build that credibility, especially in this industry, which doesn’t have a lot.

And when you build it, people are gonna follow you forever.

And that’s why I was setting up VIP line and things like that.

So guys, any information, of course, you could also email me frank@curzioresearch.com.

So that’s it for me.

A lot to digest there.

And Daniel and I are back to you tomorrow in the Wall Street Unplugged Premium podcast, especially on what the Fed’s saying and how to position yourselves further with more recommendations, which we always, always offer a lot more recommendations through that podcast.

So guys, I’ll see you then.

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.