RE: LeoThread 2025-12-10 15-34

That's going on with David, it's March 2nd. Now, Frank, encourage us to the Wall Street Unplugged Podcast, where we break the headlines and tell you what's really moving these markets. Today, I got a special announcement to make. Your long time listener, you might already know what's going on because today's usually Daniel Kreesh day. But I made big changes to this podcast. The first real change in 15 years. If you like Wall Street Unplugged, if you like listening to what I have to say each and every week, you find it valuable. The special announcement is just for you. As you might know, I've been hosting Wall Street Unplugged for over 15 years. Throughout my journey in the financial industry, working with my dad when I was a kid, my early days at thestreet.com, Stan's, my only way of launching my own business, the one constant has been Wall Street Unplugged, no matter what, no matter where I was, every single week without fail, I would share my insights with you through this podcast. (1/8)

You might be saying, Frank, why? Every single week for 15 years, it's insane. It's pretty simple. It's because I love doing it and I hope it's been valuable to you. It's always been my goal at Curzio Research is create value to the people who are going to listen to me, subscribe to our services. I never saw myself as the CEO of a financial research company. I see myself as a person you trust. It's going to give you honest opinions, even if it's not popular, but always in a straightforward way that's going to help you make money and on that note, I'm making some changes to the business that I believe is going to create even more value for you, starting with Wall Street Unplugged. I've just launched a premium version of the podcast, Wall Street Unplugged Premium. The very first episode airs tonight. With Wall Street Unplugged Premium, I'm expanding the scope of the podcast. I'm adding new segments where I'll dive deeper into the most current news and debate the most pressing topics with (2/8)

my cohost, Daniel Creech. I'll talk in detail about the week's short-term moves that could turn into long-term trends. I'll talk about the politics that matter to the market and likely your investments. And I'll talk about the specific names that keep coming up in the Wall Street chatter and by chatter, I mean CNBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and of course, Daniel and I are going to continue our regular market breakdowns, but with one big change. We'll be adding specific recommendations to the discussion that we'll track every week. So rest assured, Wall Street Unplugged, the regular versions, going to be streamable, still available, watchable online, exactly how it's always been. But this is important. Wall Street Unplugged Premium is members only. Let's talk about that. So what does that mean for you? If you're interested in this content, it's brand new, including our specific investment recommendations, like the one we're recommending today, Wall Street (3/8)

Unplugged Premium, our first podcast, Wall Street Unplugged Premium. If you're interested in the news we're hearing from our network of insiders, if you're interested in listening to premium interviews with world leaders in finance, technology, healthcare, biotech, mining, all sectors, politics, and more, head over to wsuoffer.com and become a member today. So we made it super simple and it's also super cheap. I want to make Wall Street Unplugged Premium as close to a one-stop shop view as possible for macro insights, trend predictions, investment recommendations to interviews with high-level guests. And who knows what else? We're going to have plans to add a number of new segments and exclusive content as the platform grows again. WSU Premium is members only. And as a member, we want you to be getting a more valuable podcast. It's much more than that. So as a bonus, Wall Street Unplugged Premium members will also receive a free membership to the Dollar Stock Club. The Dollar Stock (4/8)

Club is where Dale and I take all the information we receive for our various resources, connections, for the past seven days to distill it down to the most essential information and then we send it to you, our members. It's going to be a one-page document of actionable information every single week, often with specific trade ideas. And this is where the Dollar Stock Club, we first recommended Ethereum at just $175 and we all know about the crypto bloodbath for the past 12, 18 months. Yet Ethereum has still worked about 10 times that amount. It's also where we recommended Coppin Corporation at just 60 cents a share before it surged more than 1100%. The Dollar Stock Club is another way for you to derive more value from the work Dale and I do every single week. A place where you can see a running tally of our hottest ideas and most recent market analysts. So you're also going to get direct access to me. And this is going to be through a members only podcast, frankly speaking. So if you're (5/8)

not already a paying member of Curzio Research or any of our regular products, you probably don't know I do a second podcast every Friday. It's my way of giving back to my most loyal subscribers. It's basically an ask me anything to vote exclusively to your questions. Frankcurzioresearch.com, feel free to ask them. Frankly speaking is where I'll answer a lot of those. So it's your chance to talk to me directly, whatever's on your mind. As you know, I can't give personal investment advice, but everything and anything is on the table. Want to know what I think about a particular stock? Ask me. Sector, industry, I'm here. Ask me. What do I think is coming for the markets in the next couple of weeks? Could it crash? Could it go up? Could it go down? Ask me. Because in the midst of all this uncertainty, especially over the past couple of years, frankly speaking is more available now than ever. And I can tell you every subscriber that has access to Frankly Speaking, the testimonials I get (6/8)

are fantastic. Disclusive, they love it and it's personal. As I said, there's pockets from members only. That means it doesn't stream on iTunes. You're not going to find it anyplace else. You get a notification from me in your inbox as soon as it's posted online. As a WSU premium member, you'll have access to Frankly Speaking. That's going to be absolutely for free. So the big reveal, how much is a membership to Wall Street Unplugged Premium? It's a million dollars, take it or leave it. I'm just kidding. I know seriously, I wanted a product that I could make affordable for any investor who wants it. So it's just going to be $10 a month. That's it. It's $10 a month for access to my expanded podcast, behind the scenes work with Daniel, free membership in the Dollar Stock Club and access to Frankly Speaking. That's my Q&A podcast. Just $10 a month for all of that. Again, Wall Street Unplugged Premium premieres tonight. It's the very first one and we're going to have a brand new stock (7/8)

recommendation. So I'm really excited for this launch, real excited for what's coming down the line. So to make sure you don't miss a single thing, go to wsuoffer.com. That's wsuoffer.com. Sign up today, you can access your very first episode. Thanks so much for listening. (8/8)

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. Good day everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Wall Street Unplugged podcast. On this Thursday, January 5th, 2023, I'm your fill-in, your transitory guest host, Daniel Creech, research analyst here at Curzio Research. Yes, I'm the one that works for, alongside behind and with, the one and only Frank Curzio, who continues to be at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, as he hinted at on Tuesday's program. I filled in yesterday for the first time. Today is day two of that. Always a pleasure. Email me, Daniel at Curzio Research dot com, with your feedback, good or bad, Daniel at Curzio Research dot com. Got an update from Frank out in Las Vegas, as well as a couple of interesting news stories that I find intriguing, and I'll explain why you should give a flying Florida (1/17)

about these as well. In the help to just shape us individual investors on how to think through what's going on around the world around us or in the world around us related to the economy. Next we're going to talk about Frank out in Viva Las Vegas. He's in meetings constantly throughout the day with all kinds of companies, big and small, ones you've heard of such as auto manufacturers, Sony, et cetera, but also a lot of smaller companies. This year he's excited about a couple of things. He mentioned on Tuesday's podcast about it being a huge year for the tech industry in general because tech had such a down year. NASDAQ was down over 30% in 2022. A lot of those stocks have gotten hit hard, a lot of publicly traded companies. That transition, a lot of publicly traded companies have gotten hit hard. A lot of private companies are even in worse shape as funding dries up, the high cost of capital as interest rates rise makes it more difficult to gain investors as a whole. Then the real (2/17)

kicker is when the market doesn't reward just growth but looks for fundamentals and value where you have to take that money, those investor monies, work and improve your products to where they become profitable. That's a huge transition. That's one of the reasons this is a really exciting time at the CES. Frank was telling me that one of the big announcements is Orbit, spelled O-O-R-B-I-T. The company that's building the technology platform powering the metaverse, which is your combination of reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, etc. Better social media experience is what's going to play out over years. Orbit today announced its first of its kind partnership with manufacturer LG, the smart TV maker. Think about this. Smart TVs are a dime a dozen now. They're amazing. They maneuver around and click through for the most part. They're light. They hang on your wall. They look great. Prices have come down. Everybody's got a flat screen almost. Orbit says it's behind (3/17)

technology powering the metaverse, LG Electronics, and they are bringing an interoperable virtual world to LG TVs. Through this partnership, Orbit and LG will bring immersive games and experiences together and make it easy for consumers to interact in the metaverse. That last line from their press release is key to me because, as Frank often talks about, the big disruptors are usually cheaper and easier for consumers, at least over the midterm. If you want to make it easy for somebody, why are cellphones so easy to use for people of all ages? Because you just look and click on apps. You just point and touch, point and touch. They make it very, very easy. I'm not a tech guy, even though depending on my age and how you look at that, I should be. But the ease of use will help attract customers very significantly to this space in a magnitude that gets people's attention on growth. If you can sit on your couch, you can be anybody and say, �Ah, you know, the metaverse this, the metaverse (4/17)

that, make fun of Facebook for changing its name, losing billions of dollars so far. The stock has gotten cut tremendously. I think it's down over 50%, excuse me, from its recent highs.� Yet, if everybody through their living room can experience, join, communicate, or buy something through their TV, through the ease of either their regular clicker for their remote control or a different clicker for their headset or whatever, you know, anything, that is not a big barrier to me. I think that will take off tremendously and I think that that's a huge deal for metaverse companies to be partnering with such a well-known and huge company like LG. This is just the beginning, not technically the beginning of CES, but this is just to show you the inner workings and what goes on behind the scenes even during bear markets. This CES, these companies have been preparing for this since last year. Yeah, you've had a lot happen over the last year, but it doesn't stop productivity. It doesn't stop (5/17)

projects, all projects, all productivity going forward and this is one of those examples. I'm impressed by LG and this company, Orbit, as well, just because I love the aspect of entering in through your living room on your TV. Maybe a lot of people just go there once, check it out, and then put it on the shelf for a few minutes or months or whatever and don't go back, but getting everybody into this easy usage of trying to experience or see what the metaverse could be or is, even in the earliest stages, is very good for the space in general. Frank is also meeting with a company, Wave, which does virtual concert platforms or is a virtual concert platform and they just announced a huge concert with an artist many of you have probably heard of. I guarantee everybody listening to this podcast has heard of him, even if they don't listen to a single song, Justin Bieber. There was rumors that he was going to sell his portfolio for, was it 150? I know it was over, I believe it was over 100 (6/17)

million. Anyway, I saw it on CNBC over the last couple of weeks because they were comparing how young of a guy he is to other artists who sold portfolios and books of their music rights, royalties, et cetera, like Bruce Springsteen or somebody and how they have quote unquote more hits, more years, they've been superstars for 30, 40 years. Anyway, Justin Bieber in a virtual concert was just announced, again, at the Consumer Electronics Show with virtual concert platform Wave. Now later on, remember, this is fun when I call Frank early in the morning because there's a three hour difference between the East Coast here on Amelia Island where I'm broadcasting from all the way to the desert in Nevada for Frank. I call him bright and early and tell him, listen, you can't be adapted to the time zone yet. It's still nine o'clock, your time as well. Even though the clock says six this morning when I called him. He's meeting with Sony and Samsung. They're going to have a big product reveal. He's (7/17)

going to update everybody next week when he's back in the saddle, of course. The excitement that I got from talking to him is just how the metaverse and the presence this year at the CES, its first time ever, is a huge theme. It's a huge buzz and it's going to come out and it's going to lead to and he's going to come out of this with a lot of great ideas. We'll all look forward to a more in-depth, up-to-date analysis of Frank's fun, working vacation. I'll give him a hard time because I'm still here in Florida while he's out in Las Vegas, but that's okay. So a lot of fun. Frank, we wish him safe travels and a lot of big winners coming from the CES. Moving on, enough updates about Franks in Vegas. But related to Frank Curzio, at the end of last year, we were talking about Blackstone's Real Estate Investment Trust, BREIT, and how they had limited redemptions from investors in this $68 billion-ish real estate fund all over the world. They were talking about how the slowdown in the Chinese (8/17)

real estate market and economy led to some investors wanting to ask for redemptions and get some of their money back. That caused a domino effect of other investors asking for their money back. And since real estate is not a liquid asset, if enough investors similar to a bank run want all their money back, you can't give it back in time, so they limit redemptions. Caused a lot of headlines and volatility in the stock, although this stock, the BREIT, is private. There's reports here that the value is down about $20 billion in market value since the beginning of December. However, Blackstone's Real Estate Investment Trust just got a huge... What's the best word here? Do we want to say investment or bailout? Somewhere in between. The University of California is putting $4 billion into Blackstone's real estate vehicle aimed at individuals, investors, providing crucial, crucial ballast for a fund that has been beset by a wave of redemptions. The interesting thing here is how this all come (9/17)

about. Blackstone president Jonathan Gray... Now I'm going to tell you what is being reported here and then I'm going to tell you what I believe actually happened and I will leave it up to you, the smart, individual, open-minded thinker that listened to this podcast, for you to decide which way you want to lean towards and or bet with. Blackstone president Jonathan Gray said the investment from the University of California came about as a result of his TV interview he did about BREIT on December 8th. Mr. Gray's, again, Blackstone president, comments on this December 8th interview prompted the University of California chief investment officer Jagdeep Bichir, butchering that, I apologize, who has a long-standing relationship with the firm to contact Blackstone to see if there was a way to work together. Mr. Gray of Blackstone and the gentleman from University of California did a significant amount of due diligence before committing to the deal, crisscrossing the country to meet with the (10/17)

heads of all the portfolio companies in the real estate investment trust. Alright, that sounds pretty legit. The investment will come in the form of common equity in the Blackstone real estate income trust and will be subject to the same fees and terms the vehicles other shareholders get. Now, let's get into some details here. The University of California is investing $4 billion into common equity in this REIT and they are going to hold it for six years. That's different because everybody else has the option or had the option to sell and or redeem up until last year. As part of the agreement, the University of California investments will put its BREIT shares into a strategic venture to which Blackstone will contribute $1 billion of its shares it already owns. The venture will have an 11.25% hurdle rate, meaning that Blackstone's net annualized returns exceed that rate of 11.25%. If they exceed that, Blackstone will get an extra 5% incentive fee. If the vehicle's performance falls short (11/17)

of 11.25%, the billion dollars that Blackstone is putting into the deal as part of this will help cover that. They're guaranteeing to say it a different way, so that's what's being reported. Blackstone was saying, hey, don't worry about all these redemptions coming on. We're going to limit redemptions. We're not giving you your money back, but there's no worries here. We're a private company. We're not marking down any assets anytime soon, and we're still performing a lot better than every other publicly traded peer. Don't ask any more questions or raise any more doubt. Then California comes in, just like Mr. Warren Buffett would or has in the past, and says, listen, do you need help? Maybe we can work together. We've got a long standing relationship and we'll do our due diligence because you've got to say the word due diligence as many times as due diligence can be said because after the FTX and nobody did due diligence, we don't want to look like fools. They did their due diligence (12/17)

and they come up with a deal. This real estate fund has posted 12.7% net annualized returns since its inception. If you are the University of California, this is a buyer's market. You step in with $4 billion, you're getting guaranteed 11.25% just shy of its annualized returns to date. You have zero risk for six years other than returning 11.25% on your billions of dollars. For Blackstone's side, they're going to do their best as they should to perform because they got caught off guard, had to sell some properties, had to limit withdrawals and redemptions, and now they're signing this big deal. But notice that the $4 billion that goes in is still going to get feed just like all the other money. They're going to get some off the top. They're incentivized to do whatever they have to, pull whatever strings, move around other assets to beat this 11.25% because then they get another 5% in incentive deals. This is a win-win for both Blackstone and University of California, but I think it's a (13/17)

lot bigger win for the University of California. As far as individual investors take away from this, I would use caution when looking at real estate investment trusts right now because we've had such a boom in rental prices, rents on a monthly basis, and the amount of nice apartment complexes and or housing starts even despite the recent pullback over the last year in real estate as the Fed has raised interest rates to the point where the 30-year mortgage more than doubled in 2022. My point to all this is you got big players just pushing each other around, bailing each other out for a lack of a better term. That's fine. If you're an individual investor in this, this should help you sleep better at night. I still wouldn't be so gung-ho about this. If you're an individual investor in other publicly traded REIT, just pay attention and look at where their properties are. Are they in nicer areas? Are they in busy areas? Look at the balance sheets and be cautious on the sky-high dividend (14/17)

payout rates right now because if they're so sky-high, when you can go to a two-year treasury bond and get 4% plus, if they're much higher than that, you have to ask how are they generating those returns? What kind of leverage are they taking on? Do you want to expose yourself to leverage and uncertainty as interest rates continue to rise, the economy continues to slow, and the Fed is telling you unemployment is going to continue to rise, which at some point is going to cause a major impact on the ability of people to pay high rents, live in nicer apartment buildings, and continue that trajectory of higher and upward in prices. I would use any POPs to get out of some of this stuff because if you're in real estate investment trust because you have a passion for real estate and you like the income, that's fine. Again, just know your portfolio. If you're strictly in it for the income, you can look all over the place, including bonds, bond funds, other well-run companies. Site Centers, (15/17)

SITC is the ticker, but Site Centers is a real estate investment trust. They own commercial properties in some of the best areas in the United States. They focus on buildings that have $100,000 in annual income per household in those areas. They want a lot of foot traffic, a lot of car traffic, etc. But that stock year-over-year is down probably 10 to 15% and it pays around a 4% yield. Well, 4% yield is great except for the fact that you're down 15% on your capital over the last year, if you sell. Of course, I'm not saying that you should. I'm pointing out that don't just chase yields in this because now in a higher interest rate environment, a higher inflationary environment, investors are going to be able to earn income through great dividend paying companies that not only pay but grow dividends as well as the old boring bonds like treasuries and such. Alright ladies and gentlemen, day two is coming to a close. I appreciate it. So grateful to have the opportunity to fill in for the (16/17)

Frank Curzio, the one and only Frank Curzio. I'll be back for all of our paying subscribers for our Frankly Speaking. Send any questions to me at Daniel at Curzio Research dot com. That's Daniel at Curzio Research dot com. Cheers everybody. We'll catch you next week. 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 hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it's your money and your responsibility. (17/17)

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 It's January 3rd. Happy New Year Frank courageous the wall strip of pockets. We'll break the headlines and Tell you what's really moving these markets of all of you enjoying the new year a great holiday Nice and fat New Year's resolutions Speaking for myself there. Yes ate a lot But enjoyed it with the family think about going to New York, but no way not with the weather. It was too crazy But hopefully all you guys Made it home. Okay. I made it to where he had to go. Okay, cuz I know She's Southwest. Holy cow. It's a nightmare over there right just traveling freezing weather horrible How are you supposed to be fun and I think it's more stressful this year especially for me closing my house So it's into the year just very stressful Actually glad to be back at it. And today you're gonna hear (1/18)

from me and the next few days you're gonna hear from Daniel Creech Because I am about to head to the consumer electronics show which I do every single year for I believe it's over ten years I lose track I say eleven might be twelve might be nine. I don't know I lose track but every year I go there I sample all the technologies and this is If not the biggest one of the biggest conferences in the world and every year it's around the first second week It takes place and it's in Las Vegas and all the technology companies from around the world So the biggest and the best present their new technology their new services for what they're gonna release for 2023 For the full year And I've found some of my greatest ideas at these conferences. I think this year it's going to be even bigger You could say well Kobe 2020 was canceled. It wasn't But I say canceled it wasn't you know in person last year I actually went and an Omicron hit and then a lot of companies decided to cancel laid-up Pretty much (2/18)

a day or two before the conference is pretty crazy You saw half of the company set up half of it was pretty much a disaster It was a real disaster last year was a shit show This year everybody's back 2.1 million square feet of space look it up. If you don't know how much that is. Holy cow It's not just the conference center, which is one of the biggest in the world But this is at several hotels It takes four days and you're lucky if you see 60% of everything You have great contacts there Leave me the right direction where to go Used to take tours and stuff like that no longer need to do that just have great contacts there You should meet a lot of subscribers there as well. It's occurs you want members. You're gonna be there. Give me a shout I'll be there till Sunday, and I'm leaving today Later on today, so I have a media badge because a lot of people for some reason like this podcast and listen to it so they say that I'm an influencer an influencer whatever that means these days, but (3/18)

uh So I get immediate badge which allows me to have access to everything right even days before And top executives there and to be able to sample the technologies you have to wait online I bring You know video guys down with me, and you know we do all kinds of videos I'm sending to you We're gonna keep a lot of stuff behind a paywall at least a lot of the ideas and things like that So be sharing some of the videos guys be sure to watch me at Twitter at Frank Curzio tick-tock you'll see a lot of stuff. I'm gonna try to broadcast things live and Get having that kind of access and being able to do so much is really really cool especially since there will be 323 of the fortune global 500 companies in attendance We're talking about Sony Samsung Amazon Google Microsoft LG P&G Caterpillar John Deere Qualcomm AMD Verizon Accenture is swayed and write them down and memorize them anyway 174 countries will be represented 40 top retailers in the world being attendance and Over a hundred thousand (4/18)

people that's were expecting They got to 170,000 people just before cold that was the record so it's gonna be over a hundred thousand I guess probably about a hundred fifteen hundred twenty thousand just because it's an international show and still places like China the places are closed and not flying in so Otherwise would be a lot bigger, but this show is going to be significant this year It's the first time that I can remember where you saw an absolute collapse in a tech sector All right usually it's rocking and rolling it's everything is great. It's been awesome since 2008 2009 You know a few hiccups here, and it not like this I Look at the Nasdaq down 33% on the year So you have all these semiconductor companies that are gonna be there you get a chance to talk to them These are semiconductors that we're seeing record demand Probably less than six months nine months ago six months ago Less than nine months ago, I'd say more like six months ago But so much so that they were building (5/18)

more fab facilities going crit all the sudden. They're like whoa Everything just got turned off why because of the Fed Seen demand slow demand is gonna continue to slow throughout the year So this is a time for these companies not really to be aggressive with their growth plans and a lot of these companies are training Astronomical valuations like the invidious and snowflakes and things like that still great companies Great companies guys I'm not ragging on these companies in AMD's not ragging on these companies. I'm just saying Snickers is a great candy bar, but you don't want to pay $25 for it, right? That's where a lot of these companies are still trading even though a lot of the sector is down So now you're gonna see demand shrink which means your total addressable markets are gonna shrink and it's all about taking market share from everybody Else and that's who's gonna be the winners and the leaders going into the next bull market Which would probably be a couple of years from now (6/18)

But make no mistake it's gonna be really freaking crazy especially early on next year Showed you how do money flow trader provide significant discounts You know a lot of people took me up in that offer again sending me emails and thanking me and how to protect my portfolio Not just protecting that making a fortune They really make it a lot of money just betting against a lot of things and I still think going into next year Didn't first six months earnings are way too high Yes sentiments a little weak and people will kind of predict the recession now But still most accounts are not predicting recession. There is gonna be recession. In fact, there was a recession right two straight quarters negative GDP growth They said the jobs number was great. Now. I realize second quarter job numbers were a million a million jobs off There's like ten thousand five hundred job openings compared to the 1.1 whatever million that before casted which is you know, I explained that in a podcast that that's (7/18)

There's No other reason that you could look at that from a statistical point of view and be that wrong over 95% wrong and not say that that was fraudulent and how to do with an election how to do with ever whoever reported those numbers This isn't some crazy idiot that just wrote a report saying the job This is the Philly Fed going back and look at real time. They're going back and saying hey, you know what second quarter No, no, no, it wasn't 1.1 million jobs. We added which everyone said that's not a recession. We don't define a recession anymore Yes, it's been defined for last 60 years as two straight quarters negative GDP But that doesn't exist anymore because we have good strong jobs. Well turns out second quarter jobs aren't strong however, we're going to go into another recession coming this year and Companies the good news is they should see it coming And if you see it coming you could prepare so this isn't a credit crisis Well, you don't know what a bottom is people could (8/18)

prepare they can cut their cost significantly But This is about management teams is about balance sheets and for the first time since I can remember Talk about two thousand and four or five six when numbers actually matter Numbers like balance sheet cash flow earnings things like that Not just like free subscribers that will one day turn into paid subscribers. Hopefully That used to be the business model because many people your platform as possible ten million millions billions doesn't matter It doesn't matter if you make money now doesn't matter now matters matters a lot But this consumer electronic show is gonna be significant. You're gonna find lots of ideas. I plan on flying lots of ideas for you I mean you're looking at all the major auto companies. This is where they go to now You should be the Detroit Auto Show they go here first All of them gonna be in attendance gonna get a look at the latest EV technology Which a lot of these companies can't make money on EVs. They're losing (9/18)

money on every EV. They sold demands falling off a cliff A lot of these companies do not have the supply when it comes to batteries seen Tesla crash sharply crash past couple of months See due to Twitter and sales from Elon Musk whatever you want to blame it on But a lot of these companies where the whole world was like EVs of the future be careful in Order to make a change in order to disrupt the world you got to do two things You got to make something easier. You got to make something cheaper EVs are not easier It's not easy than going to gas station and fill up and they're definitely not cheaper so be careful thinking that that's the biggest trend That's guaranteed to happen. It's not guaranteed, and you're seeing a lot of companies in Big trouble when I'm looking at their balance sheets, so let's see what the GM's the Ford's let's see what that would Mercedes and BMW I'm gonna be able to test drive a lot of these vehicles because of that media badge which I did last year Good look (10/18)

at again semis very very important You Get 5g robotics drones cryptos and if T's Gonna be a big part this year gaming streaming Augmented reality virtual reality is gonna be very very very big this year smart city smart homes AI is going to be massive this year Massive finally it's not just a story like 5g was Because how many years we're finally finally this year last year was starting to see 5g roll out Everybody says it's rolled out wasn't really rolled out now. It's rolled out, but those smart cities smart homes and Web 3 in the metaverse making their first This is the first time and a CS history that metaverse web 3 are going to have a presence there Even a lot of those companies Have presence even with TCG there talk to everybody it's gonna be really cool. There's some great connections It's gonna be a lot of fun guys so be sure to watch on Twitter listen to me on Twitter go to tick tock or whatever they're gonna be relaying stuff back to Daniel I'll try to do a broadcast when (11/18)

I'm there, but Dan is gonna be updating you as I'm updating him But our whole team is gonna be on this like we are all the time gonna be broadcasting everywhere And it's really cool shit guys. It's really a lot of fun. It's stuff that you see there You're talking to robots you see drones flying around It's just all latest the newest technology and just having that kind of access is really really awesome So I'm gonna bring that to you curse your research subscribers listeners It should be a lot of fun over next week by him leaving a little while so I'm gonna keep this podcast short Just let you know stay tuned Okay, make sure you're tuning in To those channels make sure you you're going to our website curves our research. We're gonna have leaving our YouTube channel We're gonna have a lot of this stuff because this is a time where you're gonna find great great companies It's not often when you see a total Collapse as many years that I got in there It's never been like this before with a (12/18)

Nas X down this much where you're gonna see great ideas You're gonna see companies moving the needle they have to reinvent themselves They have to pull back on growth and focus on What areas are working? Where should we push growth? Where do we need to dial back a little bit like web3? Maybe we need to dial back a little bit here. Let's see But the management teams and what they're gonna do and the announcements this is How you make a ton of money in technologies when the market gets absolutely crushed This is what you want to look for a lot of these names are still overvalued But there are some very very good names in this space That are down significantly because the Nas X down 33% of the year You know that there's companies in the Nas X that are down 70% plus and they're plenty even some of the largest names Look at the Amazon's look at the Facebook's which is now meta. Let's see are those buys or do we want to go someplace else? We're gonna first hand look at a lot of companies (13/18)

have lots of meetings set up It's gonna be a lot of fun really really cool stuff and you get to see me test a lot of these technologies live So I know you're hoping that I fall on my ass So I'm trying to scooter or last time I jumped into this big tank using this Underwater scooter thing and stuff and I had to put on one of those wetsuits and I looked like a big fat seal I don't care I Shouldn't say I don't care how great a shape you in because if you're an absolutely perfect shape and you're slender you look good in That but 99.9% of people you don't look good in the wetsuit and me being a little chubby much better shape But a little chubby, huh? Wasn't that pretty but man that thing was so cool. I actually bought it was $1,200 I bought it. My kids loved it and we still used this day So there's a lot of real cool stuff there it's gonna be gaming eSports all this thing you guys see celebrities there but a lot a lot of fun and again my purpose there is Not just to entertain and try (14/18)

these gadgets out and have fun to make a fool out of myself But to really fund the best ideas and every single year if you'd follow me Gonna do this for a very very long time. Not just CS within this business for 30 years plus And I look forward to the CES just because it gives me an edge in terms of ideas I want to invest in over the next few months in 2020 based on some of the meetings I had and I'm not talking about meetings With CEOs and key executives the employees there are brilliant. These are people that know their shit You have the booth babes, right? You had the booth babes you get by them then you ask them a question They don't even know how to count to 10. Oh, hold on Let me get you somebody right just so they get some of the people in these booths but the employees behind there like when I talked to Erickson and they were talking to me about Man It's just Cisco and Erickson and talk about you know The Internet of Things and cloud I didn't understand cloud in 2013 and I was (15/18)

talking to Erickson 2014 I think it was and cloud was starting to be a really big deal in 2014 I said winning way over you and he goes we're not even in the first And he was right and I was like, holy shit You're just things like that You're talking to very very smart people have been the company for 20 30 years who blow the executive positions, but guys That when you see your badge and they see that they can get exposure that's what you're doing there You want media attention? You want to get exposure? You want to get pictures taken you want to get interviewed and a lot of the times these guys shut down our boots for us And we do live stuff right there on the floor and it's a lot of fun. So definitely tune in Also, they look at biotech JP Morgan healthcare conference coming up too. So, you know in the next couple weeks I'll be really really busy. These are two sectors I've been Annihilated and right now I want as much information as I can for you guys try to find some really really (16/18)

good ideas because There are gonna be lots of good ideas and also lots of names that you need to avoid I try to bring all those to you over the next couple days and over the next couple weeks and my newsletters be a lot Of fun leaving it to Daniel you can give him shit Daniel occurs at research calm be sure to bust his chops Because he'll be taking over the reins for the next couple days but again, I'll be reporting to him and hopefully we'll do something live and see if we could uh, You know figure that out on our end technical and I am bringing, you know, my camera guy and crew with me So which should be really cool So I'll try to do one podcast there if I can if not, I'd relay everything back to Daniel I just to give you updates but again follow me on social media. It's gonna be a really really good week and I'll see you guys soon. Take care Wall Street unplugged is produced by Curzio research one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry The information (17/18)

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 (18/18)

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 How's it going out there? It's Thursday, June 2nd, and you're listening to the Wall Street unplugged podcast Normally hosted by the one and only Frank Curzio However, he is out traveling today and tomorrow as a programming note. You are stuck with me today Hi Daniel Creech senior analyst here at Curzio research where I get to talk about things that interest me and convince you Dear listeners as to what you should give a flying Florida about in today's markets always love enter filling in for Frank here Glad to be back was back on yesterday's podcast And again since I said he's traveling today and tomorrow for all you paying subscribers our most favorite types I will be doing frankly speaking. So send any of your questions or feedback to me Daniel at Curzio research calm That's Daniel at (1/20)

Curzio research calm when I'm behind the mic. I love to take the helm here I'll give you the world according to Creech and the markets right now what to expect and let's start off with how to prepare yourself Embrace yourself for the coming hurricane and we have to figure out if it's a small hurricane with light winds or a damaging hurricane Yes, I'm having some fun with Jamie Dimon JP Morgan CEO and One of the most respected and best bankers in America, and I actually like Jamie Dimon from what little I don't know him But I I like how he can change his mind. He can he could admit he's kind of a you know He's one of those elitist humbles at times to make us small guys feel good But Jamie Dimon was all over CNBC Yesterday for he was talking to investors and He was talking about how hey, there's a storm cloud coming. We have decent times right now. It's sunny It may be a little cloudy, but boy headed down the road We got to brace yourself and he says JP Morgan is bracing ourselves and (2/20)

we're going to be very conservative with our balance sheet Now, why would he be? foreshadowing warning Pointing out some would say the obvious That you should take cover or brace yourself Well a CEO said the other large factor worrying him is the Ukraine war and its impact on commodities including food and fuel Frank talk. I'm gonna dive deep into oil here You know in a moment But Frank talked about the food prices and how they're gonna be sustained and continue to go higher on Tuesday's podcast be sure and check that out Diamond says oil could hit 150 to 175 dollars a barrel. That's up from about 115 right now If I'm gonna give you the answer first and explain why you should go ahead and continue listening here because if you feel like you've Missed the massive run and oil or energy stocks. I'm going to tell you you have it. I'm gonna share some stats as This podcast unfolds as to try to convince you and make sure you at least have exposure My goal here is to break down explain. Hey, (3/20)

here's what is catching my eye Here's why here's why I think you should give a flying, Florida Remember, it's a family program about this and make sure you position position yourself in your portfolio So that you benefit and don't get hindered or hurt By the volatility and a lot of the market pullback in general because energy has been working it will see its ups and downs Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's all gonna be straight up from here from current prices across the board But overall I do think higher energy prices and higher stock prices related to energy are in the near And distant future for a couple reasons. So let's pay attention as to what's going on. We know about the awful war and Between Russia invading Ukraine. We've talked about that I may address that some more on frankly speaking, but I want to point out to something here because These kind of things take time to unfold whether good or bad when you have a spill in the river Obviously, that's a bad but it's going (4/20)

to take time to work its way downriver into other areas And that's what we want to try to think about investors is where's the puck going? Okay. How are we positioned for today? And Why and what's changed so our new environment here and the reason Jamie Dimon is warning everybody is because now you have the Federal Reserve switching gears instead of going from a Easy money policy low interest rate environment where growth and borrowing money to grow and not make revenue was rewarded That's the mentality That was the base layer The Fed put as you would call it to support higher asset prices across the board and when interest rates are zero You can justify a lot crazier higher asset prices Now that's changing in two ways one quantitative tightening Where the Fed is going to stop? Purchasing as many bonds stop buying bonds and start selling them or letting them roll off their balance sheet Which means they're taking a massive buyer and a massive provider of liquidity out of the market (5/20)

Which the market in theory is gonna have to figure out where those rates are No pun or no shock here, but rates are gonna be higher. That's why you're already seeing them go up in terms in Second and what they're doing first with that is the Fed is actually raising rates for the first time in several years And we've talked about that a lot. So Jamie Dimon is pointing out. Hey the forward picture the road up ahead is much much different than the rearview mirror and I appreciate that and I totally agree with him The same mentality of by the dips in the tech sector that we've had for several years called the last decade where growth is vastly Outperformed will continue. It's just going to shift over to different sectors like the energy sector and what I mean by when you see these headlines about the European Union in The United States is sanctioning Russia Causing more economic harm over there. They're they're disrupting. They're trying to get cut off their economies from Russian oil What (6/20)

does that do? Well, Russia is one of the largest what three producers or so top five at least in the world You take away their main product you take away their funding you hurt their economy, then they can't fund their war the problem with that is Their they're going to continue to discount their oil and get money from China and India They've already admitted and are buying a lots of oil. I understand what the governments are doing in a perspective, but most of it is just show Because that's what politics are to gain votes if we if we consider what they're doing you What has happened here in the last couple of days you can go through the Wall Street Journal or major financial news outlets You have Biden writing an op-ed which I'm gonna go over in the Wall Street Journal My plan for fighting inflation you have Jerome Powell getting called to the White House for a meeting with Biden Of course, they're totally independent of one another the Fed and the White House don't want to talk if (7/20)

you believe that I have some wonderful oceanfront property in Arizona I could sell you and many friends of mine have them too, which I'll be glad to introduce for a small finders fee If Janet Yellen Treasury Secretary former Fed chair admitting that she got inflation wrong but now you should listen everybody because it's all going to be okay and How are they planning on to fight inflation? Well from President Biden's op-ed from Tuesday, May 31st here He points out quickly I won't meddle with the Fed but I will tackle high prices while guiding the economy's transition to stable and steady growth That sounds great as long as you don't need any merit behind it The upsetting thing here is that the obvious answer for lower prices For To lower gas prices oil prices is to increase production and we could easily do that if we had policies in place But we don't I'm not gonna rant about politics here, but we simply don't have an encouraging or a tailwind From our government to incentivize and (8/20)

encourage oil producers to produce more to make us more energy independent We have in previous ministrations. We've seen how that works Results are very easy to see That's not the case right now the issue and why you should be bracing yourself for higher higher oil prices and higher sustained prices is Because they're not politicians aren't attacking the issue of supply and demand They're just playing the blame game and you can do search engine You can do quick searches on the internet here for look at Senate Senator. Excuse me, Elizabeth Warner talking about Taxing oil profits and it wasn't too long ago where they dragged some oil executives in front of Capitol Hill to explain Why aren't you lowering gas prices? How does this whole thing work? They're not incentivized to drill and Increase production they're incentivized and even BlackRock like I've talked about in the past one of the largest asset managers who has Decided to throw its weight around what they deem politically correct (9/20)

and better for everybody Put ExxonMobil board members in place Specifically to be more of a green and get let rid get out of the oil business essentially From a macro perspective to do less drilling to be more environmental friendly at all cost Knowing knowing do not kid yourself that that would vastly drive up the price foil and Exxon would benefit from it I know that because allow me to pat myself on the back slightly I have had losers as well, but I recommended ExxonMobil about a year ago because of that because of those Environmentally friendly and I'm using air quotes here for those of you following along Environmentally friendly board members and what has the price of oil done since gone up now? There's been other factors, of course But Exxon has definitely benefited that it dropped a quick 10 to 15 percent After I recommended it in June of last year now, it's up roughly 60 percent not even including dividends knocking on probably $100 a share I haven't looked at it most recently (10/20)

But when the government policies are attacking whether Oil companies for the price of oil and blaming Putin. They're showing you their hand. They're showing you that hey, this is the blame game here's the cards we're gonna blame whether it be recession or lack of GDP or You know higher interest rates. It's all because of higher energy prices and the Fed has to get this under control That's just not going to fight the problem, which is why you as the individual ought to understand Oil prices are not going down anytime soon in the op-ed President Biden highlights that he was Released one of the largest strategic releases from global oil reserves in history That's including the US and he got partners around the world to do that he announced that he was going to release about a million barrels a day and That added up each day million barrels a day across the board each day at the end of March Okay, so oil hit its high recent high about $123 a barrel it's only 115 now Six seven percent gas (11/20)

prices continue to go higher. But again, they've shown you the cards. It's not about fixing the prices It's about who they're going to blame and how they can do that politically that Macro level is higher energy prices number two So to get back on track here with things take time that's President Biden That's what's here in the US and oil companies are now incentivized to Store up their balance sheets and pay massive dividends and buy back shares to reward shareholders through this new sustained higher energy prices So you should take note look at your exons your chevrons your Devon energies Viper energy venom is the symbol we've we've talked about that in the past Turning across the pond here The European Union takes a big chance on oil banned this is also from the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, June 1st One of the interesting things they did was not only they're banning oil shipments, but they're gonna ban the insurance or ensuring of Russian oil cargo that's a topic for a different (12/20)

discussion but that interests me a because I love insurance and the inner workings behind it and B because a Lot of the insurance on those cargo oil cargos Doesn't necessarily have to go to European Union for them for those Lloyd's of London and different types of insurers outside of Excuse me within the European Union to write those contracts The let me see here. So I'm switching back and forth Energy headwinds rattle Europe. This is from Tuesday, May 31st And I just want to point out some highlights because everybody wants to talk about getting off oil for the Necessity and the human rights thing and to protest the war which I agree with that's fine What they're not telling you is the reality that it's not going to help the individual who they claim it will In Germany Europe's biggest buyer of Russian gas Wildlife protection groups routinely challenge wind farms stretching their approval time for more than five years in Italy Europe's second biggest register Russian gas producer (13/20)

authorities reject 90% of all wind energy projects okay, this is before the War broke out and before it got politically correct to get off and just blame Russia for everything skipping ahead listen this Almost 600 renewable energy products are currently being reviewed by the ministry which didn't respond for comment. Now, this is The Ministry of Culture over overseas I'm talking here and I'm cherry-picking out of this article my big point here is the takeaway is that when you see the headlines saying we're getting off Russian oil and we're gonna replace it with cleaner or greener energy outside of natural gas and nuclear which isn't as easy just to turn on and switch over everything to supply and keep their Standards of living at normal That's why you're seeing price hikes all over across commodities and think of how bad that's hurting the individual But all that be damned everybody is playing the blame game from governments over here here in the US to governments overseas And this is (14/20)

an easy Foreshadowing of seeing hey, not only can they blame higher prices now But they can blame the recession and everything else is going to get lumped into this So that's what you need to be aware of on the form of energy front a Couple Couple more minutes here just on just on energy and why I want to share some fun stats and take all this with a grain Of salt here. This is from See, oh, I'll see if I can share some links but I had a Syblis research and if you just search for different sector weightings in the S&P 500 Chris McIntosh who we need to get back on the podcast is Has been wonderful about looking at the and I think cuppy as well as well two great guests we've had on Wall Street unplugged We're talking about or have pointed out on Twitter in different broad areas how the investment dollars of the weighting of the S&P 500 is still very low to energy in Forms of or in terms of excuse me to other asset classes. So for instance on this I'm looking in In December of 2020 Energy (15/20)

made up about two point two eight percent of the US stock market large-cap sector weightings That increased to a mere two point six seven. So from two point two eight to two point six seven at the end of 2021 Let's say that went up From December of last year to six months later. Here we are Another couple percent that still means the energy represents only five percent of large caps on the S&P 500 sector weighting Compare this to information technology being almost 30 percent communications 10 percent consumer discretionary over 12 percent financials 10 percent health care 13 percent Energy is still a drop in the bucket and what that means that there is still a lot more money that can come into This space meaning prices meaning oil prices will stay substantially higher. The new normal is higher prices If those spike to say 150 to 175 like Jamie Dimon predicts or warns about That money will come flooding in even more a lot of volatility will be here but because of those companies (16/20)

because of drillers like Devon and the other companies that have these split or Adjustable dividend plans now where they're gonna give you a fixed dividend and then based on cash flows in the previous quarter and earnings They can increase that that is going to attract a massive amount of capital as you continue to see high growth and stocks get sold off and that's what Hopefully I've drilled into your head on this podcast that if you don't have exposure to energy and commodities I'm gonna make a quick comment about commodities right now But you need to and you can scale in you can buy overtime buy a third of a position or a half a position Or whatever you normally would wait a little bit and then look to add to that whether the price is up or down as long as the thesis doesn't change and As I've pointed out you would really need government policies to change in order to drive the price of oil and gas lower And that's just something that's not going to happen right now in my opinion (17/20)

We'll look forward to you know unpacking that and things as as the weeks and months go on But understand you need to be prepared for this stringing out of volatility and lower asset prices in Growth for the next several months even into this year because the feds gonna meet here a couple more times towards the end of the year the big Thinking is they're gonna pause the rate hikes in September Ironically right before the midterm elections don't need to go there either, but that doesn't you've already had fed Voters and non voters fed board members come out and talk about how that's not a Reversion back to the old days of easy money policies or a pause they say and they're still Supposedly serious about fighting inflation which means higher rates which means you're gonna see this money allocate towards energy and commodities on commodities real quick Do not be fearful of having some exposure to gold I know Frank and I disagree with that on The real interest rates and when he's been right (18/20)

so far gold has been flat Copper and Metals in mining like tech resources is Trading near 52 week highs pay attention to that one do your own research on this these are just some ones I'm throwing out there for you because I want you to have exposure to these with tailwinds offshore oil companies as well But metals of mining tech look at Freeport Mac Moran and even your boring Gold producers like Newmont Mining are just they just have a lot of tailwinds at their back with either Sustained gold prices if you just don't need gold prices to fall out of bed and with all the nervousness and all the money printing And all the chaos and inflation going on Don't feel like you've missed the boat on oil and don't give up on just regular commodities and some of those like the metals of Mining like tech Freeport Mac Moran have had nice pullbacks from recent highs and I would definitely look to be a buyer of those Again scale in know this is a long-term game. This isn't a sprint Don't don't get (19/20)

caught up on the day-to-day Headlines stick here to us here at Curzio research. Definitely tune into Wall Street unplugged like share subscribe I can't thank you all enough for in advance for your feedback and just the opportunity to do this I absolutely love it when I was on vacation this was by far the thing I miss most other than my family is sitting behind the mic and doing the podcast so Questions comments feedback Daniel at Curzio research comm I'll see all the paying subscribers tomorrow for frankly speaking And Frank will be back to everybody on Tuesday. Have a great weekend 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 (20/20)

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 It's Tuesday December 13th, and it's great to be with you on the Wall Street unplugged podcast I am your guest hosts your fill-in host your transitory host Daniel Creech research analyst here at Curzio research. Yes I'm the one that works alongside for behind and with the one and only Frank Curzio Who if he were here today would tell you that his absence is because nobody works in, Florida Nobody has anything to do no schedules to keep It's Christmas time You know what would be a great time for a wonderful holiday play Let's call it mid-morning on a weekday particularly Tuesday No Frank is spreading the Christmas joy or partaking in it watching a Christmas play For one of his young daughters. He will be back. No worries everybody He will be back in the office this afternoon and be back behind (1/23)

the microphone tomorrow for our typical Headlines and back and forth for Wednesday So today you're stuck with me and I want to talk about two major things and I'm gonna ask you to do a major favor I want you to go to your iTunes or Pandora Spotify whatever it is you use and I want you to play Pink Floyd song Or the song money the money song by Pink Floyd And I'll give you a second to dial that up or you can hit pause because I want you to hear the cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching It's like Las Vegas people lights are everywhere whistles are going horns are blowing. The market is clapping standing ovation We are loving life right now because the market is set to open much higher after a strong rally yesterday Why well the consumer price index? Data came out this morning at 830 a.m. Eastern Standard Time I won't bog you down with a lot of details because they're difficult to follow just over on audio, but know that Expectations or the print came in much lower than expectations November CPI (2/23)

came in at zero Spot one percent that's verse zero spot three and The prior reading was 0.4. So that's even better November core CPI came in at zero spot two percent that's also lower than the expectations of zero point three percent bottom line The market is getting more confidence in the ability for Fed chair Jerome Powell to steer this giant ship of the US economy around storms Into a soft landing ie we're going to raise rates calls a little bit of slowdown the economy a little bit higher unemployment But we're not going to go into the hard word It's not popular Look at markets Dow is set to open over 2% S&P over almost 3% higher Nasdaq is almost 4% higher Everything is in rally mode except the US dollar which is also positive to see for gold quick note on gold a Bank of America survey came out a fund manager survey FMS how they refer to it and it was a shocking 21% of fund managers Said that gold is undervalued now. Why is that important? That's important because a gold continues (3/23)

to hang around the 1800 dollar level, which I'm impressed with Amidst such a strong dollar rally recently But fund managers 21% say it's a gold is undervalued that's up from 13% That's a significant that's over 60% increase and yet the price of gold from the last reading was up 9% So you have more fund managers thinking that gold is still undervalued even after a nice pop of 9% It's up over a percent today as the dollar pulls back again because investors are absolutely ecstatic That we are going to have a soft landing I Don't want to be a negative Nancy I don't want to be a glass half empty guy, but this is just one day We'll see how the markets play out tomorrow And today so today is a couple interesting things You have the CPI data that just came out. We'll see how markets close Also today is day one of two of the Fed meeting tomorrow at two o'clock They are going to announce the next interest rate increase market consensus is for 50 basis points Which would be a break in trend from (4/23)

the last several meetings of 75 basis points each time This inflation data could towards the end of the day get some people nervous or into tomorrow I think pal is very clear on saying that he was basically going to do 50 and I think he could change his language to Be more hawkish because of such a strong rally and you can tell they're looking at numbers and trying to manage expectations in the stock market indexes for investors in my opinion I Don't think it's gonna change anything on the 50 basis points tomorrow That and then his press conference will be at 2 30 tomorrow and That will be interesting because that's where the old that's where the markets will have to hang on all the kind of on every word And every language to see what he says about today's prints. Remember he said this in the past. He's trying to be Transparent and I got to give him a little credit for that. But remember he is continually said This is going to take some time one reading is not a trend They want to see (5/23)

several positive inflation readings in a row meaning several months of data and as Frank's been talking about and I I would overall you can still be bearish inside these massive market rallies and The reason for that is because we've talked about how earnings estimates are still very high We still have a lot of negative headwinds as these interest rate Increases make their way through the economy through all kinds of sectors and things from services to housing to appliances to manufacturing enjoy this for the next couple days and traders if you are looking to Unload some of your high growth stocks that are rallying with the market I would look to trim some of those positions or at least reevaluate everything and I would also Continue to look at buying puts on your favorite names that are going to struggle over the next 12 months from here So just a quick note on that. Hopefully the money song by Pink Floyd is still playing because It's just incredible how volatile this market is and (6/23)

will continue to be and what else is going higher and that is the mighty Bitcoin Bitcoin has rallied over four hundred five hundred dollars to almost the $18,000 level which is pretty impressive considering the fact that all else is being or Excuse me. The fact that there's so many clouds around the crypto is trading at just under $18,000 up over 5% some may say that it was a Better than expected CPI reading that sent Bitcoin Up over three or four percent It was already up a little bit into the print But that's not the case and now I need you to go to your music device and I need you to switch Genres from Pink Floyd and rock over to country and Western and I'm not talking about this new country and Western stuff That's so hip-hoppy. It's odd. I'm talking about the old-school stuff I want you to play Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash's song. There ain't no good chain gang Again, I will give you just a moment to get that up Maybe get through an ad click through the first five second ad in (7/23)

here because Sam Bankman freed Is now in custody in the luxury life of the Bahamas waiting to be sent back to the old US of A Where he is charged with all kinds of multiple charges wire fraud securities fraud misleading investors Pawnee schemes you name it. He is allegedly guilty of it and the wild thing here. Is that You know, there is no coincidences with what's going on, especially when you bring in Washington DC so today in addition to everything else on this wonderful Tuesday the Chairman representative Maxine waters chairman waters and And The housing there's some committee here and I'm reading this John J. Ray the third who is the CEO of FTX now who took over and is managing this through its bankruptcy filings and trying to make sense and get people's funds back from the debacle that Sam Bankman freed and his Higher management have done They are testifying in front of the house and services house financial services committee today and Sam Bankman freed was supposed to virtually (8/23)

attend now I Have no doubt that he was probably hanging out there trying to avoid what has just happened yesterday and him being arrested But he's been doing This is the most aggravating thing because he's been it's been over a month John J Ray the third took over on the early morning hours of November 11th as he says in his open testimony Which or his opening statement, which I'll get to in just a minute But it's been over a month for Sam Bankman freed. He's done several interviews both with smaller Not as well known Platforms on YouTube and different things and good for them for hopefully building a file as well as going on CNBC in the New York Times deal book and all that kind of thing and most of these and I know Frank and I have mentioned a little bit most of these interviews that he's done have just been Absolutely pathetic and it's just extremely frustrating for people Across the board in finance let alone somebody in our position meaning we we want to help individual investors (9/23)

and kind of point to the bad actors and all this this is just another case of fraud and it gives crypto a black eye and the statements going back and forth on Twitter between Representative Maxine waters and Sam Bankman freed about well, we're trying we would love to have you testify if you could Oh, well representative Maxine waters. I I would love to I just don't have a lot of data I don't know if I'll be available by the time you're requesting blah blah blah Now it comes out the night before he gets arrested That House Financial Service Committee is gonna go ahead put out a statement. It just says oh, well, we're you know we're not we're not surprised that the Justice is taking action and we're gonna bring everybody to justice and all that kind of stuff. It's like are you kidding me? This has been the most convoluted Ridiculousness going on in finance. I mean, this is this is why people look at Wall Street and look at big institutions in a negative light and Today later on when mr. (10/23)

John J. Ray the third that's that's fun to say Testifies I want to read a little bit of his opening statement because it's just as clear-and-cut Fraud as you can imagine here now, this is all legend. Nobody's guilty until they are Dragged in front of a jury of their peers and found guilty. So we're gonna continue on this front However, there's a lot of big holes that are pretty easy to identify Now, mr. Ray starts out and he you know, thanks everybody chairman waters ranking member McHenry Thank you so much for inviting me and all this He goes on to give a little background he says to give you a sense of my background on how I ended up in this Role, I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience I've been the chief restructuring officer or chief executive officer in several large and vexing corporate failures involving allegations of criminal activity Malfeasance including the Enron bankruptcy. There's one for you. Everybody sticks out He goes on to say nearly all of these (11/23)

situations share common care Characteristics ranging from gross mismanagement excessive leverage failures and internal controls failures of external checks as a result of audit firm failures or Insufficient board governments. He continues to go on here is some of the kicker Some of the unexpectable management practices at the FTX group identified so far include now he gives a few bullet points here this is about a seven page opening statement and What I want to point out to you is that the lowest hanging fruit here is It doesn't matter what kind of regulation you have when customers give funds to a platform then they in no Circumstances expect those funds to be taken at will and used without their discretion knowledge or anything else And one of the bullet points that mr Ray points out is the use of computer infrastructure that gave individuals and senior management access to systems that stored customer assets Customer assets without security controls to prevent them from redirecting (12/23)

those assets. Okay. Well, that's a little bit of a red flag Bullet to the storing of certain private keys to access hundreds of millions of dollars and crypto assets without effectively Effective security controls or encryption. All right So you kind of see where he's going here skip down one bullet point to number four the commingling of assets That is simply taking customer funds and using them without their discretion without their knowledge without their permission Using them to make bets leverage bets all kinds of things and this just continues to get absolutely worse the absent of audited or reliable financial statements and One other point here. He goes into his objectives and things like that He doesn't make any comments now during the he doesn't make any comments in his opening statement Regarding and he says he doesn't want to regarding any previous comments that Sam Bankman freed have said in his countless interviews He does go on to say though that again. He references the (13/23)

commingling of assets and then he touches on the FTX Bankruptcy and the FTX us now to bring everybody up to speed quickly here Sam Bankman freed has continued to go on and say that bankruptcy was a bad idea Right after he did it and that the FTX us which is a separate entity opposed evidently was Fully funded meaning that he he said on more than one occasion that he doesn't understand why the FTX us customers Can't just be opened up to allow their withdrawal because all the money is there Getting back to the opening statement from John Jay as He wraps up somewhat of his statement He says questions have been raised as to why all the FTX group companies were included in the chapter 11 filing particularly the FTX us the answer is because FTX us was not operated independently of FTX.com Chapter 11 protection was necessary both to avoid a quote Bank or excuse me run on the bank at FTX us and to allow our team the time to identify and protect its assets Since the time of the filing I have (14/23)

become more even more confident This was the correct decision as to books and records issues at FTX us and many relationship between FTX US and other FTX group companies become clear the point is This gentleman is absolutely saying that what Sam Bankman freed has been Saying it and he's been You can tell that he's ignoring his lawyers to go out and do these interviews and talk but he's taking some of their Advice or at least nibbles of it because he's trying to really walk the line with his language And he says stuff like well to my knowledge I wasn't aware of this or that was never my intention if that was going on I wasn't aware of this all this kind of ridiculous stuff this gentleman John Ray Has come right out and said that that's all BS Well, I'll continue to watch don't don't waste your time with the house and ways Services Committee Just I'll get some more info on that. I'll be looking at that later on today Because in Frank and I will talk about that tomorrow because I want to (15/23)

see what some of the good questions are and how this goes because afterwards we have It's only going the news is only going to grow and grow around this Arrestment or excuse me the arrest Sam Bankman free being arrested and then getting back to the US that's going to be the big kicker there Lot the the important thing here the takeaway is is that I think the Bitcoin rally is because they are putting one of the biggest crypto frauds Hopefully in front of a trial very very soon and justice will be served This is ultimately great for the crypto space I totally agree with Frank Curzio when he said this was a black guy. This is a setback because I still don't believe and I don't think anybody does the Contagion effect the ripple effect of the FTX fallout is still going to hurt the industry meaning You know, it was it was just over a month ago that FTX Went into bankruptcy Sam Bankman freed Resigned and then you had the you had some bankruptcies and you have all these other companies that (16/23)

are worried now There's rumors about the finance exchange Possibly facing Department of Justice charges for anti-money anti-money laundering laws. I I simply I think the worst is passed in the FTX debacle for crypto But I don't think the pain is over and it's just very impressive to me to see bitcoins resilience and trade You know Bitcoin was around 20 21 thousand when the whole FTX debacle happened It plunged quickly to around the 15 and I'm being general here because I don't have the exact prices Bitcoin is 24-7 and it's extremely volatile But for it to go down to around the fifteen thousand dollar level and now on not only the news of the better than expected CPI data but what I believe is great for the industry in the fact that we are putting a criminal behind bars hopefully soon is why the crypto space is rallying because again as you weed out the bad actors and the let's see you weed out the bad actors and the remaining players are If they haven't been doing it the right way (17/23)

they're going to be forced to as regulation comes down But now it's not it's not an unknown anymore in my opinion on regulation It's it's definitely a with when not if and I think that a lot of people are going to be making decisions Over the past month and from here forward in the space on that and I I think that's just ultimately a great idea for the space because You can make it through frauds Wall Street is not Uninvestable because of Bernie Madoff's and in runs of the world doctors, you know lawyers every profession servicemen Everybody has their own con artist It just you know, just terrible people for lack of a better word and just you know frauds That doesn't mean that the entire industry is bad what is bad for the entire industry is when you don't have Those people brought to justice or punished for their wrongdoing and that's what gives the ultimate space or excuse me the space the ultimate Confidence and you still have individuals that are interested in crypto you still have (18/23)

institutions that are huge You still have an international play adoption is still continuing to go up as Frank talks about innovation and Development is huge and ripe in this space even as prices crater This is just a business cycle and a new newer asset class of highs and lows So if you're if you're a short-term investor, enjoy the trading it's going to be wildly volatile I hope you guys are all ringing the cash register and making money if you're a longer-term investor I would just continue to buy over time as you can in increments and know that this is going to be a very very volatile ride Just a few minutes left here, I'll keep things a little bit shorter until I wait for the Frank Curzio to get back I do want to highlight on energy because I have been an energy bull and I know that sometimes I talk about it too much but I want to just give you an update because China continues to hint at the reopening and lack some of the COVID rules and Regulations or restrictions I should say (19/23)

and that is bowing well for the energy markets oil is rallying 2% again today Everything is higher because you have algorithms and everybody shortcovering and everybody's gonna live for the day Oil is up over 2% WTI the Brent International crude is up over 2% to almost $80 a barrel and natural gas is up almost 6% On the day after a rallying hard the last few days You have so much going on in the energy space and Frank and I talked about this last week briefly and we'll pick it Up a little bit more about this huge discrepancy between The strong performance in oil stocks and the terrible performance and the price of oil per barrel and we talked that basically the XLE the energy ETF For oil producers was near a 52 week high for the first time at when oil was near a 52 week low for the first time since 2006 I Personally think that because of China reopening is only a matter of when not if There's a lot of rumors and headlines continuing to be around China and Taiwan They're only going to (20/23)

cause more volatility in the oil markets We are only a week in a day into new sanctions on the Russian oil in the shipping Shipping sector, excuse me, and we are only a couple months away February which is my birthday month just as a heads up for everybody be Before more sanctions go on on refined products and different things My point to all this is you have energy stocks holding up excellent as oil pulls back If you think the next move in oil is from for WTI West Texas and intermediate is from around 7450 which is where it is right now down to the 60s then you want to look to lighten up everything However, if you think that all the volatility the tight supply and demand efficiency or effectiveness we have right now coupled with everything else geopolitically If you think that that is all bullish as I do I think the next leg higher is back towards the $90 level which means oil stocks are going to either level out and continue higher Or continue higher from here I couldn't be more (21/23)

bullish on this space and natural gas and I want to talk to Frank in more detail about some other Natural gas plays one has a huge NFL owner involved in that's gonna be a quick Google search The stock has pulled back and yet they look like they're in excellent financial shape So want to tease that a little bit. Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow on Wednesday's podcast But today I want everybody to be happy I want everybody to listen to the two great songs that I pointed out the money song by Pink Floyd and then there ain't no Good chain gang by Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. Those are the two major themes today Frank will be back all day tomorrow, and I can't wait until then Cheers 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 (22/23)

money and your responsibility (23/23)

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 Made a great decision to join us on the Wall Street unplugged podcast for this Thursday, December 15th I'm your guest host Daniel Creech research analyst here at Curzio research. Yes I'm the one filling in for and working belong alongside the one and only Frank Curzio Who is out of the office on a personal matter right now and because of other Scheduling conflicts. I'm actually recording this later on Wednesday. So we're gonna peer into the future but have no fear I have a couple of very important topics. I want to break down for you the Federal Reserve meeting was today and the Fed came out raised interest rates and then Fed chair Jerome Powell's Q&A that followed I took several notes I took the time and effort to listen to that so you don't have to and you can just catch the cliff note (1/23)

version I'll keep you up to date and let you know what stood out to me on that and then secondly there was Earlier this week. There was a hearing with the now current CEO of FTX talking about the mismanagement and for lack of a better word failure on FTX and why but on Wednesday there was a banking housing and urban affairs Committee hearing Titled crypto crash why the FTX bubble burst and the harm to consumers. I'm going to go over that I I looked at the I watched the video the recording because it was actually on at a different time when Frank and I were doing the podcast For earlier this week But I want to highlight a couple of the witnesses there a couple of the back and forth on the politician side that It was very similar to the first FTX hearing But anyway, I'll share with you what stood out on that kind of a macro and big picture item there if you listen to our Wednesday episode of Wall Street unplugged where Frank and I were going back and forth about the upcoming Fed meeting (2/23)

We basically didn't expect anything out of the ordinary We thought that they was gonna that the Fed would raise at 50 basis points That is a step down from the 75 basis points. They've done several times in a row. That's exactly what happened the market reacted The market sold off so I was taking notes at this and The market was up. I'm just saying the Dow was up over 200 some points Nasdaq and S&P as well all up and then as soon as the Announcement for the rate hike came in markets sold off just in a straight line So we went from up over 200 on the Dow to down over a hundred I believe very very quickly Then to start let's see here so Pals Q&A started and the Dow was down 117 points Nasdaq was down 70 and the S&P down 20 when he took a question about About over halfway through the Q&A the Dow went down to over 300 the Nasdaq down 150 and the S&P down over 40 so things kept selling off as he was answering questions I'll get to that in just a second but then Because Frank and I called (3/23)

this it was going to be a traders market and if you're going to look at this the only way to look at this is in the short term stuff because it really Nothing that fed nothing the Fed did today in raising interest rates or yesterday. Excuse me Changes the outlook for the markets over the next several months. This is all just Right before the holidays tight trading sessions a lot of just traders mentality and if you want to play that game, that's fine But most individual investors that aren't short term and I mean short term almost day traders can can kind of ignore this in the sense of Making I don't want a lot of people to put a lot of effort behind The day-to-day headlines because I'd rather you focus on the macro picture just because it's easier not to get It's easier that way to keep emotions out of it out of investing And it's easier to not get tossed around and then get frustrated on losing small losing positions because you're trying to basically time or trade The market which (4/23)

is very very difficult for individuals that only leads to more frustration moving to the sidelines Essentially throwing in the towel and then you're going to miss out on massive market rallies to the up and downside Downside what you can do through money flow trader and buying puts long dated puts on on stocks that are going to struggle over the next six to twelve months and then on the long side holding Your core quality assets that you want to hold through even recessions and downtimes because Just because market indices go down as a whole doesn't mean every single stock is going to go down We'll do our best to research and find those get them into our newsletters The 50 basis points did not come as a shock The reason the market sold off right after the announcement was made was not because the 50 basis point hike it was because the Federal funds rate projection now, this is the projection of the federal funds rate, which they're raising now to a higher they the federal board the the (5/23)

people would be Pow, excuse me. I lost my thought there pal and the other Fed governors put out projections and in September So I'm going back a month in September the 2023 for next year Federal funds rate projection was between four point four and four point nine Now why is that important? Well, because Just after this 50 basis point raise we're now at four point two five to pour four point five That's where the current federal funds rate is. So when they bumped it up 50 basis points. We're now at four to five to four fifty That's right in between The September projections for next year now the reason the market sold off is because The Fed raised those projections for 2023 to now be between five point one and five point four percent That's a knee-jerk reaction to sell because as Frank has been talking about for quite some time now This is starting to make other investors in my opinion realize that a pause is not a pivot So the slowing the pace of rates is one thing then that's kind of (6/23)

step one. That's where we are right now You're lowering the pace of rate hikes. Step two is going to be to Paul's Now we're not hiking rates any further. We're gonna hold as is and We know based on what Jerome Powell said they're gonna hike at their next meeting in February and probably again in March because they got to get this Federal funds rate higher it's going to over five percent Step two is when you stop raising rates altogether again. That's not cutting. That's just pausing Then you have to figure out well How long do we keep rates there? until we absolutely know inflation is under control and then step three is going to be The big pivot word that everybody's talking about and when will the Fed start cutting rates? No doubt that will absolutely be a huge bullish signal for markets and prices to move much much higher We will want to get in and get investors in before that pivot, but we are a long way off I'll get to that question in just a second But to just bring you back to (7/23)

scope the Fed did exactly what they were going to do outside Or excuse me with raising interest rates the market got nervous a little bit on the higher Fed funds rate projection and then we moved to the Q&A and there was For the most part there wasn't much there in my opinion on it Mr. Powell came out and you know pulled the heartstrings and talks about how he knows and how he feels and he understands how Difficult high inflation can hurt different families. Obviously. Those are the poorest conditions and us little guys down on the ladder and Then he said we raised by 50 basis points But here's what here's the biggest thing he stuck to in my opinion and I totally think this is going to change in the future So right now I have egg on my face I look ridiculous because I have said for some time that Eventually, the Federal Reserve will have to lower its inflation target or excuse me It will have to raise its inflation target from the current 2% to something higher I don't know if that'll (8/23)

be three or three and five three and a half percent I just don't think they're gonna have the wherewithal to continue down the path to get inflation from its current run rate as of This earlier this week running over 7% down to 2% anytime soon But in his defense, mr. Powell stuck to his guns and he said we are sticking with the 2% inflation goal and It's not going higher and he so in one of the greatest questions there was a couple questions on the pace of rate hikes and Powell came out and said listen were I'm not concerned about how high the pace hikes are now. It's not the rate of pace at rate increases It's simply where do we get? What level do we get to now? And how long do we stay there? he was asked about reevaluating the inflation target above 2% and I'm I was taking quick notes here. I'm paraphrasing here. I don't want this to sound like a direct quote However, I'm capturing the most important thing of what he was saying here He pointed to the fact that changing inflation (9/23)

Isn't something they the Fed the board governors are thinking about and aren't going to think about it He says it's not the time to think about it right now maybe then he straddled the fence a little bit He says maybe in the longer run. It's a longer run project at some point He says however, but now not considering it and won't consider under any circumstances until inflation is heading towards the 2% I Was very surprised personally. I was very surprised that the market didn't absolutely sell off on that news. I don't know How he could have been more blunt or more bearish Given the fact that There's already been some rumors around there and again, and I totally think that he will change his mind at some point in the future I don't think you're going to be able to put up with the Crashes that will occur the slowdown in GDP the slowdown in absolutely everything economical if you continue raising rates keeping them much much higher than In the short term keeping them very high without (10/23)

changing your inflation goal that That was my big takeaway that question and then there's always a question on so he says hey We're sticking to our 2% inflation target We're gonna keep raising rates and hold rates until we know and we have months of data more than one month reading So think about that in terms of how long it takes So you're talking at least into the first quarter through March of next year at least To try to figure out this and then at least another six months from there Just trying to give you a perspective on how to think about these markets going forward. There's always a question about unemployment and Mr. Powell has been honest saying hey employment needs to go up. That's how you destroy demand you you you want to see a slower economic slower economy higher Unemployment because that shows inflation is going to come down And the question about hey Depending on different projections you look at that means that over a million people or more are gonna be projected to (11/23)

lose their money How do you excuse me lose their job? How do you feel about that? How do you balance that as you try to guide this economy into a soft landing and avoid recession and mr. Powell? I have to give him credit again I'm not one to quick to do that because I I Point to the Fed and how ridiculous they are for the majority of as they should be But I will give credit where credit is due he's he stuck to his guns once again on his hawkish tone And he said listen there's worse pain Than just unemployment and the worst pain would be failing to act and fight inflation He says unfortunately a softening labor market is just part of it and again. I'm paraphrasing here He says I wish there was a less painful way But there isn't higher unemployment is just something you're going to have to prepare and deal with as the Fed continues to fight inflation That's a big deal as well because again that's telling the market. What are we doing? We're gonna keep raising rates and If you think (12/23)

they're pivoting anytime soon You're absolutely crazy as Frank was saying Frank would say you're insane to think they're gonna cut rates next year and you're insane for thinking earnings are gonna remain Elevated or projected to be next year. I'll touch on that in just a second the last point that really stood out to me on this was He talked about Three buckets of inflation Mr. Powell did and he talked about how there's goods inflation Which is the supply chains and you know demand has to ease on goods and services and things and he says we're seeing some strong Some some strong headway there meaning meaning that supply chains are getting easier Demand is softening a little bit for these types of goods and services for goods inflation number two He pointed to housing services He did point out that rents are still high and are gonna remain high. He said that rents that are expiring and Renew into higher markets, but new leases are actually coming down So that's a positive for them and (13/23)

he's telling you what you're thinking So I want you to think and Frank and I'll discuss this going forward and we'll touch on this But just for the next inflation data Next month when the CPI comes out for December You want to be paying attention to this things like this and then he said the third bucket that he's looking at or the Fed is looking at is non housing related core services and That's where you get into the labor market and wages rising and that will take a long time to kind of work its way through the economy the case in point here is that I Was surprised the markets didn't soul off sell off even harder. They only you know They were teeter-tottering they were up over 250 on the Dow down over 100 back to flat and then down over 200 into the close But the investor takeaway for me is that unless you're a day trader you could ignore all this Next year is going to be a very difficult time for market indices Market analysts as Frank talked about are still expecting record (14/23)

earnings strong earnings growth Yet the Fed is telling you they are not changing their projections. They're not changing their path. They're not changing their tone They're actually raising how high the federal funds rate will be into next year versus just a month ago and one last thing Jerome Powell talked about during this press conference was that Next meeting which is in February. They could also raise the federal funds rate again So they raised the projections from September and they've done this in the past But it's going to take it's going to cause a shock to the market every time because you can just feel it The market is trying to grasp onto this pause and pivot mentality because most people were bullish and that's okay Stocks go up most of the time However, we're in a period now that high inflation high interest rates to where we're gonna have a rocky Rocky road ahead for for less pun intended alright So Frank and I we could take a quick victory lap on that We'll talk about (15/23)

that next week markets sold off gave up their gains pow didn't really say anything abnormal outside of Sticking it to me because he's probably Trolling me listening to this podcast and since I believe they're gonna raise above the 2% target inflation at some point He came out to reiterate that they are not Topic number two the United States Senate Committee on banking housing and urban affairs crypto topic The witnesses and like I said, I love this. I love the title here crypto crash why The FTX bubble burst in the harm to consumers The witnesses I only recognize one of these names and I'm sure you do as well Witnesses were professor Hillary J. Allen who's an American University Washington College of Law Mr. Kevin O'Leary, who's an investor? this Jennifer J. Shkolp Director of finance regulation studies Center for monetary and financial alternatives Cato Institute and mr. Ben McKenzie shrink shrink on Who is an actor in author? This was kind of split mr. Ben was very anti crypto in his (16/23)

opening statements as well as every other question He fielded Kevin O'Leary was your most pro Kevin O'Leary is mr. Wonderful as he calls himself He's on Shark Tank, which is how I recognize him and I would guess most of you guys do Mr. O'Leary made one thing perfectly clear to me today and that's he's still he's still Grasping for that paid spokesman as an FTX Partner and spokesman he admitted to that. He says he lost millions of dollars that basically they were paying him. I Want to keep my personal feelings aside from here But there was a couple times in the hearing that they brought up finance and basically what What I'm thinking through is mr O'Leary is either got a good plan to get some of his money back and turn on Sam Bankman freed or he's just upset and has this burn it down mentality because He claims after talking to Sam Bankman freed a Post or excuse me in between the time the FTX was collapsing and when he Sam got arrested that basically Sam Bankman freed had to buy back a (17/23)

bunch of the tokens or buy out CZ who runs by Nance and That was for a huge premium it was three or four billion dollars in cash and that calls mr. O'Leary in my opinion led the conversation to believe that CZ was being a bad guy and a tough partner and Sam had to buy him out and that's really what got the liquidity crunch happening and That's what caused the demise of FTX The big issue with that is that all glosses over the fact that you had a guy based on the current CEO of FTX John J. Ray the third Who oversaw the Enron? bankruptcy Has flat-out come out and said that there was commingling of funds and just the old-fashioned bribery fraud Embezzlement, whatever you want to call it that all happened a day earlier than this hearing and yet That all got overlooked the commingling of funds now. This is just in this one aspect of mr. O'Leary And that's why I make the joke about him still being a paid spokesman for FTX even while it's in bankruptcy Most of the questions from The our (18/23)

politicians were either they were so anti crypto and we want to prove that regulation Could have stopped this bankruptcy why this is just the beginning and we're gonna see a lot more of this or The politicians that are pro crypto and made a clear point to say listen This is fraud and we have to separate just a fraud and a criminal or alleged fraud and alleged criminal From digital currencies because it's a software it's programmable and by definition technology programs are not fraudulent there was a decent argument made by certain sides of politicians to say listen you have to separate this and Good things can be used for good or bad. So programs can be used for good or bad Power can be used for good or bad and I thought mr. O'Leary made one good point when senator senator Elizabeth Warren was talking about and in several of them cite crypto is fraud and only used by terrorists and gangsters and all this kind Of stuff which is hilarious to me Real quick when you when that is your (19/23)

lead-in argument. I Just think that that shows that you have a weak hand and you want to distract and not talk about anything else like the US dollar Because you're anti crypto politicians We're talking about how this is trying to take on the US dollar dethrone the US dollar and how that was a problem for national Security Elizabeth Warner was pointing out how it's just used by fraudsters and criminals and Kevin O'Leary made a great point to say listen The US dollar is used by fraud and stuff as well. That doesn't mean that That the US dollar is is worthless. There's plenty other reasons to make an argument for that But there's a hell of a military power standing behind it to counter argue that All in all I didn't think that this had much merit I thought that the other hearing with the current CEO of FTX now was a little bit better just because it shed more light on It these professors and or authors they had some good insight like I said, they make good arguments about why they hate (20/23)

crypto why they think it's dangerous and The other two in my opinion did a good job of saying listen you got to separate this fraud from From the person versus the product What's impressive to me over this is that Bitcoin continues to hang around the seven thousand five hundred dollar level? Yesterday it popped up to almost 1800 even during the hearing and then it sold off just a little bit but The takeaway here is all of this washing out is great news for the long term again I don't want to get too much into that because I talked about this on Tuesday's podcast but as investors see stuff Illegal stuff or shady stuff being done and those people being punished Yes, they could decide to stay out on the sidelines forever and right off the sector But a lot of people I think are going to continue to be interested in it They're gonna continue to ask the questions about what it is. Why are other people interested in it? Why does it have value? why do other people think it has value and If (21/23)

there's more coming regulation and you're gonna take bad guys out and bad players get just it or get served what they deserve That's just ultimately a good thing All right little shorter podcast again. We were up against some time constraints. I wanted to try to brief you Hopefully I made that entertaining This is kind of some boring stuff, but there is a lot of moving parts The volatility in the market is something to keep your eye on but again going into next year Not that you're not going to hear about or hear from us much more But just keep your mindset on everything you're hearing through now I would even say January is all going to be short-term Nothing has changed for the next six months or longer on why there's going to be a lot of headwinds as inflation and interest rates remain higher than over the last decade and we're gonna have Just a wild roller coaster ride But Frank and I will be here to navigate help you guys make money and keep your sanity and also entertain you as (22/23)

well I hope you guys have a wonderful wonderful weekend. We'll catch you next week Cheers 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 your money and your responsibility (23/23)

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 mainstream How's it going out there? It's Tuesday January 18th, and you're listening to the Wall Street unplugged podcast Normally hosted by Frank Curzio, but once again, he is traveling boots on the ground research Meetings of minds pulling of strings deal-making is going on And in his place today once again Hi Daniel Creech senior analyst here at Curzio research and filling in for him behind the mic for at least today and tomorrow We'll see how the schedule unfolds, but I'm excited to do this again I had a great time a couple weeks ago while Frank was in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show and We're gonna have a lot of fun today Normally Frank hosts the Wall Street unplugged every Tuesday Wednesdays and Thursdays Tuesdays are his monologue, which I'll do today and I don't know if he has a (1/23)

guest lined up So just kind of bear with us a lot of exciting stuff a lot of moving parts going around here To kick off the new year and we'll all get through it together Earning season. Well, I gotta say I love having a rough outline to cover the podcast. I love the prep work I love doing everything about this and then you come to work you get here early you get all your ducks in a row and Of course fun events happen life happens Markets are down yields are going higher with this constant Inflationary mindset and the Fed hiking Projected hiking coming bill Ackman was out with a good tweet. I'll cover in just a minute But Microsoft takes the cake today Microsoft announces a huge deal all cash to buy Activision Blizzard for somewhere around give or take a 40% premium to closing its recent closing price Talk about just highlighting the metaverse highlighting gaming Macro play and writing checks. I think they're spending around 70 billion ba ba ba billion Just gonna write a check so lots (2/23)

to talk about earning season Delta Airlines earning seasons well underway the big banks are reporting Goldman Sachs reported this morning JP Morgan reported last week They even noted of strong consumers strong conditions their results were positive Goldman missed on earnings per share, but I think beat on revenues My point is they were they were solid in general because when you're comparing these to last year or previous periods Remember comparable sales comps you want to put everything in context. So Hey, we're doing great over here compared to what well for the airlines for Delta You're not going to compare earnings or losses to the 2020 year because the corona virus locked down everything Nobody was flying so that's basically a wash what I like about Delta is they are comparing to 2019 to try to give investors and everybody the perspective the context of How they're performing given the environment lots of risk out there, of course, but Delta came out JP Morgan Everybody's talking (3/23)

about inflation higher cost across the board But JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs's comps were against very solid quarters very high earnings Those are fluctuating a little bit JP Morgan drops sold off after earnings last week Goldman's down roughly four or five percent Thesis is still intact for Curzio research advisory members up big on Goldman Sachs. That's just a great bank I'll sift and go through the details but overall in a higher higher interest rate environment Yeah, trading might be tough But overall that thesis and that juggernaut is is probably going to continue to be a solid solid place for investment capital Switching gears to the airlines real quickly because I want to help continue to paint the picture unfold the thesis of The recovery trade as we look past the variance and you know this quote-unquote back to normal back to 2019 issue with comments and perspectives from the CEOs who are behind all this and The reason this is important is because this narrative as the (4/23)

narrative shifts and the majority of people or businesses and or politicians move away from lockdowns to Open economies. That's just good for everybody and I want to explain that and kind of continue on that thesis So Delta reported earnings not going to get into those details. I want to focus on what the CEO said on He did an interview with CNBC afterwards and then a few conference call transcript quotes, but first on CNBC Ed Bastian says the worst is behind the airlines Regarding impact operations due to Omnicron if you remember a few weeks ago when Omnicron really started to hit the headlines and spread and it continues to I'm not I'm not I'm not ignoring anything there the case count and all kinds of stuff is continuing to move higher the point here is they are saying that flight cancer Delta saying that flight cancellations are way down over the last few weeks and Get this and this is just great for this is just positive news in general 8,000 staff members were infected. He's (5/23)

referring to Omnicron But all of them are fine and there were no health issues. That's wonderful Just just in general like I said for For humans for the economy for everything that that's a great stat And I'm that's positive to hear the holiday season was the busiest travel period in two years again put everything in context What are your comparables to? That makes sense because the last couple years with 20 starting in 2020 have been volatile as can be after the you know Nobody was flying in 2020 Bookings continue to remain robust because people know Omnicron is not a threat to them That is a hell of a powerful statement from the CEO of Delta again. What's driving his Thesis in results. He's looking at the bookings He's looking about the business the services that he provides and how the customers are responding And he says the company is prepared for higher oil oil prices Regular listeners know that I've been bullish on oil Frank has been to as Inflation continues I expect (6/23)

commodities and oil to continue higher oil today is roughly It's closer to $85 a barrel than it is 84. That's up You know, it's it's been a steady track higher. But the point here is I don't want to get off on a rabbit trail I'm sorry Delta Airlines These are huge hugely positive comments for the economy in general as far as an open versus closed standpoint and as far as people's perspectives and Feelings towards fear of going out and doing something contributing ie buying goods and services Providing goods and services the ability to do that are Trending in the right direction from that standpoint a couple of conference call bullet points here He believes that again. This is referring to the CEO or just management believes given the high trans Transability in low severity of Omnicron that the virus is quote likely to mark a shift in COVID-19 from a panic to an ordinary seasonal flu. How do you play this out? Why am I going through this macro trend because airlines is one way to play (7/23)

it because they were so hurt and so beaten up And they the industry is not going anywhere and you can benefit as the recovery of this recovery to normal From a seasonal flu standpoint if that mindset is not going to hinder a lot of operations. That's a positive Again, we've talked about the pharmaceutical industry and how you can have exposure to that Pfizer has long been the low-hanging fruit in my opinion on how to do this and how you go from The narrative of curing and eliminating the virus to treating it. So remember we've had we've had this This direction or this conversation about Getting rid of it completely Shutting down the virus not shutting down the country to more of hey We're gonna have to learn to live with this and we're gonna treat this so Pfizer's Treatments different pharmaceutical companies. Like I said Pfizer's just the lowest hanging fruit on that But this is again from Delta which is a positive thing. That's what he is saying. Okay, you can agree you can disagree (8/23)

That's what he's saying based on the data. He's looking at from his business he couple more here expects the recovery Okay expects rates of recovery step down in January because they did have some some staffing issues and all that kind of stuff But January to February is going to be about 70% of 2019 levels Or nowhere near that's a big deal from you know, if you want to compare. Hey, when are we getting back to 2019? Well, he's projecting going forward and this is over bookings and different things and roughly 70% We're not there yet which is the thesis that Frank had behind Delta as we get back there Delta is going to be able to cut costs manage that business and be profitable and And reward shareholders, of course, so I'm the con variant has greatly impact operations again we're looking in the rear view mirror, so he's talking about why they expect a small dip and The first quarter here and then they'll get through that So that's just a little bit of boy. This is a terrible pun, but (9/23)

a little bit of turbulence if you will but to recap The CEO coming out and having very positive Comments on his staff and I don't want anybody to get affected with anything or ever feel bad But I'm glad to hear that several thousand eight thousand were infected and there were no health issues there So that that's a positive. Hopefully that is a domino effect and we start seeing that more and more across Corporates corporations across staffing across all goods and services. That's just a real positive thing so that That thesis continues to play out and that's a positive for everybody Continuing on with CEOs. I Want to switch gears this morning Black rock Larry Fink black rock the They got to be the largest huge investment manager Just absolute juggernaut of 10 trillion ish assets under management He was on CNBC and he was talking about He expects higher inflation and aggressive Fed and I'm gonna use this as a segue to something that Bill Ackman tweeted about And I think is a is worth (10/23)

noting because as we get closer to Fed meetings You're gonna continue to see volatility like we are today and like we have all year So Larry Fink Said a couple bullet points here. Some of the inflation was created by sustainability measures increasing wages are a blessing But the question is can companies pass on wages and maintain margins? So just like airlines if you're only operating at 70% capacity give or take here or there Are you able to cut it off cost? Are you able to charge? Do you have enough pricing power for those customers that you are serving to strengthen your bottom line? To manage your business to grow your business to reward shareholders This is something that everybody is going to have to continue to deal with This is the new normal and from an investor standpoint I want you to think about the new normal and how those businesses that you're investing in you're buying a piece of a business How is that going to operate in not only the current environment that we're (11/23)

anticipating and seeing rising interest rates and higher costs But then to sustain through that period where you have that as a constant He believes the US so so quickly that pricing power is important because Low hanging fruit McDonald's you could argue has great pricing power. They can The the one here on the island that I go to every once in a while, you know I try to do everything in moderation You see the constant switching of deals. It was two for four now. It's buy one get one I'm talking about their breakfast which I am I'm so biased and think McDonald's has amazing breakfast And I had a friend of mine tell me it wasn't as bad as I thought how much more general can you get for? Justification so I said oh, well, it's not that bad So how that'll affect will companies be able to pass on wages and maintain margins That's a big that's a big red flag to watch going forward or a big signal Larry also believes the US will have higher inflation over the next year and an aggressive Fed (12/23)

over the next two years now He's counting You know put that in context. That's a big theme today. He's counting this year and next year. So 2022 2023 an aggressive Fed hold that thought In Two more points from him quickly before I get on to the Fed. He thinks earnings will surprise to the upside That's a positive He believes deficits matter Okay, and he thinks stock market gains will be muted going forward now I'm just looking at the bullet points here on one of our on one of our services So I'll dig into more of this and continue to update you but that's an important thing because you want to learn Or excuse me, I don't I don't want to sound like a know-it-all you want to think about the expectations and How those are gonna play out in reality and let me let me explain that I don't feel like I'm doing this Just as Frank likes to talk about markets hate uncertainty So if you have high expectations going into an earning season and they come in lower than expectations You're gonna see (13/23)

more volatility because it's a shock. It's an all-factor It was something that wasn't prepared for by investors. It took them by surprise That is something you need to constantly think about and so here you have the largest asset manager CEO talking about hey Your expectations going forward ought to be yeah tamed down. We've had a great couple years I highlighted a couple weeks ago or Frank and I did hell last year. The S&P 500 was up almost 30% Those are much higher than your traditional 10% averages over a long time or eight and a half percent depending on what kind of how far you want to go back The 20 the 30 year, you know long-term compounding of wealth So expectations going forward need to be tamed. I mean need to be lowered that all Transitions or translates into the reality of volatility and possibly lower prices lower asset prices across Markets across the you know, the Dow the S&P the Russell the Nasdaq So keep keep that in mind going forward an aggressive Fed over the next (14/23)

two years Bill Ackman has come out and he tweeted. I believe it was a few days ago. Today's the 18th I think this was from the 15th. Yes, and he says While it has become conventional wisdom that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates three to four times this year to mitigate inflation The market expects 25 basis point increase in increments the unresolved elephant in the room is the loss of the feds perceived credibility as Inflation fighter and whether three or four would be enough I'm gonna take a break here from his tweet. So the perceived credibility because we've talked extensively as the Fed chair Jerome Powell does his press conferences and updates and Testimonies About how he is trying to guide This economy about how he's trying to be transparent and be Or to communicate with the market ie investors because like I say he watches the market and they don't want to cause a market crash And nobody does I get that I'm not I'm not and I'm not saying he should or or whatever (15/23)

I'm simply saying that I believe that he watches asset prices. He's trying to manage the economy's trying to manage everything The perceived credibility is when he Frank talked about when they did a complete 180 when he threw away the transitory Inflation remarks and said hey, it's gonna be here. It's here to stay essentially. That was a couple of months ago Frank thinks that they're gonna hike even more than expected. So four or more and If you remember our conversation a few weeks ago This is a great point and also reiterated by Bill Ackman. You don't have to do the 25 Basis point increments you can do 50 you can do anything and in reality to an extent you can say hey, let's raise it XYZ let's bump it by 1% now. I'm being a little silly there just to prove a point Bill Ackman's point is hey, this would Give you a lot of credibility. It would shock the market. So it would be painful and he even highlights that in One of his tweets because it was it was a couple two or three tweets (16/23)

What kind of pain would you see there? Well, you would definitely see The easiest thing to think about would be markets would swoosh lower You would have a quick drawdown while everybody basically hits the sell button first and then ask questions later but just like he pivoted and Shocked a little bit with or shocked a lot Excuse me with the transitory to more constant inflation If he did come out in say March or whatever when the first Fed meeting That Goldman Sachs and other banks have pulled forward If he comes out and does that That would be a buying opportunity in certain sectors where inflation remember that's not going to fix anything So if the market goes down 3% from here in general, you're gonna have a lot of stocks that are down significantly more than that If those stocks are in certain sectors commodities Goods Different services different products those companies have pricing power Those are going to be excellent opportunities to look at for investors to buy up shares So (17/23)

just like Larry Fink is telling you to kind of tame your expectations You're not going to get 20 to 30 percent a year like we have in the past or at least the last few years ie last year Those gains he believes are going to be muted Couple that with Ackman calling for a shock and all from the Federal Reserve just going to increase all the volatility one more thing on Larry Fink's comments and Just to kind of couple that and show you how I'm trying to put this puzzle together there was a solid report out of Bank of America last week and They were giving their take on believing like cash is basically going to outperform the market There's going to be 2022 is going to be a down year for equities meaning it's not going to be positive all now that doesn't mean it could be Down 10% or 20% that simply means that they don't believe it's going to have a positive return For asset allocation they point out that They believe that cash and can outperform equities, which is rare It's just twice in (18/23)

the past 30 years, which was 1994 and 2018 were both Fed shock years But there was this long period of stagflation Where you have you know constant or leveling off of wages and much higher prices So any wage increases are offset by higher prices, which doesn't do consumers any good That era and I know numbers are hard to follow so I apologize, but they're just pointing out that hey from 1966 to 1981 cash outperformed stocks and credit 7 out of 16 years The point is they're thinking hey history doesn't repeat itself But it can rhyme and if you have these negative years these Fed shocks Which is kind of what Ackerman is talking about or what Frank has been talking about saying Hey, if they do surprise like the transitory issue deal that's going to cause significant volatility and those prices are going to move lower Not saying sell everything go all to cash I'm just pointing this out to try to build the environment put in context of what we're in now and what we're going Through this (19/23)

year and in the next as we have higher prices across the board hopefully, hopefully that makes sense from a macro macro level and Finally, I want to just discuss This The Microsoft is a great deal in the sense of it shows you that hey the world continues to move forward There's a ton of volatility Activision Blizzard was going through a lot of bad press a lot of investigations on corporate not accountability, but Environment Accountabilities in there. I don't mean to throw that away but a lot of investigations on management and in corporate style and the Environment of working there and it's comfortable. Is it fair and all that kind of stuff? So their stock has been drifting lower Microsoft comes in and swoops it up with all this in higher interest rates with all of this noise going on with what the feds going to do Where are you going to see struggles with ebbs and flows of higher commodities? Consumer spending and they're buying they're looking long term and as investors you can take (20/23)

away from that and think about that Hey, the world is not ending even if the market quote-unquote crashes the world you've been through market crashes before Unless the world ends You got to look for opportunity and you know, if the world ends then it doesn't matter that's a silly cliche But this is just a good macro perspective of saying. Hey, look at these largest corporations in the world They're looking through all this noise. They're still trying to find value. They're still planning on the future. They're still investing on the future Again, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I've just looked at several headlines as the the news has been breaking this morning You keep saying seeing references to the metaverse I'm gonna listen to some interviews coming up with Microsoft of gaming and Activision and put that together again, I'll talk more about that tomorrow But I do love the timing, you know, it's coming off of a holiday weekend. They're doing all this That's that's just good (21/23)

stuff and I hope that that helps tie in from how to look through the noise and and don't be blindly bullish Just keep an open mind to opportunity because as prices move lower as volatility increases that increases the the the opportunity that increases the the ways to win the more ways to win and And as investors as stock pickers for us, we couldn't be You know, you don't like to go through painful times, but you want things to kind of trade on You know their own theses a rising tide lifts all boats So from our perspective, we'd rather be we'd rather want to shine and in a good environment We want the environment to where we can shine and provide value and that's what we're expecting and looking forward to All right, so just a few topics here a little shorter today, but that's typically my style Please send your feedback good and bad To me at Daniel at Curzio research.com. That's Daniel at Curzio research.com. I'm only doing the audio For for when I sit in with Frank, but continue to (22/23)

follow him on Twitter Check out our Curzio research page our Curzio YouTube page. Also follow Frank on tik-tok Love building the social media presence there and appreciate all followers again all comments and everything we will We'll pick up tomorrow This has been great filling in and I hope you guys have a great rest of the day and we'll talk about a lot of Exciting events including some more stock ideas tomorrow Cheers 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 your responsibility (23/23)

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 mainstream Happy New Year everybody Greetings folks welcome it is January 4th 2023 and you were listening to the Wall Street unplugged podcast Normally hosted by the one and only Frank Curzio However starting the new year Frank is out at the Consumer Electronics Show the CES Where he attends every year that they don't outlaw you for COVID restrictions Send Frank an email follow him on Twitter Tik-tok our Curzio research YouTube channel he will be Exploring all kinds and everything tech Interviews with different booths and companies trying out gadgets Regular listeners will remember he plays ping-pong against robots Uses underwater devices to swim quickly Has a lot of fun works works hard long hours, but it's Vegas can't feel sorry for him by going to Vegas for work I love that and I would like to (1/24)

take a quick poll to start the new year Daniel Curzio research calm Daniel at Curzio Research calm how long Can you stay in Vegas for and not be miserable? the average answer that I get is a weekend or a long weekend a Handful of people can stay five days. Maybe seven days. I Am the outlier in this I think Vegas is the absolute most wonderful place Simply because it offers everything in an area meaning you can do or go watch amazing shows Or listening to a street band or somebody just with a guitar trying to make it you can go to the finest and most expensive luxurious dining Somewhere on the strip or in a high-rise casino Or you can go get fast food You can carry a cocktail or adult beverage anywhere you go. Obviously. I'm a big fan of those rules Obviously in moderation as well anyway, I Actually thought about moving to Vegas when I was out in Arizona But fate brought me to the island to podcast and to help individual investors in our gladiator like environment To close out the new (2/24)

year. Well, actually programming note Frank at the CES. He's going to we're gonna catch up a little bit later today I will also be on tomorrow's podcast For Thursdays and because of programming schedules and Frank's taking some of the team to Vegas to record and get a lot of great Material at the CES. I'll be doing that a little earlier than normal however You will get it on regular scheduled time and I'll update you with what Frank is up to as of yesterday and today wandering around Las Vegas I'm gonna do a quick recap on 2022 in the stock market because there's some excellent I did a lot of reading over the break and there's some excellent articles Recently in the Wall Street Journal and I want to paint this picture of hey, here's what happened Everybody's already lived through 2022. It was a down year Etc, etc But going forward there's just an interesting narrative of optimism and that's okay. We're not we're not negative people just to be negative here But there's a lot of optimism (3/24)

in the markets going forward and most of that's natural I'll get to that from fact set in a second. I just want you the individual investor To use the turning of the calendar to think through think about the next quarter in the next six months and the next year in steps because You don't want to be always Reactive and shocked about what's coming down the pike or pipe. However, you say that I heard that on the radio people going back and forth and getting it wrong and We want to use this investor sentiment I have I'm armed here with a whiteboard and some stack of papers here Hopefully this comes across great similar feedback Daniel at Curzio research comm and then a few more things to think about Over the next year so from the Wall Street Journal over the weekend stocks log worst year since 2008 you don't want to say 2008 that great financial crisis. Everybody remembers 2008 Stocks tumbled bonds were hit by the worst sell-off ever and crypto currencies were eviscerated The S&P fell 19% (4/24)

for the year the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 8.8% and the Nasdaq all things tech The former wonder child of the stock market got hit by 33% Markets log their largest decline since 2008 the 10-year Treasury note which influences everything from mortgage rates to student debt climbed to 3.8 up from a 1.4 at the end of 2021 Now there was a couple of misunderstandings here leading to the market volatility and downturn Numero Uno was the Fed chair and Fed policy board Federal Reserve Board calling inflationary transitory which proved to be totally incorrect Now they're sticking to their guns of fighting it by all means necessary After Russians invasion of Ukraine Nearing the end of February and into March energy prices shot up over or in oil was around 130 a barrel briefly and While inflation and oil prices have subsided it remains stubbornly high 40-year highs The takeaway from this article here about stocks stocks logging the worst year since 2008 and they highlight some You know (5/24)

in the markets going forward and most of that's natural I'll get to that from fact set in a second. I just want you the individual investor To use the turning of the calendar to think through think about the next quarter in the next six months and the next year in steps because You don't want to be always Reactive and shocked about what's coming down the pike or pipe. However, you say that I heard that on the radio people going back and forth and getting it wrong and We want to use this investor sentiment I have I'm armed here with a whiteboard and some stack of papers here Hopefully this comes across great similar feedback Daniel at Curzio research comm and then a few more things to think about Over the next year so from the Wall Street Journal over the weekend stocks log worst year since 2008 you don't want to say 2008 that great financial crisis. Everybody remembers 2008 Stocks tumbled bonds were hit by the worst sell-off ever and crypto currencies were eviscerated The S&P fell 19% (4/24)

for the year the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 8.8% and the Nasdaq all things tech The former wonder child of the stock market got hit by 33% Markets log their largest decline since 2008 the 10-year Treasury note which influences everything from mortgage rates to student debt climbed to 3.8 up from a 1.4 at the end of 2021 Now there was a couple of misunderstandings here leading to the market volatility and downturn Numero Uno was the Fed chair and Fed policy board Federal Reserve Board calling inflationary transitory which proved to be totally incorrect Now they're sticking to their guns of fighting it by all means necessary After Russians invasion of Ukraine Nearing the end of February and into March energy prices shot up over or in oil was around 130 a barrel briefly and While inflation and oil prices have subsided it remains stubbornly high 40-year highs The takeaway from this article here about stocks stocks logging the worst year since 2008 and they highlight some You know (5/24)

the fang stocks Apple Facebook now meta Amazon All getting crushed Tesla down over 60% Bitcoin down over 60% Bankruptcies throughout not to mention the FTX debacle. I'm not talking about that today The takeaway from this is that at the end of this article I've highlighted where it says bond traders are betting on the Fed Pivoting from raising rates to cutting them as early as next year meaning later on in 2023 and They're interviewing different people in Robert Pirelli Who's the head of global policy research at Piper Sadler He has a good point and saying at the moment neither the stock market nor corporate debt appears to be pricing in the possibility of prolonged pain Now why do I end in the takeaway is on the bond market investors betting on rate cuts coming as early as the end of this Year and nobody is bracing for prolonged pain It is by nature that we are optimists especially analyst stock market junkies, etc Everybody's more happy when prices go up versus down. The reason I (6/24)

bring up this prolonged pain is because Frank and I had talked about and Frank did an excellent job at the end of last year talking about how earnings estimates for the market are still significantly high in fact set which is a great data research company as Of the 5th of December Facts that have the S&P earnings per share for 2023 at two hundred and thirty two and fifty three cents Let's just round down two hundred thirty two dollars. That would be an all-time record high It'd be a growth of a little bit over year over year However When you take into fact the easy money policies are over the feds continue to raise rates and tell you they're gonna keep raising rates about another percent we're between four four point two five and four point five zero at the Fed funds right now They're talking like they're gonna get that to five and a half. So another full percentage point higher and then keeping them there Something has to give you have the Fed that was telling you inflation was (7/24)

transitory. They were wrong. They admitted that now They're telling you pedal to the metal to fight inflation at 40 year highs and they're not going to stop They're going to five and a half. They've hinted at Raising that high rate to a little higher than five and a half and I say they meaning different Fed members that speak Fed governors They're telling you now We're gonna keep raising interest rates for the short term and then keep them elevated for the rest of the year The market is betting on the difference this comes back to the old saying don't fight the Fed I'm simply pointing this big picture out to you to explain that the path of least resistance The easiest path for markets currently is lower That doesn't mean that it's tanking in the stock market's gonna go down 50% But that means that basically for the first quarter January February and March of this year You can go to sleep you can hang out you can chill Kick up your feet and relax everybody start the new year off in a (8/24)

relaxed comfortable attitude Why do I point all this out? Because fact set is at 232 other estimates here Such as Bank of America Satori, which is run by Dan Niles. He was just on CNBC the other morning and Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have come out with price targets now Frank has talked about he thinks the S&P 500 is going to be S&P 500 earnings are gonna be under 200 So instead of two hundred and thirty two dollars are gonna be under 200 or around 200 Bank of America has the S&P 500 ending at four thousand for 2023 It closed at 38 34. That's just a couple percent higher the reason I'm telling you this is because Bank of America and Goldman Sachs basically and JP Morgan Have price targets for the S&P right around the four thousand mark So let's round up and say that's five percent from current levels give or take That's over a 12 month period We're going to have lots of economic data jobs reports comes out this Friday Consumer price index we're gonna have inflation data all kinds of (9/24)

data coming out over the next year obviously and the markets just gonna bounce around and Buy these guys and listen nobody's across the ball. You have to give them credit for making projections and predictions But consensus for those Wall Street banks are just four to five percent higher from current markets over a year's time And the reason I'm telling you to basically take the first month off is because the Fed meeting For 2023 the first Fed meeting is not until next month, so we have some January data We have to get through and there'll be some Fed speakers and comments and things like that that'll move markets But the next meeting isn't until February Big revisions and job data like we got as a Under-the-radar December 16th from the Philly Fed revising all the jobs from quarter to April May June period for everybody following along and That's so those the revised jobs are running at five six month lag time Yet everybody is just going to what continue traders are going to continue (10/24)

to kick around Indices higher and lower until we get something of meat What can the individual investor do to take away all this or to prepare for all this is just understand that a ton of? Volatility is coming down the pike there. That is a good Earnings estimates in our opinion in my opinion are still too high. They're gonna look to be revised lower And that's okay that happens Frank's done an excellent job of talking about that continue to build cash Continue to look at quality and quality stocks and continue To look at money flow trader run by Genia turnover right here at Curzio research to not only protect yourself But to make a killing and to make Outsized returns in a very short amount of time off the volatility and downturns in the markets the So for the first quarter again, we have to wait for several things and going into Over the next year I want to see how something transitions or how the market waiting transitions From Tuesday, January 3rd Wall Street Journal The year-end (11/24)

review and outlook section the front page are one for those of you following along with paper in hand They have a couple of really cool charts on the front page they have the S&P 500 sector waiting at the end of each year for 2022 and 2021 and They have the S&P 500 ranking by market value the top 20 companies at the end of each year again for 20 and 21 The most important thing here is to show the sector waiting Technology in 2021 was over 25% of the S&P 500 Now Obviously 25% is a significant amount that was in 2021 In fact by this graph you would guess it was closer to 30 than 25 So that's 2021 in 2022 around down technology went from around 30% to 25% That's the big dog obviously that's moving lower and that's understood right us into individual investors understand When the sector the tech sector the Nasdaq sector was down over 30% for 2022 When a lot of those companies are going to get hit It's based on market cap how big they are in waiting So therefore the waiting goes down as (12/24)

those stocks and indices move lower Energy, which I've been extremely bullish on for a while now and will continue to be I'll talk more about that tomorrow Energy in 2021 was less than 5% will call it around 3% Gauging by this graph on the on the paper in 2021 energy made up around two and a half to three percent of the S&P 500 sector waiting Fast forward to the end of 2022 and that's just over 5% so about a hundred percent increase Yet you still have technology being significantly weighted and energy being significantly under weighted The number two spot is health care also dropped a little bit or excuse me health care gained from 2021 to 2022 Financials Did as well consumer discretionary? Dropped a little bit the big takeaway there is that even though energy has had a massive run up over 50% in 2022 there is still a lot of room for it to be weighted more into the S&P 500 those earnings are going to continue to be robust as prices stay elevated Versus previous prices over the last (13/24)

three years and that is all very bullish for that sector Keep in mind we're going to see earnings estimates come down as a whole We're going to see a lot of volatility around What is a very tight market for? bank estimates and S&P 500 returns and We have to be Cautious around all data coming up over the next year The other reason or another reason I want to talk about taking the first quarter off is Because one of the big growth catalyst For markets is China reopening and getting over their zero COVID policy And they've done a lot of 180s in just the past couple weeks and This is a solid article also from yesterday's Wall Street Journal It says after three years of zero COVID economic disruption many Chinese businesses awoke to a happy new reality in December No more restrictions The world's second largest economy continues to be volatile around everything because they were just shutting down on any positive test a Manufacturer one of the manufacturers in the Shenzhen and Industrial (14/24)

company said that 90% of his staff was sick over two week period in December going into January one Street vendor they they interview a couple of different businesses or business Manufacturers owners managers etc, and they all say the same thing Listen, this virus is making its way through China at a rapid pace and everybody seems to be getting sick Almost everybody at the same time, which is really causing a lot of disruptions in supply chains products, etc Not to mention you have to balance all that with economic demand Which is trending lower as inflation continues to be high and rates continue to be risen Rose rates continue to be Continued to be hiked by the Fed the what stood out to me in this article is COVID is keeping customers away from some businesses and districts a gentleman who sells rice noodles and One of the popular districts for workers and I'm being general here because I don't want to butcher all these names and be disrespectful This gentleman said delivery and (15/24)

walk-in customers totaled about 90 on Wednesday. This is a couple weeks ago 90 and That was the same about on Thursday. So Wednesday Wednesday and Thursday this gentleman Who is a street vendor for what we would think of over here? Had 90 customers on Wednesday and Thursday That is lower than the average of say 500 so from 500 to 90 The takeaway here is that it won't remain 90 forever. It was 90 now That's the big initial shock and you see the drop it will take time to get through and to get people normal and okay with going out again because three years is an extremely long time to be not allowed to do anything and under the rule of a thumb and Just because you get that curtain lifted or you're ungrounded from your parents so to speak Maybe you run right back into the crowd and do the things you were doing or maybe you take some time in The Chinese New Year is that it changes around here, but I if memory serves me, correct It's the 22nd of this year through February 3rd or something (16/24)

like that but anyway the article goes and they're interviewing analysts and workers over in the Chinese different China areas where the COVID outbreak has happened and they say listen after the Chinese New Year meaning that period from late January into February Maybe we see we can get some more stabilization That's another reason for you individual us individual investors to think about over the next couple of months So China is not reopening in a massive way to cause demand Oil and energy have continued to stumble around those headlines energy was down earlier today again on this Wednesday, January 4th Because of not covered restrictions But the demand that's not there yet not back to pre-covid levels because even though you list lifted the restrictions now people are dealing with the virus causing supply chain issues worker issues and etc This too shall pass my point is is that that is a huge stat to go from 500 customers a day to 90 But again, I will continue to try to update you (17/24)

on this going forward over the next couple weeks I doubt if that same gentleman makes it back to the Wall Street Journal But we can use the Internet of Things and all things to look and figure that out back to What to expect for this year as I wrap up here we have You have to think about in terms of what are you betting on are you betting on the Fed? lying to you for lack of a better term and They're going to cut rates at some point later in this year, which is not in their wordage or language Or are you going to bet on? optimistic market analyst Being correct. That's question numero one and number two is If the Fed doesn't do what it says and if the Fed does reverse course and change By not only pausing and keeping rates elevated But actually cutting them this year in 2023 The question is why are they doing that? Are they doing that because revised data which I'll get into more tomorrow and we've touched on in the past was incorrect and therefore maybe The situation around inflation (18/24)

is better than expected currently right now Or is it because something in the financial system cracks Meaning we have a huge sell-off or a liquidity crunch liquidity crunch. Excuse me in the bond market on the Treasury side of anything do we have a World event such as an escalation in Ukraine in China Between Ukraine or excuse me between Russia and Ukraine Does somebody else join the war? Does anything happen between in the Middle East What would cause them to turn about and do another 180 so quickly That's something to think about And if you think it's going to be because something cracks You definitely want to have exposure to long dated puts through money flow trader and also have some exposure to gold gold is creeping up And doing well right now despite Still relatively strong daughter dollar. Excuse me And I think that there is buzz around gold because going forward into this year You're going to have a lot of uncertainty and a lot of cracks in the financial system and in my (19/24)

opinion I've been wrong about gold for different reasons in the past. But in my opinion, I do think gold is going to shine as You get this worriness of Financial markets across the globe. I know that's very easy to say But when you have a change in policy from our Fed and global Fed central banks It's not a huge bet in my opinion to think that you're gonna have a lot of volatility and screwiness To cause people to get nervous and that is when gold will shine. I will There I love doing this podcast because there's breaking news in crypto as just before I started recording and I want to touch on it a moment and that is the revolving door that you see around SEC government agencies and corporations and businesses and Coinbase, which has gotten absolutely annihilated lately along with the overall crypto market and everything risk on News broke earlier today and Coinbase was rallying about six or seven percent Based on their blog post Which reads Coinbase and NY DFS reach agreement to (20/24)

resolve compliance Investigation the New York Department of Financial Services. That's the NY DFS Has announced consent order focused on certain historical shortcomings in coin bases compliance program Obviously following the FTX debacle and thievery or alleged thievery going on there Compliance issues the handling of customers money what's going on? Who knows what who has access to what? KYC know your customer anti money laundering rules regulations AML the big takeaway here and why is the stock rallying after they just announced that the consent order includes a $50,000,000 penalty and a commitment from coinbase to continue our investments in compliance program So what does coinbase do coinbase gets with this department? They go over all their stuff They filed or they disclosed this as you have to as a publicly come traded company They disclosed in their 10k over 20 21 that this investigation Was going on so 50 million dollar in penalty and a 50 million dollar commitment from (21/24)

coinbase in investing in compliance program investments over the next two years The reason that this is important and the reason that the stock is popping a little bit again I saw it as high as 7% a little earlier I think it's up around 4% now is because as Frank always says and continues to pound Into our heads as learning individual investors uncertainty is a killer for markets and I can dig into the details later on this the takeaway here is hey, we're gonna move past this We're gonna pay a fine. They have plenty of cash They can afford that and now you're not in the targets or the crosshairs as much from this Agency as you were you've amended they want to work together They're all gonna say the right things about going forward and doing what's best for the individual and the community as a whole Yada yada yada, that's all well and good the takeaway from investors is this is now behind you You can pay the fine and you can move on and this will help with further investigations (22/24)

Regulation which is coming to this space no doubt at some point. Although a little nervous. It won't happen in 2023 just because of a split house and It takes a lot of time for anything productive let alone smart to happen in Washington Alright folks, I will catch up with the one and only Frank Curzio a little bit later today I will have an update for you in tomorrow's podcast for the Consumer Electronics Show and all things that Frank is doing take away from today is Expect a lot of uncertainty and market volatility and basically the first month We're just gonna listen to news and headlines and we're gonna see how everything plays so hold tight It's gonna be a wonderful prosperous year in 2023 and it has to be why Because 23 is Michael Jordan's number in any year that has that will be a good one. Cheers everybody. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you Wall Street unplugged is produced by Curzio research one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry The (23/24)

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 (24/24)

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 mainstream It's going out there. It's April 12th Now Frank gorgeous the wall strip of pipes we bring the headlines and Say what's really moving these markets So we have earning season which is about to start this week banks and reporting should be fun Tell everyone that we're getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we love this We're really really really too big to fail. They're all gonna report starting this week Good inflation report out later today They were on TV talking about if earnings gonna be weak since estimates have come down dramatically So what you're gonna see is companies beating estimates have been revised probably about 10 15 percent lower So we insisted wow earning season was great even though in videos earnings fell 20% year-over-year, but it was great It beat the estimates TV (1/24)

we're gonna hear about the macro backdrop. It's strong. Is it okay yet? We have six set of families are living paycheck to paycheck according to latest CNBC poll Mark with the IMF just cut its global GDP forecast its weakest level in 30 years Years an environment where stocks are crazy expensive, especially relative to interest rates And where demand is falling off a cliff If your own stocks you have a 401k All the shit I just mentioned Means absolutely nothing and meaningless next to what I'm about to tell you now if you've been paying attention to China There's getting this coalition of countries To reduce its reliance on the US dollar. I used to think this is a big joke I used to make fun of Doug Casey's a friend of mine. It's hey Doug. I just saw your presentation last week I mean it was the same one from 1979 of you telling us that The US dollar's gonna lose its reserve currency status and Doug would be like, you know, what Frank F you And I'll play Texas holding with him, which (2/24)

is a very good, Texas holding player, but even with The Bill Bonners of the world, I'm sure a lot of you follow from Gora To the Rick rules. I never believed in that. I was like no way that's never gonna happen But as you know me being independent, I don't really care about anything under the other than the data, right? It's the data that drives you it can't be personal. You can't have this agenda That's why I always hated these people have this agenda no matter what the marketing conditions were The market's gonna crash inflation is gonna happen from 2010 to 2019 we've heard that same story Yet if you have interest rates at zero and you're flooding the market with cash constantly buying bonds to the Fed that has unlimited printing Press just keep it on 24 hours a day every day of the year You have no choice. If you look at the data you had to own assets anything any kind of asset Whether it was art collectibles the stock market housing Look at those patterns of all those people told (3/24)

you to buy gold and gold was one of the ones that didn't do well because It's not really an asset tied to The government spending it's an asset that's kind of conservative that you're like Oh, you know Let me buy it's a store of value where there's no reason to even look at gold when everything else and the shittiest ideas going up 300% in A matter of a year or two. I used to make fun of these people now I'm not making fun of them anymore because the data has changed When China executes its first LNG trade using the one instead of the dollar you have to take notice When it's out as in China currently discussions about accepting the one instead of the dollar for oil trade First time since the early 70s when Nixon took us off the gold standard you have to pay attention So now what do we have we have the BRIC nations BRICS says for Brazil Russia India China and throw in South Africa Maybe people think it's BRICS what an apostrophe X but it's actually BRICS the S stands for something (4/24)

interesting South Africa They're working together to create a universal digital currency to reduce their reliance on the dollar sounds like fantasy shit, right? No way that's never gonna happen again. I've been saying this many many years, but listen up just listen to the facts So you have state Duma deputy chairman That's basically with speaker the house of Russia. This is what he said and I'm quoting here just the other day the transition to settlements in a national currencies is the first step the next one is to provide the circulation of digital any other form of Fundamentally new currency in the nearest future and at the coming BRICS summit which is being held in August by the way Is the readiness to realize this project will be announced such works are underway He Then said this new digital currency could be secured not just by gold But also by other groups of products like rare earth elements or soil. This is really happening right now we never had Presidents of nations come (5/24)

out on public stages and say this yeah You could say whatever you want behind scenes and stuff like that Not when you have these summits and meetings with the flags from each country and you're saying this on a national stage And by the way, you're not gonna find a lot of shit on Google. They suppressed it Go to tick-tock go to Twitter. You might find a few things on Google not all this stuff, you know on YouTube You're not gonna find a lot of it. You should hear see what they're saying at these conferences but now Which surprise we have France joining the party France? President Macron just visit China two days ago announced that Europe needs to rely less on the US dollar. We're talking about France It was like the LA Clippers They want to be a big player in town, but no matter how much noise they make they'll never be the Lakers Look Francey and he just wants to be a major player in Europe, but nobody really pays attention to France You know, you don't say Oh friends, you know UK (6/24)

Germany Well pay attention to France Because president Macron said on stage with President Xi. This is a couple of days ago Quoting Europe must resist pressure to become America's followers You know, so you want to build a third superpower in Europe Which will be led by himself, of course and that your should reduce its dependence on the US dollar France Europe This is where I wish Donald Trump was still president because Trump would have called Macron the second he heard that and said hey buddy just a reminder We're a largest foreign investor. We have over 4,500 businesses in France supporting 500,000 jobs, which helps support your economy Unless you want us to shut off your LNG supply and make your economy crash Keep your FM out shut about the US dollar and this fantasy third superpowered nonsense So we have Biden probably thinks France is type of butterfly right now but no seriousness Under Biden France, I'll say it. I'm sorry gonna curse fucking hates us so in 2021 Biden announced (7/24)

a Newly formed Alliance is what Australia in the UK that gives these nations access to US nuclear subs. Okay. Sounds pretty cool Well right after that deal was struck Australia turn around and gave the figure to France and cancelled the 66 billion dollar contract to purchase 12 diesel powered submarines They went out there France, but they Made it very very clear how pissed off they were to the poet Biden like apologized and said we could handle it a little bit better But then Biden turns around and raises the inflation reduction act which authorizes 370 billion That's a package of green subsidies to be allocated to construction with turbines solar panels micro process electric vehicles in the US But more specifically within this plan includes a seventy five hundred dollar tax credit for buys of EVs Manufactured in the US that also have US manufactured batteries So you cut out all of Europe in the EV for this for this trend because they can't compete with price Kind of like what China (8/24)

does when they dump steel on the market or would they do a rare elf birth elements? When you cut a lot of stuff authors, there's a big reason why steel companies are doing much much better when you're not dumping Cheap free steel to the market So this hurts France Germany almost all European companies that are trying to compete in the EV race which why Macron is doing what he's partying going to strip clubs with President Xi playing nice with China and also playing nice with Russia. I Mean, they're not even providing a budget or anything they don't provide any data of any weapons that they're helping or provide Ukraine because they're not anymore and The US has taken notice. They're like, you know what F this I Mean at France you have to partner with someone and you're getting screwed every which way you're just like gonna partner with the one That's gonna work out the best for you. And right now the terms are so much better With China and Russia than they are with the US But what do (9/24)

you have you have China pulling all the strings? Yes, we're talking that China with nobody in the US allowed to say anything bad about China in public anymore despite I'm creating COVID which killed close to seven million people worldwide including 1.1 million Americans can't say anything bad about them Nope, wasn't in Buhan suppress that absolutely not didn't start in Wuhan They didn't lie what you know Who cares the common sense part of it where who and all these scientists and doctors wanted to go into one to see what was? Going on and try to say nope. You can't you can't come in With a hoop magically said without even going into China that Wow China handled this so great. So fantastic I think Trump decides cut the funding to the who when everybody got pissed off When do I who said that? Here's a China's responsibility massive amounts of people hundreds of thousands of Americans since 2021 due to fentanyl Even after we tipped off China's government To Chinese fentanyl traffickers. (10/24)

What do they do? Nothing. They never took action Read it is according to Brookings report from last year. Hey, we're letting you know where these people are go get them Okay, and they do nothing That's fentanyl comes here and yes that China which are wonderful politicians love so much Because they're all in bed with them and man go down that rabbit hole Don't use Google and go down that rabbit hole. Holy shit. I'm talking Republicans Democrats, why do you think that every single problem is blamed on Russia? collusion Biden's laptop no matter what it is It's always gonna be blamed on Russia because we don't really deal with Russia we have no ties to Russia They're not a big trading party China. Forget it. No way you want to talk about demise of Trump. It was when he really started Raising tariffs on China, that's when it was like, holy shit I mean the amount of money that's what's wrong with the democratic system. If you want to find everything wrong It's a great system on earth. It's (11/24)

easily corruptible. There's so many parties It's like this the college admission scandal, right? So hard to get into these colleges but yet when you're paying like 35 grand to the to the guy who coaches tennis and some guy wants to write him a check for 150 grand to have his Write a scholarship for their daughter It's a co easily corruptible program that blew up in a lot of famous people's and hedge funds faces But it's easy very easily corruptible because you have so many people so many moving parts it's all about money it's all about power But this is the China Who's doing all of this? Because now what do we have We have this growing hatred of the US and man is it growing? We're Brazil Russia India China South Africa. That's the bricks but also also Saudi Arabia Argentina Iran Indonesia Turkey Egypt All expressing interest in joining allies to have their own digital currency to compete Against the US dollar and not own individual Like their alliance to have it Which is pretty smart? (12/24)

And don't forget Malaysia, that's interesting You see that news that came out last week discussing with China to create an Asian fund between nations to help reduce reliance on the US dollar This is all news stories from the past couple of months When have we ever seen this we've seen yeah here and there and someone talking shit or whatever We don't see them on public forums at summits like this yelling Wanting us to hear this Even Singapore discussed a topic last month reducing its need for the US dollars it gets stronger. It's harder to compete Singapore where everyone speaks English this was to love us the most I've been to Singapore Don't think anyone speaks another language other than American English whatever It's crazy What a beautiful place by the way Now why am I bringing this up? What does this mean? Why is this such a big deal to you? It means earnings inflation The Fed these are big problems temporary in nature or cyclical. I've argued with this cycle It's probably gonna (13/24)

last a few years instead of a month which we're used to when we have a downturn Over the past 11 years because you had the Fed there to back us up You have COVID trillions comes into the market we have one bad month everything goes back to normal and then we search Everything's fine What was it nine months ten months maybe during the credit crisis we were fine. We're okay. Everything's cool Wasn't like the dot-com ever that three years, you know for now that you don't have the Fed there It's gonna take longer Laura so those are cyclical in nature Right weak demand high rates recession low GDP cyclical cyclical cyclical and wait it out Yeah Now these problems look like little tiny pebbles on The side of a massive volcano that's about to erupt that's what's going on right now, and I'm not as fear-monger You know you listen to me for what you know I'm an old crazy bastard now. I'm 50 years old and I'm old You don't hear me shouting like this Stuff they have to be worried about but man (14/24)

announcement after announcement joining alliances all these countries a for your portfolio It means that you should have solid allocations to certain sectors And there's three super important sectors that should account for about twelve to fifteen cent of your portfolio They only gonna talk about these in detail and Wall Street and pub premium tomorrow But if you listen to some of these stories you're probably not familiar with them. Maybe one to here there But again this this has not been mentioned like publicly and freely by these other countries at major events conferences state dinners You know what where so many countries just outright hate the US right now It wasn't a big deal when you look at all you know we have problems with Russia We have problems with China or parts of Europe you know alone They can't do much about it, but together along with adding the brick nation in the old brick nations Hey, holy cow. That's a serious threat You pay attention to it Yes, just one of the (15/24)

main topics will be discussing On Wall Street and pub premium covering lots of stories Which sounds insane? I mean it does sound as any when I say it right the US dollar could lose its reserve currency status It's not gonna happen right away, but the fact that these initiatives are taking place, and you have to stand up and Take notice And just do to research yourself start looking at it So you look what with Bretton Woods right, New Hampshire only a three-week meeting that was in 1944 It's when the US dollar became the official reserve currency right after World War two right 44 countries are there gold was a basis for The US dollar other currencies were official pegged to it You know everybody remembers that 1944 people don't remember it became fully functional to to 1958 Holy cow that's a long time. I'm not saying this is gonna happen quickly But the fact that it's starting is seriously and there's lots of money to be made and lost if you're paying attention Can I don't expect this (16/24)

to happen anytime soon, but this should? really scare you And this is serious stuff right here because it's insane as it sounds the US dollar was a reserve currency style Yeah, I always thought so I was thought it sounded crazy Until we decided to spend trillions post COVID After every asset class return to new all-time highs until your research History where every eight or a hundred years this pattern of a new global currency emergence You know the Great Britain Portugal Spain Netherlands now the US The reason why she is actually saying that every eighty hundred years. He just recently said that that's why we have to reduce our alliance It's time for change I Mean till you see how much gold Russia and China have been buying over the past couple of years Do your research look at the charts why would they be doing this for? And all the shit sounds crazy so you see this skyrocketing volume of the ruble want training Right it's trading by the Russia's invasion of Ukraine look at the (17/24)

volume in transactions ruble want trading on it's insane Sounds crazy until you see for the first time ever dozens of major countries developed nations talking publicly in a coordinated effort in a coordinated effort All the same time to wean themselves off the US dollar by starting a universal digital currency Yes idea sounds crazy until you have the US government shutting down things like crypto out of nowhere. Why? What was the threat? Banks were embracing it. Why? Why are you shutting off banks that had nothing to do with fraud that were doing the right thing? Why you close our bank? Why why why? Why are you doing everything in your power to keep the dollar strong interesting do you see this threat coming as well? How do you keep it strong? Raising rates which will attract more foreign capital Almost every other country has stopped tightening. Have you noticed that it sounds crazy Until you see the two biggest alternatives to the US dollar which are Bitcoin and gold have you seen (18/24)

where they are right now? Gold all-time high just off of it Bitcoin was 15,000 recently it just broke 30,000. Why do you think that's happening right now? So I could tell you something that's a lot of freaking coincidences This isn't just one or two things like I know freaking way down. I mean those are facts. I'm telling you about And I know this diehards and people being frank you crazy. That's nuts again I'm not someone that that says shit like this lightly But you're seeing this change when you see politicians spending trillions with total disregard of anything they don't care Where there's no consequences for their action at all they'll get reelected no matter what no matter How many places they destroy people are still gonna vote? Democrat no matter how much the Republicans mess up in certain areas. They're still gonna vote Republicans There's no change. There's no change here And more importantly you could do whatever you want get caught in lies you could go on under oath (19/24)

testimony show pictures and get caught completely and There's still no consequences for your action. What do you think is gonna happen? It's gonna entice everyone who's not messing around fucking around To start doing things because they're seeing everyone else benefit You see some kid rob a store for and get to new TV, and then you're like wow that's messed up And then I'm not all the other friends do it and everybody else does it and doesn't does it you know what you're gonna Feel like an idiot You know you're gonna Do you're gonna try to rob a store and grab a TV cuz everybody else has got it for free you're promoting this You're promoting spending you're promoting just Unbelievable amounts of debt I mean trillions guys trillions would it take 200 years to spend 1 trillion. We're spending trillions or a few months now The debt ceiling good luck and the politicians are smart they sign a deal right now They don't want to see a week of dollar which you're going to see if they don't (20/24)

sign a deal But their egos are so inflated and they're gonna fight for all this bullshit For their communities for themselves or whatever that they better start looking at the bigger picture Because dollar weakens that's not a good thing you want to keep the dollar strong But I tell you the coalition the unity among so many countries the coordinated effort Pay attention it's gonna influence a lot of sectors, and I'm not talking about sectors at all well I own this stock or that stock. I'm talking about sectors. I'm talking about gold not going to 3,000 but 15,000 Bitcoin going to a hundred thousand massive massive moves If this really develops the way, I think it is and it looks that way And the u.s.. Is just falling asleep with the wheel I'm sure I'm gonna get a ton of emails about this feel free to email Frank Curzio research calm. I'm here for you I'll take it yell at me. Call me crazy, but provide research for me. I Don't mind anyone disagreeing on a mind anyone have an opinion, (21/24)

but support it I've been wrong before Not often. I try to tell my wife. I'm never wrong I've been right more than wrong when it comes to stocks. I wouldn't be doing this, but yes I've been wrong you have a difference of opinion. Let me know or maybe you have more information about this Let me know I'm here Frank Curzio research calm and one of emails me knows That answer a lot of those emails anyway. Well show on premium It's gonna be tomorrow. That's our new podcast just $10 a month also gives you access to a dollar stock club portfolio, which Would give you a trading idea day on myself every single week, which we track provided by up to price for hide the catalyst in the podcast More detailed analysis in the markets stocks making the news It's an hour long that podcast it's been huge since we launched Just the reviews have been amazing, and I appreciate that I told you we're gonna provide a very very very detailed really no-nonsense podcast And we want to charge for it And we should (22/24)

because the details you're getting there the fact that we're independent we could talk about this no hold barred Not tied to anyone we don't get paid by third parties We say basically what we find and what we know about through our research which is 100% Independent so I really appreciate all reviews for watching on a premium if you're interested go to wsu offer comm to subscribe You can cancel any time you want, but it's just a monthly service for only $10 a month which includes portfolio again bees are just Or this is just one of the topics That we're gonna discuss along getting it deep in detail with many many many topics that people don't want to talk about however It will lead to more profits for you and also to avoid the sectors That won't benefit when a lot of this shit goes down Sky says it for me questions or comments. I'm here for your friend Chris research comm I'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care Wall Street unplugged is produced by Curzio research one of the most (23/24)

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 (24/24)

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 mainstream Good morning. Good day. Good afternoon. Thank you for tuning in to the Wall Street unplugged podcast It is Tuesday April 5th, and I am your guest host Behind the mic Daniel Creech senior analyst here at Curzio research filling in for the one and only Frank Curzio who if I had to guess Is somewhere between New Orleans and Amelia Island with the biggest grin on his face on? Cloud nine not worrying about a thing lack of sleep probably losing his voice high cost of gas prices All that takes a backseat why because the Kansas Jayhawks are the NCAA men's basketball champions And What was a thrilling game a record-setting game because it looks like they set a record from? They broke a record from 1963 the largest deficit come back to win they were down. I believe 16 points at one time who? Tune (1/24)

in tomorrow on our Wednesday podcast when we get back to regular scheduling programming Where we did Frank and I discussed the hot topics moving markets I'm sure he'll tell us all about it and I'll probe him to try to calm it down a little bit But yeah congratulations to them, and what a great game three-point game Vegas once again calls it correctly for all you underdog betters because North Carolina covered and I believe the under cover too So good luck to all out there today since I'm behind the mic and running the show I'm gonna talk to you about a couple of topics that got my attention And if it gets my attention why it should get your attention all right? I'm gonna play a theme little a little theme here in jeopardy I'm gonna give you the answer first on these two topics As to why you should care, and then we'll work backwards And I'll explain it hopefully entertain you and educate you along the way on how I'm thinking through markets in situations that are unfolding in our crazy (2/24)

world right now First topic why should you care about what's going on with the Russia Central Bank and its currency? And how it affects global markets and the potential and the tailwinds? It's creating their answer there are huge shifts massive shifts Taking place in the global financial system at a central banking level around the world and that's going to Impact and affect all of us individual investors and remember us individual investors are kind of like gladiators We're thrown into the arena. We're outnumbered. We're outmanned We don't have the influence or capital as the big players. We don't get to make the rules We just have to pay attention do the research and position ourselves to benefit from what's coming not get hurt by it So the takeaway here is make sure you have exposure and investments to oil and gas energy and Hard commodities and currencies gold and silver. That's the takeaway you can do that through producers the big dogs little dogs It doesn't matter ETFs. Just (3/24)

have exposure and understand why you have exposure or at least know Your reasoning behind this your thesis behind this because the shifts taking place in the global financial system and fiat dollars money backed by nothing and endless printing by governments around the world Leads to inflation we're experiencing that now That's when things starts to to move when people are getting hurt and feeling in their pocket book That's when things take place takes change takes place and you want a position for that What in the hell is going on over in Russia with its currency? I have a couple of articles here and they both make great points They they disagree with one another and they're from they're very recent ones from March 30th the other one I believe is the same but I'm going back and forth between an article in bullion star and from global economics commentator in Mich talk right before Russia invaded Ukraine when you look at the Russian currency to US dollars obviously after the invasion (4/24)

sanctions US sanctions and worldwide sanctions happened you had major headlines around huge corporations from McDonald's to Visa MasterCard and just about everybody else for the most part over here cutting ties with Russia their currency plunged 3036 percent against the dollar this is back on February 24th and the following days when those sanctions were announced fast forward to the end of March and On paper and again, I'm not overlooking the terribleness of war in the invasion. I hope hoping pray all that stops immediately on paper That has already gained all those losses back. So what in the hell is going on on paper? It's as if nothing is going on in the world in reality So lost 36% following the sanctions now, it's back Major headlines are pointing to the fact that For the first time in a couple years and just going off memory. I've read this through Reuters and Bloomberg and and countless others some point to the fact that Russian Central Bank is buying gold at 5,000 rubles per (5/24)

gram and Based on these calculations. That's that's putting it around one thousand nine forty four US dollar terms in gold per ounce They point to the fact that Russian Central Bank Willing and announcing that they're going to buy 5,000 per gram is going to help in links their currency to gold now It's exciting saying you got gold bugs forever It says hey in a world of finite money money printing innocently, which I've dubbed combination of Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka Nothing when in a world where nothing backs the currency other than the promising of taxing the people Is it really that big of an idea or really that big of a stretch to think? Wow Maybe your currency should be backed by something You don't have to go back in history very far to figure out that it was You know, it was tied to gold back leading up to the 70s when Nixon cut that that's one but The bullion star points out that hey They are Pegging or putting their linking their currency to gold Because they're willing to (6/24)

buy it at a little bit below market price and then they could potentially Also say hey you have to buy Commodities they're huge producers or exporters of oil and gas and wheat What if you had to buy gold? What if you had to use gold to buy those commodities not just the Russian currency a Couple of things with that real quick on is it back to gold? I have a hard time believing that simply in the in the way we would think about exchange for gold and Meesh talk points out Hey, they're not the central bank isn't selling any gold at a fixed price It's not as if you can go to the window of the central bank and say hey, I want to okay You're gonna willing to buy gold at X price. But are you going to give out gold in exchange for Russian currency? So the linkage hey is the headline the headline is a great headline and get your emotions stirred up And it even it even gets me. It's like holy cow If somebody's actually gonna use a commodity back currency that's going to make some waves Who knows (7/24)

if it's gonna be a huge success or not? But that's a significant change from where we are that you need to pay attention to It is it is a positive for gold because it's another buyer of gold, okay, so that's a tailwind there why is the currency Rebounded its losses from the sanctions so quickly I would argue seven weeks is pretty damn quick to gain back thirty plus percent fall in value. I highlighted that there was several major corporations like McDonald's closing all the Franchises there and continuing to pay employees even though doing so that was a noble fact in my opinion MasterCard and Visa also pulled out while that pulled out of Russia and while that affected and Impacted some Russian citizens that were using those cards with the sticker Master and Visa MasterCard and Visa on Outside of the country. It didn't change anything within Russia and that's because Going back after sanctions for Crimea where happened in 2014 when Russia was being a bad actor MasterCard Visa did (8/24)

similar sanctions So Russia built a transaction system on their central bank underlining all those All that happened when Master and Visa from what I can put together in Meesh talk points this out in the equivalent of basically 90 some million dollars in fees When Visa and MasterCard pulled out now those fees none of those transactions got harmed So the fees are going to the Russian central bank who got hurt all those McDonald's is that pulled out or shut? They didn't pull out. You can't physically go grab the real estate Russia just renames them That's profound. That's that unfortunately Points to the fact of why world leaders including including President Biden and others are saying hey This could go gone for a long time me like many others were hoping and pray Hey if this happens and it's happened. Okay, it started. Hopefully it ends quickly Now you have several different people talking about the prolonged effect of this or how this can draw out So hopefully that all gets resolved (9/24)

But it just points to more volatility more chaos and the longer the longer lasting that this can happen ie and the supply or in the hits it's going to cause on supply chains commodities and such So may it's not let's not go as far as saying it's actually linked to gold But they do have a lot of power in turning off exports in Commodities in their currency. So me talk points out and says hey, they basically, you know, they're taking drastic steps. They're not letting foreign sellers sell Russian currency, they're not letting foreign sellers sell in the stock market They're causing US dollars and euros to be paid for outside of the sanctions. So again oil gas commodities That's why it's a artificial heat mish talk argues that it's more of an artificial demand for it. That's why it's stabilizing regardless of the exact reason why the takeaway for investors is that sanctions and supply chain disruptions and commodities and commodity related Assets is is a huge tailwind for higher prices (10/24)

and Even though Russia isn't demanding gold payments or anything like that You don't have to have a specific to get wind of other countries starting to say hey, that's maybe it's not a bad idea Including us maybe it's not a bad idea to have more sound Commodities for everything from precious metals and energy I either make the world go round to also value Scarcity limit people have a psychological connection money is emotional. You want to believe in something that backs it Why do you think Bitcoin and crypto is doing so well? Overall yes, it's volatile but people flock to scarcity limited supply in Quantity that you can argue what that price is going to be but it's going to have a price and right now That's forty some thousand dollars for Bitcoin so no go back ruble mish talk points out to eight reasons why the room the Ruble is rebounding and it is because Russia escaped visa and MasterCard so they don't pay any of those fees that helps It's keeping it in-house Russia still trades (11/24)

oil and gas with Europe President McCrone even said hey, we're not I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but he says hey, we're not a war with Russia again You can't just turn the lights off people Russia halted currency trades again and a lot of foreigners are for foreign holding holdings It put in place stock market restrictions It threatened to stop commodities including uranium natural gas fertilizer rare earth metal minerals, which drives up prices Which is what their economy thrives on Sanctions cannot take away Russia's natural resources and here's a good one the Fed Nor so the Federal Reserve nor the European Central Bank can print commodities. It can simply print dollars That is the big takeaway because as inflation hits us all in our pocketbooks The world and individuals are start its election year You're gonna have you're gonna hear a lot more about sound money or budgeting or how are you going to fix inflation inflation is? Skyrocketing and interest rates are going to be moving (12/24)

higher. So what in the hell are the individuals to do? buy those commodities short and sweet a Couple of good things from the boy and star so I kind of talked about the me stocks saying hey They're going a little far on that. It could cause a lot more so It if you have more buyers It's going to cause demand further sanctions by the US knowing that the ruble is back to pre invasion levels The Biden administration is already hinting as well as others more and more sanctions are coming all that takeaways for the individual Individual investor is they're gonna try to do form. They're gonna try to freeze US currency reserves over there They're also going to do commodities or maybe try to do something on the gold That Russia holds and they're already doing that on the way it can export it Through different banks that are sanctioned all that means all that takeaway is when they when they screw and tinker with the supply chain Prices are going to be affected and I would argue that the (13/24)

direction of those prices are going to go higher not lower Which is why you need to have exposure to that The reality is is that on paper? The Russian currency is trading back to levels acting like the invasion never happened. That's While I admit absolutely batshit crazy. It's something that needs to be noted and investors need to pay attention So dev on energy Exxon Mobil Viper energy is a smaller one look at ETFs on the gold side new mon is a low hanging fruit Barrick Those major producers that have leverage to the price of gold These are longer-term macro tailwinds that I think you need to have in your pocketbook on your watch list To think and understand that hey as more and more disruption happens and inflation takes hold You're going to start see more more momentum towards hard commodities and things like that. So have exposure That is enough for topic number one topic number two on What you should give a flying Florida about is the new activist investor the new the new shape (14/24)

that it's taking. I Commented last week or a couple weeks ago with Frank on Wall Street unplugged about Carl icon. I respect him I like to read everything that he puts out in his letters and situations His thoughts successful over a very long career investing career He's still doing his old-fashioned corporate radar where you go in and yell at management for being overpaid and not producing results Like he is with Southwest gas, but he's also taking on what I would put under the umbrella of the emotional Conversation or the emotional bullying for lack of a better word to have some fun the ESG environmental social governments governance Tailwind we've seen him. He is fighting with McDonald's With you know, I read is it CNBC or Maybe a link through Finviz, but it was instead of you know, what's a corporate radar? I you come in you buy a big chunk of stock I think all of you know where I'm going with this on my Twitter reference earlier you come in you buy a big chunk of Stock yellow (15/24)

management you want board seats. You want to make some changes Carl icon with his latest bow with McDonald's. Yes the happy arches. He bought like 200 shares of McDonald's 200 200 and he's fighting with them over how they treat pigs and other animals I believe on raising, you know, just just that whole tug at your hearts and good for them Like I said, I'm not a I'm not in for abusing animals, but it just shocks me that that that's popular right now You know that's going to get attention and the feel-good and and hey, what are you doing to make everything better including? you know the treatment and people want to be able to track things from farm to plate I Think that's and that's why everybody has hey How are we what's our plan in our initiative to save the world and everything that we have an impact on in our business? That is huge right now that all leads to Elon Musk and Elon Musk has recently just disclosed that he has a passive just under 10% ownership in Twitter Okay, social (16/24)

media giant Twitter It's roughly a three billion dollar stake this guy cracks me up I've been critical and complimented him throughout the past I Try to be even on my criticism and praise for Elon Musk because he is entertaining as hell and he plays the game better than most Richest guy around 200 and some billion dollar net worth. This is chump change for him, but it proves a bigger point Just like what we've seen with meme stocks The emotions of Of One versus the other in meme stocks and GameStop and AMC It was the little guy versus the big guy and they were driven by hey, we're gonna make money So they're driven by greed and we can profit and we're also going to hurt them, you know, this David versus Goliath We're sticking it to the man. We're we're the rock and roll. You know, we're busting out here Screw curfews screw screw all that screw rules We're gonna do what we want and we are going to press it to them and get rich in the process Short squeezes they created a lot of pain. (17/24)

They've changed business models. Look at look at what happened to those business models in the The dying business models they had on paper, you know lack of sales. They were just the old blockbuster etc, etc movies viewership was going down then Retail gets behind him emotion gets behind him AMC is now Armed with a ton of capital, I believe the CEO said they raised 1.8 billion during the pandemic Gives it plenty of cash and what do they do? They go and invest in a gold and silver mind in northern Nevada Which with one of the most successful resource investors sprout at the same time. That's huge if you're hating on AMC They they have been given a lifeline forget outside of just the cash They raised, you know, even if you're a fraud, which I'm not saying anybody's a fraud But think about this, even if you're a fraud if you have tons of cash, you can continue the fraud for longer, right? Even if you're a dying business or a slowing business when you have tons of capital backing you you (18/24)

can stretch that out You can increase this duration Okay, and you can also if if you're smart you can make some good investments or good changes You can reshape your business model. You're giving a second chance. It's like a video game You just died on this level, but I hell when you hit this saving point now, you can just restart and try again That's wonderful AMC has a ton of cash on its balance sheet It's getting into different areas like crypto and hinting at different things GameStop is the same way now Twitter Elon Musk takes to Twitter I mean This is like the ultimate Trojan horse coming in without a disguise You just walk right in you tell them what you're gonna do. You're buying shares You're taking polls on whether or not they honor free speech. A lot of people say no, he's got 80 million Twitter followers What do you need you need big money and big vocal cords or a big megaphone? To be an activist investor today. The irony here is that now Twitter could be turned into a meme (19/24)

stock that has Canceled blocked certain people from Trying to make certain causes or arguments and that's politics to kovat to whatever I mean that is just hilarious because Twitter popped 27 25 percent when this news hit earlier this week on yesterday Now I'm not I'm not saying if you want to play I we talked about this last week, man. I missed Twitter I thought when they were gonna come out with a pay option. That was good. Don't give me any credit I didn't buy any I just watched it drift lower. Obviously it pops now. You're thinking all well, which woulda coulda shoulda it'll be interesting to watch from here if Twitter does take on that meme stock retail emotion angle and Before I came to record I already seen headlines about Twitter is engaging With discussions and things with Musk. He's gonna be on the board free speech going it the reason that this gets my attention is because it draws forward the free speech and a lot of Hot topics right now on social media with regulation (20/24)

everything going into an election year I think the risk reward for higher than lower is still higher for Twitter shares now because this is a huge shift Not only in for Twitter stock also for just the environment of activists and things in general and If you want to do some screens on hey, look look at some of these players Look at who there's whole you know, who's buying what listen to what people are saying Musk has foreshadowed this and Going after Twitter and all that kind of stuff But one of the bigger takeaways is BlackRock has been doing the same thing So pay attention to how it's received and reported on in the news Because I've already seen headlines about hey, this is kind of scary You just got a big rich guy coming in throwing his weight around Well, that's no different than what BlackRock's doing one of the largest if not the largest asset management a asset manager Excuse me with trillions and under management. We highlighted what they did and threw their weight around (21/24)

with Exxon Mobil Yet a little activist investor by a small percentage of the stock nowhere near a controlling interest in shares Yet they convinced the controlling interest of shares ie BlackRock to vote for them to get board members on Exxon Mobil So activism is nothing new. There's nothing new under the Sun. Don't panic about this use this as an entertainment laugh this off This is light-hearted if you want to trade in and out of this name. Hey have at it, but the bigger picture is Activist investor is shaping up and anything can take hold. You can have an Elon Musk He's got a wild history with tweets and driving share prices in his own company Tesla Twitter crypto currencies and all that kind of stuff Just understand that This is just another data point another piece to point to and say hey This is just craziness in this world. We live in this is the reality of the investing world So be prepared for huge swings volatility and anything can happen because we have a lot of money (22/24)

sloshing around in the system even though the Federal Reserve is going to try to take some out with easing or quantitative tightening and higher interest rates and things The pond that we've been dumping money into the system for so long There's still a lot sloshing around and anything and everything will happen It'll be a hell of an exciting ride and it'll be entertaining. So just pay attention to that kind of stuff That's two topics that got my attention and I wanted to break that down. Hopefully that was educational and fun We've had some technical difficulties. So I apologize if some things miss well or didn't go well But that's not Garrett's fault our wonderful sound guy. That is my fault Tune in tomorrow Wall Street unplugged Like I said on our Wednesday hot topics moving markets day between Frank Curzio and myself Daniel Creech again Always an honor and a pleasure to fill in for Frank Curzio Give me any feedback good or bad is all of its welcome Daniel at Curzio research.com (23/24)

That's Daniel at Curzio research.com and make sure you have exposure to gold and silver oil and gas Cheers 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 (24/24)

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 Franker's just the wall street up a podcast where I break that headlines and Say what's really moving these markets a special interview setup today, and I really want you to listen up Because a person I'm interviewing is a multi platinum artist the young rapper named dill Dyl where his hit song which is it with another young rapper named Wes Walker called Jordan Belfort Yes, about the wolf of Wall Street sold over two million copies Just gonna talk about his experience with his label actually Gonna tell you how he got screwed by his label, which let him create NFTs non-fungible tokens And start doing performances in the metaverse So I interviewed him a few weeks ago the metaverse conference in Las Vegas where he also performed the post conference VIP event By the way, he's awesome. It's (1/24)

really really good. Anyway, I Think dill's story is fascinating. He's one of 30 35 people I interviewed with Very very big social media followers that are going all in the metaverse and NFTs fascinating people But after you listen to this one specifically, you know exactly why they're going all in on these major trends Here's that interview right now Thanks so much for joining us man. What's going on? Hey, how's it going? Happy to be here at the metaverse Expo So metaverse Expo probably something you might have not said two years ago, right? Now you're seeing so many artists like yourself get into it. Talk a little about what you do yourself Introduce yourself to the audience. Yeah, I'm a multi-platinum artist. I've been in the music industry almost a decade now and about Five years ago six years ago I got into crypto and I found a new passion for crypto when I got involved and I actually quit making music for a couple years until I realized that music is my true passion and I wanted (2/24)

to use my platform as a multi-platinum artist to Teach people what I learned about the future of financial and creative freedom So in 2018, I recorded this album crypto rich which came out in 2019 it was the first album to tell a whole story about crypto through music and Now it's become one of the top selling music NFTs. We do shows in the metaverse. We do IRL shows we have merch We have all different types of utility for my collectors So it's been amazing for me as an artist coming from the traditional industry Where artists typically get screwed financially to this new way of doing things? We're now able to get funding from my community without having to give up all of my music ownership So talk about the screw part not in a bad way and I don't want you to mention names, you know but a lot of artists probably have gone down that path and they figured out and they got famous and I hear that with so many people Where they'll come out the content. They'll do everything and next thing, (3/24)

you know, they're not making any money at all And you know a couple years later It's it's kind of like a shit show Talk about that and how it led to what you're doing now because now you still have your audience The audience knows you and you have social media and now, you know, we'll get to the NFT part But talk about that and how it led to this. Yeah I mean the problem in the music industry is that the labels have built a business model of Basically giving predatory deals. So what they do is they look for new upcoming artists They often sell them a dream and unless you're the top 1% of artists at that label a lot of times you kind of get left out to dry and so that's what happened to us You know, we took a deal we were sold a big dream, but then ultimately the label never reinvested in us, right? So this song is multi-platinum over 2 million in sales And I've only seen a tiny percentage of that less than a living wage that I get every year, right? And so like the average listener (4/24)

assumes that because I made this multi-platinum hit, you know that I'm making tons of money And you know all this stuff, but that's very much not the case So that's why I found myself going into crypto because I was looking for that next play I was looking for what I could do. I'd toured I did over a hundred shows, you know I got the chance to be in some of the best studios in the world But I needed to find my next play right and so I got big into crypto and at some point I thought you know What maybe music isn't gonna work out? But I think it came full circle when I decided to tell my crypto story through music and that's brought me to where I am Today so in many ways if that situation didn't happen with the label, then maybe I'd still be looking for a label deal You know, maybe I'd still be looking for that one up, but I think that early experience with the label taught me like, okay This is how the traditional industry looks and now I don't have to reach for that anymore because I (5/24)

understand That I can do all the things I need to do with me and my community alone It's good you come back from that because sometimes when you have traumatic experience people always focus on that But they don't realize that that's probably the best thing that may have happened to you, right? There's now look at you now and talk about the NFT part of the business where this is you this is your content You can sell directly the audience. You have your business talk about that. Yeah for sure I mean so it was only a single song deal so a lot of artists get locked up in these deals or maybe they sign for a few albums and then they're not happy about the Income they're gonna make off those albums. So it puts you in a tough situation So, you know in many ways like a blessing in disguise. Yes, they got my big multi-platinum hit But at the same time I still own all my masters. I can still operate independently So what's amazing now is that I have actually sold more music NFTs in the last (6/24)