Wholesale prices rose 5.4% year over year, Frank Curzio and Daniel Creech said on Wall Street Unplugged, against a Fed inflation target of 2%.
Most of the market's attention was on oil topping $100 a barrel. Curzio and Creech argued the number that actually matters is diesel, which is up roughly 25% in a single month and feeds directly into the price of everything trucked to a store.
"So the Fed's credibility right now is an effing joke."
Curzio has run Curzio Research for about 30 years; Creech is the firm's co-host and analyst, and both put real positions behind the calls they make on air, including a $340 stock they say is being mispriced off its own credit-default swaps.
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 59 minutes of audio, 12 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 takeaways that matter.
🎙️ Hosts: Frank Curzio, founder and CEO of Curzio Research, and Daniel Creech, the firm's co-host and analyst
📰 Published: 10 September 2026
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 59 min | ✅ Time saved: 47 min
Key Takeaways
PPI came in at 5.4% year over year against a 2% Fed target, and odds of a September hike jumped past 70%
Diesel, not crude, is the inflation number that matters — up roughly 25% in a month and feeding straight into freight costs
Nestlé's own CEO said every supplier is raising prices and the company intends to pass them on
A widening group of consumer-discretionary stocks — Dick's, Casey's, Tapestry, Yeti, Lululemon, TJX and Burlington — are all down 20% to 40% in 30 days
A Deutsche Bank rule of thumb puts fair value on the 10-year near 5.9% if GDP growth holds
Oracle's stock is trading off its own CDS spreads, and Curzio calls it cheap at 19 times forward earnings
Take-Two could see $4 billion to $5 billion in Grand Theft Auto VI sales in its first week alone, not counting the online mode
Meta's new Muse AI agent is "a game changer," Curzio said, reversing his prior worry about AI threatening its ad business
The single biggest investing lesson both hosts named is the same one: limit your losses, then let the winners run
1. The Fed credibility gap
Curzio opened with the day's PPI print, which came in 0.1 percentage points above estimates but up 5.4% year over year.
He compared the Fed's inflation target to a company that keeps missing its own revenue guidance. "Imagine a company in 2024 saying that their annual revenue target is $1 billion, and they only generate $600 million," he said, tracing the same shortfall through 2025 and 2026 — the kind of miss that would send a stock down "40%, 50%, 60%." His verdict on the Fed doing the equivalent with a 2% target: "So the Fed's credibility right now is an effing joke."
Rate-hike odds moved fast. Curzio said odds of a 25-basis-point hike at next week's meeting were "over 70% now," up from where they stood before the PPI release, and that a fourth consecutive month of hot inflation data reverses two months of readings that had suggested inflation was moderating
He said the market's muted reaction so far has surprised him. "I'm impressed that markets weren't down more yesterday," he said, adding that stocks are pricing in roughly a half-percent move so far even as the 10-year approaches 5%
2. Diesel is the real driver
Creech flagged diesel prices as the number underneath the headline oil story.
Diesel is up sharply in a single month. "The elephant in the room, diesel price is up 24.1% in August alone," Creech said, and Curzio put the broader move at roughly 25% in a month, with WTI briefly touching $100 a barrel — a level "nobody had... a month ago"
Diesel is the direct cost businesses cannot avoid passing on. Curzio walked through the supply chain: "Trucks, everything, freight. Any item you see in any store... is delivered by trucks," and diesel running 80% higher year over year is a cost every retailer eventually has to eat or pass through
Nestlé's own CEO said the company is passing costs on, not absorbing them. Curzio read the company's note aloud: "Each and every supplier of ours will be increasing costs," and "Making sure consumers come along if we have to increase prices" — a rare instance, Curzio said, of a company saying it plainly rather than hiding it
Apple is doing the same thing at the high end. Curzio pointed to higher memory costs pushing prices up "across the board," including on the new foldable iPhone, which he said could be 15% to 20% of revenue going forward despite carrying "very, very little memory" at its base price
The Fed hiking rates does nothing to bring diesel down, Curzio said — it is pure sentiment and signaling rather than a fix for the underlying cost. His broader framing: "We are just pawns on a chessboard," or, borrowing a line from investor Darius Dale, "frogs in boiling water on a debasement trade"
3. Who has pricing power
Creech pointed to a specific batch of consumer names as evidence the market is already pricing in demand destruction.
A wide swath of consumer discretionary is down sharply in 30 days. Creech listed the sector as down about 20% overall, with Dick's down 40%, Casey's down 30%, Tapestry (owner of Kate Spade and Coach) down 30%, Yeti down 23%, and Lululemon down 24% — though he noted "it seems like it's down every single month"
The surprise for him was TJX and Burlington, the off-price retailers usually seen as inflation-resistant because they sell name brands at a discount. TJX is down 20% and Burlington down 33% — a signal, in Creech's words, to "watch out" because even the supposed hedges are getting hit
Curzio's framework is to ask which companies actually have pricing power. Companies without it will be forced to lower estimates once true costs show up, he said, while their stock prices — still near highs — have not yet priced that in
Creech separated the near-term reaction from the longer arc. Of companies that can raise prices: "They're always going to push that through," he said, but he does not expect them to reverse those increases even if oil eases, because true demand destruction "does not happen right away" — he compared it to oil needing to hit $160 and stay there for real behavioral change to show up
4. The 10-year's math
Curzio brought up a Deutsche Bank note he called "solid" and said got his attention.
The rule of thumb: the 10-year trades roughly 70 basis points under nominal GDP growth, going back to the 1960s. With Q2 GDP running near 6%, Curzio said: "That means that the 10-year needs to read or run... about 5.9%."
He does not expect a jump straight to 6%, but sees 5% as a level the market clears on the way there. "I don't think anyone's talking about 5.25 on a 10-year, but... we have to be careful," he said, adding that once the 10-year clears 5% he expects talk to shift quickly toward "5.2, 5.[3]... disaster territory for our economy and equities"
The Treasury's own buyback signal disappointed the market. Curzio said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was expected to announce a $10 billion buyback of long-dated debt but came in at $6 billion instead. "However, bonds definitely didn't go in the direction they wanted to yesterday after the announcement, in my opinion."
Earnings growth is the load-bearing wall under the whole market, Curzio said — companies that can pass rising costs to consumers keep their guidance intact; those that cannot will have to cut estimates, and stocks trading near highs without having priced that in face the sharpest drops when they report
5. Three earnings calls
Listener questions turned the conversation to three names reporting or in the news this week.
Oracle trades off its own CDS
Curzio said Oracle's stock decline tracks its credit-default-swap spreads, not its fundamentals. He compared it to what happened with SpaceX bonds, and said the stock's move from the low $150s down toward $115–117 lines up with CDS spreads widening on concern about its AI buildout obligations
He called the stock cheap given the backlog. At 19 times forward earnings against "hundreds of billions" in remaining performance obligations, he said a decent quarter and stable-to-lower CDS spreads should push the $340 stock back toward $200
His advice on how to track the trade: watch the CDS spreads directly rather than guessing, calling them easy to find on "Yahoo Finance or CNBC" — as long as they keep coming down, he sees room to buy any pullback
Take-Two's GTA6 math
Curzio's range for Grand Theft Auto VI's first week is $3 billion to $5 billion, with the high end more likely in his view, and none of that figure includes the long-running online mode that has generated revenue for over a decade
He argued AI changes the ceiling on the online version specifically. Past open-world crowds were capped by how many real players could populate them; with AI-generated characters, cars and NPCs, "you could have like 100 million people in these worlds and you could do anything you want in this world" — an experience he called "totally open"
He sees the stock, at $216 against a prior high near $260, as not yet pricing in a blowout week-one number. "But if they go over 5 billion, this stock is going to go much, higher from here."
Meta's Muse pivot
Curzio reversed a prior call on Meta. He said he had worried a few weeks earlier that AI would threaten Meta's core digital-advertising business, alongside Google; the release of its Muse AI agent changed his view. "I think Muse is a game changer. I really do"
The pitch is a personal AI agent embedded across Meta's platforms — integrating with email, calendars, payments, health and smart-home systems, working in the background on long-running tasks even when the app is closed
The stock's own reaction told the story, Curzio said — it was "up, whatever it was, 6, 7%" in "a really shitty market" the day of the announcement, which he read as the market recognizing a real product rather than a story
He tied it back to Meta's core ad business. More usage of Muse means Meta tracks users more closely across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which he said supports the advertising business he had separately worried AI was going to erode
6. Nike: not a buy yet
A listener asked whether Nike is worth buying near its lows.
Curzio is starting to warm to Nike but will not buy at the 52-week low. "I would never buy a stock at its 52-week low... you don't want to try to catch a falling knife," he said, adding he would only step in early if the CEO were buying more stock than ever — something that has not happened
He blamed years of earnings management through buybacks for masking the real business, now exposed as China sales have slowed. He wants to see either a strong quarter or new leadership from outside before getting involved, drawing the comparison to Alan Mulally's turnaround of Ford: "That's what happened with Ford and Mulally when the stock was at two or three... he came in and he restructured the company... and turned Ford around"
The dividend is not a reason to buy on its own. Nike's market cap has fallen to $55 billion from as much as $250 billion, and its dividend yield is around 4% — attractive only if the turnaround actually happens, not as downside protection by itself
7. Cap losses, ride winners
A listener asked for the single most important lesson in buying or selling stocks.
Curzio's answer was a hard rule: cap losses at 25% and never average down. "You want to put your stop losses on stocks. You can go 25%," he said, warning against trailing stops in a volatile market and against buying more of a stock simply because it has gotten cheaper — a trap he said he fell into during his own first five years of investing
He used a poker analogy to explain why. Comparing it to a skilled player folding pocket kings against an all-in bet from a novice, he said: "If the more I play this guy, the more he has no shot because he's not going to beat me over the long haul... I'm not going to let him get lucky." The point, applied to trading, is staying in the game long enough for skill to compound rather than risking elimination on one hand
The flip side of the rule is not holding back when a high-conviction idea works. Curzio said his biggest regret is not sizing up on ideas he was right about — settling for a 3x or 4x gain on a call that could have returned 30x or 40x
8. Management is the real edge
Creech offered his own answer to the same question: management matters more than the story.
He said the pattern holds across the calls that worked. Naming Michael Dell, Jamie Dimon and Mark Zuckerberg as examples, he said the majority of the best-performing recommendations "are going to have solid managers," pointing to Dell and Google as picks from the past 12 to 18 months that few people wanted at the time but are now up more than 100%
A good story without execution goes nowhere. Creech called the gap between a compelling story and real delivery one of the most frustrating patterns in investing — "everybody has a great story," but a company can go "sideways or down for years" if it never turns the story into revenue
He pointed to Bitcoin miners pivoting into AI data centers as the live test case. He named DGXX as a company actually generating AI revenue and building out sites now, in contrast to peers still only talking about the pivot after diluting shareholders along the way
Curzio and Creech's bottom line is that diesel-driven inflation is forcing a choice on every consumer company — raise prices and risk demand destruction, or hold them and cut earnings guidance — and that a 10-year yield pushing past 5% toward 5.9% is the mechanism that turns that corporate problem into a stock-market one.
Bonus Insights
The hosts opened on Thursday night's NFL opener rather than markets. Curzio called the Seahawks-Patriots game one of the worst season openers he's seen in years, with both starting quarterbacks — Sam Darnold and the Patriots' passer — leaving with injuries; Creech was already looking ahead to the 49ers-Rams game in Australia
A listener question on healthcare and AI drew a detour into drug-development economics. Curzio said AI-driven robotic labs are cutting the time to bring a drug from clinical trials to FDA approval from 10–12 years to under six, and that failing a costly Phase 3 trial after clearing Phase 2 has historically wiped out well over a billion dollars for the companies involved
Curzio flagged copper, gold and Bitcoin as places he's currently positioned, citing Freeport-McMoRan and Southern Copper as beneficiaries of a roughly 45% rise in copper prices over 12 months, alongside a small explorer, Coppernico, that recently secured permits for an undeveloped Peruvian copper deposit
He floated an unusual research angle on hedging: identifying which major retailers and freight operators locked in oil hedges around $75 a barrel, arguing those companies could quietly take share from competitors now forced to pass diesel costs straight through
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Oracle (Curzio says its stock is trading off its own CDS spreads and is cheap at 19 times forward earnings ahead of its earnings report)
Take-Two Interactive (Publisher of Grand Theft Auto VI, which Curzio estimates could do $3–5 billion in week-one sales)
Meta (Its new Muse AI agent, which Curzio calls a "game changer" for both its own growth and its core advertising business)
Nike (Down from a $250B market cap to $55B; Curzio is watching for a strong quarter or new leadership before buying)
Nestlé (Its CEO's on-record comments about passing higher input costs on to consumers, which Curzio cites as evidence of broader corporate price pressure)
Apple (Raising prices across its lineup, including the new foldable iPhone, on higher memory costs)
Freeport-McMoRan and Southern Copper (Copper miners Curzio says have benefited from a roughly 45% rise in copper prices over the past year)
Coppernico (A small copper explorer Curzio's firm has a marketing relationship with, which recently secured permits for an undeveloped deposit in Peru)
Dick's Sporting Goods, Casey's, Tapestry, Yeti, Lululemon, TJX and Burlington (The consumer-discretionary names Creech flags as down 20–40% in 30 days, including the off-price retailers usually seen as inflation-resistant)
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