The Best One Yet - 😻 “Jay-Z’s Laser Eyes” — Cash App’s Bitcoin issue. Walmart+’s reverse Santa. Lithium’s gold rush.

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Walmart has whipped up a solution to the “Ugly Underbelly of Ecommerce”: it will come directly to your door to pick up your returns. Is Block, the owner of Cash App, so into Bitcoin that it’s blinded by its own laser eyes? And the newest gold rush isn’t gold… it’s Lithium.$BTC $SQ $WMTFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Friday, the real Friday, September 23rd, and today's pod is just the best one yet. The T-boy. Stocks keep dropping, but T-boys keep popping. What's our first story, Nick? Jack, what is our first story? These are your honors, baby.

Block. The owner of Cash app just fell 7% because it may be a little too into Bitcoin. Cash app may have broken the 80-20 rule. For our second story, Walmart already has curbside pickup. Yeah, it does. Now they're launching doorstep returns. To quote our college coaches, the best defense is a good offense. And our third and final story, the new gold rush isn't for gold at all.

It's for lithium. Gold, silver, and lithium, and lithium. Was that a Yukon Cornelius I just heard? I feel like I may have just sucked a craft commercial. But yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix. Just a perfect mix to end a week on Jack. Last week, we told you all about quiet quitting. Quiet quitting.

You do the bare minimum. work. Your job is your 9 to 5. It's nothing more than that. Just enough to get paid, not enough to get a promotion. But new thing related to quiet quitting. Real thing. Quiet firing. Quiet firing. When a company fires you without telling you that they're firing you. You're not terminated. No. You just can't work here anymore. And Jack, where is quiet firing happening these days? Let me check. Facebook. Facebook didn't suck this idea. They invented the quiet fire, apparently. Here's how quiet firing is going to go over at Mehta. Okay, first, Facebook doesn't go through the standard firing process. No, Meta's not going to hand you a box, call security, and escort you to the exit.

No, instead, they're going to tell you there's been a reorganization, and they're going to ask you to apply for a different role at the same company. And if you don't get a new role within 30 days, you can't work here anymore. Do you see what they did there? Oh, I'm not eating your lunch. I'm just taking a bite of your sandwich until it's all gone. I'm not taking your money. I'm just paying with your credit card. I'm not stealing your car. I'm just borrowing it for free, forever.

Jack, it looks like Zuck is pulling a move straight out of office space, the movie. The guy with a red stapler. We're not firing you, Milton. No, we're not. We're just moving your cubicle into a dark, humid, inhospitable basement. And we're not going to pay you anymore. But you're definitely not fired. I didn't say fired.

So, Yeties, if you're about to get quiet fired, Jack, what should you do? Quiet quit? More quietly. If you can't get quiet fired, if they can't hear you. Excuse me, where's my stapler? Let's hear three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm.

They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

Start the show. For our first story, Block, the owner of the cat. app just dropped 7% because they may be too obsessed with Bitcoin. Block may have broken the 80-20 rule. Okay, Yetis, if you got a second right now, if you're not driving, for instance, go to the website block.com.x, Y, Z. Block.x, Z. It's a cool looking website. And Jack, what's the first thing you're going to see? You're not going to see anything. Oh, good point. You're going to hear a sound. You're going to hear a playlist curated by Jay-Z. This website has a JZ. This website has a J-Z. curated playlist that's called Block vibes.

That's a good name. And it's honestly something I want to play at my next upbeat dinner party. Yeah, they got good tracks. They got Mood by WizGid and they got two for two by Madlip, for instance. Then a bunch of other songs we'd never heard of, but like we need to hear about them. I said that like I knew it, but I have no idea. Never heard them before, Jack. Full disclosure. But Yeti, what the heck's going on here?

Block is not a music or entertainment company. No, Block is a $33 billion dollar fintech company. It's the artist formerly known as Square. Why is the first thing you see a playlist from Jay-Z? Well, Jack, who else does Block happen to own? Okay, Block owns the peer-to-peer cash app. They also own Square, the payment dongles and terminals that you pay for your coffee. Like at the flea market.

And they recently acquired Jay-Z's music streamer title. So Block is basically a reflection of their founder, CEO, Jack Dorsey's personal preferences and interests. Yeah, it drops Bitcoin and it drops beats. But here's the problem. Block stock just fell to a two-year low after it got downgraded by a bank. And why did it get downgraded, Jack? It got downgraded because laser eyes.

Yeah, because of laser eyes. Basically, analysts think that block is too into Bitcoin. It's too crazy for crypto. It's got too much laser eyes turned on right now. Nick and I jumped in T-boy style to the annual report. And the first thing we looked at was Cash App, because that's the most popular product. But Nick, they only mentioned Cash App 100. How many times?

How many times did they mention Bitcoin, Jack? We control FD it. They mentioned Bitcoin 40 more times than Cash App. And then we looked at Square. Square is the most profitable product of the company. And that was also mentioned fewer times than Bitcoin was mentioned. Crypto trading is less than 5% of Block's business, but it occupies a majority of the company's focus. Look at the CEO's Twitter bio.

It says it all. Yeah, it does. It doesn't say that Jack Dorsey is the CEO and founder of Block. It doesn't mention cash app. It doesn't mention square. It says one thing. What do they say? Hashtag Bitcoin. In fact, the company's new name, Block, is a reference to the blockchain. And yet 95% of their revenues are just coming from standard finance. That's why the investment bank said this yesterday. They said Block has enormous potential in payments that it's not cashing in on, so the stock

drop 7%. Missouho Bank downgraded the stock. They cut their target stock price in half from 125 bucks a share to just $57. They think Block needs to turn off the laser eyes, put him in the closet for a while. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Block? Block broke the 80-20 rule. The 80-20 rule. 80% of a company's profits tend to come from just 20% of the customers. So you should pour a majority of your focus into that part of the company that drives 80% of the profits. We talked about the 80-20 rule before, but here's the situation at Block. A majority of their focus isn't on what drives 80% of the profits. A majority of their focus seems to be on what drives

no profits at all. It's like the analysts think that this is totally backward. Like crypto and buy now pay later, that's getting all the love, but it's not bringing in that much money right now. A block would argue that this is a bet on the future. Eventually, crypto will be a majority of their business. Block's investing in what's going to generate the most future profits. That's probably what Block would say. But it isn't clear that that future is going to happen anytime soon. It looks like, like Jack's laser eyes are breaking the 80-20 rule. For our second story, Walmart just launched the most convenient return policy that's honestly humanly possible.

They will come and get your return from your house. They will pry it from your cold dead finger. You have to do nothing to return your package. You may not even want to return it and they'll take it from it. Anyway, either way. 20 years ago, if you wanted to look cool, trendy and cutting edge as a company, what would you do? You add.com to the end of your company's name. Well, today, Jack, if you want to look cool, trendy and cutting edge as a company, what do you do?

You add plus. Yeah, plus. Or plus max. That's extra credit. You add plus to the name of your products like Walmart Plus. That was Walmart's response to Amazon Prime at launch two years ago. Yeah, it's basically the same subscription concept as Amazon Prime. 98 bucks a year for Walmart Plus. You get free two-day delivery. You get free grocery delivery.

You get streaming video and a bunch of other perks. It's a stage five zucking of Amazon Prime. But Walmart Plus has a problem because it's been playing catch-up in this game with Amazon for like two years. But it just pulled ahead for the crucial holiday period. And here's what Jack and I found fascinating about the story. The core here is returns. Returns. Returns.

We call Returns the Achilles heel of e-commerce. Returns. They are the ugly underbelly of online shopping. Returns cause a rare double pain. First, it costs you time to repackage, to print, to label, to shift, to drop off that package somewhere as a return. And if you return something, it also costs the retailer, but it costs them money to pay for the shipping, to inspect the product to make sure it's still good, and then to reshelf. So no one seemed to like returns, which is why Walmart is focusing right now on returns. Walmart just announced they are killing one side of that painful return equation we just described.

The side of that equation that hurts EU. Walmart calls it return pickup from home. This is basically a doorstep return. Like, no doorman needed. Walmart will send a person to your house, like in home alone with the cops when they knocked on the door to make sure Kevin was okay. Kevin! But they're doing it to pick up the item that you want to return. For Walmart plus members in select locations, you schedule a pickup of your return items at your front door.

You don't have to find a box. You don't have to tape it up. You just leave that electric toothbrush that had the broken batter. Just leave the thing on the doorstep. Walmart will pick it up. Walmart's basically pulling a reverse Santa here, Jack. Now, this is a big investment by Walmart. They're not taking the chimney.

They go to your front door and they take stuff from you. They just take it. Good stuff you don't want that. Right. Now, those pickup logistics, that's going to cost Walmart a lot of money. That's why it's an investment. This is like a second delivery, but it's going to kill a customer pain point of returns. And that means it's an investment that could result in more customer love and more customer orders.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Walmart plu? For the first time since Amazon, Walmart is playing offense. They're playing offense here. Our coaches would be proud. Coach Ritter would be proud. Coach Lars would be very proud, Jack. There's no eye in e-commerce. Yeties, for three quarters in a row, Amazon's core North American e-commerce business lost money.

Amazon admitted it has too many warehouses, and now it's even dealing with a union drive as well. Jeff Bezos, the godfather of the company, just dropped to an embarrassing number three on the list of most rich billionaires in the world. You can't sit with us, Jeff. But for Walmart, Daddy's, it's the opposite situation recently. Walmart's enjoying consistent profits, steady growth, and a brick and mortar business that is booming, baby. For the past 20 years, Walmart's been defensive, trying to stop you from defecting to Amazon. Now Walmart is finally playing offense. It's offering something prime camp.

Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. A lot of yetis don't realize how much prep work goes into this pod. We spend hours every morning jumping in T-boy style to earnings reports, CEO tweets, breaking news headlines. Yeah, Jack and I are toggling tabs like you toggled IM Convo's in 2004. Having eight tabs open can be stressful. You don't need that, especially when invest. Robin Hood offers it all in one app. Whether you want to trade options, ETFs, or stocks through Robin Hood Financial,

or you want to buy some Bitcoin on Robin Hood Crypto. You can do it all on the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing in Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's robinood.com slash TBOY. Limitations apply. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, all investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned or part of Robin Hood.

We are not employees of Robin Hood. For our third and final story for the new Friday, Canadian Landon And prospectors are on the lookout for lithium. Because lithium is the gold of the 2020s. Take us back to 1849. Prospectors rush to San Francisco for the gold. Gold. Silver and gold.

There we go. Straight out of the Thunder Mountain Ride at Disney World. Yet he's for a decade back in the 1840s, San Francisco was the world's fastest growing city. And in fact, you see it today. The San Francisco 49ers football team, literally. named after that gold rush. The gold logo, the gold stripes on the pants, it's because of that 1849 gold rush. Well, today, the world's newest gold rush is 5,052 miles to the north by northeast in Canada. In Canada, way up north in the forest of Montreal. Yeah, up there,

prospectors are drone into the earth, pulling out samples, and they're discovering something that's just, it's something better than gold. They discovered lithium. The reason lithium is better than gold is because the price of lithium has quintupled in the last year. It's got up by 5x in the last year. Lithium, not the 90s-grown serious X-M-Chad. Good clarification. Take it easy, Pearl Jam. Take it easy. Lithium, the best performing medal in the economy by far right now. Which means two things. First, we should probably move up North Jack and start a Canadian football team and call them the 22ers. And that would make a lot of sense. Where's Steve Young when you need them? Yeah, the Steve Young of lithium. The Joe Montana of

Rare Earth metals. Where is he? What this actually means is this economy is giving lithium a lot of love. Yeah, it's giving lithium a classic piggyback trend. Because if the United States wants to electrify all their cars, which it apparently does, then it needs lithium. Every electric car battery right now needs about 17 pounds of lithium in it. No lithium, no charge. In fact, Elon Musk literally said this year that Tesla may need to go into the lithium mining business. It needs lithium. that badly. Plus, the Inflation Reduction Act that recently passed Congress gives car buyers $10,000 off than an electric car. But only if that car is made in North America with North American materials. So lithium that is mined here in North America can sell for $10,000 more than

lithium that we import from China, Australia, or Chile. Not too shabby, but Jack, it does lead one question. Will there be enough lithium? Or will Elon have to put on a hard hat and pull Zoolander on us. I got the black lung pop. It's not very well ventilated down there. Talk to me in 30 years. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies? Over in lithium.

Yes. The answer is yes. We will have enough lithium because of the simple beauty of economics. Yeties, Jack and I saw this story and we had to sit down, stand up, sit back down again. Honestly, Jack was very excited because this lithium just captures this principle more than any other story. Right now, it may seem that. there's not enough lithium for the world to go electric, because there isn't enough lithium right now. No, so all that demand has caused lithium's price to search by 5x. It's really expensive. But here's the beauty of that really expensive lithium. This is the beauty of profit incentives.

That high price will actually fix the whole lithium problem. Because the price is so high, it's now attracting more people to find more lithium. That huge quintupled price is what's motivating a dozen new mining companies to find lithium in North America, blow up the land and extract it from the earth. That crazy high price is what incentivized one company to travel 350 miles northwest of Montreal to the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the forest. Surrounded by wolves, surrounded by bears.

It's freaking cold up there. Even moose, and they're just trying to do one thing. Mine lithium. Ipsop facto, the huge demand pushed the price up. But now that high price is dry. more supply. And then once we get more supply, the price will eventually come down. That is just the simple beauty of economics. Jack, can you and Larry Zoolander whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? Block stock just got downgraded because it's too Bitcoin

focused because of its laser eyes. Block's break in the 80-20 room. For a second story, Walmart is adding doorstep returns to Walmart plus. For the first time since Amazon, Walmart's finally play in offense. And our third and final story, lithium, is the new gold in Canada and parts of this country, too. Because of the simple beauty of economics. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Mindy Lehman in lovely New York City. Mindy is a software engineer and she just learned something she wanted to share. Yeah, the word typewriter. Like the word typewriter. It has a special claim to fame. It has an ironic claim to fame. That's because the word typewriter is actually the longest word that you can type using only one row of your keyboard. When the typewriter was invented,

typewriter was the longest word you could write with one line. We repeat, you can't write anything longer on one line than you can write typewriter on a typewriter. Did they name it the typewriter? Or did they say, what's the longest word I can do here? Oh, it's a typewriter. Mindy Lehman, you don't want to face her in Scrabble. Yeties, you looked fantastic all week. And remember, if you're quite quick, right now? You just got to be a little bit more quiet. I think you took my stapler. H-Y-H-D-B-O-I. We'll see you on Monday.

Have you had the best one yet? If you know, you know. And before we go, good luck and have a carboloaded dinner to Steve Ropeppy running the Berlin Marathon this weekend. Steve, I lived on the corner of Tor Strasser and Tukalski Strasser when I studied abroad. Nick spent a couple nights there back in 2009. Great Strausses. The marathon runs right by my old apartment.

Right on those Strausses. Grab us a Dernar Kabob. And Juan Garcia and Masiel Martinez, happy anniversary in Santa Domingo Dominican Republic. Happy birthday to Kate Choi in Valencia, California. And Ryan Ford is turning 23 on the 23rd in California. And Angelica Rivera, happy birthday down in Dallas.

Alex Cruz celebrating his birthday in a Jeep CJ7. Happy 25th to Ibrahim Aziz in Toronto, Canada. And Morgan Beck with legendary Yeti, Happy birthday down in Austin. And happy birthday to Ogecci Nuoco in Atlanta, Georgia. And Sophia Lager down in Denver. And Alec Boyd in Denver, Colorado. Sean Big Ballin McQueen, also down in Denver.

Happy birthday to Katie Carlson in Boston. Just outside Boston. And Jenny, the Libra Hancock over in Philadelphia. And happy 34th to Jason Buzanski in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And Colby Hernandez turning 40 up in Montana. And happy birthday to Rushi Nyack on the way to school right now in Arizona. And a happy birthday to Bayloo in Jersey City. And the big guy, Jeff Maglin, just enjoyed his first T-boy episode down in Baltimore.

Celebrate that win. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Nick and I both own stock. A block, Robin Hood, and we own some Bitcoin too. Yeah, Ben the Bitcoin. Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. A lot of you listen to our show while you're driving. Two hands on the wheel. Keep it 10 and 2. You might be cruising Chris, no rush.

Stay in the right lane. Or you might be Dahlene from Dahl. Duncan, dotting from lane to lane. And there are different drivers on the road. They're different investors too. Maybe you're cruising down the long-term lane with stock investing, or maybe you're a more advanced full-speed trader. Well, the Robin Hood app helps put you in the driver's seat wherever you're at in your

investing journey. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robinood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Limitations apply. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, all investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned by. are part of Robinhood and we are not employees of Robinhood.