The Best One Yet - 👑 “Where’s the Dothraki roller coaster?” — HBO’s Game of Missing Thrones. JetBlue’s platform problem. 1 whale crushed stocks.

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

If your stocks fell on Friday, there my be 1 person to blame (but seriously). HBO Max snagged the Game of Thrones creator for a multi-year-multi-million-dollar deal. And JetBlue’s tired of just airplane, so it’s launching its own Expedia.$JBLU $DIS $T $VIAC $DISCAGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn 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. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Tuesday. T-Boy Tuesday, March 30th, Jack. Good news to the whole world. The canal? It's open.

Keep it moving, people. Keep it moving. There's like 300 ships that are finally slogging their way through the Suez Canal. And you get to go home and you get to come. The world is like a little less stop right now. Jack, you know how they unclogged the ship? Don't give you this helium balloons nonsense. They turned it off and then they turned it back on again.

Ah, there you go. Snackers, this is the best one yet. For our first story, what's the T-Boy Jack? HBO Max just signed Game of Thrones creator George R.R.R. Martin to a five-year, eight-figure content deal. Yeah, here's his job at HBO. Build this a multi-billion dollar video universe like Star Wars. Do what Star Wars did. For our second story, Jep Blue, they know you want vacation, so they're launching their own Expedia. It's the biggest love-hate relationship in business.

For our third and final story, nearly a dozen stocks fell huge on Friday, and a few more fell on Monday for no fault of their own. One single giant Wall Street whale came crashing down. Made a mess for everyone, Jack. But before we hit that wonderful mix of stories today, we got a huge miss going on in the dating app industry. Giftability. There's no giftability. It's hard to craft a meaningful text after like two ngronis and some garlic fries.

You're accidentally DTRing via SMS. We've all been there now. I haven't been there. But Snackers, we're seeing some redemption in this latest. team up between a dating app and a non-dating app. Yeah, get this. We noticed that Lyft is going to let you gift a ride to your future significant other in Tinder. That's right. Without leaving the Tinder app, you can make sure that Carl and a Toyota Camry is showing up in three minutes to pick up your date. Nothing yells romance like the power to summon a white Honda accord. Christine, I had a really nice

night. Yep. It was so nice. So I booked you a ride home. We'd have to talk about how you came up with the name of Christine for that one. But what this comes down to, Snackers, is it's all about app optimization. Optimization. Yes, we have one app partnering up with a complementary app for in-app service. We got one app in the other app without you having to leave the apps. We think Grubhub should get involved. Yeah, gift your data bento box in the dating app.

Spotify, get up in there. Gift your Melo Beats playlist in the dating app. Debbie, nothing says who I am like my beats. And Venmo could get on board with this. Request half of the $28 bar tab in the Tinder app. And preemptively end the relationship. Snackers, we want to know what other app should optimize a relationship with another app. Hit us up at Jack Kramer, at Nick of New York, at Robin Hood Snacks.

Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned into snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. It's snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robin Hood family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any securities.

Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, HBO just signed the creator of Game of Thrones to a five-year Major League Baseball-style deal.

His job help HBO win in the game of streams. The man George R.R. Martin, born in Bay on New Jersey, author of the books that became the Game of Thrones series. How can I kill this beloved character I've spent three seasons developing in such a magnificent way that the audience doesn't miss this amazing character. I did something with like a femur last week.

Maybe I'll mess with his tibular this week. Snackers, according to the Hollywood reporter, he just signed a five-year deal with HBO to continue building the empire he already started there. All right, so this is like Buddy the Elf's dad hiring Miles Finch, but with like an A-Rod contract. He must be a self-pole elf, but not for one adorable children's book

for five years worth. All right, snack, I sprinkle a little context on this thing. HBO, they already had a deal with Martin back in 2007. Yes, they had the exclusive video rides to A Song of Ice and Fire. A lovely show. That became eight seasons of Game of Thrones, 59 Emmys, and employed like half the population of Croatia for filming. A Song of Ice and Fire was a book,

and there's no word on whether this video deal will delay his writing of the Wins of Winter, the final book of the original series. It's been like six years. But now Game of Game of... Thrones is over. So HBO Max badly needs a new spark to fire some excitement and energy into this streaming service. Jack, HBO Max needs an anchor franchise worthy of your monthly streaming bill. This goes back to 2016 when AT&T announced it was acquiring Time Warner. Time Warner was the owner of HBO. Ifso facto, AT&T owns HBO. So since then, we're looking at AT&T stock. It's not

doing too good. The S&P 500 is up 85% and AT&T is down 20% over that period. Okay, AT&T, one of the biggest wireless companies in the world owns HBO, owns Warner Brothers, and controls your entire phone plan. They also own TBS, TNT and T. These guys know T's and these guys know media, baby. And yet, despite all of those incredible assets, AT&T's market cap, the total value of odd stock, is less than Netflix. Let that sink in. AT&T is worth less than Netflix. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at AT&T? Cinematic universe building. That is one way to win the game of streams. Snackers, Disney's first fan freak out strategic Disney Plus move was blowing up the Star Wars universe into the Mandalorian. And after that, Disney Plus turned its 23 existing

Marvel movies into like a dozen more Marvel Shmovies. Well, HBO Netflix. Well, HBO Netflix, Max's best hope rely on the Game of Thrones universe to drive subscriber growth. They're already working on it. In fact, they are currently developing a show called The House of Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones from when the Targaryens were in control of Westeroos. Honestly, HBO Max Jack should be renamed Knights Watch. That's what the streaming service should be. Five more Game of Thrones themed series have already been greenlit,

including another series about the Targaryens. How many Targaryens are there? A series about House Valerian where the steel comes from. Not a rom-com. Flea Bottom, which is like the pits of Kings Landing. Okay. And an animated series with like cartoons for the kids, I guess. Now with less nudity.

Oh, and finally, this last one we had to throw in for you, Nick. It's called the Nemiria Project. Okay. It's about a warrior queen of House Martel. No relation. Same spelling. It happens a lot. Snackers, what Disney did to get over 100 million subscribers,

HBO Max needs to do with George Aramard. think HBO could win the game of streams with a game of throne cinematic universe. You win or you die. For our second story, JetBlue is tired of just airplanes. So they're launching their own Expedia. Not bad. This story, though, is really about the biggest love-hate relationship there is in business. First of all, can we start with like a bummer community announcement over here? That's not our story. We figure we should let the Snaggers know. JetBlue is now charging for overhead luggage space. Sir, can I help you store that carry-on-on-away suitcase that you definitely got as a Christmas gift? That's going to cost you extra, starting July.

But here is like our actual story that we thought was fascinating. JetBlue is launching their own standalone travel site that includes vacation activities. It's called Paisley. Paisley, which I think, Jack, is the design on like all of your grandmother's furniture. I think Paisley is that thing. You know what I'm talking about? The circle? It's like a yin without a yang.

Right, right. It's a teardrop, but there are a lot of the tears. Right. And we jumped onto the website, Paisley.com. It looks like they zesley. Expedia. Yeah, this is a separate online booking platform, but the homepage is like palm trees, Infinity Pools, and then... And then the glowing check. Yeah. Paisley explicitly says, Help us, help you glow up your vacation. Okay. And then a funny thing we noticed,

they only mentioned JetBlue one time on this website. Now, Snackers, we're a year into a pandemic, so we're going to ask you to warm up your dormant vacation booking muscles, okay? Oh yeah, you know what that means? A trip to Rio, that's going to be, I don't know, 14 internet tabs you got up on the browser, Jack? Your Google Chrome is about to explode. Or you can go to paisley.com, which offers all your travel needs, plus deals, everything you need around your JetBlue flight. Or you can get a trip advisor kayak hotel tonight, six them all at once, four tabs, three different browsers, you know what we're talking about. Or you could go to Paisley. But there's one catch that Jack and I notice is going on with Paisley. This isn't for

everyone, literally. Now, it's only for people who have already booked a flight on JetBlue. Because Paisley is all about the add-ons. You've got to stick your name and the comments. information number from your JetBlue previously booked flight if you're going to access this stuff. Then, once they know what flight you're taking, they're going to recommend a hotel or home rental, a car rental, restaurant reservation, even a snorkeling excursion. You got to love the snorging. Oh, and they'll hook you up with like tickets to Universal at a discount. They're like doing a lot of experience stuff. So right now, JetBlue's thinking this is an extra business line to make a commission through fees off of your existing flight that you've already booked. You came for the free tarot chips.

stayed for the all-inclusive resort. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Jeff Blue? The greatest love-hate relationship in business right now is platforms. And to kill a platform, one must launch a platform. Joe's Pizza loves that people discover their hot slices through the delivery apps. But Joe's Pizza hates paying up to 30% of fees that the delivery platform takes, Jack. Similarly, airlines like JetBlue love that you found their flight from LAX to JFK for 300, $156 bucks on Expedia.com.

But the airlines hate the ticket commission that they got a fork over to Expedia because you booked with them. Now, JetBlue would prefer that you book a flight directly on JetBlue.com so they don't have to pay a commission. And their loyalty program helps get people to do that. But if you're going to insist on booking through an aggregator, Jack, JetBlue's got one for you now. We think JetBlue could eventually open up paisley.com to people who haven't already booked

a JetBlue flight. And then JetBlue isn't just an airline. It's an airline plus Expedia. It's a platform killing a platform. Sounds like a George R. Martin plot. For our third and final story, Snackers, if you lost money on Friday in the stock market, it may have to do with one whale who splashed all over Wall Street

and kind of got everyone wet. This is a classic hedge fund margin call story. Classic hedge fund drank too much at the party, collapsed right on the bar, ruined everything. He is the worst. And the worst in this case is archaic. capital management, a hedge fund run by a Bill Huang. Bill Huang, a man who is also guilty of past insider trading crimes that included a $44 million

lawsuit. Mr. Huang is living the hedge fund lifestyle. He's taking a 2% fee. You love this. To invest other people's money. Must be nice. And then take 20% of whatever gains he manages with those investments. Jack, you got to love the hedge fund business model.

Take people's money, make money off that money, and then make money off the money. you make for those people. Now, Friday, Mr. Huang's hedge fund reportedly got the margin call. The white collar equivalent of defaulting on a mortgage and then getting foreclosed upon. Yeah. The fund, Arkego's capital management, they had $10 billion of investor money to invest, aka half a lift. But then a bunch of banks lent Huang and his hedge fund another $20 billion, so he had $30 billion total money to invest in the stock markets. Okay, so then according to the Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank, they were the ones who were like dishing out these loans so Wang could be spending more and investing more. And then last week, those three banks reportedly recognized that Huang's fund was doing really bad.

So they initiated the margin call. Yeah, they did. Huang's tab with those banks was so big that they called them up and basically said, you got to put up some cash and you're going to have to put it up ASAP. And since Huang isn't J.G. Wentworth, no, he isn't. He didn't have any cash to put up. So the margin call allowed the banks to sell the stock that Mr. Huang owned and keep the proceeds for themselves to repay the loans. They didn't think they were going to get repaid. Iso facto. So we can sum it up here, Jack, $30 billion worth of stocks were sold in a flurry of market crushing selling on Friday because of the money that Huang owned. That is more than a lift worth of sell orders.

And when that happens, the stock price is bound to go down. Yeah, Viacom stock was the biggest loser of him. It fell 50% from last week. Then Farfetch fell big because apparently he owned that. He also owned Tencent and Discovery. Both stocks also crashed. But that was just the beginning. Apparently, a couple other investment banks had lent money to Huang 2, and they were a little late to initiate their own margin calls. All right. So you got these banks like Credit Suisse and Nomura that announced on Monday billions of dollars in lawsuits on loans. they'd made to a hedge fund. They didn't say which hedge fund they lost billions of dollars to because he couldn't pay them back. Jack, was it your hedge fund? It wasn't my hedge fund. It wasn't your hedge fund.

I don't know whose hedge fund it was. People familiar with the matter are saying it was Arkegos capital management. And those banks, they're not going to get repaid. So their stocks plummeted by 14% each on those losses they're bound to incur. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in the entire financial system, including investors. Beware of whales. They can crush schools of fish and even their whale friends. Yeah, whale investors, they are so big that one-by-one, one sell order can move the entire market. A whale's sale will send a stock plummeting. A whales buy will send that same stock soaring. Yeah, well, this whale jack didn't just crush its own investors or unknowing investors in the stocks that it bought. It even crushed the banks that had lent money to it and investors who

own stocks in those banks. All right. So you got collateral damage to any investor who owned the stocks that got fire sold on Friday. And even more collateral damage to those who got splashed Monday when the banks announced that they lost money from this whale. Now, Snackers, we saw back in January that schools of little investor fish can band together to move the markets on some particular stocks. But this story shows us that one big whale investor can move multiple markets at any moment. What's my hedge fund? Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? George R.R. Martin is trying to pull at George Lucas at HBO.

Build a cinematic universe win the game of streams. Less nudity. JetBlue is dabbling with its own booking platform, Expedia style. It's JetBlue's answer to the love-hay relationship of platforms. For our third and final story, a giant whale. Sank a bunch of stocks the past couple trading days. Yeah, beware the whales. They can crush the schools of fish and our fish friends.

And we care about our fish friends. Now time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by David Crozy in Lovely Iowa. Pollinpocalypse season has started, where tree pollen turns are cars, sidewalks, and boogers, banana yellow. This allergy nightmare is caused by botanical sexism, where only male trees were planted. This plan started with the 1949 Yearbook of Agriculture

that advised only male trees should be selected to avoid the nuisance from the seeds. Ironically, if they had planted only female trees in the same way, we would have skipped most of the seeds and the pollen, since female trees don't make seeds without males nearby. Nick, I expected a Jeff Goldblum situation. Yeah. Nature finds a way.

It finds a way. Never going to sneeze the same way again. I'm never going to look at an arboretum the same way again. Snackers, you look fantastic, by the way, for this T-Boy Tuesday. Remember, let us know what app should be within another app. Tweet us at Nick in New York, at Jack Kramer, at Robin and Snacks. If you know, you know. And before we go, happy 50th birthday to Starbucks.

Cool. And happy birthday to Basil and Aaron, who are a couple with the same birthday in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That is wild. Happy birthday, Stephen Brandt in England. And Rick Wang over in New York City. And Gus Gonzalez in Houston. And Silly and McLaughlin and Sleepy Hollow. Tim D.

Living the dream in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chris P. living the other dream in Rochester, New York. Happy birthday, Jeffrey Swend in Brooklyn. And Kushuk Perry in Seattle. And Peter Shobie. Wow, in Dallas, Texas. Hey, and Jack, Nick Tran just finished his fundraise in Seattle. Fantastic.

Ariel Rodriguez, congrats on the promotion of Wichita, Kansas. Well, Niersa just passed her board exams in Nashville. Alex Lowe, future Dr. Alex just got to medical school in Boston. Maybe you can help out Edmund Davies of Hoboken who just broke his collarbone. That is the best one, yeah. And Anne McHugh and her mom over in Pittsburgh, they're curious, Jack, if your new baby is going to be named soda. Seven. Yeah, it's going to be seven.

and don't anybody take that name before me. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve.

to serve as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.