The Best One Yet - “Zuck cancels his Libra moon-landing” — AMC theaters’ expiration date. Gilead’s corona-cure bet. Facebook’s cryptocurrency 180.

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

The most refreshingly ambitious project of the next decade should’ve been Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, but now it just looks like a weird version of Venmo. AMC theaters stock surged 31% after showing off all its cash, though Thanksgiving is its expiration date. And markets surged Friday on word drugmaker Gilead has a COVID-19 treatment that works — and how this went down sounds like a movie script.Learn 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 Monday. Welcome back. April 20th. Jack, what's going on? This snacks is packed with protein fiber and all the nutrients you need.

This is a good one. Scale of 1 to 10, 10 being a T-boy, zero being we shouldn't have done this and recorded it at all. Were you thinking? This is a 10. This is a T-boy. It's the best one yet. I'm getting to the first story.

Please. The name Gilead freaks out fans of The Handmaid's Tale. Yeah, you know, it's about a horrible fictional dystopia, and it is a real-life pharmaceutical company. Well, on the pharma side of things, one of their drugs is seeing rapid recovery with COVID-19 patients. Market surged Friday on this glimmer of hope. Jack and I took it out of the oven. We're tossing a little bit of context on this thing.

Sounds good. Our second story, AMC movie theaters. It isn't launching a delivery service for $28 popcorn and boxes of Mike and Ix. Nope. But it does apparently have like plenty cash. They love bragging about that thing, right? The movie theater chain just got a $500 million loan that should last them through Thanksgiving. That means Jack and I are talking about

Corona economy expiration dates. Third and final story. Facebook was pursuing the most ambitious project of the next decade. We're talking Libra, the futuristic global money currency stable coin. But Facebook just sadly and inevitably announced a massive downgrade of Libra's goals.

Snackers, think less Bitcoin, more like PayPal, actually more like paper money, kind of is. But before we get into that, we're all kind of like whipping on the apron and feeling like Chef Boy already in the kitchen these days, aren't we there? You can't help it these days. You look at the tomato can assortment in your house. It's like a rainbow. What have you got going on up in there, Jack? Every time I go to the grocery score, I get like seven different types of canned tomatoes, peeled, diced, salted, unsalted,

fancy, low-grim. Got a little piece of cilantro that were like parenting like a baby and trying to get it to grow in the window over here. True story. I haven't used one of those cans of tomatoes. It's just a piece of mind knowing they're up there. But Jack and I noticed something else that's going on right now. While you're cooking more at home, big food wants to help you out. Let's kick it off with Disney. It knows that its theme parks are closed, so it's whipping up its recipes from its favorite cuisine that you can try it in your kitchen. Get this, you like splurge in your mouth on like the Toy Storyland grilled cheese?

We know what's in it now. Spoiler, four different types of cheeses and two teaspoons of heavy cream. Don't check the cholesterol on the nutrition facts. The real shocker was that it was not the reverse and 12 cups of cream. Also, how about magical cookie fries, which sounds like it's coming from Buzz Light Years' home planet? Turns out Mickey is like a vegan in this situation. Those are plant-based. Disney has those recipes available online if you want to check them out. Oh, and let's say you're dying for a Shake Shack burger, but you can't visit a Shake Shack

because, you know, they're all pretty much closed down right now to actually enter. They've partnered with some sort of fancy delivery company Nick was just telling me about it's called Gold Belly and they will send you all the ingredients to make your own Shack Burger. You become like a DIY Shake Shack franchisee. This thing's got eight packs of Pat LaFrieta beef, Martin's potato rolls, and then, to top it all off, the secret shack sauce. You line up the whole family like the Von Trapp family,

and you become a meat assembly line whipping up these burgers. You're calling how much you pay them. In the meantime, we're going to hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks are about to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the rob of her 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. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you.

Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, Gilead's treatment for a COVID-19 is showing some extremely encouraging results out of nowhere. Markets got very excited on Friday about the potential for a COVID-19. COVID-19 treatment. And we got to throw a little disclosure in here. Jack and I are not doctors. We are not PhDs, nor do we come from families of doctors, which all doctors seem to come from. That's very true, Nick. I also didn't spend seven years trying to become a medical doctor. You become a doctor because your parents told you to become a doctor. That's true. Now, the story here with Gilead, it begins in Chicago, which is the setting where 18,000 people

have been confirmed with COVID-19 infections. And then Jack and I noticed this thing played out like a screenplay? Like a screenplay. The scene, the opening scene here is one hospital, the University of Chicago Hospital, which is trying out a drug to treat COVID-19. The star of this screenplay is Remdesivir, a drug made by Gilead Pharmaceutical, a publicly traded company. We're thinking like a Brad Pitt meets Julia Roberts kind of a thing. And the plot is 125 patients who were invited to try out remsevere at this hospital. And of those 125 patients who have COVID-19. 113 of them are showing severe symptoms.

So this is serious stuff. That's where we get the Brad Pitt-inspired very early climax to this story. On Thursday, a professor updated the hospital that trial results they're in. And a health and science news company called Statt got a copy of that update, which actually took place in like a Zoom meeting. So somebody recorded the video and Statt got its hands on it. And thank you for reporting. If you're curious about Statt, it is STAT.

and like all science journals, it is absolutely an acronym. Here's the takeaway. Only two of the 125 patients died of COVID-19, and most have already been discharged after recovering thanks to this treatment. In fact, more specifically, most patients went home after just like six days of treatment. That sounds pretty good. It sounds incredible. COVID-19 cases in the United States so far as of Friday have a death rate of 4.9%.

But get this Snackers, when it came to this medication at this Chicago hospital, The death rate was just 1.6%. Even more impressive because 90% of the people who it was given to had severe symptoms, which is like really bad. Now, if you're like celebrating right now and you seem very excited, you're not nearly as excited as Wall Street was on Friday. Thursday night, our apps blew up with notifications. Ding ding!

Even though the medical experts are cautioning against like taking too much from this. Market started rising on Thursday night all the way into the weekend. The Dow ended up jumping 700 points on Friday. Now, Gilead, the creator of this star drug, tempered the enthusiasm and said more studies and rigorous trials are needed before we can like start to celebrate you. Back it up, back it up. Unsurprisingly, Wall Street ignored that advice and shot the stock up by 10% on Friday. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Gilead?

There is a three-part medical cure for the corona economy. Snackers, the economy we're living in, it won't return to normal until we can all be confident that interacting with people won't end up getting other people killed. All right, the first part of the medical cure to get things back to normal, more tests. So people can be sure that they won't infect others when you're going outside and have a dinner, all you want it to do. The second part of the cure is a treatment like remdesivir could be so that if you do get infected, you could get better and go home.

And then the third part is a vaccine so that, you know, nobody gets infected in the first place. Vaccine is the one that's probably furthest away. Treatment is a little closer and more. tests we should be doing now. But this news on Gilead made investors really bullish on number two, the treatment. For our second story, AMC's movie theaters, the stock searched 31% on Friday. Well, it got a $500 million bailout and not from the government. That's probably why. Basically, the movie industry's been stuck watching like Saw 3 Silence of the Lambs and I don't know, the entire Twilight saga thrown into that. It's been covering up its eyes like not wanting to see what

comes next. And Snackers, that's because movie theaters aren't just closed. AMC's movie theaters are absurdly close to bankruptcy. The company has literally been making zero dollars of revenues for like a month now. Also, they furloughed their entire 600 person staff and get this, that includes the CEO. And with all of its theaters nationwide shut down currently, the stock had plummeted 87% in the past year coming into Friday. But then Jack and I were trying to decide what we're going to watch this weekend, because, you know, that's pretty much all you can do after 7 p.m. these days. And we noticed that AMC had two really nice things happen to it last week. On Thursday, President Trump issued federal guidance for all the governors of these great 50 states

on how and when to reopen their economies. Apparently, they can be three phases of opening. And phase one, shockingly includes cinemas. I could not believe that, like, the next phase of opening up involves going into a confined room with, like, 50 other people. They're like, Carol, did you? see this? Start melting the butter. Now, FYI, the federal guidance says strict physical distancing must occur in the movie theaters for them to open up at all. You're going to basically be encouraged to go in, bring three coats, and throw them on the seats surrounding you. That's actually the polite thing to do

in this case. I'm sorry, my friend is in the bathroom. You actually just, you can't sit here. Now, phase two of the federal guidance was movie theaters can be open with moderate social distancing, which is less severe than strict social distancing. Probably you only need like one seat between you and that other random person, maybe not two or three. And then phase three is unrestricted movie theaters. They're open. Let's go, baby.

Boom. Get in there. Make out if you want a French kiss. Doesn't matter as much as you want to do. Sharon Strauss, bring your own straws, whatever you want. Now that was the first thing that was fun for AMC last week. The second thing we noticed was that AMC announced it has a new $500 million in cash. And that cash didn't come from taxpayers like it did last.

last week with airlines. It came from a debt financing. Basically, AMC issued a lot of bonds to a specific group of private investors. And then the company said they have enough cash with that new 500 million that could last till Thanksgiving with the theaters remaining closed. That's right, this Thanksgiving. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies? Maybe smooching over at AMC. Each shutdown business right now has its own corona economy expiration date. Snackers last week, analysts started predicting that movie theaters could come back by like as early as mid-June. And AMC just said that it can survive shut down through Thanksgiving with the cash as guy. A.K.a. Jack and I are calling that the unofficial expiration date for AMC, which is Thanksgiving. If the economy opens before Thanksgiving,

AMC will likely survive. But if the economy opens after, then it's probably going to run out of money and then it would go through bankruptcy. On news of this from AMC, Live Nation, a different company in the concert business, rose 6%. Boom, Disney, it's theme parks, the stock jump. 3%. Darden, the owner of Olive Garden, rose 8%. All of these companies bounced higher because they're liking these encouraging signs that people could be like getting back together this year. Hopefully, before their expiration dates. Snackers, if you're on a Snacks challenge run, we're a little past halfway done. Jack, I feel like you deserve a water. You can run back, you can jog back, you can bike back, and then have a few, you know, walk it out, walk it out. For our third and

final story, remember Facebook's like big, change the world, Libra cryptocurrency thing? Jack? I do, but that project just got hugely downgraded. Snackers, they wanted to put a man on the moon over at Facebook ended up in Nova Scotia. Zuck ordered a filet mignon. The waiter brought out a frozen beanburger hot pocket. And guess what? Zuck didn't even send it back. Just finish the damn project out already. All right, I'll take some saracha and just devour the thing. Facebook's Libra Project was the most refreshingly ambitious thing of the next decade. Snackers, think about this. A single global cryptocurrency open for everyone, and its name was Libra. When we covered this announcement nine months ago, we thought anyone

can pay for anything in any country without any fees all digitally. A lot of nis, a lot of every few fees. Sounds pretty incredible. Here's the thing, though, Mark Zuckerberg needed Congress's blessing. So he cut his hair, he put on tie, traveled over to Washington, D.C. And Congress was like, Zuck, you look great. Love what you're doing. Keep it up. You look clean. But we do not approve of this financial union you're putting out. We're really not into this. And it's understandable why. It felt like one man would be running the global financial system, aka Earth's money. Zuckpucks were supposed to be like complementary to all the currencies in the world right now. Kind of seemed a little competitive. And then the fallout continued. Eight companies that sat within the Jedi Council like Libra Council

quit. They're like, I'm out of here. I don't even want to be associated with this project anymore. This was like supposed to be an independent group overseeing the currency. Mace in Switzerland, well, you know, everything's a little bit neutral except for the milk chocolate. Mace Wind is like the only one still on that council. So here's the news that Jack and I noticed going into the weekend. The head of Libra, a guy named David Marcus, sent out eight tweet updates on what's going on with Zuckcoin and it wasn't pretty. It turns out they're changing slash deleting the most important and fundamental part of the Libra cryptocurrency. No more global currency independent of like euros or dollars or Rand or AI or yen.

Not the case. You pretty much got to delete the word global because there's simply going to be a digital money tied to a local currency like the U.S. dollar that will work in a Facebook account within the United States for that dollar example. All right. So Jack and I are looking through these eight tweets from one man, which sounds like not that many, but it was actually a lot. And we're thinking, you know what? Libra just basically sounds like your Venmo account. You don't need eight tweets to say Libra is now pretty much Venmo. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies Libraing over at Facebook? The idea was right, but the inventor was wrong. Snackers, Facebook's privacy scandals and like the whole misinformation enabling thing,

that hasn't really hurt its growth or profits. No, shockingly, Facebook's stock is like still very high despite all the scandals. But it has absolutely hurt Facebook's credibility and its ambitions like Libra and more. Think about this great project that came out in 2019. It's called the Facebook Portal, a video piece of hardware to let you connect with friends in a video chat, and it will track you around the room while you're cooking up that chef boy r d stuff. That piece of hardware came out last year and sounds like it would be absolutely perfect for the moment we're living in where we're all quarantined.

Facebook portal should be thriving right now. Except do you know anyone who has one? Because we'll let you answer it. No. The answer is no. Nobody has a Facebook portal. I personally have never seen one. Don't even know what it looks like.

It feels like some kind of a mystical thing from like a Narnia book. So Facebook's portal could have been incredibly useful for society. Similarly, Libra could have empowered everyone on the planet with a digital wallet in your Facebook account. Libra would have been a simple and profound creation. But no one trusts the creator. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us to start the week, please. Gilead Pharmaceuticals has a drug that could be a treatment for COVID-19. And that treatment is one important part of a three-part cure for the economic illness. Exactly. Our second story, AMC theaters, has just about enough money.

to survive through Thanksgiving. Circle thy calendars. That is AMC's unofficial expiration date. So it's hoping theaters are open before that. Third and final story. Facebook has decided that Libra can't be a global cryptocurrency anymore. Zucks going with national currencies instead. Looks more like Venmo in the Facebook app.

We're calling it right now at snacks. He wanted a filet mignon. He's getting my hot pocket. We really downgraded that beanburger over there, our Jack. No, time for a snack back thing. This one is actually from us. Weird submission. Yeah, we were doing this.

the research for the Gilead Pharmaceuticals thing. And we noticed that Bill and Melinda Gates at the Gate Foundation, they are building factories right now to prepare developing a vaccine for COVID-19 that doesn't even exist yet. Not even like one factory or two factories are like a shed outside of factory. We're talking seven different factories for seven different potential vaccines that aren't even done yet. There are seven vaccine candidates that the Gates Foundation's like, we should be ready in case these work out. So they're spending billions of dollars. And they're only going to pick like one or two of the factories anyway. Bill and Melinda, in the meantime, Airbnb those things could be fantastic venues. Snackers, we cannot wait to start the week with

you. It looked fantastic. Jack, what are we going to do with all these tomatoes, by the way? I need some creamy tomato bisque or something, man, I don't know. You got the diced, you got the polished, you got the pummeled. It's a long list. You got the peeled. You got the unpeeled. Why so many options? We'll see you guys tomorrow. By the way, this is Nick, and I still own one Bitcoin. Its name is Ben. The Robin Hood Snack. 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, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only, 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 as the basis of any investment decision.

Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.