Robinhood Snacks - 💊 Stimulus pill flops

"That wasn't the right injection! "

 

 

Dow Jones

21,201 (-9.99%)

S&P 500

2,481 (-9.51%)

Nasdaq

7,202 (-9.43%)

Bitcoin

$5,770 (-26.11%)

10-Yr US Treasury

0.795%

Hey Snackers,

COVID-19 isn't just a human problem: hundreds of hungry monkeys swarmed a Thai street to fight over one banana. The number of tourists that usually feed them has fallen dramatically.

Despite announcements of over $1.5T of new government emergency loan programs, all 3 major US stock indexes fell nearly 10% yesterday. This triggered the 2nd 15-min halt in trading this week — and it's the biggest single-day stock market drop since 1987's Black Monday.

Cure

Markets aren't healed by the President's speech or the Fed's $1.5T stimulus medicine

THE TAKEAWAY

The market's cure lies in the root of the illness... Public health efforts toward preventing COVID-19's spread can get to it. The gov's ban on flights from Europe takes aim in that direction. South Korea took swift action on its outbreak, and its rate of infection has dropped significantly:

• It's testing 20K people per day (just a total of 10K Americans have been tested so far) and they treat infected people for free — They're also tracking patients through apps (little creepy). But it's resulted in an impressively low 67 deaths out of 8K cases and 222K tests, as of Thursday.
• Italy's outbreak happened around the same time, but it now has over 1K deaths out of 15K cases and 73K tests.

Test

America's lab-testing duopoly just got even more important

THE TAKEAWAY

Off the JV bench — and in the Varsity game... LabCorp and Quest could be doing more to scale testing, but they have some "opportunity blockage" (like Hasbro with Baby Yoda).

• Neither company lets people come into one of their thousands of locations to get tested for COVID-19. They require a sample be taken at a doctor's office, and turnaround can take 3-4 days.
• The CDC has imposed restrictions (aka, red tape) around the rollout of testing kits and guidance for doctors on who should get the test, slowing the scaling process.

What else we're Snackin'

• Shopped: Shopify gives employees a $1K stipend to buy office supplies while they WFH
• Cryptout: Bitcoin plunges 26% and hits a 10-month low as cryptos fall in a massive sell-off
• SaaS-y: Oracle stock pops 5% after the enterprise tech giant enjoyed a 4% growth in its cloud services
• Magical: Augmented reality startup Magic Leap — which has Google and Alibaba among its investors — could sell itself for a dreamy $10B
• Slacking: Slack shares tumble 22% after the workplace-messaging company reported a loss more than 2X bigger than last year's (but sales grew 49%)
• WFH Max: Amazon tells all its 750K employees worldwide to stay at home if possible through March on coronavirus fears

The Snacks Daily Podcast

Casper, Brandless, Harry's Razors, Outdoor Voices... Direct to Consumer startups are having a moment right now. Not in a good way — they're flopping. Why?

D2C means ecommerce with no physical storefronts — so they have to get eyeball attention another way: digital ads.

Learn more about D2C's (ridiculously high) Customer Acquisition Cost in our 15 minute podcast, Snacks Daily.

Snack Fact Of the Day

In 2015, there were 503 commercial airports in the US and 17.7K in the world in total

Friday

• The Consumer Sentiment Index tells us how we're all feeling

Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Amazon and a Bitcoin.

ID: 1118745

Robinhood Snacks newsletters and podcasts reflect the opinions of only the authors who are associated persons of Robinhood Financial LLC and do not reflect the views of Robinhood Markets, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. They are meant for informational purposes only, are not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security in a self-directed Robinhood account or any other account, and are not an offer or sale of a security. They are also not research reports and are not intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk and the past performance of a security or financial product does not guarantee future results or returns. Keep in mind that while diversification may help spread risk, it does not assure a profit or protect against loss. There is always the potential of losing money when you invest in securities or other financial products. Investors should consider their investment objectives and risks carefully before investing. The price of a given security may increase or decrease based on market conditions and customers may lose money, including their original investment. Robinhood Financial LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Testimonials may not be representative of the experience of other customers and are not guarantees of future performance or success. Robinhood Financial LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.