This is Nick, this is Jack, and this is Snax Daily, it is Wednesday, September twenty third. Nick, today is a good day because I tripped and fell during my morning run, but I fell athletically snackers. If you see a couple of guys jogging with knee pads on, you found Nick and Jack. So we jumped in an ice bath and whipped up our best podcast ever for our snackers. This is a ti boy for our first story Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Peacock, Apple, TV, Plus, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime and of course, Roku, Voodoo, Fu Bo and Kokabee Snackers.

We have ourselves the first casualty of the streaming wars. Spoiler it's Quamby for our second story.

A company that makes knockoff peloton bikes. They claim they're partnering with Amazon for a cheaper at home prime spin by Jack. And I have wanted to ask this question for years. Did Bezos just suck peloton for third and final story. We're jumping into the summer reading of eleven reporters at BuzzFeed, just a classic trove of documents showing how criminals and cronies exploit America's financial system.

It's actually bad news for five big banks.

But Zachares, before we hit that story, one awesome snacker named Srinivasan Sankar pointed out to us the most innovative thing in the airline industry right now. Jack and I jumped in snacks style. We couldn't make this up. It's called the Flight to Nowhere. True story. Singapore Airlines is literally going to fly.

Flights that leave from one airport sounds normal and arrive at the same airport a lot less normal.

You're going to go through security at Singapore Airport. Here's how it goes down. You take off, you go in a circle, you fly for three hours, and then you land at the same airport. This is because a small survey by the airline showed that 75 percent of Singaporeans are willing to pay two hundred eighty eight dollars for a flight to nowhere. But get this, apparently 40 percent of those Singaporeans are willing to pay double that price for business class.

Must be nice snackers. You're all asking what's going on here, like what's going on here?

And the reason Singaporeans are willing to do this seem to be twofold.

First, there is a patriotic desire in Singapore to help out the hometown Singapore Airlines. Second, travel hungry Singaporeans are dying to travel. They are really travel starving right now. Going to my yardstick here. Turns out Singapore is such a tiny island nation. It is the size of Brooklyn and Queens combined.

The whole country is the size of two fifths of New York City. And because international travel is highly restricted right now, people are getting a little stir crazy, kind of just want to get out there and pay twelve dollars for an airport water bottle.

They are stuck on their island with nowhere to go. They are dying to get out of the house. So they're going to do a staycation, but they want the staycation to feel like a real vacation. So Singapore Airlines is doing package deals, including a limo ride and a hotel, to really round out the whole flight to nowhere experience.

I've heard, Nick, if you fall asleep on the plane, it really feels like a vacation.

Jack, we've been saying it for years. It's not a trip without a few airline miles. And a good, nice TSA pat down led to three stars. You tune in the next day. I spoke to the lawyers and we got to get some legal out of the way about the here. Ray Giudice, they don't reflect the views in Araba. Her family is only formational. Just so you know, we're not recommending any securities. Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice not to offer a sale of a security by Nexxus Digestible Business News for use by Nancy Pelosi, member Fembot ABC for our first story, according to Quimby, reportedly is up for sale or it's going to spark itself, which is also up for sale.

That would make it the first casualty of the streaming war. But snackers, here's the first thing you got to know about Quebec. It actually followed rule number one of streaming.

Your name is Towel's in two syllables. That's a case in point.

Hulu, Voodoo, Roku, Bubo and Quamby, which stands for Quick Bites, Quick Bite, snakelike Netflix quality streaming content. But you're getting this thing an eight minute episodes. Nick, your subway ride from Grand Central to Fulton just got Caribbean. And if I just got Quamby, that means I'm either paying five dollars for could be with ads or paying eight dollars because I want to be fancy for without ads.

Now this isn't just your user generated influence or Snapchat content.

You got to pay for quick. And the team over at QB is patting themselves on the virtual backs because this past week they earned themselves ten Emmy nominations. The host of the Emmys, Jimmy Kimmel, nominated the company, though for biggest waste of a billion dollars in a leading role.

We're assuming Jeffrey Katzenberg wasn't in the virtual audience or he would have been in real life. Matt, Jimmy Kimmel, though he was actually a little off QB, has raised one point seventy five billion dollars from investors, including Disney, Warner Media, NBC and a lot of other like movie and TV production companies.

But since could be cash, those checks, it's fallen on some hard times. That could be it could be drama. It has badly missed subscriber growth numbers since it launched way back in April. Now a. Yes, talking about here is what's going on in the finance department, but over in the legal department, it could be they're dealing with a lawsuit. Their core technology, TURNSTYLES, which lets you turn the phone from landscape to portrait seamlessly, was allegedly stolen from another company.

And over in the metrics department Equipe, they're dealing with some other numbers that aren't looking too exciting either. Downloads peaked on April 6th, which was launched.

And this is as if you look back on your life and your greatest accomplishment was being born, picked once you picked early and never peaked again.

And according to the recent reports, Jack and I jumped into Quimby's only had four and a half million downloads in its first two months, and that is despite a 90 day free trial that Quarmby offers, which is matched only by Casper mattresses.

In terms of free samples snackers. Remember, for the internship, you get the Casper mattress, return it at the end of the internship life and 90 days sleep free. But that leads us to the news. According to PMed equity, given all of what Jack and I just described is now exploring, quote unquote, strategic options.

Translation, they're either going to sell themselves to a media company like maybe Hulu or Netflix or go public, buy us back. And it's particularly tough timing because he has no leverage to demand a good price. So this will probably end up being seen as a failure.

We're thinking T-Mobile or maybe AT&T will buy Quebec for a tiny price and then operate for free to its wireless customers.

You can quote us on it. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Quebec where we identified a real customer problem? Yes, it did. Problem was, it was solved already. Snackers Quebec executives love pointing out that it was created for those in-between moments, like when you're on the train for 10 minutes, take a quick bite of your favorite show or when you're waiting for your buddy Timmy to show up at the park to meet you.

But it's Timmy, so he's always late.

Maybe it's up to some quippy episodes where the executives also love pointing out the bad luck of covid-19 which killed their chances for success.

Yeah, you don't really have many in between moments anymore because you're either working from your living room or you're on the couch afterwards.

But we identified the real problem. Something already exists in the market for in between moments, and that is social media and mobile games.

So real competition for those 10 minutes on the 4chan, it's Instagram or Candy Crush, not Netflix or who.

And the proof we've seen over the last six months is Tic TAC and Instagram. Both are thriving, mid pandemic and so are mobile games. There is a ton of media already in the market for those in-between moments, a.k.a. those Quimby's, a.k.a. there's already a bunch of Quimby's out there for our second story.

Amazon has reportedly helped a peloton knock off, knock off peloton with the cheaper peloton knock off echelon is banking on the unbundling strategy to beat pelletised snackers. We got our buddies over peloton for a second. They didn't invent indoor spinning. They just tossed in some software, a tablet and a generous dose of smugness and led to our first day. Just got off my butt. No big deal. Must be nice. Now, Echelon is a company that is brazenly knocking off Balaton at a much lower cost.

No joke.

Jack and I tweeted out these images, the color, the design, even the red knob to change the resistance level. They're identical, Nic. Even the name has the name of the syllables and the Rimer.

So you got to start paying attention because someone's going to say to you, yeah, we just got a of Palatine National. You say it fast. No one has any idea. Peloton as Shalon It is the McDowell's to Pelton's McDonald's. And last month we covered Peloton announcing a lower cost spinning bike for your home. When and I jumped into that story it honestly it read it read like an Onion article. Jack Peloton releases lower cost bike now just eighteen hundred and ninety five dollars.

Not too shabby for only the price of a trip to France for eight days now Echelon just launched and actually lower cost by yes they did for five hundred dollars yesterday. This new Xiulan bike is the dollar menu to peloton to Ribhi.

Now here's where the story gets really interesting. Echelon claims that they partnered with Amazon on this new bike, and that's because this new bike is actually their third bike. Their first two were twelve hundred dollars and one thousand dollars. But this one, it's only five hundred bucks. Now, they issued a press release and they said they developed it with Amazon, but they didn't get any quotes from Amazon. No, they didn't.

And Nick, it seems like they just asked Amazon, what should we do to improve sales of our bike on your website, Amazon.com, to which Amazon had one responsibility for them, the standard email, lower the price so they lowered the price.

This one is five hundred dollars, which I think Jack is less than a normal bike price. This connected bike is less than like a normal Schwinn.

I don't know if we're allowed to say this, but maybe it just by the Xiulan and you take it off the stand at this point. Take off the wheels, actually pop the tires. And you got so snackers.

Ashland's claiming this new brake, this prime bike was developed in coordination with Amazon, but Amazon hasn't commented or confirmed and there's no branding anywhere on the bike. Honestly, the closest thing this has to Amazon is they say the name is the prime bike. Like we could just call this snack. Prime, yeah, I think anyone can add the word prime to their product, and that's legal, that's prime real thing, you get the downloads really quickly. Also the Echelon prime bike, they're also selling the same bike on Wal-Mart, Amazon's arch rival.

They just removed the sticker from the bike that had prime rib. So it turns out excellent. Could just be pulling a fast one on us, just like they're pulling a product fast one on peloton. We're calling this unbundling echelons doing and it works if customers are willing to plan ahead.

Billy, what's going on here? So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Peloton and Amazon? Ashland's five hundred dollar bike does not include a screen, but it has a really simple shelf where you could easily put a screen that you can look at snackers. Echelon calls it a connected bike, but it's actually not connected.

But do we need another screen? You already have three like iPad that your aunt gave you for Christmas the past three years.

So when you buy like a peloton, first of all, congratulations. Second, the big chunk of that nineteen hundred dollars is going toward the proprietary peloton screen.

You can easily put your smartphone, your iPad or just look at your TV when you're on the bike that works to the war. So Echelon is banking on customers who want to save fourteen hundred dollars and then nothing to do with your aunt's new iPad.

Spirit Airlines is a famous unbundling. They remove the checked bag, the seat selection, even the water from the price of a ticket. Yeah, ironic twist here too. You could just end up paying twelve dollars a month for the peloton training subscription app and then use Pelton's content while sitting on an excellent bike. And guess what? Millions prefer the cheaper unbundled option. Classic if saving money simply requires you to plan ahead or put your phone on the bike.

Oh yeah. In Spirit Airlines also doesn't even have a screen in the back of their seats for the same reason. Unbundling works if you're willing to plan ahead. For our third and final story, big banks knowingly moved and cleaned trillions of dollars in criminal dirty money. That's according to a bombshell investigative report by BuzzFeed. You got drug cartels. He got some human trafficking.

You also got a few terror networks. Feels like a Netflix promo. Read. Sit down. Here's the idea. It's narcos beats take in meets Ozark. Nick and I are going to share a little old story when we're twenty two in New York City working in finance. You show up first day on the job. They take your picture for the ID, they hand you the password, they tell you to shave every day, and then they say, congratulations, you're the first line of defense against terrorism.

We're like blinking three or four times before we say, what's the Excel password again?

Snackers criminals and corrupt politicians, they're actually driven by the same motivation as like everyone else.

Money have a drug lord, has some duffel bags of cash that's not as useful as a bank account of cash to chase and a sapphire card.

So it's up to banks to stop dirty money from entering the US financial system. They love bringing up those points. They're doing a lot of travel to drug dealers now.

Young bankers, they're actually taught to ask tons and tons of questions to get to the bottom of, like whose money is this and where did this money come from? Yeah, simple stuff. Like what address is this account registered at?

But then they'll also be like, oh, this LLC owns this money. Who owns the LLC and who owns that LLC and who owns that LLC?

And all of this was heightened after the September 11 terrorism attacks and the Patriot Act got passed into law because to quote Uncle Ben, with great power comes great responsibility.

Well, then yesterday we noticed that BuzzFeed published a bombshell report called The Vincent Files money from drug cartels, organized crime, corrupt leaders, the banks that their money in and the government doesn't stop. Eleven BuzzFeed reporters opened up their report with those scary words, and they called out five banks for allowing trillions of dollars of dirty money into our financial system. JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon. Now to, quote, track these crimes have layers because the banks committed crimes, but their crimes allowed criminals to commit other terrible crimes.

Case in point, HSBC led a Ponzi scheme go by, which had been barred in three states, moving fifteen million dollars in between accounts. And the criminal operative used those stolen funds to buy two golf courses, a mansion and a thirty nine carat diamond.

But both Uncle Ben and investors were really disappointed by this report. The scale of the lack of anti money laundering policies led to stock drops from Deutsche Bank of two percent, Bank of America by two percent and JPMorgan by one percent. And the eleven BuzzFeed reporters also called out the US Treasury for not stepping in to stop the banks. Thanks to their journalism, we know that the banks flagged sketchy clients and sketchy transactions would like mountains and mountains of fire. Yes, they did, but did nothing to stop them.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at the big banks? The banks didn't take these huge risks for free. They got paid handsomely for snackers rule No one to finance. Over here, with greater risk comes greater potential reward. Banks commonly put their clients into three buckets of risk, high risk clients, medium risk clients, low risk clients. The higher the risk the client, the higher the interest rate on the loans or the fees on the transactions.

Now, Deutsche Bank with. She is infamous for naively doing business with corrupt clients, they aided Russian criminals, according to this report, in a scheme that stole money from American small business. You think that Deutsche Bank are paid handsomely for dealing with the shady company, Jack? Yeah, we think they did. Yes, we do. They probably charge double or triple their normal fees. So this story shows the critical importance of a well-funded, well resourced Treasury Department.

They're responsible for oversight of sanctions and anti money laundering laws, and they're responsible for holding the banks accountable, not just filing a bunch of paperwork. Jack can whip up the takeaways for us over there.

We got an early obituary for Quimby, the first casualty of the streaming war and an early autopsy. There's already a ton of quick bites in your phone. Second story, Echelon has done it again, a five hundred dollar bike that, if you squint, looks like your wealthier buddies palletize.

Vieaux belies full story.

The big banks blew it big time by letting criminals be customers, and they probably got paid handsomely for all that. Now time for our snack. Back to the day this one tweeted in by a proud parent snackers, Isaiah and Georgia Gomer and their baby snacker, Goldie Lynn Gomer, straight out of Paso Robles, California. That's right. And they wanted to point out to us that there is only one letter that doesn't appear in any US state's name.

Now, if you think you know what it let's remember Texas, Arizona, Wyoming, Jack, I buy a concern over that.

The letter Q appears in none of the 50 states names snackers.

Before we go, congrats to Mark. And Lori got married twenty five years ago at chapel on the Middlebury College campus. Go Panthers, the same place I graduated as a fab in 2011. Collin West passed the Series Seven down in Memphis, Tennessee. Congrats to Rachel and Jamie celebrating four years of dating over in Overland, Kansas, and April and Joe engaged down Chicago and Shannon Mellissa celebrating five years together from Boston, Mass. But happy birthday to NAREIT and Buzz Buzz in Amman, Jordan, and Morgan Beckwith in Austin, Texas.

And Armando Guirgis in Cicero, Illinois. And another Middlebury panther named Dorothy, a.k.a. Dot Intel. Harad Colorada it Hesus Laura in Baltimore, Maryland, Derek Stottlemyre in Sarasota, Florida. Antillean Etran in Wilmington, Delaware. And Joey Berlind in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The other Berlanti and Nick land in San Luis Obispo, California, and Kay Choi in Valencia, California. And Happy Birthday to visit Jiang in Nanjing, China. Snackers Instagram is Nixon, my Quimby's and we love seeing snackers.

Sharon likewise. Have you had your snacks, darling? We've got to go ice some body parts if you know you know. We'll see you tomorrow. This is Jack Ilhan, stock of Amazon, the Robinhood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robinhood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robinhood 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 as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC member, FINRA, SIPC.