Slate Money: Quick Bites (July 11, 2020) – Detailed Episode Summary

Overview

In this "Quick Bites" episode, hosts Felix Salmon (Axios), Emily Peck (HuffPost), and Anna Szymanski (Breakingviews) deliver an energetic round-up of the week’s most eye-popping business and finance stories. The trio dives into the Robinhood-fueled day-trading boom and market froth, the spectacular flop of mobile streaming startup Quibi, and the dire surge in childhood food insecurity during the pandemic. Along the way, they offer wry commentary, sharp analysis, and flashes of gallows humor about everything from tech hype cycles to policy failures.

Segment 1: Robinhood, Day Trading & Market Frothiness

00:33–14:49

Key Discussion Points

• The Rise of Robinhood and Market Mania

  • Robinhood has become the go-to platform for young, retail traders, particularly during the pandemic.
  • Stocks like Tesla are soaring to wild valuations, with even companies lacking products or revenue (e.g., Nikola, shell companies/SPACs) becoming worth billions.
  • Felix: “Tesla being the one you’ve almost certainly heard of. It’s now trading...bigger than every other car company in the world combined.” (01:13)
  • IPOs like Lemonade’s are cited as examples of irrational, Millennial-driven hype.

• Gamification & Real Harms

  • Robinhood’s app design uses rewards and incentives (confetti animations, etc.) to hook users and encourage frequent trades.
  • Felix: “They have built an incredibly addictive app with a bunch of gamification aspects to it...gamification is just really bad...it actually caused one kid to commit suicide.” (04:26–05:03)

• Accessibility vs Investor Protection

  • Anna: “When you underprice stock trading, especially for retail investors who have no idea what they’re doing, the consequences are not going to be good.” (03:34)
  • Index funds are suggested as a true form of democratized investing for the masses.
  • The hosts warn that the retail trading surge evokes dangerous bubbles of economic history and express concern about the ultimate fallout.

• Payment for Order Flow

  • Felix explains that Robinhood’s “free” trades are subsidized by selling order flow to high-frequency traders – a controversial but standard industry practice.
  • Felix: “This is not a big problem as far as I’m concerned or as far as basically anyone who knows what they’re talking about is concerned.” (08:33–09:26)

• Distinguishing Gambling from Investing

  • Robinhood traders are likened more to gamblers than investors; comparisons drawn to day trading during the dot-com boom.
  • “Robinhood is the place where people do their gambling,” Felix says, noting that it's mostly young people playing with “money they can afford to lose.” (09:57–10:51)
  • But Anna warns: “It does kind of create this belief that this is investing, this is how you build wealth. Because people talk about it as they are investing and that’s not what this is.” (12:03)

• Stimulus Money Misallocation

  • Emily raises concerns that government stimulus checks are being spent on speculative trading, contrary to policy intentions:
    • “It’s basically garbage, sending money to high frequency traders and this company Robinhood...doesn’t seem as good for the economy.” (13:38–14:14)

  Memorable Quotes:

  • Anna: “Pretty much bad. Just in a word: bad.“ (03:34)
  • Felix (on hype): “Any suicide is connected to, you know, any specific event. But...there was clearly a major, major user interface fuck up with Robinhood that basically...was a major contributor to his suicide.” (05:03)
  • “The more you trade, the worse your returns tend to be. This is often even the case with professional traders.” – Anna (09:26)

Segment 2: The Quibi Debacle

14:49–22:51

Key Discussion Points

• What Is (or Was) Quibi?

  • Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s highly funded ($1.75 billion) bid to create a platform for short-form, premium video content – targeting the “quick bite” smartphone experience.
  • Almost no one is paying for Quibi after free trials; paid subscriptions are very low—about 72,000 of an estimated 5 million downloads.
  • The Internet is gleefully watching its failure—Felix: “There’s a lot of schadenfreude...enjoying the spectacle of Jeffrey Katzenberg falling flat on his face.” (16:31–17:03)

• Why Did Quibi Fail?

  • Leadership’s generational gap and lack of digital/media savvy – e.g., referencing 1970s icons and failing to make content easily shareable or viewable on TVs.
  • Emily: “They didn’t even make any of its bite sized...content screenshottable...so dumb.” (17:53)
  • The only viral hit: a clip of Rachel Brosnahan’s character demanding to be buried with her golden arm.
  • The disconnect between elite “premium” content and what mobile audiences actually crave (e.g., TikTok’s raw, funny, fleeting clips).
  • Anna: “They don’t seem to understand...when you’re dealing with smaller bites, you don’t need that to be like Mad Men. In fact, you almost don’t want it to be. The whole point...is that you just want some stupid funny thing.” (20:53)

• Context—Streaming Wars

  • Quibi’s flop versus Disney+’s success (with Hamilton, The Mandalorian).
  • The hosts suggest there’s room for a couple premium services (Disney+, Netflix), but Quibi spectacularly misread the market.

  Memorable Quotes:

  • Felix: “This company, pre-revenue, became a unicorn. And not just became a unicorn, it became what I call a minotaur. It became a company that raised over a billion dollars in cash in a single round with no product.” (18:24)
  • Emily: “None of (the winners) will be Quibi.” (22:49)

Segment 3: Pandemic and Child Food Insecurity

23:15–29:48

Key Discussion Points

• Alarming Rise in Child Hunger

  • Nearly 14 million US children (as of June 2020) living in food-insecure households—almost triple the rate during the Great Recession.
    • Emily: “These numbers are absolutely unprecedented since they’ve been keeping track...there’s something really extraordinary and horrifying going on right now.” (23:38–24:39)

• School Closures, Grocery Price Spikes, and Systemic Issues

  • School meals are absolutely crucial for millions of children. Pandemic school closings have cut off this vital resource.
    • Anna: “It just underscores how dependent so many kids are on getting their nutrition from school.” (24:39)
  • Price spikes in groceries aggravate food access for families already on the edge.

• Long-Term Societal Harm

  • Food insecurity is linked to long-term educational and cognitive damage, and to future diminished social and financial achievement.
    • Felix: “Food insecurity for children is basically the same thing as educational and cognitive harm.” (26:08)

• Policy Response—Failures and Suggestions

  • The expanded SNAP benefits have been insufficient and poorly administered, with millions of children still left out.
  • Emily: “The Trump administration slow walked a lot of the expansion and put limits on it. That left out like 5 million children...really shameful.” (27:16)
  • Felix & Anna advocate for more direct, unconditional cash transfers to families, though acknowledge challenges in identifying and targeting recipients.

  Memorable Quotes:

  • Anna: “(Solving child hunger) would have a negative cost...it would make the economy long term much more productive. That’s something they show over and over again.” (28:36)
  • Felix: “This would go into feeding kids who need to be fed.” (28:14)

Segment 4: Numbers Round

30:11–34:47

• Felix: 400,000 – Number of people who crossed the Brooklyn Bridge each day when it opened; now less than half that (mostly cars). The city-dweller's dream: “banned cars week.” (30:11)
• Anna: 20 million – Dollars generated in Tuscaloosa, AL every weekend with an Alabama football game—highlighting the looming impact of pandemic sports cancellations on local economies. (32:06)
• Emily: 3.2% – Percentage of left-handed participants in neurological research studies (vs. 10% of the population), revealing bias; “...what this means is...there’s sort of this like black hole in the research that could be filled if they were less biased against lefties.” (33:00–33:38)

Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• Anna (on Robinhood): “Pretty much bad. Just in a word: bad.” (03:34)
• Felix (on Quibi): “…it became what I call a minotaur. It became a company that raised over a billion dollars in cash in a single round, with no product, just based on the strength of… a couple of boomers who are really in with what the kids are gonna want.” (18:24)
• Emily (on food insecurity): “There’s something really extraordinary and horrifying going on right now… absolutely unprecedented since they’ve been keeping track…” (23:38)
• Anna (on fixing child hunger): “There’s absolutely no excuse not to...” (28:36)
• Felix (on streaming): “I think there’s room for two. I think there’s room for Disney and there’s room for Netflix.” (22:06)

Episode Tone & Language

• Conversational, witty, and sometimes irreverent; the hosts weave together sharp finance commentary with personal anecdotes and exasperation at policy failures.
• Key points are often punctuated with sarcasm or humor, adding levity to the topics, even those of serious consequence (e.g. child hunger, tech busts).

Essential Timestamps

• Robinhood and Market Frothiness: 00:33–14:49
• Quibi Flop: 14:49–22:51
• Child Food Insecurity: 23:15–29:48
• Numbers Round: 30:11–34:47

This episode offers a fast-paced, insightful dose of financial journalism that covers speculative mania, tech hubris, and the devastating impacts of poor pandemic policy—all delivered with Slate Money’s trademark candor and dry humor.