E38
E38: Bestie brawl, Robinhood's $70M fine & S-1, Delta variant, next gen candidates & more
2021-07-03 spoken.md · speaker-labeled ▶ watch ← E37 all episodes E39 →
3
ideas born
5
ideas moved
11
captures · 4 voices
3
dissenting
+112.6
conviction added
-69.0
decay · 62 silent
Every number here is replayed from score_events — the same ledger the pool ranks on. Decay is what the 62 ideas nobody mentioned gave up this week; it applies only when an episode is processed.
Tier crossings
conviction thresholds crossed by this episode — 65 / 45 / 15 · ideas born here show where they landed. why 65 isn't always green
▲ +76.8
🌍 Delta variant is a non-event — no reopening reversal
born at
green threshold
76.8
still watch — green gate not met
▲ +6.5
🏛️ The four big-tech monopolies get broken up by the end of the decade
watch
→
green threshold
62.8 → 69.2
still ember — green gate not met
Who moved the board
each voice's force on conviction this episode — supports and opposes, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of this episode's movement
What got argued (5 ideas)
ordered by how hard each idea moved · quotes are verbatim from the transcript, timestamps deep-link into the episode
The Delta variant is more transmissible but does not punch through the vaccines, will not overwhelm hospitals, and will not force a durable return to lockdowns or restrictions in the US — public tolerance for them is spent. Reopening trades keep working through the fall.
plays
JETS ·primary
CCL
DAL
PEJ
evals 2022-01-03
Let me make a prediction. ... So, you know, I don't know what's going to happen with the Delta variant, maybe a lot, maybe a little, but as far as I can tell, I think people are tired of uninformed impacts to their lives, and they're not going to put up with it anymore.
Even if this Delta variant is highly infectious, there are enough people vaccinated in the United States at this point, that this Delta variant is not going to crush our hospital system. It's not going to cause massive amount of fatalities, which is the reason we went into lockdowns in the first place. All of the concerns that we had last year that rationalized a lot of the extreme behavior that we undertook, no longer exists.
this delta variant is just more COVID fear porn ... The truth is, is it more transmissible? Yes, it is going to, I think, sweep through areas of the country in the fall that aren't vaccinated. But the question is, how does it perform against the vaccines? And so far, the vaccines are holding up the variants, none of the variants have really punched through the vaccines in a meaningful way. ... If you are double vaxxed with Pfizer, you are protected against the Delta variant.
Newly public quality companies beat the index post-IPO — the Goldman study of 4,500 IPOs shows the IPO cohort as an index outperforming by 10-15 points, so holding rather than distributing at the lockup is the right call.
plays
IPO ·primary
FPX
evals 2022-07-03
But that they basically highlighted that IPOs as an index generally outperform the market over some period of time, whether it's one year or three years. And so if you have access to those IPO shares, assume you're a venture investor, you can beat the S&P by 10, 15 points, just generally without having any thought about the business itself or the company itself.
But I do think that of all the big tech companies, the argument for breaking up Facebook is the weakest because it's true. ... It's harder to say definitively they have a monopoly in social networking. When you've got Twitter, you've got Snapchat, you've got Reddit, you've got TikTok, you've got LinkedIn, you've got so many other companies in social media.
I think that Facebook's monopolistic impact probably tends towards some form of information distribution, but it's a very technical argument that has to be framed accurately on the one side or it's how they've aggregated long-tail advertisers on the other. But to your point, David, on the idea of social networking, I don't think they're a monopoly in the least.
▼ GOOGL
🏛️ The four big-tech monopolies get broken up by the end of the decade
closed 37
CONTESTED
▲ +6.5
62.8 → 69.2
Huge. It's a huge priority. There's six bills that just got passed in the House and it's going to the Senate. And I do think this is one of the areas where you could actually get some bipartisan agreement in the Senate. ... So, you know, that says to me that legislation is likely. I think it's going to go through. I think we are going to see some big changes. ... But that does not mean that the argument against Amazon, Google and Apple isn't strong. Those companies are clearly monopolies or duopolies in their spaces. Nobody can effectively compete with them.
NEW
▼ SCHW
🏛️ Washington intervention in retail fintech is the real overhang
closed 1
CONTESTED
▲ +5.2
-0.0 → 5.2
The record $70M FINRA fine on Robinhood is the industry pre-emptively self-regulating because market participants are genuinely afraid of AOC/Warren-driven federal intervention in PFOF, gamification and digital market structure — which would slow the digital transformation of markets. Sacks' counter: a max fine is cheap insurance and the overhang is priced as a cost of doing business.
plays
SCHW ·primary
COIN
IBKR
VIRT
evals 2022-07-03
Yeah, so it should be a black eye for the company, but the reality is that they're happy to pay the fine and just move on so they don't have this issue hanging over their heads anymore. And now they're going to be able to IPO at like a 50, 60, $70 billion valuation. ... And so for them, it's a sort of cost of doing business. I think there's something a little bit off about that, but that's kind of how it works.
And everyone is worried about the government intervening and changing how this business is transforming. Because as soon as the government gets involved, it's going to slow down the transformation, it's going to make things much more challenging. And I think that everyone's trying to keep the government at bay, while the great digital transformation of markets is underway.
Episode digest
written during extraction and stored in data/extractions/ep038.json — the auditable source of truth, including everything market-adjacent that did not earn a capture
Twenty-one minutes of this episode is the Jason-vs-Sacks Twitter feud over moderation airtime (SPEAKER_5 literally announces a skip-to-20:48 timecode); Friedberg moderates the therapy session, Chamath tells Nick to cut it and reframes it as a distribution opportunity ("we're at a million fucking people a week, we could be a 10 million people a fucking week"). Zero market content until 20:48. From there: Robinhood's S-1 plus the record $70M FINRA fine. Jason discloses hard — seed investor, "this one deal will do three or four times the value of the first fund, the launch fund one, which was $11 million," and a 500x on a $50B mark. Sacks makes the episode's one hard-numbered directional call, that the fine is defused and Robinhood IPOs "at like a 50, 60, $70 billion valuation" (it priced at ~$32B on 2021-07-29 — the call was wrong, but HOOD was still private on this episode's date so there is no scoreable instrument; the claim is preserved inside the fintech-regulation-overhang mention rather than given a fake ticker). Friedberg's contribution is the genuinely new thesis: FINRA is an SRO, not a regulator, so the largest-ever fine is the industry buying off Washington — "everyone's trying to keep the government at bay, while the great digital transformation of markets is underway" — which makes federal intervention in PFOF/gamification the live overhang for SCHW/VIRT/IBKR/COIN. Sacks takes the other side twice ("a sort of cost of doing business"; a max fine is actually *better* for Robinhood at 33:02), so this idea is born with an intra-episode split. A second new thesis falls out of the LP-distribution argument: Friedberg cites the 2019 Goldman study of 4,500 IPOs to claim the IPO cohort as an index beats the S&P by 10-15 points, Sacks backs it with the Sequoia/Square receipt, and both conclude GPs should hold rather than distribute — an implicitly bullish 2021 new-issue call that aged catastrophically. Chamath is the counterparty but only on fund mechanics ("I would distribute them immediately, book the win, move on" — he wants the shares because "I don't think they're as good of a public market investor as I am"), never on market direction, so no oppose mention. Delta variant is the big reinforced block and it's a four-way consensus: Friedberg brings the R0 1.3 data, the state-level vaccination correlation and a JAMA mask/CO2 paper, and argues the hospital-overwhelm rationale for lockdowns "no longer exists"; Sacks calls it "just more COVID fear porn" and says double-vaxxed Pfizer holds; Chamath opens with an explicit "Let me make a prediction" that people "are not going to put up with it anymore"; Jason concurs with an HIV/condom analogy. Note covid-normalcy-summer-2021 closed 2021-06-19, so this is a new idea with its own fall window, not a mention on it. The nuance a reviewer should see: Sacks simultaneously predicts CA schools will NOT get five-day in-person instruction and that LA mask mandates are coming — so he is bearish on policy while bullish on the health/market outcome; only the latter is captured. What got trashed: the FTC's Facebook monopoly case, dismissed by the DC federal court days earlier — Sacks says the FB breakup argument is "the weakest" and Chamath says "I don't think they're a monopoly in the least," both of which land as oppose mentions on facebook-boycott-short-2020 eight days before that idea's 2021-07-11 kill date. Sacks separately predicts the six House antitrust bills clear the Senate ("legislation is likely... going to go through") and that Amazon, Google and Apple are the real targets — hence the FB-safe / AMZN-GOOGL-AAPL-exposed split in the new antitrust idea. Amazon's Lina Khan recusal petition is treated as a joke by Chamath and Jason ("the Gambino crime family has petitioned to have them recuse") and Sacks reads it as reserving an appellate argument. Next-gen-candidates segment (DeSantis front-runner, Nikki Haley can't unite the wings, Biden and Trump both one-termers, gerontocracy riff) and the Weisselberg indictment ("a bit of a nothing burger") carry no instrument and were skipped. The teased drought segment never happened. Label anomalies: none — all four besties have plausible turn counts (Jason 119, Sacks 89, Chamath 59, Friedberg 55) and content matches fingerprints (Jason's Robinhood seed/launch fund, Sacks' chess.com and Craft founders, Friedberg's science corner, Chamath's Italy and NBA friend group); the two SPEAKER_5 turns are the promo voice-over at 0:42 and a one-word "Yeah" at 35:03 that belongs to Friedberg or Jason and carries nothing.