Lots More With Sam Ro

Sam Ro (0:00)

I saw someone, was it you or someone else who tweeted, you were at the Capital One Cafe?

Joe Weisenthal (0:04)

Oh yeah, I stopped at the Capital One Cafe this morning. Have you been there before?

Sam Ro (0:08)

Yeah, but I went there when it was the ING Direct Cafe in like 2005 or 2006 It was like my first job out of school where I was actually starting to make some money.

There were all these commercials about like these high interest savings accounts. I didn't really understand what this meant, but that's when I learned that there are these non brick and mortar banks that'll give you a higher interest rate because they don't have brick and mortar operations. So because I guess whatever the ING entity was in the US didn't have brick and mortar locations, but these cafes where you can get information, you go there, you read a pamphlet, and then you go home and go to ingdirect.com and then sign up for a 5% savings account.

Tracy Alloway (0:48)

Wait, that was your first job, did you say?

Sam Ro (0:50)

My first job.

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

Where this was happening when you had your first job. Oh, I see, okay. I was like, it'd be cool to work in an ING cafe.

Sam Ro (1:00)

Maybe.

Joe Weisenthal (1:03)

I did a deadlift.

Sam Ro (1:04)

One, two, three.

Tracy Alloway (1:10)

Barges.

Joe Weisenthal (1:10)

This is an after school special, except.

Tracy Alloway (1:12)

I've decided I'm gonna base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

Joe Weisenthal (1:18)

Where's the best squid ink pasta?

Tracy Alloway (1:20)

These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

Joe Weisenthal (1:23)

No, I think that in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast.

And people will think, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore. We do have the perfect guest.

Tracy Alloway (1:38)

Well, in the meantime, this is Lots More.

Joe Weisenthal (1:41)

A weekly chat about whatever's on our minds.

There's a regulatory decision, I think Tracy, from the Office of the Controller of the Currency, somewhere, I think it was them, on this question, because of course in the United States, retailers are not, you're not allowed to open a bank. If you're like Walmart has tried forever, all these companies always tried to get into banking. We have pretty strict regulations, or we try. And so I think that there's restrictions in the other direction too. So the question arises, well, if like, Starbucks presumably couldn't open a bank, so why can a bank open a Starbucks competitor? By the way, we are here with Sam Ro. He is the editor of the newsletter.

Now, tell me, I've always thought it was tker.com, but it's not?

Sam Ro (2:29)

I call it Ticker. But if people wanna call it TKer, I guess that's okay. There's another company that people seem to mispronounce and they can't decide what's the correct pronunciation. It's called Tesla, or maybe it's Tesla. Some people call it Tesla, some people call it Tesla.

At the end of the day-

Tracy Alloway (2:45)

I never thought about that before.

Joe Weisenthal (2:46)

Wait, which one do you say, Tracy?

Tracy Alloway (2:47)

Tesla? Tesla.

Joe Weisenthal (2:49)

I say Tesla.

Tracy Alloway (2:50)

Tesla.

Sam Ro (2:51)

In my opinion, it doesn't really matter what the name of the company is. It's a multi-billion dollar company. And that's like how I like to think of TKer.

Joe Weisenthal (2:58)

It doesn't matter the name, but it's a multi-billion dollar newsletter.

Sam Ro (3:01)

Maybe, in some people's eyes.

Tracy Alloway (3:03)

Well, for people who don't know, TK is the sort of like filler language that journalists use in copy. Like, you know, if you have to add a percentage move after the market closed, you would put in TK just to remind you. Because supposedly it doesn't, it'll always show up in misspelled like word search. So it'll never, in theory, make it into the final copy. But I've seen it happen plenty of times.

Sam Ro (3:27)

Yeah, that's actually sort of the origin of how I got the name for the newsletter was I was squatting on a sub stack, you know, URL, like in like late 2019, maybe. And, you know, they tell you, you should name the newsletter or name the brand or whatever, but I just really didn't have any idea for it.

Tracy Alloway (3:46)

I was just like, I'll put it in later, TK.

Sam Ro (3:48)