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Treat Yourself—Everyone Else Is
🚗 The travel boom is still booming, but the “treat myself” boom has become more of a “cheap myself” boom. Find out what the means for the economy.
In this issue of the peel:
🚗 The travel boom is still booming, but the “treat myself” boom has become more of a “cheap myself” boom. Find out what the means for the economy.
🎮 Not touching grass is still the move, and Tesla shares continue to rise without much reason. Meanwhile, Pinterest and Airbnb had a bad earnings day.
📈 Screw the Mag 7, we’re looking at the Magnificent 2000. I’d give you all the money in my wallet ($17.00) if you knew this stat before reading the below.
Market Snapshot

Banana Bits
BTC sets yet another record level, crossing $80k for the first time ever.
The EU wants to pivot from Russia to the U.S. for their LNG imports.
Get prepped on what a Trump Round 2 could mean for U.S. foreign policy.
Russia’s unspoken secret weapon in the war against Ukraine: North Korean soldiers… and they love it.
U.S. and global oil inventories remain incredibly low.
Icahn Enterprises tanks after slashing their dividend.
The S&P 500 crossed 6,000 for the first time ever on Friday.
The Daily Poll
What’s your personal travel vibe lately? |
Previous Poll:
With the upcoming election, how do you think political factors will influence the job market?
Very significantly: 34.4% // Somewhat significantly: 42.8% // Not very significantly: 16.1% // Not at all: 6.7%
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Macro Monkey Says
The Treat Yourself Boom
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to escape the peace and tranquility in the U.S. right now, but apparently, a lot of us are outta here.
Maybe it’s just those members of Diddy’s guest list (allegedly) who “swear!” they’re moving out of the country this time, but it seems like there’s a lot more going on.
Quarterly results from lodging companies, along with consumer spending data and insights from international air traffic, suggest that this “post-pandemic travel boom” might be the first sign of another Roaring Twenties.
Let’s get into it.
The Numbers
Below is an image of the International Trade Administration’s tracker of U.S. and international airline travel. Right away, we can see that Boeing’s planes aren’t the only things booming.
According to this data, the departures of U.S. citizens from the United States have increased by 20.3% YTD through the end of October compared to last year.
Meanwhile, the graphs in the lower half show that the number of U.S. citizens taking off to go abroad has consistently increased throughout the pandemic period.
A booming travel sector is generally a good sign for an economy, but a key question for the U.S. is how concentrated this growth in international trips is among wealthy consumers.
According to Bank of America's internal card data from September, luxury hotel spending slightly outpaced standard, but both experienced declines compared to September 2023.
Meanwhile, high-income households have (naturally) seen faster growth in the number of transactions made abroad in some of the most popular travel regions.
Interestingly, lower-income households dominate transaction growth in the Bahamas, suggesting these consumers are opting for more proximal vacations to lower-cost locations.
If we look at earnings results from Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, we can get some insight into the breakdown of travelers by income.

According to the firm’s Q3 numbers, revenue growth per available room (RevPAR) grew across the board, from luxury to select brands, with the fastest growth found in the mid-tier pricepoint Premium category.
Occupancy improved at a slower rate, indicating that pricing drove revenue growth. Here, we also find the only decline, found in occupancy of Select rooms, Marriott’s lowest-price brand.
Finally, the average daily rate (ADR) grew across each category but posted the slowest growth in the luxury category.
This suggests a mixed bag of travel performance among U.S. consumers. It’s clear that everyone still wants to GTFO wherever they are, but it seems that Americans are looking to be more frugal while escaping wherever they’re from.
One way to stay frugal while fleeing involves traveling close to your neck of the woods—road trips rather than strapping into a death machine from Boeing. According to Airbnb data from Q3, guest stays within 300 miles of their home address more than doubled from 2019 to 2024.
Local travel is growing at double the rate of international on Airbnb’s platform. And, to be fair, many consumers first consider Airbnb when staying close and using a hotel when abroad, but unfortunately, this is the best data we have.
The firm did, however, highlight the states experiencing the highest rates of in-state travel:
This data also kinda sucks as it relates to annual growth trends and travel across incomes, but if you’re willing to extrapolate from these states—as some of the most populated and most traveled to by out-of-state visitors—we can assume similar trends nationwide.
That implies, again, that less expensive, local travel is dominating vacation growth.
The Takeaway?
It’s almost as if the pandemic ushered in a year-long “treat myself” boom. Consumers were willing to spend up after being trapped in hell, I mean *home with their families during the pandemic. Record asset prices contributed, too.
So, now that the macro backdrop is normalizing and we’re more psychologically removed from the traumas of 2020, consumers are still prioritizing travel in their spending more than pre-pandemic but are doing so more frugally.
That’s a good sign for the economy—and the life enjoyment—of Americans. Plus, high travel demand helps maintain the labor market, given that leisure and hospitality make up a sizable chunk of total employment.
Ya love to see it. Should we do a Daily Peel field trip?
Career Corner
Question
I had a networking call last week with two vice presidents at a bank where I brought up a program I've applied for. During our discussions, they said they would push my application.
I want to follow up and inquire if they had the chance to push my resume through. What is an appropriate message to follow up and ask if they have pushed me through?
Answer
I would email each of them individually (this way, they will see it as them being responsible), but give a few days between each.
You can simply say:
"Hi [name]—thanks again for the call last week. I really appreciated the insight you gave to me on the X program, and I'm excited about continuing the process.
Do you have any knowledge of the timing for the next steps?
Best Regards,
[name]"
Head Mentor, WSO Academy
What's Ripe
Sony (SONY) 8.98%
Utterly refusing to go outside and touch the grass, consumers ate up as many PlayStation Plus devices as they could in Q3. I’m sure Sony appreciates it.
The Japanese tech giant reported 9% revenue growth and still missed estimates. Thankfully, a 73% increase in operating profit stole the limelight.
Game and network services revenue surged 12% thanks to increased volume and pricing, improving margins. We’ll see how that holds when (and if) GTA 6 ever gets released.
Tesla (TSLA) 8.19%
This is the kind of degenerate gambling we love to see. Investors are bidding up Tesla shares on this kinda gut feeling that a Trump Admin will be good for the company and/or its CEO.
Not sure how that would work, but my guess is that traders expect more benefit to Tesla from regulatory removals than detriment from subsidiary removals.
Tesla earned $554mn in regulatory credits in Q3, ~2.9% of sales and ~30% of net income. That’s a lot of regulation to cut to compensate, but maybe Uncle Sam could use it.
What's Rotten
Pinterest (PINS) 14.00%
I guess nobody needs winter outfit inspo heading into this holiday season as Pinterest shares tanked on Q4 guidance. The social media site beat for Q3.
My girlfriend’s favorite app (and probably yours too) reported EPS of $0.40/sh on $898mn in revenue vs estimates for $0.34/sh on $896mn. Guidance declined.
Lower expected ad spending from food and beverage makers like Coke, whose revenue was flat YoY, is expected to stymie growth in the fourth quarter.
Airbnb (ABNB) 8.66%
You can only charge $250 “cleaning” fees while still expecting customers to clean up after themselves for so long. Sales beat estimates, but earnings missed.
Airbnb reported $3.73bn in revenue and $2.13/sh vs the $2.14/sh expected. The top line grew 10%, but net income plunged $3bn, or a not-so-nice 69% YoY, mostly due to changes in accounting standards.
In addition to the earnings miss, slower growth in average daily rates hurt sentiment as well. Plus, the firm hyped up all of its hosts and listings but offered little detail on the demand/user side.
Thought Banana
What If I Told You…
Everyone loves an underdog story. The Patriots in Super Bowl 51, Average Joe’s Gym in Dodgeball, or Donald Trump building several failed businesses off a “small loan of $1mn.”
Inspiring stuff. But over the last year, a quiet underdog story has given material for a new blockbuster movie right under our noses. Let’s dive in.
What Happened?
What if I told you that, over the last year, the Russell 2000 has outperformed the S&P 500?
I know, I did double-take when I heard it the first time, too, but unlike most politicians, numbers never lie.

The small-cap Russell 2000 index has increased 38.45% over the last year through Friday's close, while the S&P 500 is up 36.99%.
Unfortunately, both are currently outperforming the WSO Alpha portfolio, but not for long!
Anyway, if you’re saying to yourself now, “Yeah, of course, the Russell 2k outperformed” then congratulations—I’m sure J.P. Morgan would hire you as their new Chief Strategist on the spot.
I don’t even think the Russell 2000 would’ve guessed it outperformed the S&P.
We’ve heard constant attacks on our homie, the S&P 500, for being “too concentrated” in the stocks carrying the index. The Mag 7 names have done a lot of heavy lifting, but they’re far from the only ones getting in on the gains.
Even the S&P 500 equal weight index—which weighs Nvidia as much as Math Group—is up 31.00% in the last year.
Part of the underlying reason could be declining interest rates. Smaller-cap companies tend to be more risky and, thus, take on interest rates with a larger spread against Treasuries than large-cap, blue-chip stocks.
So, when rates decline, the magnitude of those declines hits small caps harder, decreasing their borrowing rates by a larger degree.
The Takeaway?
Equity concentration is certainly a risk for these indexes, but perhaps not as much as many think.
Small caps are on fire, along with large caps, primarily tech stocks. Much of this is driven by the AI growth narrative, but with all the AI spending announced over the last few quarters, it doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon.
The Big Question: Can small caps keep up their outperformance, however slight, against large-cap stocks?
Banana Brain Teaser
Previous
A school club plans to package and sell dried fruit to raise money. The club purchased 12 contains of dried fruit, each containing 67/4 pounds. What is the maximum number of individual bags of dried fruit, each containing ¼ pounds, that can be sold from the dried fruit the club purchased?
Answer: 804
Today
The annual interest rate earned by an investment increased by 10% from last year to this year. If the annual interest rate earned by the investment this year was 11%, what was the annual interest rate last year?
Send your guesses to [email protected]
It’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that.
How Would You Rate Today's Peel?
Happy Investing,
David, Vyom, Ankit & Patrick