In short: A CPI data point, not a view: the 5 bp core surprise was "entirely due to wireless telephones and Airbnb shifting their policy" — a discrete jump in lodging prices she calls "very minutiae things… not a broad inflationary impulse."
Airbnb is the other half of the same argument. Alongside wireless plans, the August inflation report showed a sudden jump in lodging prices, which Wong attributes to Airbnb "shifting their policy." Together those two items explain the entire 0.05-percentage-point gap between what economists expected for core inflation (0.24%) and what was reported (0.29%).
Because the index is rounded to one decimal, that tiny gap turned an expected "0.2" into a reported "0.3," which read as a hot number and pushed traders' odds of a September rate hike up by about 20 points in a day. Wong's view is that a policy change at one travel platform is not a reason to tighten monetary policy. No view was given on Airbnb as a company.
11:20— Yeah, exactly. This is the dilemma that the Fed faced that I just described. They have boxed themselves in. When you look at the CPI report, it really only surprised by five bips. So, we had going in 0.24 for core CPI. The actual is 0.29. And that five bips of price is entirely due to wireless telephones and Airbnb shifting their policy, like very minutiae things, right? Not a broad inflationary impulse increase, right? And however, it rounds up on the Bloomberg terminal from a baseline
In short: Upgraded to Outperform with a $200 target; Terranova's JOET already owns it and he supplies the fundamentals. The rules-based provenance first: it was added on strong momentum on August 7th, before Josh Brown put it on his best-stocks list. The case: "early August, 2nd time this year they increased their annual revenue forecast. They are having price moves after earnings that they have not seen since 2020. It's fundamentally oriented about a traveller that is very resilient, has not stepped back, whether it's Europe or here in the United States, and also the World Cup was very beneficial for them."
Airbnb was upgraded today with a $200 target, but the more interesting fact is the order of events: Terranova's rules-based ETF bought it on 7 August because of price momentum, before the analyst call and before it appeared on Josh Brown's best-stocks list.
The fundamentals he cites afterwards are the kind that suggest the momentum was not noise. The company raised its own revenue forecast for the second time this year, the share price reaction to earnings was the strongest since 2020, and the underlying reason is that travellers have simply not cut back, in Europe or the United States, with the World Cup adding a one-off boost.
In short: Called a buy at Rosenblatt with a $220 target, and the vehicle for Josh Brown's best argument for systematic process. He is candid that his own opinion was wrong: "I would never — if you told me, should Airbnb be considered one of the best stocks in the market? I would say absolutely not. But pull the chart back. It's breaking out of this channel it's been stuck in since it came public." The evidence: "this is clearly going to take out new highs. You can see the accumulation, you can see the rapidity with which it's run up this time and has not given back any ground even with the market down." And the general lesson: "that's where a rules based strategy can help you. It forces you to reconsider a stock that you have a bias against for one reason or another… that's the importance of having a system and a strategy rather than just waking up every day and saying what should I trade?"
The interesting thing here is not the stock, it is that Brown recommends it while saying plainly that he would never have chosen it himself. Asked whether Airbnb belongs among the best stocks in the market, his instinct is "absolutely not."
His screening system surfaced it anyway, which forced him to look at the chart — and the chart shows the stock breaking out of the range it has been stuck in since it went public, running hard, and refusing to give any of it back even while the market falls. Rosenblatt made it a buy today with a $220 target.
The lesson he draws is the point of the segment: a rules-based process is valuable precisely because it makes you re-examine names you are biased against. Left to your own judgment you simply never look at them again.
In short: Joe Terranova's final trade — Airbnb, extending the day's travel-is-where-the-consumer-spends theme that also drove the Expedia discussion.
In short: Hotels check in. Q2 revenue +17% Y/Y to $3.6B (a $30M beat) with GAAP EPS $1.37 ($0.12 beat), GBV +16% to $27.2B and Nights and Seats Booked accelerating to 10% growth at 148 million — North America posting its strongest growth in nearly three years — with adjusted EBITDA of $1.3B at a 35% margin. The hotel expansion is becoming meaningful: thousands of boutique and independent hotels across more than 20 destinations, still a single-digit percentage of nights but growing roughly 3x faster than the core homes business and bringing new travellers who later cross over into home rentals — "less about competing head-on with Booking and more about widening Airbnb's top of funnel." The World Cup added 150,000+ first-time home listings, and major events "continue to give Airbnb a repeatable playbook for quickly adding supply." Product work shows underneath: customer support cost per booking fell 16% Y/Y, with conversational AI search and personalised trip planning in preparation. FY26 revenue growth guidance raised again to at least mid-teens and adjusted EBITDA margin to at least 35.5%; Q3 revenue of $4.69–$4.77B above consensus. A disclosed author holding.
In short: Named among the owned travel companies hit at the war's onset — held through the volatility (bought deliberately ~$120 the day before; see the Jul-16 appearance).
Airbnb is the home-rental marketplace, another owned travel name that got hit at the war's onset. Oxbow bought it deliberately (around $120, after years of patience — see the July 16 appearance) and held through the sell-off.
The takeaway here is his discipline: a war-driven dip in a quality holding is something to monitor for excessive downside, not automatically sell.
12:34So if there's oil or gas is a key input to a product of a company that we own, what's the negative hit that might be to their earnings and how much downside do we want to risk? You also have, something we noticed, we owned a few of the travel companies like Booking or Airbnb or Expedia.
In short: High-quality business he watched for 4–5 years after its 2020 IPO (~$145), then bought "a little above $120" when the valuation got reasonable — hopes to own it for years.
Airbnb runs the home-rental marketplace. Finucane calls it a high-quality business but wouldn't touch it at its IPO — instead he watched it patiently for four or five years after it went public in 2020 near $145.
Only when the price fell to a little above $120 and the valuation looked reasonable did Oxbow buy, expecting to hold it for years. It's a live example of his "never chase the IPO, wait for the price you want" rule.
33:37And the average usually is it cuts in half at some point during the first year. So if you do really want to own these sorts of newly public stocks, you have time to watch it and just see what happens during that first year. And we had a good example ourselves where Airbnb is a high quality company that went public in 2020 at around $145 a share.
In short: "I think that Airbnb will do really well" — a marketplace with non-AI structural strengths.
18:29I think Uber and DoorDash will be spectacular winners. I think that Shopify is a spectacular winner. I think that Airbnb will do really well. We even have companies that there's a bit more debate about companies like Spotify and Duolingo. They don't own proprietary data per se. Spotify just has access to music. Duolingo has access to AI curriculum and courses.
In short: His single-stock-vol short expression when index vol was too rich to buy: bought June $100 puts because it is consumer/tourism-related (destroyed in an oil-crisis recession), a poor customer experience with hidden fees, tech-adjacent, and "the chart looks horrendous." The order itself became the tell — the market maker gapped the entire quote above the mid to a 55+ implied vol, revealing options illiquidity worse than the $3mn top-of-book cash tape.
Airbnb runs the short-term home-rental marketplace. Paulo wasn't making a deep fundamental call — he wanted more "downside insurance" on the market, and buying insurance on the whole index (index options) had gotten expensive. So he shopped for a single stock likely to fall hard in an oil-shock recession and bought put options on it (a put profits if the stock drops). Airbnb fit: travel/tourism gets crushed in a recession, the product has a lot of unhappy customers and hidden fees, it trades like a tech stock, and the chart looked broken.
The interesting part wasn't Airbnb itself — it was what happened when he tried to buy the puts. Normally he nudges the market-maker's price tighter; this time the dealer yanked the whole quote higher and refused to tighten, implying far more fear (higher "implied volatility") than the screen showed. That told him options are now dangerously thin and hard to trade in size — a warning sign that when selling starts, there won't be enough liquidity to cushion it.
In short: Actively under research, no position stated, and the name his own data pushed back on. "Airbnb has been a company that's starting to look pretty interesting for me. So, I've been doing some more research" — the research being a saved cross-company chart of gross bookings across Expedia, Booking Holdings and Airbnb. "This gives me an idea of like, oh, I think Airbnb is growing the fastest, but what I actually realized is Booking's growing the fastest off the COVID lows. That is not a thesis that I would have come in with." He guesses most people off the street would say Airbnb too: "the data tells you otherwise."
Airbnb is the one name he says he is actively working on — "starting to look pretty interesting for me. So, I've been doing some more research" — but he states no position and reaches no conclusion on the record, so this is a research-in-progress mention rather than a recommendation.
The way he researches it is the transferable part. Instead of studying Airbnb alone, he built a chart comparing gross bookings — the total value of travel booked through a platform, before the platform's own cut — across Airbnb, Booking Holdings and Expedia, and asked which is growing fastest, from what starting base, and at what take rate. All three companies disclose those numbers themselves.
The result went against him: Booking, not Airbnb, has grown gross bookings fastest off the COVID lows. "That is not a thesis that I would have come in with." He notes most people asked cold would guess Airbnb too. The lesson he draws is not about Airbnb's quality — it is that a widely-held industry narrative is cheap to test against the companies' own disclosures, and worth testing before you own anything.
1:05:37This is one where I like to keep track of gross bookings across Expedia, Booking Holdings, and Airbnb and see which ones have grown the fastest. Airbnb has been a company that's starting to look pretty interesting for me. So, I've been doing some more research, and this is one thing that I've really liked looking at, is going, okay, our gross bookings across the aggregators, which one's growing the fastest, off which base, off which take rate? And they disclose all of these numbers for investors. They disclose all of those
In short: With Expedia, the "haves" side of the K — earnings sound like a "raging bull market" as wealthy holders spend their money-market income on travel.
Airbnb is the home-rental platform. He cites it as evidence of the "K-shaped" economy — the split where the wealthy thrive and everyone else struggles. Affluent customers, flush with interest income on their cash, keep spending on travel, so Airbnb's results sound like a "raging bull market" even as lower-end businesses suffer.
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