Ready for Take Off or Jet Lagged?

Episode 54 - Ready for Takeoff or Jet lagged?

This is episode 54 of The LongVol Report Podcast – welcome back and for the new listeners, welcome. Make sure to subscribe to the Spotify/YouTube – we put this out each Thursday with the Pod/video out on Fridays, you can ask questions each week here and I’ll do my best to answer.

It’s amazing how connected to the markets you have to be when you get disconnected – or in my case, are traveling to a different time zone. This week has been filled with earnings reports, tariff deals and news headlines causing markets to pause, rally and drop. While fighting jet lag in the hotel I had Bloomberg TV and heard someone say this is a “tactical market not a thesis market” and I’d sort of have to agree.

The Nasdaq and SP500 have recovered all of the DeepSeek/BOJ sell-off amidst earnings and I put out a note to members today: “New index highs coming?. Normally I don’t write as much during the week on the Substack but this is a market where earnings and news make it so that charts/ideas change and right now we’re set for a 8th/9th inning rally it seems pending the close of this weeks candles.

This week Trump and other countries decided to postpone for a month while negotiations were had but we’re only one Tweet/update away from it shocking the markets again; welcome to the headline risk era.

Then, we had earnings this week in some of the names we’ve talked about on the podcast and in the report: $HSY, and $EL being the two of concern. Earnings season is important for us to look to see what changes are being made and what outlooks are going to be so names can be tracked, removed or triggered into new positions from the report. We’re going to cover a few of those this week on the show and keep it shorter than usual because I am fighting this jet lag and trying to get through reading all these earnings so let’s get into it.

This week we’ll talk about:

Broad Market Update
Some Charts of Interest
SPX and Broad Market Thoughts
Hersheys Earnings Review
Estee Lauder Earnings Review

Now on Spotify

The Broad Market: Stock Market Sentiment

This week the levels for SP500 were $6050 which was key to regain and we did that this week. We tested it Monday after the tariff talks were backed down and were closing somewhat bullish which could lead to an “8th inning rally” as noted above.

Financials have been on fire: investment banks are not pulling back and there are a few we were watching – we expect M&A to pick up and profits to rise but this is reassuring given our views on $SCHW and others.
A great chart from @RyanDetrick – compensation continues to grow and the consumer is strong which is important for some consumer brands ( $AAP/$HSY/$ETSY/$EL etc) and if Disney and Netflix were any signs of disposable income being spent then…

Charts of The Week:

SPX/QQQ/AMD/GLD/HIMS

HSY/Hersheys Earnings: This was a starter position last month and it’s recovered well into this earnings report on Thursday. This is a legacy brand going through a tough few quarters but that should end as we get into the heart of 2025 and as we understand more on the outlook provided from earnings. The price action on the earnings I think was a tell that the market now knows the guidance coming into this year and I believe we’ve priced in a lot of the downside here so the plan is to watch this further in the coming weeks to possibly add to this position.

We know what’s coming and given the price acton the market seems to be okay with it
When Cocoa prices come down we think people will take notice straight to this name and this becomes a darling…but not down here when nobody wants it and is chasing names like $PLTR (congrats by the way – but lets talk valuation).

Esteee Lauder/EL Earnings: This is an out of favor name the past few years and they’ve made some poor acquisitions but on the other hand, and despite it being down after earnings, they’ve got all the bad news out of the way. If we know the bad news we can look forward to the good news which will be coming from here on out now that the bad is behind. They took quite a few one-time write-offs but with that they’re resetting expectations which is key to fix the brand and for the stock price.

The PRGP is set to save the Company $800 to $1B in annual savings and that’s a plus even with margins where they are.
Too many quality brands under this name to ignore and when the market doesn’t want something that’s when we want to have a look