Rich People Invent October

Wealthy travelers discovered autumn exists. They're calling it "fallcations" because branding a season makes you important.

The premise here is that summer got too crowded. Too many poors at the beach. Too many middle managers clogging the Amalfi Coast with their paid-time-off energy. So the solution is to simply travel when everyone else has to work. Revolutionary stuff. Next they'll figure out that Tuesdays are less busy than Saturdays.

This is being presented as a trend. Labor Day marks the start of rich people doing what rich people have always done, which is whatever they want whenever they want. But now there's a portmanteau for it, so CNBC can write four hundred words about how the wealthy are disrupting the concept of September.

The technical analysis here is flawless. If you chart "people with money" against "ability to take vacation outside peak season," you get a perfect correlation going back to the invention of feudalism. Nothing has changed. Not one thing. But financial media needs you to believe this is news because the alternative is admitting they're just describing wealth inequality with jazz hands.

Retail traders will read this and think they've identified an opportunity. They'll start buying shares in hotel chains and airlines, convinced they've cracked the code on shoulder season revenue. They'll create a watchlist titled "Fall Travel Plays" and pat themselves on the back for being so observant. Then they'll check their portfolio in November and wonder why United Airlines doesn't care that Todd from Greenwich took his family to Napa in October instead of July.

The wealthy have been avoiding you since spring. Now they've just made it official.

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