Southwest announces airport lounges. Four cities get them first. The airline partners with Chase because apparently one company that makes you wait in lines needed help from another company that makes you wait in lines.
Chase runs the Sapphire Reserve Lounge Network. Southwest wants to build on that. Build on it. Like adding a second floor to a house made of credit card debt and flight delays.
The pitch is simple. Pay Southwest. Pay Chase. Get access to a room where you can sit before sitting on a plane. Revolutionary stuff. Nobody has ever thought to charge people twice for the same experience of eating stale pretzels in a different location.
Retail traders will buy Southwest stock because lounges equal premium brand. Premium brand equals pricing power. Pricing power equals margins. Margins equal tendies. This is the financial analysis of a person who thinks a balance sheet is where you put your checkbook when it tips over.
The technical setup here is f*cking irrelevant. Southwest could announce they're opening bathrooms on the moon and it wouldn't matter. The stock moves on fuel costs and consumer spending and whether some algorithm in Greenwich decided it was time to rotate out of airlines again. But sure, lounges. That'll do it.
More cities coming soon, the airline promises. Translation: we're going to keep building these until someone checks whether people actually want to pay extra to sit in a Southwest lounge. A Southwest lounge. The airline that made its reputation on not charging you for everything just invented a new thing to charge you for. Progress.
Chase gets to slap its name on more rooms. Southwest gets to pretend it competes with Delta. Retail gets to explain to their spouse why the credit card bill includes a lounge membership for an airline that flies to Tulsa.
The chart doesn't care that Southwest discovered the concept of a waiting room with better chairs.
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