A Tale of two Companies: Netflix ($NFLX) and Blockbuster (BLOAQ)

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If you are reading this blog that means you are part of the online revolution which has sped up the way we conduct business and also the way we spend our leisure time.
The recent years have brought user generated videos, tv episodes and even full movies to the web. Gone are the VHS and DVD days where it cost $6-7 to rent a movie and in are the $10-15/month to watch unlimited movies. The company that revolutionized this was Netflix a few years back and that caused dear ol’ brick and mortar Blockbuster to go belly-up.

Well Gentlemen and Ladies the beast is awakening from its two year sleep. In what might turn out to be a lengthy blog post I will be evaluating both Netflix and Blockbuster because in another week (December 15th) Blockbuster is expected to file its reorganization plan.

Lets start with Netflix $NFLX king which Since January 2010 alone is up a whopping 245% from $55 to $190 a share. Being a technical analysis freak I always look at the chart to see how the stock has done in the past and whether its shot up too far from the ground (my moving averages trio) and as you can see below the real ground is the 110 ema which right now stands at 151.37.  I also use two shorter term averages in case I don’t want to wait for a stock to go that low but with Netflix being $40+ above ground I am willing to wait. (Click Image to Enlarge)

Sure sure technicals are one thing but I also like to look under the hood at fundamentals. I plug balance sheet, income statement and other data into my system and what I get is an all in one visual of different ratios.  The profit margins have increased over the years and that is a positive thing but Netflix’s equity multiplier has increased from 1.78 to 3.41 which is basically doubled within the year and that signals to leveraging, all the profitability ratios are also good, but when we get to Liquidity ratios such as current and quick ratios we see a different story, Netflix has become more illiquid for better or worse. Lastly Long term debt to total assets has gone up significantly from 6% to 35% within a year so that might be a warning shot.  And Finally the past few day Netflix has been under the influence of mostly negative news and especially tonight’s after-hours news of its CFO  ”retiring”.

Netflix receives a score of 57% (out of 100 of course) based on my hybrid system of technical analysis, fundamental and news and on we move into Blockbuster.

When was the last time you heard about Blockbuster? My educated guess would be around 2007 when they stopped advertising (started going belly-up). Well I do have some news for you and the news is that the Yellow and Blue logo is making a comeback but first lets keep the layout somewhat organized (neat freak) and start off with a chart.

Below is a chart using the exact averages as above but this one isn’t as pretty and Blockbuster (BLOAQ) former $BBI  has been “under ground” for quite some time. Even with the recent doubling of its price from 5 cents to 10 cents the ground hog hasn’t been able to stick its head above the 12 cent ground for long. Back in May the ground hog (Blockbuster) poked its head, didn’t see a shadow and that resulted in 6 more months of winter. So technically speaking, 12 cents has to be broken before the stock goes anywhere gooood. (Click Below to Enlarge)

Just because Blockbuster stock is yet to break out, that doesn’t mean that the company isn’t making steps into a re-emergence from bankruptcy. As mentioned in the beginning of this article Blockbuster should be submitting its plan on December 15th, meanwhile they have just closed 18 more physical stores in a move from offline to online media.  For those of you that like purchasing dvds at a physical location, NCR Corp operates RedBox-like kiosks with Blockbuster logo and movies. Tests on about 900 kiosks are being run now in San Francisco, Miami etc to see if people would pay $3.99 for the first night to rent a new movie 28 days before it comes out to Netflix. Going into bankruptcy it had $1 billion in debt and coming out it is expected to have $100 million or less.

Just a few weeks ago Blockbuster received court approval for $20 million in advertising, it had not advertised since 2007 and they have already begun with a few ads showing their competitive edge of providing movies 28 days earlier than Netflix the ad campaign is called “Less Waiting. More Watching.”
Another thing i noticed  while looking website statistics and info is that when you search “new releases” on Google Blockbuster.com is #3 ranked and Netflix is #10.
Ok so why would I (or You) as a consumer want to pay $11.99/month for the 1 Dvd plan when Netflix is $9.99/month right now?
Well there is a big reason why I highlighted “right now” because it is the main reason Blockbuster is the only one to offer movies 28 days earlier since it costs $3.99/movie.

With Netflix’s recent fame in the stock market more companies such as the movie studios will want to suck more money out of them and they (Netflix) will pay higher prices for the movies. At this moment either Net profit margins will begin declining if the $9.99 price is still valid or Netflix will be forced to charge $10.99, 11.99 12.99 etc and that will drive users to other competitors since the price advantage is no longer valid.

With the new campaign, Blockbuster’s ad spending next month is to be three times as high as it was last December. The final month of the year is traditionally one of the most lucrative for the company, as summer event movies come out on DVD and families watch movies together over the holidays.

I will leave you with Blockbuster’s new ad campaign that came out less than a week ago.

What a crook I would be if I didn’t disclose my holdings. Short NFLX via option puts and long Blockbuster.

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Investimonials Inspiration for InvestingFreak

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I would like to take a few short minutes to Thank all the Freak-y readers for their support.

You can check out Investingfreaks’ Investimonial page and leave a review for others to see so we can get more visibility.

There are currently two 5 star reviews and one email from a reader that found us through investimonials as well.

Here are what is being said about this blog.

Danny:  ”funny, sharp, witty blog and really timely notifications”

the creator of this blog warned his subscribers to be extra careful a couple days before the flash crash! check it out. go to the website and go back to may 6th and before! its a really funny blog too.

theres a nice little community of sharp traders at investingfreak. they share their trades and other speculations. really cool site, i love it

Tommy: “I bookmarked this site!”

This blog is great. The few traders that write for this thing are on point and comedic. That really helps keep the reading light and interesting. I wish they updated the blog more, but with all the market action that has been going on since the start of September. I can’t blame them for that. When you find guys that are willing to share great information, take advantage of it.

Fetcher (via email)

You have to know that I truly enjoy using your blog. it’s very useful and really effective tool for everyone! Actually I found it via investimonials.com, according to it your blog has few reviews but I think your blog deserves to be rated higher. So it would be a big step to ask your readers/visitors to leave reviews in investimonials.com.

Again I appreciate the voiced opinions because as much as I ask for comments in order to improve the site and content many just don’t want to be bothered and pitch in.

One last thing is an update and apology. The last blog post before this was back in October and that is unacceptable but as Tommy mentioned about the market he is correct. (By the way I am long Blockbuster $BLOAQ, a January 165 Netflix $NFLX put which I acquired when Netflix was up at the $205 area a few days back)

I should begin posting more in the next few weeks. But if you are a reader you are urged to go to investimonials.com and write a review if you have something good to say. :)

-K

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When ETF’s don’t work ($VXX, $VIX)

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We are all caught up in the new bubble that I would like to call the Great “Enron Task Force” (ETF).

Basically ETF’s are usually set up to mimic indices that we cannot directly buy. That is a great way to stay invested and diversified if you believe the stock market in general will do good or bad. The number of Enron Task Forces is now reaching the gazillions and “investors” are so drawn into them that they are getting bigger and bigger and bigger (can you guess already?).

Here is SPY ETF compared to the index that it tries to replicate. (Click To Enlarge)

As you can see the mirroring effect is almost so perfect that by owning SPY shares you will make nearly the same percentage as how the S&P 500 has performed.  Thats GREAT! It takes pain away from doing individual stock research. Of course if you still want to invest in specific stocks with minimal effort and AMAZING returns I would recommend Bear Sterns.  After you have made millions in Bear Sterns get your attention back to this useless post.

Hey I have an Idea! I believe Volatility will increase and VIX index will keep going higher again. Hmm “Google Google on the wall whats the best ETF of them All?” Google: VXX for the win!   So there you have it, if you want volatility there is an ETF for that.  Alright time to cut to the chase because its nearing midnight. Click Below to Enlarge the Comparison between VIX and VXX.

Notice a Difference between the SPY comparison and the the VXX comparison? Gosh I hope so or get the FREAK out of here!  They don’t mirror each other AT ALL. They Barely did before last august and from then on its a whole different story. Speaking of stories… Thanks Dan for the heads up in the comments about the “VXX Reverse Split 1:4” story.
For those that are new to stock splits a quick search can yield a lot of information but I will spare that for you by explaining in my own words what will happen here.
When VXX reverse splits in the first week of November (lets assume its at $13 on that day) it will start showing up as a $52 instead. How can they just change the price? Well If you owned 4 shares of VXX now you will own just 1 later thats how.

Ok finally getting to the finish.  A reverse split is bad because instead of increasing the amount of shares outstanding, the company is making this move to make the stock look like it has more value when in fact is the same crappy thing.  I will not be playing VXX but seeing the “oh so perfect” mirroring effect it has done so far I congratulate those who will keep shorting it via whatever method works for them and reaping profits until VXX slashes in half once again.

Thats it for now and I hope that helped clear your question Dan.  Volatility will not get a spark just because Barclays “Enron Task Force” will have a “higher price”. If you’re still confused or stumble upon other interesting things that you would like to share, the boxes are right below the post most of the time.

Happy Trading all and to all a good night!

-K

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SPY’der Pig Spy’der Pig!

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Well it surely has been a lifetime (one month) since I last posted but don’t blame me much because life has become much busier and time consuming. Don’t worry though I won’t leave fellow freaks without some delicious charts before I return to the freakishly busy life of mine .

First off for some humor Here’s my Inspiration to the awesome title. :)

Ok so without even mentioning any recent news because I really don’t care if the Economy officially came out of recession last summer or if Larry Summers will finally leave his post at the end of the year because I am a technical trader and I like to trade what I see rather than what I hear. If I traded what I heard then I would be a BOOOYAH Cramerica Fan which would have made me millionaire by now if I had invested billions.

Lets start off with an hourly chart for the past 20 days of the SPY so we can see what happened while the blog was inactive.
I will not reveal the indicators of lines used in the chart but with some trial and error you might be able to figure it out :) . As you can see starting September 1st the market broke above the blue line while at the same time volume picked up and a special indicator went from red to green.  SPY at the time was around 107 and today it reached a high of nearly 115.

Thats great and all as we see what happened in the past but what about the “Freak”ing future?  I am not calling a market top yet but I must make my intentions known that if either 115 or 113 are broken on the hourly while the volume is there then that will determine the future.  If I were to call it? I would say the volume increased the last two hours of today’s trading thanks to Ben Balloonhead and the special indicator below is heading downhill (but still green).  My ideal trade would be when SPY cuts below 113 and the indicator turns red.  Remember that even if what I am preaching does not happen at least it is a more informed decision than pressing a “Buy Buy Buy, Sell Sell Sell” button. (Click Image below to Enlarge)

Next up we will visit something I like to call the Bollinger Bands and again I will not reveal the inputs but I hope you are understanding (you can always figure it out with some hard work), as you can see I have also shown the signals my system has given to me. I am awaiting for that Sell signal which might send SPY to 110′s at the very least if it displays me that lovely red “S”.  of course there have been times where the market just consolidates along the blue lines and then moves up in which case I wouldn’t enter until I see my system print the signals while I also evaluate the chart already posted above.

Are you falling asleep yet? If so you aren’t a real Investing Freak because only the elite know that without doing your homework you will go into the market like a headless chicken and come out a loser. Now Time to introduce the updated Investing Freak special chart which I last displayed back in June. If you click on the link and go to that post you will see a  ”price line” drawn near 1152 (it’s really just a bit over 1150 if you get microscopical), I mention that because today the market reached up to 1048.59 and retreated a full 10 points!  10 points is a sweet intra-day move which you can make a killing on if you play it right. Anyways here is the updated chart since I can see you falling asleep. (Click below to Enlarge)

Recap: I’ve been busy, market has been behaving according to plan and is not showing more negative signs than positive but no definite reversal has been noticed so just use the charts above for reference. If they are helpful, you are welcome to post comments so we can liven up the blog again.

Until next post…. Enjoy Making money!!

-K

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Existing Home Sales Plunge, Unemployment to do the reverse

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Existing Home Sales which are more important than the new home sales data plunged over 27% year over year, the amount of sales was the lowest since 1995. At the current pace it will take over 1 year (yes 12+ months) to sell the existing houses out there.

People have begun losing their jobs once again after a few months of lowering unemployment claims. How do I back this up? No data other than I now have more than one close acquaintance that within the next 2-3 weeks will receive a pink slip. They survived during the worst of it all and now employers are deciding its time to let go. Thats amazing! Keep your profits because you wont be making as much money in the future with 15% of the american workforce unable to afford staples such as bread without a food stamp.

On the currency front according to ZeroHedge

And once again, all of Europe is dumping its deposits in Switzerland, running away from domestic banking centers, and making the lives of Hungarian CHF-denominated debtors a living hell. The EURCHF just hit an all time low of 1.3066. The Bank intervention sonar just went apeshit as both the BoJ and the SNB are fully expected to intervene at any moment.

Technically Speaking? See for yourself how the market has acted recently especially since I officially returned from break August 6th.

K- August 6th, 2010
vacation just ended today so it will take me at least a week to slowly get the groove back. be patient this time…

Euro/Usd and SPX have been in a water slide since.  Its hard getting from Information overload mode to 2 month no internet and back to information overload so I tire out by all the information I once processed in a usual day so the recovery process puts me on tract to return trading right after labor day and the Special chart that hasn’t been posted here in a bit as well. (Click to Enlarge)

Happy Trading and make money trading not listening to baldies at CNBC unless he entertains you and the advice isnt followed. :)

-K

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The Perfectly Timed Vacation

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It’s been six weeks and the stockless and unwired vacation has wound down. To my surprise I see that BP bottomed right when I covered my July puts at a profit and since its nearly 39% up. Euro went from 1.22′s to 1.33′s and so on. Its time for me to find the reigns and take control of the market once more.

It will be a week or two until I get my trading groove on but for now i’ve updated the Current Pick’s page on top.
here are the main indices.

Market Indices

Symbol Description Buy Date Sell Date
$SPX
S&P 500 INDEX
7-7-2010
SPY
SPDR S&P 500 ETF
7-7-2010
$INDU
Dow Jones Industrial Average
7-7-2010
$COMPX
NASDAQ Composite
7-8-2010
QQQQ
PowerShares QQQ (ETF)
7-8-2010
IWM
iShares Russell 2000 Index (ETF)
8-6-2010

Hope its been a profitable 100 point market move for my fellow readers and here’s to more fun swings to come.

-K

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Tropical Storm Alex to BP’s Rescue

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I Want my life back! I am not the only one as plenty of fishes, birds, and people also want their life back that  BP plc (ADR) has taken away. Not to Worry because BP feels sorry, so sorry that it is donating oil spill revenue to charity (the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation). BP said it would provide $5 million to the group immediately, Based on a current futures price of $77.83 a barrel, the collected oil is worth about $1.2 million. BP hopes to cap the well by August.

With the CEO now out of the picture time to get back to work and stop this drilling insanity. Hmm maybe not thanks to a federal judge who has overturned the Obama administration’s 6-month moratorium on new deepwater offshore drilling projects. What’s the reason for overturning the decision?
The Interior Department said it needed time to study the risks of deepwater drilling but U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman said in his ruling the Interior Department assumed that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

Come on there has to be more to this story and thankfully there is. Like many judges presiding in the Gulf region, Feldman owns lots of energy stocks, including Transocean, Halliburton, and two of BP’s largest U.S. private shareholders — BlackRock (7.1%) and JP Morgan Chase (28.3%). Here’s a list of Feldman’s income in 2008.  How can he stop drilling when his heart is fully soaked in oil? He can’t because Industry ties among federal judges are so widespread that they are beginning to endanger the courts’ ability to conduct routine business.

More great news!  We don’t need to head to Italy to see the amazing Leaning Tower of Pisa because BP pipe is tilting more.
The Deepwater Horizon riser package that sits on the seabed a mile below the ocean surface weighs over 450 tons, including the 48-foot-tall failed blowout preventer. National Incident Commander Thad Allen announced that the riser package is tilting “10 or 12 degrees off perpendicular (On June 10 it was only tilting by about 2 or 3 degrees). Engineers and geologists fear the stack atop the well could tip over if the well integrity further degrades, leading to the “unlikely, but not implausible” scenario of “oil gushing through the sea floor.”

Hey you say, its unlikely and worst case scenario and BP will get things rolling before something worse happens. What else coulg go wrong? everything is already factored for the worse.
Oh wait! More Great news just arrived! Tropical Storm Alex comes to the rescue (or not) of BP.  The ECMWF model is the most aggressive in developing this system, taking it into the Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane next week. The NOGAPS model keeps the storm weak and farther south, predicting that 93L will bring heavy rains to northern Honduras as a tropical disturbance or tropical depression on Friday and Saturday. But either way this will be fun to watch.

Here is the graph of Invest93 (Tropical Storm Alex)


Check out some previous BP Posts:
BP Cares about the small people June 17
BP now stands for Bad Publicity June 14

Thats all Folks,
-K

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First Day of Summer

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Its June 21st and officially first day of summer. With that being said a summer vacation is in the works which might result in some inactivity on here.
But until then I will not stop improving and updating the blog. Last week I managed to get the blog running from 7 second load page to less than 2 which is 3x faster.

Next up was the much neglected Current Picks page that wasn’t updated since May 15th. That is now checked off the list and also an improvement in the look of the current picks page was done. Here is a before and after shot.

Next up on that page is to have a visual chart for at least the main indices but don’t expect it anytime soon.

Getting away from general information and into market talk. It seems like 6-10-2010 was a turning date for the majority of the symbols that my system tracks. The S&P is up 31 points (nearly 3%) since then. One thing i noticed is that 1139 is strong resistance if it the market gets that high.

Seeing this i decided to have some fun by plugging in BP stock into the system and i’ll let the chart speak for itself. Keep in mind BP rig exploded April 20th.

The Futures are up 13 points (1%). Only scheduled news is for Bennies counterpart Trichet to speak at 12:30pm.  Unscheduled news? well the US navy moving around in the Red Sea and the Israeli crafting a new “do not bring into Gaza” list.

Update: Oh and what’s this? Far offshore, crews drill into Gulf to stop oil (AP) Relief well? Ay Dios Mio!! The only little people left after this will be BP shareholders and pension funds. They dont know how much oil is underneath there… oh wait one relief well might not be enough because the aim has to be precise so lets drill about 50 and deplete the oil ASAP and when the bottom of the gulf becomes an empty cavity without the oil and collapses on itself it’ll look like a humongous version of  the Guatemalan Sinkhole and lets not mention the Mega Earthquake a crashing of the seafloor would create but wait lets add some tsunami for a topping :) . I realize i’m being a bit unrealistic as this takes time but lets put it this way,I might still be alive when it happens and it will not be pretty.

Make Money!!

-K

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Capital Gains Tax Rates to increase in 2011

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President Obama has publicly said that he will let the Bush-era capital gains tax cuts expire on schedule this year, so it’s important to know how they will affect your investments.
If you’re in the 10-15% tax bracket long term cap gains will go from 0% to 10% so if you have investments that you’ve held long term you might think of selling this year to avoid paying 10% to IRS  unless you are making a loss in which case you can hold and pray forever. For more detailed brackets visit Bargaineering

I always felt that the speed at which the TARP money was getting repaid was extreme for such a crisis. Major players paid big bucks back in order to possibly restore confidence in their institutions and the economy (of course so they could use more money to pay their CEO’s bonuses as well which was forbidden under TARP).  The latest headline didn’t shock me one bit.

After a string of profitable paybacks from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and 59 others, the list of deadbeats is growing. In May, 91 banks missed their dividend payments to taxpayers. Two big banks already look like serious zombies. Pacific Capital Bancorp , with $7.4 billion of assets, and Anchor Bancorp Wisconsin with $4.5 billion, have each missed five dividend payments and appear incapable of surviving without taxpayer cash.

This is so awesome and so unworthy of mentioning (since we know news always gets factored in before its published) but since my Celtics lost I had to create a new blog post.

Make money tomorrow and be careful if you’re messing with options as its options ex day.

-K

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BP Cares about the small people

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As you might have figured out by now, BP plc (ADR) Chairman and the CEO met with President Obama ONLY two months after the oil spill disaster.
Of course as I mentioned in the previous post BP now stands for Bad Publicity so nothing was unexpected on my end when the Chairman said: “I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.”   Bad publicity this time will cause BP to buy google ads for keywords such as petite, small, midgets, oompa loompa.  They needed a leprechaun to give them some lucky charms but now they insulted the small guy.

Did you hear that? BP cares about you so much that if you are in the Gulf of Mexico and for the next century your fishing or tourism business is doomed.. BP has put together $20 billion dollar fund for your damage It is truly truly truly sorry. Oh and If you weren’t affected by BP but are part of US pension funds – including Calpers, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Ohio Public Employees Retirement System then BP is truly truly truly sorry for you as well because the 12% dividend yield that you saw a few days ago will be reduced to 0% so they can spread that wealth to the victims.  You can enjoy your -50% gain in BP stock now.

But wait I forgot to mention one benefit of this disaster. BP has hired cleanup workers to clean things up and this good news for the people of the Gulf.  Hey you just got promoted from fisherman to fish rescuer, Congrats!!  Just sign here on the dotted line ………..   and just make sure to not get sea sick from the delicious fumes because your complaints and health information will never be part of BP’s record.

BP attempted to deny and conceal links of its oil spill to illnesses, after initial reports of oil cleanup workers who were getting sick due to extended exposure to oil and dispersants. Fishermen have complained of “severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing” after working to clean up the spill, and one said BP did not provide protective equipment. But BP CEO Tony Hayward brushed off illness concerns, suggesting “food poisoning” might have been the culprit.

Although Louisiana state records indicate that at least 74 oil spill workers have complained of becoming sick after exposure to pollutants, BP’s own official recordkeeping notes just two such incidents.

You all should feel sorry for BP Because it will take anywhere from 100 days to 365 days for BP to make back the $20 billion in profit while the victims sit at home and receive checks.
Ok fine that’s less than a year’s worth of profits… But this is just a fund for economic damage, and won’t protect it against all sorts of other legal costs. According to NYT legal costs and criminal fees could hit at least $63 billion.   WHOOPS!    Hey NYSE:BP stock… you will be missed when you hit $19 but on the bright side! You’ll be a teenager again full of energy (pun intended) !

And now for a mini change of subject.  Senate has now accepted an expanded Fed audit. The House proposal allows repeated future audits of discount window and open market transactions, whereas the Senate proposal had only allowed a one-time audit. Of course this is just a grain of salt and even when it’s passed it might be years before we see any audits.

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