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.

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

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

BP plc (ADR) has concluded that its “top-kill” attempt to seal its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor. If the casing is compromised the well is that much more difficult to shut down, including the risk that the relief wells may not be enough. If the relief wells do not result in stopping the flow, the next and drastic step is to implode the well on top of itself, which carries other risks as well. The real doomsday scenario here… is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into the formation, basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario. -Naked Capitalism

The U.S. Coast Guard gave BP Plc 48 hours to find more capacity to contain its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after scientists and researchers doubled their estimates of the spill’s size.Based on government estimates, the drillship isn’t capturing as much of the spill as BP predicted earlier this month. In a June 4 interview with CBS, Suttles said the system would be capable of capturing as much as 90 percent of the flow.

If BP does not comply with this order, and cannot give a satisfactory reason why, this will put them further on the back foot in their meeting with Obama next week. Readers are correctly cynical as to whether the Administration will live up to its tough words, but the groundwork is being laid, which would make failure to follow through even harder to defend.

Separately, BP said its board will meet June 14 to discuss whether to cut or defer its second-quarter dividend payment following the spill. This is causing BP's Major British Shareholders to Ditch The Company While American Ones Are Staying. Major UK institutions including Legal & General, M&G, Scottish Widows, Threadneedle and Axa have all trimmed their holdings since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank. US pension funds – including Calpers, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Ohio Public Employees Retirement System – have held their stakes in the company despite the dramatic fall in the share price.

If you think BP is a good buy right now check out this article: The Ultimate Contrarian Bet: BP

Lets see what today has in store for BP and the rest of the market.

Happy Trading

Update 1pm : - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.) and members of the Democratic caucus on Monday asked BP Plc (BP) to set aside $20 billion in a special account to be used to pay for economic damages and clean-up costs of an ongoing oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

Update 3:30pm: To demonstrate that it’s responsibly taking care of the oil spill and listening to public complaints, BP has touted the fact that it has set up call centers to handle the response. However, one of the operators at the BP Call Center in West Houston has revealed that she and the other 100 employees are just PR props; BP isn’t actually doing anything with the thousands of calls it receives: "“We’re a diversion to stop them from really getting to the corporate office, to the big people,” said Janice. … Because the operators believe the calls never get past them, some don’t even bother taking notes."

Here is an Update of the InvestingFreak Special SPX chart the Red Line (250MA is broken for now so lets see if it holds broken and turns into resistance. to the downside i see 1040 and to the upside a retest of 1104 at least is possible although not all this action might come monday. (Click Image to Enlarge)

So there you have it. Fun week ahead but lets all make money whichever way it goes.
Also visitors are always welcomed and encourage to comment and participate in daily market discussions, your posts wont be deleted or censored unless they contain inappropriate content and links.

S&P futures are down 9 points since the open.  On top of the page in the "Economic Calendar" tab you have easy access to the daily calendar happenings and live commodity futures.

There is much surprise that the German government has declared a ban on naked short selling, including CDS, as of midnight tonight, with no prior notice or the niceties demanded by the banks when government chooses to act. This action seems to have perturbed some and confused many.

Germany is claiming that this move will stop the Speculators

The ban will also apply to naked short selling in shares of 10 banks and insurers that will last until March 31, 2011, German financial regulator BaFin said today in an e-mailed statement. The step was needed because of “exceptional volatility” in euro-area bonds, the regulator said.

HMMM Where oh Where Have I heard this story before...  Oh Yeahh.. September 20, 2008 German regulator bans short-selling in financial stocks

Germany on Saturday halted short-selling in financial shares, when investors borrow company stock to sell it, following the example of Britain and the United States. The ban affects 11 shares including those of AAreal Bank, Allianz, AMB Generali, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Boerse, Deutsche Postbank, Hannover Re, Hypo Real Estate, MLP and Munich Re.    BaFin, said short sales were banned with immediate effect until the end of the year, underscoring that they could lead to huge losses in the current global financial turmoil.

Roll Back to May 18, 2010....

Allianz SE, Deutsche Bank AG, Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Boerse AG, Deutsche Postbank AG, Muenchener Rueckversicherungs AG, Hannover Rueckversicherungs AG, Generali Deutschland Holding AG, MLP AG and Aareal Bank AG are covered by the short-selling ban.   “Massive” short-selling was leading to excessive price movements which “could endanger the stability of the entire financial system,” BaFin said in the statement.

I wonder what happened last time they tried protecting the banks? Well I will examine it below but what's that I hear you say? This Time is Different?  It sure is!!
During the last Crisis we had Lehman go bankrupt and Bear Stearns collapse.  Two years later we don't have any financial institutions going down. We Have Countries that are crumbling and their "shareholders" (taxpayers and citizens) revolting.    Greece is Bear Stearns because of the trillion dollar bailout and Portugal might as well become Lehman because unless Europe is willing to print a trillion for every country they bail (which I know they can if they want) and euro dropping to parity and beyond with the dollar.... someone will have to hold the bankruptcy stick.

Anyways Lets look at how the last short selling ban affected the financial institutions they tried to protect.

I'm using Dow Jones Germany Index for a Benchmark as to compare returns.

Oh myyyyyy Germany Saved the day as speculators were on the sidelines watching and missing out on 18 to 65% gains (its what you do when you short and if you're not familiar just Google "selling stocks short")

The Previous ban was 3 months and the protected stocks crashed an average of 46%. The New Ban will be around 11 months and will crash how much? It will crash aplenty so I will not make an exact percentage call on this one. But I will be doing one thing this time around though.  I'm putting German Financials on a Bank Watch List that I will check back on April 1st 2011.

Make plenty of money these next few weeks even if my blogging is sporiadic at best. (Offline life always comes first)

-K

Quick Update to the post on April 28 Special Edition: Here comes the red ink, correction begins.
I want to talk about my leading market indicator ( Sotheby's  BID)
As Quoted from April 28's article.

Now lets take a look domestically at  BID - Sotherby's   which as I mentioned on March 14th's post is Part of my indicators arsenal.  A move below 32 (20% drop from 39) would tell me to wipe the dust off my ammunition and a move under 22 (40+% drop) would just signal that Chaos is back and since this is a Leading indicator to me it would highly influence my positions.

What BID did today is move below 32 for most of the day so my ammunition is now dust free and waiting for the under 22 move if it comes.

Go to the link above to check the older chart (or click here) but here is the one updated today that shows you how BID bounced right on the trend-lines I had drawn a while back.  Since it bounced at 28 that to me signals that there is still a chance for survival from this heart attack.

Here's the chart and I will stop here for the day. Tomorrow there should be a textbook green day with more red on the way for next week. (Click to Enlarge)

-K

Nightly News Links

US Economy:

Ben Bernanke's Mortgage Buying Will Be Missed (Until Round 2 Begins) (Business Insider)
The mortgage backed security (MBS) purchase program began in earnest on March 18, 2009, when Fed Chairman Bernanke announced an expansion of the program to the size limit of $1.25 trillion. The result of that program saw the S&P 500 rise 55.08% between March 18 and today (March 31, 2010), its end. What will the world be like after?

Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time (NYT)
The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Chicago PMI Dissapoints (Econompic)
Investors were also disappointed Wednesday by a survey of Chicago-area purchasing managers that showed U.S. business activity continued to expand in March, but at a slower pace than the previous month. The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago said its business barometer slipped to 58.8 in March, from a nearly five-year high of 62.6 in February. Economists expected a reading of 60.8.
Still, Croft noted that a reading above 50 still reflects expansion. "We think the economy is marching forward here, but not at an extremely fast pace," he said.

ADP Employment... Not Yet "Back in Black" (Econompic)
While many are waiting for Friday’s Payroll figure to tell them the state of the US labor market, I’m going to rely on today’s ADP report as a better gauge. That is because it is private sector based and thus won’t be distorted by the likely 100k+ adds of government census workers and the “methodology used to construct it” takes out most of the impact of the Feb snow storms and March snapback. It turns out that +40,000 was a bit optimistic as ADP showed a contraction of another 23,000 jobs. If these figures are to be believed (we will see "official figures" Friday), then we may have to wait for April for the private sector to stop contracting.

Market Call:Down(Zen Trader)
On a daily time frame I received my sell signal today and picked up DXD & SDS. We’ve been trading in a range with multiple distribution days this past week and it appears we’re in for some more selling. Could I be wrong and we rally? For sure. However, a number of other signals are pointing down.

World Economy:

European Unemployment to 11 1/2 Year High (EconomPic)
Euro zone inflation was much higher than expected in March and the unemployment rate reached 10 percent in February, data showed on Wednesday, highlighting the fragility of economic recovery.

The IMF Warns About German Banks... And That's Bad News For France's Too (Business Insider)
Mike O'Rourke of BTIG spotlights some interesting comments from a recently released IMF report (.pdf) on Germany:
“Simulation exercises suggest that German banks could suffer significant losses from commercial real estate investments in the U.S. and Spain, and more generally from exposures to Southern Europe. The simulations also suggest that a reassessment of risks associated with claims on Southern Europe could have a large impact on capital flows within Europe, as German (and also French) banks would significantly reduce their foreign claims to restore capital ratios.”

Interesting Links:

The Story Of Bottled Water (2010)
The Story of Bottled Water, released on March 22, 2010 (World Water Day) employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over five minutes, the film explores the bottled water industrys attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0

Have a Good Night

-K

Nightly News Links

US Economy:

Q4 GDP Revised down to 5.6% (from 5.9%) (Calculated Risk)
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 ... Real personal consumption expenditures increased 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter. Note that PCE and Residential Investment (RI) - the two leading categories - were both revised down for Q4. This suggests that final demand was weaker in Q4 than in the previous two estimates.

Half of US Home Modifications Default Again (Bloomberg)
More than half of U.S. borrowers who received loan modifications on delinquent mortgages defaulted again after nine months, according to a federal report. The re-default rate of loans modified in the first quarter of 2009 was 51.5 percent by the end of the year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision said in a joint report today. The figure, which measures payments at least 30 days late, climbed to 57.9 percent for changes made in the prior 12 months.

Treasury Planning Citi Stake Sale (New York Times)
The Treasury could unveil a preset trading plan next month for the sale of its 27 percent stake in Citigroup Inc, Bloomberg said on Thursday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. Citigroup shares rose 2.9 percent to close at $4.27 following the report, which soothed investor fears that the United States would dump large blocks of shares on the market.
The Treasury plan will lock the government into a schedule for selling its shares with the aim of eliminating any concerns that the sales are based on nonpublic information.

World Economy:

Greece is finally given their safety blanket (The Big Picture)
As has been hinted at for the past few days, Germany and France have agreed to involve the IMF in a joint backstop that will be there for Greece ONLY if they run into a funding crisis. Greece needs to raise about 20b euro’s by the end of May to meet upcoming maturities. ECB Pres Trichet who said he wanted to avoid using the IMF yesterday, said he was “extraordinarily happy that the government of the euro area found out a workable solution.” Greek debt is rallying, stocks are up 3% and the euro is higher.

Geopoltical Update: South Korean Ship Likely Hit By North Korean Torpedo, Emergency Security Meeting Held In Seoul (Zero Hedge)
Several South Korean sailors were killed and one of its naval ships with more than 100 aboard was sinking on Friday after possibly being hit by a North Korean torpedo, South Korean media reported. A South Korean vessel fired at an unidentified vessel towards the north and the South's presidential Blue House was holding an emergency security meeting, Yonhap news agency said. South Korea's YTN TV network said the government was investigating whether the sinking was due to a torpedo attack by the North. The network also quoted a government source saying it was unclear yet whether the incident was related to North Korea.

Goldman Joins Race for $10 Billion Polish Asset Sales (Bloomberg)
The Polish capital is luring international investment banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world’s most profitable, as the government prepares record share offerings this year. The main lure is advisory work for the Polish government, which plans to sell stakes this year in its energy, insurance, chemical and phone companies to raise $10 billion to finance the widening budget deficit. The economy, the only one in the European Union to avoid a recession, and the Warsaw Stock Exchange, where the total value of listed companies has tripled since 2003, are also attractive, bankers said.
“It’s no wonder foreign banks are coming to Poland,”

Have a Good Night

-K

A stop order (also stop loss order) is an order to buy (or sell) a security once the price of the security has climbed above (or dropped below) a specified stop price. (Note that both bid and ask prices can trigger a stop order.) When the specified stop price is reached, the stop order is entered as a market order (no limit). This means the trade will definitely be executed, but not necessarily at or near the stop price, particularly when the order is placed into a fast-moving market, or if there is insufficient liquidity available relative to the size of the order.

I filled an order for 400 PFE at $17.90 (its support). I set a stop-loss at $17.78-- I like to take tiny losses. While away, look what happened:

For a fraction of a second, the price fell to $17.75! Coincidence? This is what happens when others set stop losses and the movement is bearish-- they are being taken out within fraction of a second. More importantly however, stop losses can be seen by market makers and they sure know how to make your life miserable.

Regardless, my stop loss order was not taken out and I'm still in this trade.

Best of all, just see what happened right after: