Stocks futures are frozen in place, perhaps fitting given the weather and "Big Huge Event" on the horizon tomorrow when the ECB announces QE-Euro style. Yesterday the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was basically unchanged though it did move in a more than 1% range. On the chart we're still stuck in that range from roughly 2,000 to 2,050. It should be apparent by now that we're not going to break out of that area without a good reason.
Broadly, earnings have been a bit of a mess. With 49 S&P 500 companies having reported the average growth in EPS is only .4%. The only slightly interesting wrinkle is that revenues are actually outstripping earnings, rising .8%. Either way it's the slowest growth since Q3 of 2012 and, at least thus far, there isn't a lot of reason to believe it's going to get better in 2015.
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But there's always a trade, even when the numbers sort of stink. Hidden in the flat averages has been a relative beat down in some former high fliers. One of those names, Netflix (NFLX), is up 15% this morning after announcing sort of blah subscriber growth last night. What's interesting is that Netflix shares were down about 25% going into last night, in part on concerns over content prices. Well last night Netflix said it's going to raise $1 billion, enough to fund 20 more Adam Sandler movies.
It's not the news that's important, but the reaction. If the market is willing to pay 15% more for shares of Netflix this morning it really doesn't matter what you think of Adam Sandler flix. For that matter, it's irrelevant that House of Cards pushed its creative ambitions in front of a train years ago. Wall Street wants beaten down stocks and content. That's not a green light to buy high spec names but it's a flashing yellow for more aggressive traders.
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Here are three loosely related, relatively beaten down names that have sort of a Netflix vibe ahead of their numbers:
How about Alibaba (BABA). Yes, Yahoo owns a huge chunk of it. That stock is down 17% from its highs. Netflix is going to China? Baby, Baba is already there.
Consider also Amazon (AMZN), handing out sitcoms to Woody Allen of all people. Amazon invented profitless investing in the future and the stock has been death.
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Finally the big daddy of tech in Apple (AAPL). Shares are off more than 10% from recent highs. It's not exactly a "dip" given the run its had and Apple's chart still looks bad with lower highs but anytime you get a dip has been a decent excuse and $100 makes a nice support level.
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