Reading with Cody: Today’s links…
Here’s some of what I’m reading this morning along with my thoughts on each topic.
An Explanation and Some Reflections – I know a few folks over at Netflix, including Reed Hastings, the CEO and author of this strangely apologetic but still arrogant “reflection” and I can’t tell you what the heck he’s doing with this. I didn’t think the DVD and streaming pricing changes that Netflix put through a few months ago was that big of a deal. But if he thinks the revolt from the customers over this issue is about him needing to communicate better and not about the pricing and the lack of decent stream-able content on the site…then he’s got another thing coming. And changing the shipping service to Quickster (Qwikster? Qwixter? What was the new name of the DVD service again?) is not exactly clarifying much of anything. I’d have thought Netflix would be tempting after this big pullback, but as I wrote the other day (see Revolution Investment ratings for Akamai, F5, Netflix and six others), “There’s not a lot of cash for the company to work with so they’ve got to execute perfectly. That raises the risks.” Netflix has not been executing the last few months and that’s going to keep me on the sidelines.
Near-term trading strategies from the Wall Street All Stars – Quite a few bulls. Guys liking tech, including RIMM, Priceline, Amazon and Google and Apple. But nobody’s buying right now. Is that bullish or bearish?
Indicator Update 9/18/11 – I like to follow Jeff Miller’s economic commentary because he filters through a lot of the nonsensical economic indicators and trends to try to end up with some sort of meaningful near-term and longer-term economic conclusions. His leaning bearish for the very near-term and I can’t argue against that much just now, especially after last week’s big rally taking us to some new highs in a lot of our stocks, I’m not a stomping bull as much as I was a during August’s big crashes.
UBS raises loss estimate to $2.3B and Obama seeks $3 tln in cuts – Lost in all this discussion about yet another rogue trader at yet another brokerage/bank/conglomerate is the fact that US taxpayers are spotting these UBS traders the entire nut they’re trading with. Obama and the Republican/Democrat Corporatist Regime he fronts is looking for billions of dollars in cuts to social security and food stamps and so on, even as UBS remains on welfare. Remember this? “Federal Reserve data showing UBS AG and Barclays Plc ranked among the top users of $3.3 trillion from emergency programs is stoking debate…” Short the banks, welfare-funded trading won’t last much longer.
Gold Heading Higher Is A Certainty – I am a gold bear, but not short yet. Jay’s got a catalyst for gold coming up that I’d not considered, but the trend is up, and I’m not fighting it.
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Cody Willard writes Revolution Investing for MarketWatch and posts the trades from his personal account at TradingWithCody.com. At time of publication, Cody was net long Apple and Google.
