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After three consecutive quarters of massive beats, Netflix stock is tumbling, down over 10% in kneejerk reaction to Q2 earnings, which beat on earnings but missed and revenue, saw fewer than expected subscribers added in the quarter, and projected less than expected new subscribed in the coming quarter..

In Q2, NFLX reported EPS of $0.85, beating expectations of $0.79 but missed modestly on the top line, reporting $3.91BN in revenue, below the $3.94BN expected. Far more concerning, however, was the number of subscribers which missed on both domestic and international:

• Q2 total net streaming additions 5.15MM, a drop from last quarter’s 7.41MM, and below the Exp. 6.27 MM
  • Q1 domestic net streaming additions 0.67MM; missing badly Wall Street exp. 1.21MM, and the company guidance of 1.20MM
  • Q1 international net streaming additions 4.47MM, Wall Street exp. 5.06MM, guidance 5.00MM

Meanwhile, Netflix’ Q3 2018 outlook was also weaker than expected, with the company now expecting Q2 net streaming adds of only 5.00 million (0.65 MM in the US and 4.35 MM internationally), a decline from the current quarter’s disappointing numbers, and far below the 5.93 million sellside estimate.

NFLX also expects $3.988 billion in Q3 revenue, generating EPS of only 65 cents, the worst quarter in years.

Adding insult to injury, the company returned to its massive cash burning ways, reporting that in Q2 2018 it burned a whopping $559 billion, the highest number in the past year.

 

Developing

 

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Did the machines take a day off? Were they in Helsinki too?

Amid the end-of-the-world – if you believe the media – Trump-Putin press conference, today was The Dow’s lowest intraday range day since Christmas 2017…

 

The Ruble managed to hold gains… So did Putin ‘win’ after all?

 

And cryptocurrencies surged – perhaps helped by chatter of BlackRock sniffing around…

 

Futures were volatile overnight…

 

But cash markets were dead during the day. Dow Transports were the biggest loser in equity land as The Dow trod water around unch all day…

 

Netflix closed higher into earnings…

 

As the world waits with bated breath to see if the FAANGs can do it again…

 

Banks soared today, erasing Friday’s losses…

 

Are Semis signaling trouble ahead for the S&P?…

 

Bonds & Stocks remain in their own worlds…

 

Treasury yields ended the day higher, but rallied after Europe closed…

 

The yield curve popped… and dropped…

 

The Dollar drifted lower today, extending Friday’s reversal…

 

In commodity land, PMs and copper went nowhere fast…

 

But 4th time was the charm for WTI Crude to break below $70…and plunge it did as outage concerns eased – 2nd worst day for WTI in 13 months (last wednesday was only one worse) – Also the biggest 4-day drop since March 2017

 

Finally, as we noted earlier, what happens next?

 

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A private equity firm co-founded in 2007 by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young has been accused of covering up a massive fraud at one of its portfolio companies. The accusations, which came in the form of a civil suit filed by the acquirer of the firm where the fraud allegedly took place, have prompted the FBI to investigate, potentially placing Young, his partners and his employees in hot water, per the New York Post.

HGGC, where Young is a managing director, purportedly helped falsify test results at Citadel Plastics, according to the lawsuit, which was brought by plastics manufacturer A Schulman, which bought Citadel in 2015 for $800 million.

The PE firm, HGGC (which was formerly known as Huntsman Gay Capital Partners), where Young is a managing director, “falsified test results” at its Citadel Plastics company, according to a lawsuit filed by rival plastic manufacturer A. Schulman, which bought Citadel for $800 million in 2015.

Citadel allegedly had been selling products with the claim that they met Underwriters Laboratories specs, when they did not, according to court testimony.

A civil trial over the alleged fraud started in April, and Judge Travis Laster is expected to rule on the liabilities portion of the suit as early as the end of this month.

Schulman, is seeking damages of up to $275 million. What’s worse, federal investigators are probing the alleged fraud. Already, the FBI has issued more than five subpoenas.

Federal investigators are also probing the alleged antics at Lucent Polymers — purchased by HGGC’s Citadel in 2013, court papers reveal. The FBI has issued more than five subpoenas in the matter. Young was not among those subpoenaed — nor is he one of the executives named in the suit, although his PE firm is.

The lawsuit “came back into focus” last week after Young – a hall of fame quarterback – said during an interview that his firm’s strengths include its ability to form partnerships with its portfolio companies.

Schulman’s 2016 lawsuit came back into focus last week after Young said in a TV interview that a major ingredient of his PE firm’s recipe for success is forming partnerships with its portfolio companies.

“We’re really attacking the market in an old-school way: We really look for partnership,” Young, known for his stand-out years as a San Francisco 49er, told CNBC.

HGGC has denied knowledge of the fraud, arguing that its role has been to provide “financial oversight” of Citadel, as well as “helping with M&A. An executive director at the firm also said he didn’t notice any “red flags” when he served as chairman at Citadel.

“I think there is a certain level of arrogance at HGGC that surprises me,” said one source close to Schulman, who said Young’s TV appearance caught his attention.

In the court battle, Schulman claims HGGC at least knew about the potential for fraud at Lucent because the PE firm’s Citadel team flagged potential problems with the highly profitable Lucent product lines, according to court filings.

HGGC Executive Director Gary Crittenden, who was also chairman of Citadel, said during court testimony that he did not see any red flags at Lucent when the company was bought – or during the period it owned it.

The trial started in April, and a ruling on whether HGGC is liable for the fraud could be handed down in the coming weeks.

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

When I was a little girl I used to end all my nightly prayers with the words, “And please no nuclear war, and peace on earth. Amen.” This was in the early eighties. The knowledge that weapons existed armed and ready which could annihilate all life on earth, including my Mum and my Dad and everyone I loved, kept me up at night.

I still marvel at the fact that these weapons exist, just as armed and just as ready, and we just go about our lives like it’s perfectly normal. They’re even more prone to malfunction than they were back then, because so many parts of the system are much older now. All it would take is something failing to work the way it’s meant to or somebody making a mistake or miscommunication that hadn’t been adequately anticipated and prepared for, and it could set into motion a chain of events from which there is no coming back. We’ve already come within a hair’s breadth of nuclear annihilation on more than one occasion due to such occurrences, and yet people still act like preventing that from ever happening isn’t the single most important priority for our entire species.

In the days leading up to the Helsinki summit between leaders of Russia and the United States, an open letter titled “Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security” was published and signed by experts, activists and scholars ranging from Noam Chomsky to Gloria Steinem to Daniel Ellsberg to Michael Moore. Part of the letter reads as follows:

“At the same time, the US and Russian governments show numerous signs of being on a collision course. Diplomacy has given way to hostility and reciprocal consular expulsions, along with dozens of near-miss military encounters in Syria and in skies above Europe. Both sides are plunging ahead with major new weapons-development programs. In contrast to prior eras, there is now an alarming lack of standard procedures to keep the armed forces of both countries in sufficient communication to prevent an escalation that could lead to conventional or even nuclear attack. These tensions are festering between two nations with large quantities of nuclear weapons on virtual hair-trigger alert; yet the current partisan fixations in Washington are ignoring the dangers to global stability and, ultimately, human survival.”

Open Letter –On Common Ground: For Secure Elections & True National Security, signed by Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, Walter Mosley, Amb. Jack Matlock, Gov. Bill Richardson, Valerie Plame, Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Walker, among 23 signers/ via @thenation https://t.co/sUTHXGlRnp

— Katrina vandenHeuvel (@KatrinaNation) July 11, 2018

All of this is completely true.

You can perhaps understand why, then, when #TreasonSummit became the top trend on Twitter during the Helsinki summit, little 1983 Caitlin Johnstone wanted to punch everyone spouting that moronic bullshit right in the fucking nose.

Though you’ll never hear American mass media talking about it on either MSNBC or Fox News because it doesn’t fit the narrative on either side, Trump has actually dangerously escalated cold war tensions with Russia far beyond anything his predecessor dared to do. From adopting a Nuclear Posture Review with greatly increased aggression toward Russia and blurring lines between when nuclear strikes are and are not appropriate, to facilitating the longstanding neoconservative agenda to arm Ukraine (a dangerously hawkish move which Obama adamantly refused to do), to repeatedly bombing the Syrian government and killing Russians in Syria as part of its illegal occupation of that country, to throwing out Russian diplomats on more than one occasion, to expanding NATO with the addition of Montenegro, to aggressive sanctions on Russian oligarchs and more, this administration has inflamed tensions along multiple fronts and increased the probability of something going disastrously, irrevocably wrong.

Whether the US president has been doing these things because that was his plan all along, or because he is beholden to powers which wish to advance such agendas, or because he’s caving to political pressures from his opponents in order to avoid accusations of treason, is a question that’s open for debate. Personally, I do not care. What matters is the fact that these escalations are there, and that they need to be scaled down, and that I shouldn’t have to share a fucking planet with anyone who thinks otherwise.

Is #TreasonSummit really trending on Twitter?

Where was this hashtag when Trump was canoodling with Netanyahu and Bin Salman?

— Sameera Khan (@SameeraKhan) July 16, 2018

Opposing talks which could lead to de-escalations between the two countries who own almost all of the nuclear warheads in the world is inexcusable and unforgivable. I don’t care if you’re dumb enough to swallow the US intelligence community’s still completely unsubstantiated claims of Russian hacking. I don’t care if you think Trump is bought and owned by Vladimir Putin. Even if both of those things were true, there would still be no excuse for opposing peace talks in a dangerously escalating new cold war. None.

Communication and understanding in this situation is an objectively good thing. This meeting with Russia’s leader, which all US presidents have done for many decades, is an objectively good thing. If you have joined in the campaign to help shove the tide of opinion away from peace and toward nuclear holocaust, you are making yourself an enemy of humanity. You have become so warped and demented by your hatred of Donald Trump that it has made a part of you less human.

I despise Donald Trump and everything he stands for, and I despise everything that created him. I hate that I have to know his fucking name. But he is the only President of the United States right now, and he is in a unique position to help steer us away from the iceberg and avoid a confrontation that everyone on earth should want to avoid. Any possibility of that happening, however remote, should be supported.

Only assholes and morons oppose these peace talks. If you want to help steer this ship into the iceberg of nuclear holocaust, then I want you thrown overboard. Get a fucking grip, you raving lunatics. Stop this. Stop this immediately.

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San Diego Judge Dana Sabraw has thrown another wrench into the Trump administration’s plans for tightening security at the US border by issuing a temporary halt to deportations of families that were separated under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.

In his ruling, the judge argues that the families need some additional time to consider whether to pursue requests for asylum. It was made in response to a request from the ACLU, which said it was responding to “persistent and increasing rumors…that mass deportations may be carried out imminently and immediately upon reunification,” according to the Associated Press.

Sabraw ruled last month that the Trump administration would have 30 days to reunite the youngest children detained under the policy with their parents. The administration just barely finished the reunifications before the deadline, though it said some children could not be reunited with their parents because they had been deported, or for some other reason. The government is now working to reunite some of the older minors with their families.

These same families now must be given at least a week to consult with their children and an advocate or counsel about their chances for asylum.

The American Civil Liberties Union had asked Judge Dana Sabraw to delay deportations a week after reunification. The ACLU said in a court filing that its request is a response to “persistent and increasing rumors … that mass deportations may be carried out imminently and immediately upon reunification.”

The ACLU said parents need a week after being reunified with their children to decide whether to pursue asylum.

The decision “cannot be made until parents not only have had time to fully discuss the ramifications with their children, but also to hear from the child’s advocate or counsel, who can explain to the parent the likelihood of the child ultimately prevailing in his or her own asylum case if left behind in the U.S. (as well as where the child is likely to end up living),” the ACLU says.

DOJ attorney Scott Stewart opposed the delay, but did not address the mass deportation rumors in court, according to the Associated Press. He added that he would respond later in writing. The judge gave the department until next Monday.

The Trump administration had recently taken steps to speed up its vetting procedures to help reunite families more quickly. But Sabraw said he had begun to have second thoughts about the government’s motives for speeding up the reunification process, though he later praised Jonathan White of the Office of Refugee Resettlement who said that some of the older children had already been reunited with their families and that “it is our intent to reunify children promptly.”

DOJ attorneys assured the judge that the children were being well cared for and offered to have him visit the facilities where they were being housed. But Sabraw argued that “no matter how nice the environment is, it’s the act of separation from a parent, particularly with young children, that matters.”

On Friday, Sabraw, who has been overseeing the government’s reunification efforts, ordered the Trump administration to give legal advocates 12-hours notice of when and where immigrant families would be reunited, an attempt to make the process less chaotic.

Sabraw’s latest order was likely intended to show the Trump administration that it can’t rush to reunite families only to immediately deport them. Migrant families will now be entitled to spend some time in the US working on their asylum claims, regardless of how quickly parents are reunited with their children.

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Two weeks ago, Goldman made a surprising finding: as of July 1, just one stock alone was responsible for more than a third of the market’s YTD performance: Amazon, whose 45% YTD return has contributed to 36% of the S&P 3% total return this year, including dividends. Goldman also calculated that the rest of the Top 10 S&P 500 stocks of 2018 are the who’s who of the tech world, and collectively their total return amounted to 122% of the S&P total return in the first half of the year.

And another striking fact: just the Top 4 stocks, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Netflix have been responsible for 84% of the S&P upside in 2018 (and yes, these are more or less the stocks David Einhorn is short in his bubble basket, which explains his -19% YTD return).

Now, in a review of first half performance, Bank of America has performed a similar analysis and found that excluding just the five FAANG stocks, the S&P 500 return in H1 would have been -0.7%; Staples (-8.6%) and Telco (-8.4%) were the worst.

FAANGs aside, here are the other notable sector observations about a market whose leadership has rarely been this narrow:

• Only three sectors outperformed in the 1H (Discretionary, Tech and Energy). Meanwhile, Staples and Telecom were the worst-performers in the 1H.
• Energy staged the biggest comeback in 2Q to become the quarter’s best-performing sector after turning in among the worst returns in 1Q.
• Industrials and Financials notably underperformed in June, the 2Q, and the 1H while Discretionary and Energy outperformed in all three.

Looking at the entire first half performance, tech predictably was the biggest contributor to the S&P 500’s 1H gain, contributing 2.6ppt or 98% of the S&P 500’s 2.6% total return.

The broader market did ok: trade tensions, negative headlines, and the slow withdrawal of Fed liquidity contributed to volatility’s return in June and earlier in February, but the S&P 500 still ended 2Q +3.4% and the 1H +2.6%, outperforming bonds and gold.

The Russell 2000 led the Russell 1000 by 4.9ppt in the 1H as small caps may have benefitted from expectations of a stronger US economy, a strong USD and the sense that smaller more domestic companies are shielded from trade tensions (where we take issue with this notion). However, mega-caps also did well: the “Nifty 50” largest companies within the S&P 500 beat the “Not-so-nifty 450” in the 2Q and the 1H. Non-US performed worst.

Some additional return details by asset class:

• US stocks outperformed most other asset classes in the 1H, including bonds, cash, and gold.
• Within equities, the US was the only major region to post positive returns, outperforming non-US equities by 6.1ppt in US dollar terms in the 1H.
• Amid concerns over global growth, a stronger dollar and trade, coupled with a strong US economic backdrop, small caps outperformed large caps in the 1H.
• Megacaps also did well: the “Nifty 50” mega-caps within the S&P 500 beat the “Other 450” stocks in 2Q and the 1H.

Performance by quant groups:

• Growth factors were the best-performing group in the 1H (+6.7% on average), leading Momentum/Technical factors (the second best-performing group) by 1.7ppt while Value factors were among the weakest.
• Despite the macro risks, the best way to make money was to stick to the fundamentals and own stocks with the highest Upward Estimate Revisions (+12.4% in the 1H), a Growth factor.
• Low Quality (B or worse) stocks beat High Quality (B+ or better) stocks in June, 2Q and the 1H. But both the lowest and highest quality stocks outperformed the rest of the market in all three periods.

The Russell 1000 Growth Index beat the Russell 1000 Value Index by 9ppt in the 1H, on track to exceed last year’s 17ppt spread. Growth factors were the best-performing group in the 1H (+6.7% on avg.), followed by Momentum factors. But Momentum broke down in June, and June saw the 56th worst month out of 60, -1.4 standard deviations from average returns.

What about alpha?

Unfortunately for active managers, BofA notes that while pair-wise correlations remain lows, alpha remained scarce. The average pairwise correlation of S&P 500 stocks rose sharply in 1Q with the increased volatility which typically hurts stock pickers, but quickly came down below its long-term average of 26% in 2Q. However, performance dispersion (long-short alpha) continues to trail its long-term average.

What does this mean for active managers? According to BofA, never has the herding been this profound: since the bank began to track large cap fund holdings in 2008, managers have been increasing their tilts towards expensive, large, low dividend yield and low quality stocks. And today, their respective factor exposure relative to the S&P 500 is near its record level.

This is a risk because as we discussed recently, the threat is that as a result of an adverse surprise, “everyone” would be forced to sell at the same time. As BofA notes, “positioning matters more than fundamentals in the short-term, and this has been especially true around the quarter-end rebalancing. Since 2012, a long-short strategy of selling the 10 most overweight stocks and buying the 10 most underweight stocks by managers over the 15 days post-quarter-end would have yielded an average annualized spread of 90ppt, 15x higher than the average annualized spread of 6ppt over the full 90 days.”

Keep an eye on the first FAANG today when Netflix reports after the close.

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