Market News

Dividend stocks are a “no brainer” compared to Treasuries says Bob Doll, the chief equity strategist for Nuveen Asset Management. He told Bloomberg Radio that with dividends outpacing yields on government bonds, it’s an easy decision in favor of equities.

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Whole Foods is losing market share to competitors ranging from Costco to Kroger. For proof, look no further than the company's third quarter earnings report, which revealed a fourth straight quarter of comparable store sales declines.

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In mid-July General Electric hit a new post-crisis high, fueled by the industrial giant's successful exit of most of its financial services businesses and a refocusing on its engineering roots. The earnings report capped an over 20% surge in GE's stock over the previous 12-month, which has won Immelt increasing support on Wall Street even from so-called hedge fund activists like Trian Partners. But, it doesn't seem like GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt believes the company's turnaround 100% complete.

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Chipotle is still reeling from the outbreak of several food-borne illnesses last year. Will a new burger concept help turn things around?

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Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) online ad company Google owns YouTube. According to Trefis estimates, YouTube makes up over 12.5% of Alphabet's value. Trefis also estimates that it generated nearly $12.6 billion in revenues in 2015. However, Alphabet continues to explore avenues to boost YouTube's revenues. While last year the company launched the ads free videos streaming subscription services on YouTube platform called YouTube Red, it is now exploring a paid YouTube subscription cable service called Unplugged that would offer customers a bundle of cable TV channels streamed over the Internet. Through the launch of these services, the company is trying to disrupt the $64 billion video-on-demand (VoD) industry and the $200 billion TV advertising industry. In this note, we explore the VOD industry and the subscription VOD model. In a second article, we explore how YouTube can disrupt the cable industry and monetize its skinny cable model through AVoD (see below).

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Recently, LinkedIn acquired PointDrive, a Chicago-based start-up which has a technology allowing sales professionals to share visual content with prospective clients, thus building better relationships. The company plans to integrate PointDrive's technology into its sales solutions portfolio to better position LinkedIn as a platform where sales professionals can engage with clients. This acquisition comes on the back of LinkedIn's enhancements to its Sales Navigator tool, where the company included CRM sync, Gmail extension and new discovery features on the Sales Navigator mobile app. Once LinkedIn becomes a part of Microsoft (after the pending acquisition), an increased focus on its sales tools can enable the company to tap into the growing trend of social selling. The enhancement of its sales products can drive revenues for its Premium Subscription segment, where Sales Navigator is the fastest growing component.

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Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc. (NASD: CSOD), where a total volume of 2,795 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 279,500 underlying shares (given that every 1 contract represents 100 underlying shares). That number works out to 43.4% of CSOD's average daily trading volume over the past month, of 643,665 shares. Particularly high volume was seen for the $45 strike call option expiring August 19, 2016, with 1,350 contracts trading so far today, representing approximately 135,000 underlying shares of CSOD. Below is a chart showing CSOD's trailing twelve month trading history, with the $45 strike highlighted in orange:

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After eating the dust of growth stocks for a decade, the value investing strategy has come out ahead this year.Some of the growth stocks that led last year's returns either experienced altitude sickness or slowed. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) shed 2% year to date after gaining 46% in 2015. Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) gained 19% after a 32% year. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is up 11% compared to 123%. Mostly notably, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) has caved 20% after starring as the best performing stock last year, gaining 140%. The S&P 500 so far this year has gained 6.6%.

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The high-low fallacy makes certain investments appear much more attractive on the surface. When one peers below the surface, the fundamentals of the business are often revealed to be in much worse shape. This week's Danger Zone pick has a history of executing a traditional roll-up strategy to great success - if you only care about revenue growth. For those that care about profits, the increasing losses and declining ROIC earn Acadia Healthcare (ACHC) a spot on July's Most Dangerous Stocks list.

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Despite a week of good news, after hours S&P Trading on Thursday evening provided flat trading. It’s a bit disconcerting that with 4 of the 8 largest capitalized stocks in the S&P 500 not only rising in price, but exceeding expectations, the overall market was unable to pick up any substantial steam in Friday's trading. The E-mini closed Friday’s session with a gain of about six points.

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