News and analysis

Netflix (NFLX) continues to climb further up, even in the days when some other mega caps like Google-parent Alphabet (GOOG) and Apple (APPL) stopped growing to adjust their price levels. The streaming giant, and one of my favourites, just added another 10% during the next month after its amazing quarterly numbers (released on January 23). The following morning on Wall Street, its share price ranged between $540 and $560, after a close at $492 on the previous day, very close to the price I bought the stock when coming back from my Christmas vacation. And now it costs nearly $100 more at $600, 22% higher against the start of the year. And my personal target for Netflix shifted to at least $800, if not approaching $1000, which would mean doubling. It sounds extremely cool for a non-AI stock in the chip insanity epoch. If one would ask me, what is exactly the driver for Netflix's very fast development on charts, then I will rather focus on keeping the ability to create awesome content.

The first thing one can see when opening the homepage of Netflix at the moment is Avatar: The Last Airbender, starring as the main dish of the Top 10. The release date was February 22, 2024, which was only one week ago, yet I am more than sure, Netflix CEOs would mark this saga as the major contributor to cash gathering for the first quarter. If you may be unfamiliar with the original adventure fantasy cartoon series about the journey of twelve-year-old Aang, the Avatar and also the last survivor of his nation of the Air Nomads, then you have missed a lot. This boy and his friends peacefully master the four elemental powers of nature to save a world at war when ruthless enemies are eager to fight. A whole nostalgic generation of young adults who wanted to see how this happened in a live-action world grew up. These former children, teenagers and their parents are dreaming of Aang riding his faithful sky bison Appa once again to reimagine the acclaimed animated series.

The movie makers suddenly found an unmistakable weak spot inside the hearts from various countries and all continents, who simply cannot resist the temptation to experience it, even if there are several seasons - as the TV series about the unity of all living beings and the playful avatar of this suffering world who is destined to save it is coming exactly at a proper time. According to the story, the Fire Nation is obsessed with solving all their hidden and obvious internal complexes on the battlefield. Isn't that an accurate diagnosis for our real world's disease that it badly needs, and therefore the simple movie is hitting the bullseye of the TV audience, as well as of the Wall Street crowds. For me, mentioning "bullseye" is the perfect play on words to describe the effect on markets.

Hindu people like the film, as they feel echoes of their national legends about Krishna and Rama in Aang's image, despite the slight ironic bantering over whether the stories of the past correspond to reality, or something was thought out for the benefit of the world and humanity. The Chinese part of the audience may like a balanced soft power approach, very similar to the philosophy of Taoism and Buddhism. There is something for Muslims, Christians and Jews to find close to them, as well as for family adventure lovers. For me, the storylines in Avatar: The Last Airbender look much more authentic than Amazon's Prime video attempts to invent the Lord of the Rings prequel, which many fans of Tolkien accuse of contrivance and unnatural artificiality, as well as protracted action that are too far in spirit from the books of the great creator of the Middle-earth universe. And it would be worth saying, this Netflix series appeared to be much more universal than the recent Disney premieres thickly mixed on the woke agenda, including remakes of their own early masterpieces of a cinematic heritage such as the Little Mermaid or Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers with almost unrecognizable old characters who are not able to meet people's expectations, being too far from the best standards of glorious Disney traditions. The new version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs does not look promising as well in this context. The number of plot twists and funny jokes in Avatar: The Last Airbender is substantially more than in James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water, which is the third part of Avatar's saga streaming on Disney+, although the graphic execution of the nature for the Aang universe can even be compared to the famous franchise to some extent.

Combined together, all this may strongly add to the reasons why Netflix nearly doubled its market value in less than 12 months, while Disney stocks continued to consolidate near the vicinity of its multi-year lows. The Disney+ streaming business achieved great success in the COVID years when people spent lots of time at home, yet to consolidate the success was a more difficult task. So, Disney shares only recovered to the levels of early spring 2022, still giving a 45% discount compared to its all-time highs of 2021, yet the crowd of potential purchasers for Disney is still inertial and mostly hesitant, unlike Netflix investors. It seems that Netflix was able to please its customer's silent request for the inner substance of its message, also using the hyping computer effects of neural networks in an appropriate manner, and it saved the audience from the boredom of the surrounding world, while simultaneously giving hope for more spiritual ways of resolving the tangle of human contradictions between nations. This is important for those who still care about this world, and also brings profit to film-makers.

Besides, the Top-10 of Netflix series now include the 6th season of a Formula 1: Drive to Survive, the 3rd season of Wrong Side of the Tracks drama about a war veteran who takes matters into his own hands when his teenage granddaughter falls victim to the drug dealers and Fool Me Once thriller where ex-soldier Maya sees her allegedly murdered husband on a secret nanny cam to uncover a deadly conspiracy. I am going to watch all these movies soon, by the way, and I think I will not be the only person who will find reasons to extend my subscription on Netflix in the near months. Customers’ enthusiasm usually builds a nest for the further uptrend in the company’s business, isn’t it?

This week, ApeCoin (APE) added 9.1%, reaching $2.00. However, its gains could have been more substantial, considering a 16.0% slump on Wednesday after Yuga Labs announced it would cease collaboration with NFT marketplaces that don't support royalties for all creators. This announcement resulted in a 4.0% drop in the NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, falling to 22.55 ETH, and ApeCoin suffered similarly.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) later recovered its losses when the company clarified that the move did not include its Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club brands. APE returned to the resistance at $2.00. However, on February 29, Bored Ape Yacht Club prices declined again to 22.44 ETH. This might exert downward pressure on APE prices, potentially moving away from the $2.00 mark.

The stocks of one of the largest oilfield service companies, Halliburton (HAL), reached their peak prices at $43.79 per share in the middle of October 2023. Since then, they have experienced a decline of 25.0% to $32.90, primarily associated with falling crude prices. However, a recovery of oil prices has been underway since the middle of December, with a 17.0% upside. It's noteworthy that HAL has risen by only 6.0% during the same period, indicating good upside potential.

Additionally, prices are currently at the support of an ascending channel, creating a favorable scenario for further upside. A potential rise to the range of $41.00-$45.00 is likely. To manage risk, a stop-loss could be set at $25.00.

Folks, I would totally agree with a Citigroup analyst Christopher Danely when he estimated Micron Technology (MU) stock as being still underperformed so far. He mentioned at least three particular cases of why this was happening. These three reasons included allegedly high capital expenditures on DRAM (dynamic random access memory, which is a type of semiconductor memory that is typically used for the data or program code needed by a computer processor to function), so that some equipment makers verbally stoked fears of overcapacity, high market valuation already and continuing negative comments by Micron's rival Rambus, even though the two semiconductor businesses officially ended their lasting license battle more than ten years ago. Yet, Citi’s sources re-checked DRAM order rates and found they only have increased from the server end market, the analyst wrote in a research note. As to the DRAM capex rising, Citi argued that even if it increases 20% more, it would still be 30% below the peak burden of 2022. On valuation, again, the counter argument was that Micron share price is lagging behind the average pace for the chip segment. Therefore, City has a Buy rating for Micron, with a target price at $95, against a $90-92 current range. Yet, I would personally see the target area well above $100 per share for Micron, as many analysts seemingly overlooked one specific but crucial thing, which is direct joining of Micron to the NVIDIA AI party.

Micron Technology (MU) added more than 6% to its market in the first half of this week responding to its official announcement that the company will increase production of its HBM3E (High Bandwidth Memory) chips, which will be used in NVIDIA's last generation of H200 GPUs (graphic processing units), specially designed for artificial intelligence applications. The HBM3E model consumes 30% less power than rival offerings, which is important for powerful generative AI purposes. The HBM-type chips market is led by larger NVIDIA's supplier SK Hynix, but Micron would be the second in this scale, especially since SK Hynix already sold out its 2024 inventory. HBM is Micron's most profitable product, due to its relative complexity involved in its construction. Micron now says it is going to deliver these increased performance memory chips in the next quarter. I feel, when more news would be revealed on the matter, for example during NVIDIA's GTC developer conference next month, the uptrend in Micron share price could be accelerated. Anyway, producing advanced memory chips for the AI chip king NVIDIA, and maybe also for AMD soon, would be considered by the market crowd as a privilege which may boost the market value of Micron as well, when the crowd is so mad from the entire AI agenda. So, I would also consider it a privilege to add this stock to my portfolio. Again, the third approach to peaking prices of 2021-2022 on charts is good for a potential breakthrough, according to theoretical considerations of the technical analysis. A small discount on today's pre-market trading also looks favourable to choose the right moment for a purchase.