Box Office Accelerates Furiously

The box office boom kicked into top gear this weekend as Fast and Furious opened to $72.5 million, shattering expectations and the prior record for April. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the weekend was up an astounding 89.8% for the top 12 films. The top two films pulled in $106 million, up 10.8% from the entire slate […]

Movie Star Salary Control Just One Way Studios Are Coping

On Thursday the Wall Street Journal ran a major story discussing how the Hollywood studios are trying to cut back on the huge payouts to movie stars. David Poland of the Hot Blog and Movie City News did a follow-up which linked to articles by Gabriel Snyder at Gawker and Kim Masters of The Daily […]

Housekeeping: Sold Time Warner Cable

I sold all the shares clients received last week in Time Warner Cable (TWC) as a dividend from Time Warner (TWX). For each share of TWX owned prior to the 1 for 3 reverse split, clients received .03867 shares of TWC. For the long-term, I think the market is undervaluing cable stocks but I fear […]

April Model Signals Favor Small Cap and Growth

There were no changes this month to Northlake’s Market Cap and Style models. The signals remain small cap and growth. As a result, within the index rotation portion of client portfolios, I will continue to hold positions in the Russell 2000 Small Cap Index (IWM) and the Russell 1000 Growth Index (IWF). The small cap […]

“Dow of Steve” Debuts at SNL Kagan

I am very pleased to announce that SNL Kagan, by far the industry leader in independent reporting and analysis on the media and communications industries is debuting a new blog authored by yours truly. The first post at the Dow of Steve should go up later today. Kagan is a subscription site that comes at […]

Monsters vs. Aliens Scores in 3-D Adding Bull Fuel to Movie Stocks

Monsters vs. Aliens met expectations with an opening weekend gross of $58.2 million. The box office also benefitted from a surprisingly strong opening for The Haunting in Connecticut. With these two films driving the weekend, the two week slump is over as the weekend was up 52.5% for the top 12 films according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. […]

Trrying to Explain the Rally

In trying to explain the rally in the face of nothing but sensational negative news, I have tried to stress that all it takes is signs of stabilization in the economy and less negative sentiment to turn things around. A few weeks ago I was joking that if CNBC ran a headline that said “Guaranteed […]

Monsters vs. Aliens Sets Up Two Way Trading in DWA

The next film from Dreamworks Animation (DWA) arrives in theaters on Friday. Monsters. vs. Aliens will easily be the #1 film this weekend and will drive the box office to very positive comparisons But for investors the more pertinent questions are whether the film has a strong enough opening to drive DWA shares higher or […]

CETV Sells 31% Stake to Time Warner Dramatically Improving Risk-Reward Trade-Off

Central European Media Enterprises (CETV), one of my long-time favorite stocks which I stupidly rode all the way down, soared on Monday following the announcement that it was selling a 31% stake to Time Warner (TWX) at a 20% premium to Friday’s close. Apparently, I was not the only who believed that CETV had sunk […]

Box Office Cooling Won’t Last Much Longer

The box office continued its cooling trend as the weekend was down 1.5% for the top 12 films according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. This marks the second consecutive down weekend following almost three months of positive comparisons. Year-to-date, the box office is now up 9.9%, well off its peak growth, but still a very good comparison that […]