Tag Archives: Arrested Development

Netflix Streams Up Profits, But Slowing Growth Spooks Investors

By Mark Rogowsky, Contributor Netflix had the quarter it promised investors 3 months ago. Fresh episodes of Arrested Development and a quarter-end total of nearly 30 million domestic subscribers. Coupled with the promised international growth, margins ahead of forecast, and profits in line with expectations laid out in April, you’d think everyone would be happy. But Wall Street wanted more and a somewhat cautious outlook left Neftlix stock heading down and then sideways after hours. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ At Comic-Con: Joe And Anthony Russo On Directing The Next ‘Cap Adventure

By The Huffington Post News Editors

The first “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” footage had its Hall H Comic-Con premiere on Saturday night and the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. What’s already apparent is that this ‘Cap will be heavy on S.H.I.E.L.D. and, as co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo explain, will bridge the two Avengers movies, creating a “very strong hand off.”

I met with the Russo brothers here in San Diego shortly before their Hall H panel to talk about their highly anticipated sequel and just how two directors who are best known for their work on “Community,” “Arrested Development” and the Owen Wilson movie “You, Me and Dupree” found themselves in the directors’ chairs for a big budget Captain America movie.

I have to admit, after watching “You, Me, and Dupree,” I didn’t think a future step would be a Captain America movie.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Big Winner at Emmy Noms: Netflix

By Evann Gastaldo

Netflix is officially a player in the original TV game: Emmy nominations were announced this morning, and both House of Cards and Arrested Development scored nods. Cards was nominated for nine awards including Best Drama Series (the first top Emmy nod for an online series, the AP reports), and cast… …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home

MSN and Xbox May Revive Heroes

Could Heroes be making a comeback? It’s an odd and interesting time for TV fandom, as the return of Arrested Development on Netflix and the revival of Veronica Mars (via a Kickstarted movie) is causing a lot more “Hey, maybe this could come back too!” discussion about all sorts of shows.

TVLine is reporting that a Heroes revival is indeed as possibility though, with MSN – in the midst of planning a bigger push of original programming via Xbox – in talks to launch a new version of the superhero series that originally aired an on NBC from 2006-2010.

Unlike true cult (as in low rated, but holding onto a passionate fanbase) series like Arrested Development and Veronica Mars, Heroes was once a huge hit, only to suffer big ratings drops over its four year run, as the show suffered a lot of criticism from the press and its fans over story decisions made after the popular first season.

Continue reading…

From: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/17/msn-and-xbox-may-revive-heroes

4 Billion Reasons Netflix Is Soaring

By Anders Bylund, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings got himself and his company into some trouble last summer. Hastings used his personal Facebook page to reveal the fact that Netflix users spent 1 billion hours in front of streaming videos in June. Critics said this information was valuable to shareholders and would have been more appropriate in a more traditional medium such as a press release or an SEC filing.

The SEC took a look, decided to allow social-media postings to carry investable information — and Hastings is back on Facebook again. This time, the news is that Netflix users streamed 4 billion video hours in the first quarter of 2013. Here’s the whole posting:

Source: Facebook.

If the billion-hour tidbit was material to investors, this posting shouldn’t be any less valuable. Converted into “more than 1.3 billion hours per month,” it’s at least a 33% increase in viewing hours on a global level compared with that market-moving note from last June.

So what do these billion-scale numbers really mean?

If viewer engagement has stayed constant over the past nine months, the figure would mean that Netflix grew its global subscriber base by more than 34%. That would be on the high end of Hastings’ subscriber guidance for the first quarter, which gets a full report in less than two weeks.

Or, with subscriber counts at the midpoint of official guidance ranges, you’d get a 3% increase in monthly viewing per user. That would help Netflix suppress the dreaded churn of users getting bored and leaving the service.

The truth probably straddles both dynamics, with a heavier lean on high subscriber numbers than increased engagement. I do expect churn to get guided down a bit as the slate of original Netflix shows makes its presence known. House of Cards is a hit, Hemlock Grove hooks into a suddenly red-hot horror-movie market, and Arrested Development comes with a fully developed fan base. And most of their eyeball-grabbing action falls in the second quarter.

Keep your eyes open for more of Hastings’ Facebook posts if the second-quarter report leaves you wanting more.

The tumultuous performance of Netflix shares since the summer of 2011 has caused headaches for many devoted shareholders. While the company’s first-mover status is often viewed as a competitive advantage, the opportunities in streaming media have brought some new, deep-pocketed rivals looking for their piece of a growing pie. Can Netflix fend off this burgeoning competition, and will its international growth aspirations really pay off? These are must-know issues for investors, which is why The Motley Fool has released a premium report on Netflix. Inside, you’ll learn about the key opportunities and risks facing the company, as well as reasons to buy or sell the stock. The report includes a full year of updates to cover critical new developments, so make sure to click here and claim a copy today.

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/14/4-billion-reasons-netflix-is-soaring-weekend/

What If Netflix Has a Flop on Its Hands?

By Rick Munarriz, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Netflix is in a good groove these days.

Goldman Sachs bumped its target on the shares from $125 to $184 on Thursday, encouraged by Netflix’s widening addressable market — not just the 84.2 million U.S. homes with broadband connectivity, but the fact that Netflix is now a viable subscription option for those embracing Web-enabled mobile devices.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tooted his own company’s horn on Thursday, pointing out in a Facebook status update that the service delivered 4 billion hours of content through the first three months of the year.

Then we have a catalyst that has yet to play out. Hemlock Grove — the latest show that will be exclusively available on Netflix for the time being — begins streaming next weekend. After February’s wildly successful House of Cards, if Netflix can nab another magnetic property, it will be that much harder for folks to cancel subscriptions between programming lulls. Netflix will have proved itself worthy of scoring magnetic content, and the comparison’s with Time Warner‘s HBO will be even more apropos.

Is Netflix on the same level as HBO? Not exactly. As anyone knows who has seen House of Cards available as a DVD preorder on rival Amazon.com , Netflix is often merely paying for exclusive streaming rights or just the benefit of carrying a particular show first. If it’s a hit, it may very well be made available through other outlets down the line.

But what if we don’t get that far with these next shows? What if Hemlock Grove isn’t scary? What if Arrested Development‘s fourth season next month isn’t funny?

We may not be dealing with hypothetical questions here.

“Weird can be good, but this isn’t intentionally weird so much as it is plain bad,” reads a scathing Hollywood Reporter review of Hemlock Grove from Tim Goodman.

Let’s be fair here. Goodman also panned the similarly creepy American Horror Story, the sleeper gothic horror hit of 2011 where the Harmon family moved into a haunted house — and paid the price.

“Unlike the Harmons, watching what goes on in that house even once is enough to know better than to go back again,” he concluded.

He was wrong then. The show fared well on FX and went on to have a second season. Maybe he’s wrong this time, too. Then again, maybe it’s better for Netflix if Goodman is right. Netflix will have some duds on its hands. That’s inevitable.

Amazon is in the process of greenlighting a bunch of pilots. It will then see which ones are fit to bankroll complete seasons for based on the streaming audience’s initial reaction. However, even that hurdle won’t guarantee that Amazon won’t have some clunkers of its own.

Netflix has more money to spend than anybody else on streaming content, because it can justify the content land grab as it spreads it around its 33.2 million streaming accounts worldwide. However, when a show falls

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/13/what-if-netflix-has-a-flop-on-its-hands/

Jason Bateman Explains What’s Different About ‘Arrested Development’ Season 4 On ‘Kimmel’ (VIDEO)

By The Huffington Post News Editors

Jason Bateman dropped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with some words of preparation for the new season of “Arrested Development.” Based on what he said, calling it a season may not even be completely accurate. He explained that the episodes won’t be anything like the first three seasons on Fox.

Instead, they play out like the first act of a movie. “Each character gets their own episode, and all the action happens at the same time,” Bateman said. “So it can only really work on Netflix, where these episodes are released on the same day. So, like, you can stop my episode if you see G.O.B. run by on his Segway, you can stop mine, click over into his, watch where he’s going.”

He explained to Splitsider that it’s intentional, as they do plan to come back together and make a movie to follow up on the events of these episodes. “Unfortunately, there’s probably gonna be about a year, maybe a year-and-a-half gap between the two, so you’ll end up having to watch these episodes again,” Bateman said. “It wasn’t perfectly scheduled, but we were just happy to get together as soon as we could.”

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From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/jason-bateman-different-arrested-development-video_n_3058910.html

‘Arrested Development’ New Episodes Get Character Posters (PHOTOS)

By The Huffington Post News Editors

The members of the Bluth clan are getting individual posters for Netflix’s “Arrested Development” new episodes.

The posters feature jokes and references to each individual “Arrested Development” character from Seasons 1 through 3 on Fox. For example, the poster for Lucille Bluth has a pill bottle, nodding to an episode where Lucille mistakes a “drowsy eye” alcohol warning for a “winking eye” alcohol suggestion.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Buying Netflix Stock Doesn't Have to Be Scary Stuff

By Rick Munarriz, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Netflix wants to creep you out next week, but that’s a good thing.

Hemlock Grove — a new show with blood-curdling aspirations based on a Brian McGreevy novel and directed by horror guru Eli Roth — will stream exclusively on Netflix starting a week from Friday.

True to its “binge viewing” mantra, Netflix won’t string viewers around with weekly cliffhangers. All 13 episodes of the series will be made available at the same time. It’s a strategy that may have been criticized by industry analysts and television veterans with House of Cards in February, but viewers obviously don’t have a problem with dictating the pace of their content consumption.

Netflix stock is on fire these days, and the leading streaming service provider has to make sure that it has the programming to match.

The show is unlikely to make the same kind of Emmy-magnetic waves that House of Cards did earlier this year, but it’s hard to argue against the subject matter. American Horror Story has made Gothic horror trendy, and fans of Twilight may want to know that there are werewolves involved.

It remains to be seen how this busy slate of exclusive first-run programming on Netflix this year will fare. It doesn’t help that it no longer provides monthly churn metrics, so all we have to go on is the ultimate net growth of subscribers.

Netflix began the year encouragingly strong on that front with 33.2 million global streaming accounts.

Most of the original programming buzz has been generated by House of Cards and next month’s Arrested Development revival, but Netflix also has a few more shows along the lines of Hemlock Grove that could prove to be sleeper hits.

At a time when Netflix stock has more than tripled, the restored dot-com darling will need to make sure that it has more hits than misses along the way.

It’s not as if Netflix will lose ground to the competition if it whiffs here and there. After all, have you assessed the competition?

Time Warner‘s HBO is the premium platform that Netflix often drums up as its biggest rival, but it’s not a fair comparison. HBO has the quality proprietary content that Netflix craves, but the old-school model where costly subscriptions are tethered to even more expensive cable and satellite television plans prevent it from being a fast-growing service.

Amazon.com has the ambition — matching Netflix in terms of the streaming smorgasbord as a stand-alone offering — but its catalog remains vastly inferior to what Netflix has amassed over the years.

If Hemlock Grove is lucky, it will be as scary as the frightening lead the competition has let Netflix amass largely unchecked.

Research worth viewing
The tumultuous performance of Netflix shares since the summer of 2011 has caused headaches for many devoted shareholders. While the company’s first-mover status is often viewed as a competitive advantage, the opportunities in streaming media have brought some new, deep-pocketed rivals looking for their …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

The Best Way to Watch Movies Without Paying a Fortune

By Bruce Watson

Filed under: ,

Getty Images

About two years ago, I decided to leave Netflix. There were a lot of reasons, but the big one was their decision to split their streaming video and their DVD service. My daughter, who was addicted to “Phineas and Ferb,” was foursquare in favor of the streaming service. I, on the other hand, was unimpressed with the offerings but liked the DVDs by mail.

Keeping both streaming and DVDs, unfortunately, would have doubled our monthly Netflix bill. Add in the fact that the streaming in our building was insanely slow, and the upshot was that my wife and I decided that we could come up with about a billion better ways to spend our money — and at least three or four better ways to watch movies and TV shows.

The first thing we did was sign up for Amazon Prime. For $79 per year — about $5 per year less than Netflix’s basic streaming service — it lets users stream unlimited movies and TV shows. Beyond that, though, it also includes free two-day shipping on Amazon orders and allows users to borrow Kindle books for no additional cost. Perhaps most important, Amazon’s streaming service offers every “Phineas and Ferb” episode at speeds a lot faster than Netflix (at least in our apartment).

Streaming is all well and good, but what about the films I wanted to watch that aren’t available through either Amazon or Netflix? After a search of the available options, I decided to go with Blockbuster, which has a DVD delivery service that is roughly comparable to what Netflix used to offer. The difference is that it costs $10 per month — about $2 more than Netflix used to charge — and only gives me one DVD at a time. On the other hand, the selection is incredible, the service is convenient, and I haven’t had any problems.

Of course, Netflix will still mail you DVDs. The only problem is, you have to get the streaming service as well, and the two combined services would run me $16 per month. Put in context, that’s a little bit less than my total monthly payment for Amazon Prime and Blockbuster. And Netflix doesn’t give me free shipping on Amazon orders or free loans of Kindle books. With those two options, I estimate that Amazon Prime is saving my wife and me at least $10 per month.

There are trade-offs, of course. We can’t watch Netflix’s original series House of Cards, which I’m told is brilliant. And, when Netflix releases its new episodes of Arrested Development, we won’t be able to watch them, either. If they ever come out on video, perhaps we’ll get them from Amazon — along with free second-day shipping.

Bruce Watson is a senior features writer for DailyFinance. You can reach him by e-mail at bruce.watson@teamaol.com, or follow him …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Social Media and the SEC: A Love Story?

By Caroline Bennett, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

In the beginning, there was the Internet. Then, in a big bang of light, sound, and tweets, there was social media. Since then, companies haven’t known quite what to do with themselves.

There has always been some gray area as to what’s appropriate for a business‘ social-media presence, and what isn’t. Now the SEC is getting involved, and its latest decision doesn’t crack down nearly as hard as you might think. In fact, Netflix is already reaping major benefits from it, not to mention Facebook itself.

The latest ruling
In a statement released on April 2, the SEC said it was perfectly ethical for companies to take to social media for releasing “key information,” just so long as they abide by the SEC‘s Regulation Fair Disclosure.

To find out what constitutes key information, take a look at the company that sparked the action: Netflix. Last July, CEO Reed Hastings posted on Facebook that users were streaming more than 1 billion hours of video a month. Within one day, Netflix’s stock jumped from $70.45 to $81.72, which raised quite a few red flags about the post.

But now, as far as the SEC is concerned, this kind of self-promotion is A-OK among public companies, just so long as they clarify which social-media tool they plan to use. If a company says its news will be available on Facebook, for instance, and it pops up on Twitter or (suspend your disbelief for a moment) Pinterest, then there’s a problem.

Are Facebook and Netflix better off?
Facebook’s stock took a noticeable jump after the SEC announcement, rising 5% from $25.32 to $26.67. This reaction suggests that the market is celebrating the SEC‘s decision, and the good news couldn’t come soon enough for Facebook. Even after the success of Graph Search‘s unveiling, the company is still struggling to return to its IPO price, so any positive press must feel like a breath of fresh air for Facebook and its investors.

The news is also Netflix’s second SEC victory in a month. A few weeks ago, the company finally got the government‘s go-ahead to make its social-media service, Netflix Social, available to U.S. residents. So why hasn’t its stock reflected these victories accordingly?

For one thing, the SEC news coincided with whispers that investor Carl Icahn had sold 10% of his share in Netflix. Even though Icahn later denied the rumor, the damage was already done. That news, paired with the announcement that Time Warner had released its own online streaming service, was enough to sink Netflix’s stock by 4%.

But don’t cry for Netflix just yet. The company’s annual revenue has more than doubled since 2008, and while it possesses a market cap of $9.46 billion, it has just $400 million on the books in long-term debt and boasts $3.9 billion in assets. And that doesn’t include the revival of Arrested Development.

There’s always money in the social-media stand
By and large, the market has met the SEC‘s …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Black Ops II 's Alcatraz Zombie Mode & Doom 4 Goes Next Gen

Not a headline but it might as well be: Nolan North (best known as the voice of Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series) makes a one of a kind cameo in today’s episode. By one of a kind, I mean you won’t see him do something like this anywhere else, so totally worth the watch. In real world news, Activision unleashes the Zombies once again for their next Black Ops 2 DLC pack, Doom 4 is no longer a current gen game, and prepare to stock up on frozen bananas cause Arrested Development is returning! And sooner than you think.

Here are the stories covered in today’s Daily Fix:

Activision has announced the second downloadable content pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Movies

News: Arrested Development: Season 4 Premiere Date Announced

Do you have plans for Sunday, May 26th? Cancel them! Netflix has revealed that’s the day we’re getting new Arrested Development episodes!

Yes, the Bluth family will be back, as the entire new season is released all at once at 12:01am in territories Netflix is available, including the United States, the UK, Latin America, Canada, Brazil and the Nordics. It also turns out we’re getting one extra episode, making the new season 15 episodes total. Originally, it was announced that there would be ten new Arrested Developments, but that number expanded to 14 in January, with extra production time added. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN TV Videos

‘Arrested Development’ Gets May 26 Premiere Date For Season 4, New 15 Episode Order

By The Huffington Post News Editors

The Bluths are officially taking over Netflix when “Arrested Development” premieres new episodes on May 26.

Netflix has announced that 15 all-new “Arrested Development” episodes — which is one more than was previously reported — will be released on Sun., May 26 at 12:01 p.m. PT.

Below, check out the teaser poster the “Arrested Development” Facebook posted:

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Netflix Confirms Date for "Arrested Development" Release

By Evan Niu, CFA, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Online video streamer Netflix (NAS: NFLX) has now confirmed the official date for the return of cult favorite “Arrested Development.” The company is releasing all 15 episodes of the fourth season simultaneously on May 26. The show will be available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Latin America, Brazil, and the Nordics.

Netflix said in 2011 that it would bring “Arrested Development” back as an exclusive series. The company has seen successful with original programming, particularly its “House of Cards” series that was released in February. At a Morgan Stanley tech conference in February, CEO Reed Hastings said it was unlikely that additional seasons would be possible.

In a statement, series creator Mitch Hurwitz added, “Finally my simple wish for the show is coming true: that it be broadcast every second around the clock to every television, computer or mobile device in existence.” Welcome back, Bluths.


 
 

The article Netflix Confirms Date for “Arrested Development” Release originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Netflix. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Facebook Is Now an Essential Tool for All Investors

By John Maxfield, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

It’s easy to view the social networking site Facebook as nothing more than a pointless time warp for young whippersnappers with way too much time on their hands. But after a ruling yesterday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, it may become an essential component of any serious investor’s toolbox.

How we got here started innocently enough. On July 3, 2012, Reed Hastings, the chairman and chief executive officer of Netflix , posted the following message on his personal Facebook page:

Congrats to Ted Sarados, and his amazing content licensing team. Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June. When House of Cards and Arrested Development debut, we’ll blow these records away. Keep going, Ted, we need even more!

Seems harmless enough, right? Hastings was simply boasting — and deservedly so — about the fact that the customers of his popular video streaming company had watched a cumulative one billion hours’ worth of content in a single month. This matters because, as Hastings explained on a conference call last year, it’s “a measure of an engagement and scale in terms of the adoption of our service and use of our service … [and] shows widespread adoption and usage of the service.”

In a day and age when seemingly everything is broadcast over some type of social media, be it the birth of a child or an engagement or whatever, Hastings’ use of his personal Facebook page to celebrate a somewhat esoteric milestone wasn’t either unusual or typically out of the ordinary. Unless you’re a securities regulator at the SEC, that is.

The problem was that Hastings’ comment abutted against Regulation Fair Disclosure, or Reg FD, which mandates that publicly traded companies disclose material, nonpublic information to all investors at the same time. It was adopted roughly 12 years ago out of concern that companies were selectively “disclosing important nonpublic information, such as advance warning of earnings results, to securities analysts or selected institutional investors before making full disclosure of the same information to the general public.”

Thus, the question concerning Hastings’ posting on his personal Facebook page was whether or not it constituted a full and public disclosure of presumably material information. To drive this point home, here was the sequence of events that followed, as recounted in the SEC‘s ruling:

The announcement of the streaming milestone reached the securities market incrementally. The post was picked up by a technology-focused blog about an hour later and by a handful of news outlets within two hours. Approximately an hour after the post, Netflix sent it to several reporters, but did not disseminate it to the broader mailing list normally used for corporate press releases. After the markets closed early at 1:00 p.m., several articles in the mainstream financial press picked up the story. Research analysts also wrote about the streaming milestone, describing the metric as a positive measure of customer engagement, indicative of a reduction in the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Why Investors Need Facebook, and Today's Other Big Financial Stories

By John Maxfield, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

So you thought Facebook was just for the youngins? Not according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Read about this and the other stories influencing financial stocks today.

1. It’s time to Facebook friend your stocks
In a ruling issued yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (click here for the ruling itself) held that companies can use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to disseminate material nonpublic information to investors so long as the companies have told investors which outlets they use. The issue came up last July after Reed Hastings, the chairman and chief executive officer of Netflix , posted on Facebook that the company had streamed more than one billion hours in the previous month for the first time in its history. Here’s Hastings’ original post:

Congrats to Ted Sarados, and his amazing content licensing team. Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June. When House of Cards and Arrested Development debut, we’ll blow these records away. Keep going, Ted, we need even more!

2. Bank of America’s ongoing battle with MBIA
The legal death match between Bank of America and mortgage bond insurer MBIA completed another round yesterday after an appeals court ruled in the latter’s favor on a number of critical issues. The principal question before the court was whether B of A is only obligated to repurchase mortgages that have already gone into default. According to the court, the answer is no: “Plaintiff is entitled to a finding that the loan need not be in default to trigger defendants’ obligation to repurchase it. There is simply nothing in the contractual language which limits defendants’ repurchase obligations in such a manner.”

The court also upheld the lower court’s ruling that MBIA need not demonstrate a “direct causal link” between alleged misrepresentations by Countrywide Financial (which B of A purchased in 2008) and the degradation in value of mortgage-backed securities insured by MBIA. The implications of this ruling are wide-ranging. To read more about this, check out Reuters’ Allison Frankel’s take on it here.

3. Bank of America concludes settlement with the NCUA
In slightly better news for B of A, the National Credit Union Administration announced yesterday that it will drop legal claims against the bank in exchange for a $165 million payment. Not unlike MBIA, the NCUA had alleged that the bank “downplayed risks of poor-quality mortgages packaged into securities” that were then sold to credit unions around the country. As I discussed here, this marks a “small but important victory” for the bank in its efforts to atone for the sins of Countrywide. To learn more about B of A’s progress on the legal front, check out this in-depth series that we published in February.

4. Wells Fargo’s complete domination of the mortgage market
This is more …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

‘Game Of Thrones’ Cast As ‘Arrested Development’ Cast And More

By The Huffington Post News Editors

“Game of Thrones,” “Arrested Development,” “Mad Men,” “Seinfeld” — we love a show with a powerful ensemble. Bring on the chubby sidekicks, the sulky blondes, and the weird guys with odd hobbies! In honor of “Game of Thrones'” third season (which premiered last night — read our recap here), we reimagined the people of the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond) as the casts of some of our other favorite television series. Winter is coming to all kinds of places.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

These 5 Stocks Are Off to a Great Start in 2013

By Anders Bylund, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

As we ease our way into April, the first quarter of 2013 is in the books. Here are some of the market‘s best performers so far, and why I think they will or won’t keep soaring the whole year long.

Will these rocket rides blast even higher in 2013 — or run out of fuel?
Image source: NASA.

The safest bet
Movie distribution expert Netflix jumped 104% in the first three months. The stock came into 2013 with rock-bottom performance expectations but blew skeptics away with a fantastic first-quarter report.

Subscribers have largely forgotten about the brand-damaging Qwikster debacle, and the international expansion program is building up a head of steam. Moreover, the House of Cards original-content experiment bowed to fine reviews and appears to set Netflix apart from other online film services, much like the premium cable networks jockey for position with Emmy-winning dramas.

The original content project continues with horror series Hemlock Grove in April, starring Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgard under the guiding hand of genre master Eli Roth. Then there’s low-budget comedy Bad Samaritans and high-concept prison dramedy Orange Is the New Black, not to mention the reboot of cult series Arrested Development. These titles should help Netflix attract fresh subscribers, and the overseas expansion will keep Netflix growing for years to come.

Netflix shares may seem expensive right now, given the earnings-sapping costs of rapid expansion. But make no mistake: Netflix is cheap even at $200. If nothing else, the stock will pop again next January, with another holiday season under the bridge. This January bounce was no accident.

The housing experts
The housing market is suddenly booming again, at least in comparison with the miserable years between 2008 and 2012. This rebound has created a number of strong gainers on the market.

Online house-hunting service Zillow has gained 97% so far. The site enjoyed a 47% year-over-year increase in unique users, and management set expectations even higher for the next quarter.

Private mortgage insurer MGIC Investment soared to the tune of 86%, and rival Radian Group jumped 75%. Both companies crushed earnings estimates in March, and Barclays upgraded them to a “buy” rating. Bad loans from the subprime bonanza are fading away just as the market for new housing stabilizes. Owning these stocks seems less risky these days.

That being said, fellow Fool Sean Williams worries that MGIC‘s recapitalization plan will destroy shareholder value while its debts pile up sky-high. It’ll take a dramatically stronger housing market to make these issues go away, not the gradual return to health we’ve seen so far. It makes sense to lump Radian and Zillow into the same booming-but-risky category until further notice. Don’t invest money in these tickers that you can’t afford to lose, in case the rosy projections don’t pan out.

The bigger they are …
Here’s a shocker. There are 3,077 stocks on the U.S. markets …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance