July 16, Market Update

​Stocks opened the week with a sleepy performance on Monday that ended with a slim loss of 0.1% for the S&P 500. The Nasdaq Composite also declined, losing 0.3%, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to add 0.2%. The Russell 2000 under-performed, dropping 0.5%.

President Trump capped a week-long trip to Europe by meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. The leaders met for roughly four hours, discussing a wide range of topics, including arms control, the future of Syria, and, of course, Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, which Mr. Putin again denied. The market had a muted reaction to the summit.
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Back on the home front, energy (-1.2%) was the worst-performing sector on Monday amid another dive in crude prices. WTI crude futures dropped 3.8% to $68.34/bbl and are now 7.8% below the nearly three-and-a-half year high they touched last week. The widely cited catalyst was a Friday comment from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who said some countries may receive waivers to continue buying oil from Iran. However, several other factors -- including restored Libyan production -- were also at play.

​Netflix, one of the most popular stocks in the market, reported earnings that were well below expectations after the market closed yesterday. Their subscriber growth, arguably the most important metric for Netflix, dipped ​sharply this quarter. New subscribers in the US totaled 670,000, vs. expectations of 1.21 million. International new subscribers also missed estimates by a large margin; 4.47 million vs. over 5 million expected. The stock declined 14% in after hours and is the first of the FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) to decline significantly following earnings.