LiveWire

Sell-off came following a tripling in the last 6 months

Legacy media stocks like ViacomCBS (VIAC) and Discovery (DISCA) went parabolic since November. Fox (FOXA) also benefited, though to a much smaller degree. VIAC and DISCA both tripled in just a few months as hopes of a robust economic recovery boosting ad revenue and, more importantly, the potential for streaming riches similar to Disney (DIS) and its Disney+ platform helped fuel gains. But over the last four days, most of those gains have been incinerated. The catalyst appears to have been a secondary offering from VIAC a few days ago. But there have also been rumors of a big, leveraged position by an unnamed fund having its portfolio seized and liquidated by its prime brokers. There have also been huge blocks of stock reported at dealers, with Goldman Sachs (GS) reportedly getting tapped to sell a block equivalent to more than 6% of VIAC's free float and a second block equivalent to more than 12% of DISCA's free float. Another similar collapse has been playing out in Chinese education technology stocks listed in the US as ADRs. We heard on Sunday that Archegos Capital was behind the massive $10.5 billion in block trades executed on Friday by Goldman Sachs Group. Chart source: Bespoke 

Ark Invest Management's CEO Cathie Wood said on Thursday that her Ark funds had been hit by the climbing interest rates, but remained confident that this would only be a temporary thing and that the group's strategy of betting on disruptive and high-growth companies would stay relevant. 

Prime Video and Twitch, as well mobile properties run by Verizon Communications Inc. and the league, tallied an average-minute audience of 4.8 million for an exclusive presentation of the league's San Francisco-Arizona match-up, in the best regular-season streaming performance to date. When adding viewership from TV stations in the teams' home markets, the average-minute audience reached 5.9 million, according to the NFL. The league's media partners averaged 15.4 million viewers per game during the 2020 regular season, according to live-plus-same-day data from Nielsen Holdings PLC. The average delivery was down 6.7% from the 16.5 million watchers in 2019, as all five packages sustained audience erosion.

Altria is one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes and related products. The stock is trading higher Friday following an upgrade from Jefferies, which argues that the tobacco giant is more resilient than the market realizes, even as traditional cigarette use declines. Analyst Owen Bennett raised his rating on Altria (ticker: MO) to Buy from Hold and his price target to $58 from $40.