Mike Zigmont Mike Zigmont, author of the Zigmont Report, is a partner at New York-based Harvest Volatility Management, a hedge fund with over $12B AUM, offering volatility management solutions to its investor base worldwide. Mike has been publishing his daily newsletter (Monday-Friday) privately for the firm’s investors and his personal contacts in the investment business

since 2008, sending it daily shortly after the market close.

The opinions expressed below are my own

Calm before the storm? Investors continued their trend of staying on the sidelines today. Capital flow was *

extremely

* light at 81%. That’s almost as low as the half-session before Independence Day. News was pretty thin today as well although BlackRock, Bank of America, and JB Hunt all announced their earnings this morning. They all beat the street expectations by the way (no surprises there really). Only BAC traded higher though…. Hmmmmm.

Anyway I don’t know if a storm is actually coming but the last few trading sessions have been so quiet I wonder what will bring activity back to the market.

The major imminent event is the Netflix announcement. They release their results just after today’s close. NFLX is up about 109% YTD though. Given how important NFLX has been to the equity bulls this year, there’s a lot riding on NFLX

tonight

. The actual results are going to take a back seat to how investors move the stock. I’m pretty sure that NFLX’s trading

tomorrow

will move the market in the same direction.

There are a lot of late-comers/performance-chasers that could bail if things go south and there are a lot of regretful observers who could finally jump in an join the party.

It’s a crowded trade but it could always get more crowded.

Anyway, the point I want to make is that while earnings season kicked off last week, investors didn’t really act on those releases (or today’s). Tech and growth have led the market the whole year and so, it is very likely, that the effective beginning of earnings season is just after today’s close.

See you

tomorrow

-Mike P.S. Netflix earnings beat, revs are in line, streaming adds disappoint. Stock is down 8-10% in the post-market. Index futures down in sympathy….. all that being said, we still need to wait until

tomorrow

morning. These instant reactions often have a funny way of reversing by the open.