(Update: NFLX closed at $678.61 per share Wednesday, down $2.58 per share — a negative 0.38 percent — from the prior day’s close.)
Previously:
Netflix stock (NFLX) spiked early on Wednesday, coming within mere pennies of its all-time high — then billionaire investor Carl Icahn dumped all of his stock, and all of that positive momentum reversed.
The market reacted strongly to Icahn’s fire sale, and NFLX is currently down about $5.61 per share, or a negative 0.82 percent. However, that decline is from Tuesday’s market close of $681.19. It’s down even more dramatically from today’s opening price of $700.50, following an after-hours rally yesterday. And from Wednesday’s peak of $706.20 per share, the going rate at the time of this writing, $675.58, is down $30.62 per share, or a negative 4.3 percent.
The aforementioned top dollar for Netflix shares today came at 10:39 a.m. ET, right around Icahn’s social media announcement. Two minutes later, it sank to to $687.80. NFLX then rallied a bit before ultimately declining further. Icahn held 1.4 million shares of Netflix stock as of the end of March.
On Tuesday, Netflix announced a 7-for-1 stock split, similar to the one Apple had pulled off in the past. The idea is to make the super-expensive stock more accessible.
On Wednesday, Icahn explained via Twitter: “Sold last of our $NFLX today. Believe $AAPL currently represents same opportunity we stated NFLX offered several years ago.”
NFLX has been the top stock in the S&P 500 this year, rising nearly 100 percent.
Below is the current day’s NFLX trading chart; the stock market was still open at the time of this writing.
Here are Icahn’s Wednesday tweets:
Sold last of our $NFLX today. Believe $AAPL currently represents same opportunity we stated NFLX offered several years ago.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 24, 2015
1/2 I believe the market is extremely overheated – especially high yield bonds.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 24, 2015
2/2 If more respected investors had warned about the market in ’07, we might have avoided the crisis in ’08.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 24, 2015