
Netflix was the top stock of the decade - prostoalex
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/netflix-was-the-top-stock-of-the-decade-delivering-over-4000percent-return.html
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dasil003
I bought Netflix at the time of the Qwikster debacle because it was obvious
the market was overreacting to what amounted to a one-time mistake. At the
time, Netflix was a leader in both vision and their technology was a major
competitive advantage.

Almost a decade later I'm bearish. Their technology advantage is being
commoditized away, and production + marketing has not been their forte. It's
possible they'll turn it around, but even so they've got a massive battle on
their hands against the likes of Disney and other big content producers who
have almost a century of experience in this exact arena. It's not that I don't
think they'll be successful, but the current price is over-inflated because
Tech—they've got a long way to go to justify the valuation.

~~~
natrik
It's hilarious how much production has not been their forte. Aside from a few
hits like Stranger Things, most of their originals, which they need to pan out
for future success (instead of paying 100 million for Friends) are absolute
rubbish.

~~~
xvector
Witcher has to have been one of the worst-written TV shows I’ve seen. A shame
because the source material isn’t bad at all.

~~~
bdz
There haven't been any good video game-to-motion picture ever. What people
love in games is really hard to put on screen (Witcher has the original source
material books but they were never as famous or good as the games).

Honestly it's really hard to do it, to appeal to both the gamers and the wider
audience who never touched the game (inc the critics)

I'm playing games since the late 80s and seen so many movies and TV shows
failing.

This list is perfect
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games)

~~~
stevenwoo
The Castlevania anime is really well done and can stand alone without the game
but if you have played some of the games it really feels like a playthrough
with a good story, though the first two seasons are based on one particular
version.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania_\(TV_series\))

~~~
dllthomas
I found it quite surprisingly good! Also surprisingly gory and crude - which
isn't good or bad but seems notable.

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duxup
I remember for years I kept seeing predictions of Netflix's demise about how
someone established coming along and doing it better or every content
providers just not selling and/or creating their own service...and so on.

Netflix is still around and at least for me it is one of a couple services I
regularly use / keep and I'm actually kinda annoyed when another service comes
along. I just watch what the handful of services I use have...I don't want to
chase content around.

~~~
stormbrew
I used to feel this way but more and more Netflix is the service i question if
it’s worth the price to me. This holiday season kinda emphasized why: normally
i wind up binging a lot of Christmas movies this time of year but their
selection this year (in Canada at least) was downright bad. Like 1 or 2 things
i recognized and a dozen or so crappy shovelware shows.

I’m basically only in it for their original stuff now, which with everyone
trying to eat their pie was really the only way they were ever going to keep
people, but i could just sub for a couple months every year to binge those.
Keeping the year round sub for that is kinda meh as a value proposition.

~~~
judge2020
> Like 1 or 2 things i recognized and a dozen or so crappy shovelware shows.

[https://i.redd.it/rd05w5nlj0541.jpg](https://i.redd.it/rd05w5nlj0541.jpg)

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usaphp
> A $1 million bet on Netflix’s stock placed on Jan. 1, 2010, would be worth
> close to $43 million today.

Same goes for AMD, in 2016 it was just $1.8, now it’s $47. Incredible growth
in just 4 years

~~~
axaxs
That one hurt. AMD had hired Keller, and rumblings of a new generation were
afoot. I'd just bought a house and had no spare cash, so told my trusted
coworker to go all in on AMD. He had no spare cash either. Now we once a year
have the 'so...AMD...yup...yup' conversation.

~~~
omnimus
And now they don't have Keller so... sell quickly?

~~~
eganist
Eh they still have Papermaster.

Disclosure: I went long AMD in 2009 and doubled my bet when Mark joined.

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gok
And second-to-top stock of the last two decades. [1]

Top stock of the 90s was (I believe) Dell.

[1] [https://howmuch.net/articles/best-performing-
stocks](https://howmuch.net/articles/best-performing-stocks)

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lawrenceyan
With Youtube and Disney+ encroaching on their territory, Netflix is in a
pretty precarious position in my opinion.

~~~
anonu
Not sure how you measure precarious. Do you think people will just drop
Netflix and run to another streaming provider?

Or do people end up paying for a handful of these things?

I can say from my own experience I've got at least 4 streaming subscriptions I
can think of...

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mixmastamyk
Bummer. I knew this would happen to some extent early in the decade, but
thought they’d lose it all when the media companies took back control of their
media. Also, was cleaned out over a margin call on Apple in ~2009.

One of these days I’ll make the right call at the right time.

~~~
luckydata
One of these days you'll stop trying to time the market and you'll make money.

~~~
everdev
Hard to beat ETFs over the long run without insider information.

~~~
all2
Buy'n'hold is a hard strategy to beat in terms of results and time commitment.
Two of the best people at this run fool.com.

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jpmoral
I should know better but I got into an Internet debate about when the
millenium changed (1999 -> 2000 vs 2000 -> 2001 (obviously)). It all started
when I made a joke about the decade not ending yet.

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r32a_
Bitcoin beat every single stock.

~~~
pergadad
And 2000 other speculative investment/currency projects failed

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tus88
Netflix started streaming in 2010. Apples fall down.

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anonu
Many people view the decade ending next year, 2020...

So there's still time for TSLA to beat NFLX.

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shmerl
Netflix also gradually moved to the dark side, disassociating from Internet
companies alliances, and joining the MPAA and similar cartels of copyright
maximalists.

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taspeotis
Some Netflix trivia: my residential internet connection can't stream Netflix
as of yesterday. I get M7111-5059 which is "[y]ou seem to be using an
unblocker or proxy" despite using neither VPN nor HTTP proxy.

I don't have malware on my PC, everything else is an iDevice, the trickiest
thing I do is use Google Public DNS [0].

Alas their help page [1] says to contact my ISP. Who have helpfully confirmed
they aren't doing a VPN on my behalf! Contacting Netflix results in them
asking me if I am using "automatic" network settings and to ... contact my
ISP. "We’re confident that your ISP can get you back to streaming."

My best theory is they've blocked a range of IPs belonging to my ISP because
something in that range is helping users evade Netflix's geoblocking.

If anybody knows more about how Netflix's great firewall works I am all
ears...

EDIT: Yes I have tried changing my IP by disconnecting the modem but it seems
it's a static assignment. Next port of call is to ask the ISP. Or better yet,
Netflix might unblock me!

[0] Cloudflare DNS makes no difference, and my ISP's DNS makes no difference.

[1]
[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/53047](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/53047)

~~~
madaxe_again
Irony of ironies, your best solution might be to use a vpn. My ISP does
dramatic traffic shaping at peak hours, and is blocked by prime video as they
think it’s a vpn, and I use a popular commercially available vpn provider to
sidestep it, and most of their servers seem to work fine with Netflix etc.
Additionally, as my ISP is a cell provider, it also means I get automatically
served mobile optimised content when streaming, which the VPN also sidesteps -
it’s the difference between 800kbps and 50mbps. It’s literally the difference
between YouTube at 144p or 4K.

It’s costing me $3 a month - my connection would be pretty much unusable
without it.

