Why Are These 4 Stocks Having Such an Unpleasant Morning?

The news keeps on getting worse for commodity giant Rio Tinto plc (ADR) (NYSE:RIO), as the spot price of iron ore fell to a fresh 10-year low (now below $40/metric ton) on the back of a weak Chinese economy and an industry supply glut. Rio Tinto plc (ADR) (NYSE:RIO) gets a substantial portion of its cash flow from iron ore and plunging prices is a huge blow for the company. In response, Rio Tinto plans to cut its capital expenditures by $1.5 billion over the next two years to bring spending down to around $5 billion for each of 2015 and 2016. Rio Tinto’s CapEx cuts will sustain the company’s $4.1 billion dividend for now, but it needs iron ore prices to rebound in order to do well. Shares of the company are off by 6.4% today and are down by over 30% year-to-date.

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) shares are off modestly after Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) launched its Streaming Partners Program, which provides Amazon Prime members with discounted prices for different 3rd party subscription streaming services such as Showtime and STARZ. Amazon’s new service is separate from its Prime Video streaming service and represents additional competition that Netflix will have to contend with in the company’s quest to dominate streaming programming. Of the 730 elite funds that we track, 57 firms owned $6.51 billion worth of Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) shares (accounting for 14.90% of the float) on September 30, versus 50 funds and $6.15 billion respectively on June 30. Among the funds long the stock is Andreas Halvorsen‘s Viking Global, with a holding of 4.52 million shares at the end of September.

Disclosure: None