Now, as we jump into today, you'll notice that my stock brokerage account is lower than it was just a day ago. It's quite a bit lower. In fact, we're down around $10 to $15,000 just on the day. I was actually getting near $1 million. We were only $7,000 away from a million. Now, we're $32,000 away. Just today, as of right now, we are down $10,000. If I move to the story fund, you see the same thing. If I look at the past day, we are down $7,400. And this isn't just one company. A lot of companies are selling off today. Meta, Google, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, all the big tech companies, all the NASDAQ leaders, all the AI winners, plus even software companies. Intuit's down big on the day. Salesforce is moving down a little bit today. Adobe just hit a 52-week low. There's no love for Duolingo in this market. It continues to trade down. Companies big and small today are getting crushed in this market. The Dow Jones is down. The S&P 500 is down even more. And down the most is the Nasdaq. The biggest winners are leading the losses today. So, if you're looking at your portfolio today, it looks like a bloodbath. Many of your favorite stocks are probably selling down aggressively. And this is how investing works. This is exactly how it works. It's like Mike Tyson says, everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face. And if you have a plan with your investments, it's important to stick to that plan even though today we're getting punched in the face.
And when looking at both portfolios, when looking at the top companies to buy, four of them came to mind. The first one is Netflix. This is a company that I believe should be on the radar to be a purchase by any new investor. When we look at Netflix, there's a couple reasons that I outline this company. First of all, the price is way down from its recent highs. Netflix is going through a substantial dip. When I see a highquality compounding machine that recently traded at $133, it's now down to a price of $89. that catches my attention. I simply look at these situations and want to learn more about them. The news of any big acquisition will likely drag down the stock price of any company, and Netflix is no exception. But there's reason to believe that in this case, it's actually a benefit for Netflix. In the case of Warner Brothers Discovery, the acquisition makes sense. Warner Brothers Discovery represents highquality prestige TV series that have incredible IP value. Intellectual property is so valuable in the world of content and Netflix knows that. After all, much of what's watched on Netflix is licensed content from other companies, especially Warner Brothers Discovery. These are the series and movies that people love. Warner Brothers has an excellent box office business and they have an excellent streaming business. The problem with Warner Brothers Discovery is that when they were spun off from AT&T, they were dumped with an enormous amount of debt. So Warner Brothers Discovery ever since this point in Q4 of 2022 has had a staggering amount of debt and that weighs on you. The interest expense of this debt weighs on you. Even with this huge amount of debt they've spent the past years paying it down every single quarter, quarter after quarter. Now while they're busy paying it down, they can't do things like invest in new shows. They can't expand their business. They can't expand in talent and technology. They're too busy paying down debt. And this is where I want to highlight an important distinction. The content of Warner Brothers Discovery in the actual business in terms of their assets and their production is excellent. It is top tier content and everyone that has access to the library knows that the financials, their current market structure is really bad. They have an enormous amount of debt that is causing them years of continual debt management. The reason that the Netflix acquisition makes so much sense is because Netflix will get the IP. They'll get the incredible content that'll really help out Netflix's library for the long term, and it also solves the problem of their bad financial structure. Netflix has the financial strength to pay for this acquisition and the debt very easily. This will not be something that holds down the company from reinvesting back into the future. So, I look at this as a situation where Netflix is solving the biggest problem with Warner Brothers Discovery, which is the financial situation while obtaining that incredibly valuable IP from their library. Netflix knows this and they want this deal badly. They already have a signed agreement and they're trying to protect themselves from the ongoing attempts from Paramount to block their deal or obstruct their deal or make it so that Netflix can't buy Warner Brothers Discovery. And Netflix is making moves to preempt this. David Faber on CNBC explains this fully.
The vote is the key. It was not going to take place until the late spring or early summer. That will change should Netflix move forward with a change to all cash. Why? Well, when you issue stock, you've got to issue a lot more financials, a lot of accounting around it. And that just takes a lot of time, a lot of time, a lot of effort, work, not to mention expense even uh for doing that. This makes it cleaner and quicker. How much quicker? A lot. We're talking months. In fact, again, uh unclear, but you could see a shareholder vote as soon as late February, early March. If in fact Netflix does this, you will get the proxy and you will get the date, but perhaps the proxy will come very soon. Again, that's the point I'm making here. The proxy itself would not be filed for quite some time if you were continuing to include stock uh in the transaction. that will change with an allcash offer and that will bring the question as to whether Paramount is going to raise and some and do something beyond suing and claiming it's being treated unfairly um in order to try to win the day. That remains unclear at this point, but Sarah will have the effect of consolidating that timeline significantly.