On Thursday morning, Amazon (AMZN) announced that it had added more content to its Prime Instant Video service. With this announcement, Prime Instant Video hit a new milestone, one that will make the streaming content wars even more interesting. Today, I'll breakdown the latest news, and discuss what it means for the rest of the players in this space. Should Netflix (NFLX) and Redbox Instant, the partnership between Coinstar (CSTR) and Verizon (VZ), be worried?

The latest news:

Amazon announced a deal with NBC Universal to bring in a wide variety of new content to the Prime Instant Video service. The deal is for the following shows.

• NBC dark fantasy "Grimm", as well as "Smash"; will also get psychological thriller "Hannibal" later this year.
• USA Network spy thriller "Covert Affairs" and legal drama "Suits".
• Syfy's new futuristic show "Defiance" (later this year) as well as fan favorite dramas "Eureka",

Short interest figures for the end of April were released late last week, and below we provide a table of the stocks in the S&P 1500 with the highest short interest as a percentage of float. Topping this month's list are shares of Blyth (BTH), which has more than two-thirds of its free-floating shares sold short. While BTH may not be a household name, there are plenty of more recognizable names on the list, including Coinstar (CSTR), J.C. Penney (JCP), GameStop (GME), SUPERVALU (SVU), 3D Systems (DDD), and United States Steel (X).

For the 25 names listed below, we have also calculated their performance since April 30. To bring home the point about how hard it has been to be short the market in recent weeks, only three of the stocks (BTH, CRR, and COCO) are down so far in May. Overall, the average

The discussion involving Netflix (NFLX) has certainly heated up in recent weeks after the company's first quarter earnings report. Netflix posted a strong quarter, with revenues mostly in-line on solid subscriber growth. The company was able to keep costs under control, which led to a huge beat on the bottom line, after subtracting out a one-time item. Netflix's Q2 guidance was fair, and the stock soared past $200, nearly touching $225 at one point. While the stock has come off its high a little, it closed Friday at $213.45, after beginning 2013 at just $92.59.

Today, I'm going to take another look at Netflix, but a different one this time. I'm not going to rant like many do about the sky high price to earnings valuation. I'm not going to describe how original programming will bring in new members and send this stock even higher. I'm going to look

By Eric Winter

As a testament to a his successful career, investor, writer and billionaire Ken Fisher has earned his spot on Forbes' list of 400 richest Americans, landing at 271 according to the publication. He started his fund, Fisher Asset Management, in 1979, making the firm a dinosaur in the world of fly-by-night hedge funds. Fisher recently disclosed his holdings for Q1 2013 in his latest 13F filing. Our research on these public disclosures has led us to discover a small-cap strategy that is up 37% since its debut last September, compared with the market's 12.9% return (learn more here). Continue reading for our take on the largest new investments made by Fisher so far this year.

Coinstar, Inc. (CSTR) stands out as the fund's top new investment in the first quarter of 2013. The automated, self-service retailer operates coin conversion machines as well

Q1 2013 Earnings Call

April 25, 2013 5:00 pm ET

Executives

Rosemary Moothart - Director of Investor Relations

J. Scott Di Valerio - Chief Executive Officer and Director

Galen C. Smith - Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Darren Aftahi - Northland Capital Markets, Research Division

Michael J. Olson - Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division

Andy Hargreaves - Pacific Crest Securities, Inc., Research Division

Eric C. Wold - B. Riley Caris, Research Division

Ronald Bookbinder - The Benchmark Company, LLC, Research Division

William Lennan

Presentation

Operator

Welcome to the 2013 Quarter 1 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Adrienne, and I'll be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Rosemary Moothart, Director of Investor Relations. Rosemary Moothart, you may begin.

Rosemary Moothart

Thank you, Adrienne. Good afternoon, and welcome to Coinstar's 2013 First Quarter Earnings

SWY - Safeway, Inc. - Shares in the food and drug retailer are trading down sharply on Thursday, falling more than 18% to $23.14 during the first half of the session, after the company posted first-quarter revenue that missed analyst estimates. At least one trader who appears to have purchased front month put options on Safeway on Wednesday afternoon is benefiting from the double-digit percentage declines in the price of the underlying today. The largest increase in put open interest on SWY yesterday was the 4,566-lot jump in the number of open contracts at the May $26 strike. It looks like most of the $26 puts were purchased at a premium of $0.40 each. Traders long the contracts are benefiting from Safeway's pain today, with premium on the $26 puts up more than six-fold at $2.55 apiece as of 11:55 a.m. in New York. Today, some options players appear

After the bell on Monday, shares of streaming giant Netflix (NFLX) rocketed higher after its first quarter earnings report. Subscriber numbers came in at the high end of guidance, while revenues were roughly in-line with expectations. After subtracting out a loss on the extinguishment of debt, earnings per share beat. Netflix shares jumped more than 25% to around $220 on the news. Today, I'll break down the numbers, and see if this rally is worth buying into.

First Quarter Results:

The table below shows where Netflix came in against its own expectations. Netflix analysts were expecting approximately $1.02 billion in revenues and earnings per share of $0.18.

*Net income and EPS are after adjustment for debt extinguishment.

In terms of domestic streaming, Netflix came in at the high end of its guidance or even above in some respects. The company did well with its new original series "House of

The following companies are all unique in at least one way. They have caused major disruption to at least one industry and in some cases several. These companies are leaders in their respective fields and have not only turned industries upside down, they have created new industries and forced companies to either restructure the way they do business or go out of business.

Amazon (AMZN)

Amazon started by challenging the retail book chains and forcing them to evolve by putting its entire retail sales channel online. Broader selection of inventory for lower cost. Since Amazon first went live in 1995, it has continued to apply pressure to the book industry by working tirelessly to keep costs down, adding other product lines and offering an after-market sales outlet for its items. All of the above has made Amazon the largest online retailer.

Further upsetting the status quo, Amazon launched the Kindle,

There are currently more Redbox kiosks in the United States than McDonald's (MCD) and Starbucks combined. -- Chris Katje [Article]

This is my first attempt at posting an article on Seeking Alpha. I am doing so for three reasons. The first is I have already benefited a great deal from this community and wanted to give back some effort. The second is Chris Katje's Seeking Alpha article (linked above and from which I took the initial quote for this piece) in March and how it really got my mind going on this company. Finally, I expect and want a discussion with the community to help me think better about Coinstar (CSTR) as a holistic situation over time not just as a month by month or quarter by quarter play.

Up front, I am a fairly recent direct long in Coinstar. I am also long Microsoft (MSFT) ,Verizon (VZ),

The first week of the second quarter was not a good one for shares of Netflix (NFLX). The streaming giant saw its shares decline by almost $25, a decline of 13% for the week. Netflix shares, which were above $197 just about a week earlier, closed the week at $164.66, and were more than $2 lower than that at one point on Friday. About a third of the post-earnings rally has been wiped out, which begs the question. For Netflix, is reality starting to set in? Today, I'll take a look at the past week or so in Netflix news, and try to figure out where shares go from here.

First, Reed is off the hook:

During the summer of 2012, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made news when he posted on his Facebook page that Netflix viewers had watched 1 billion hours in June. There have been questions as

By Kevin Wu
Netflix (NFLX) is without a doubt the most dominant movie streaming platform that exists today. Very few rivals, including Amazon's (AMZN) Prime service, can compete with Netflix in terms of infrastructure, movie selection and most importantly, worldwide subscribers.

Netflix has this market covered

To view this industry efficiently, let's look at the business models of all these services. Amazon's Prime offers streaming so long as you are an Amazon Prime subscriber. Coinstar (CSTR), which operates the popular Redbox kiosks, puts these at locations such as malls and convenient stores like 7-Elevens.

This model works pretty well since movie-lovers are able to rent their movies for a low price and can return the movie at any Redbox location. Only recently did Redbox finally add an internet streaming business model. Then there's News Corp (NWS) and Disney's (DIS) Hulu, which offer advertising-based internet subscription

Short interest figures for mid-March were released after the close on Tuesday, and below we highlight the 25 stocks in the S&P 1500 that have the highest short interest as a percentage of float. As shown, the top five most heavily shorted stocks in the S&P 1500 are all in the S&P 600 small cap index. Topping the list is Blyth (BTH), which has more than 80%

I've given Netflix (NFLX) all the credit in the world for their tremendous fourth quarter report. The company beat estimates and issued Q1 guidance that was well above expectations. As a result, the stock has gone from just over $100 to more than $180 per share since the report, and it had nearly doubled going into that report. But as I look at the current analyst estimates for Netflix in 2013, I start to worry. On the heels of that great quarter and guidance, analysts have kept increasing their expectations, and rightly so. Since the Q4 report, the 2013 average revenue estimate has jumped from $4.07 billion to $4.27 billion, and analysts are currently expecting 18.2% growth. That number seems fair, but I'll come back to it later.

My main issue is with the earnings per share figure. Going into the Q4 report, analysts were expecting a profit

I profiled Coinstar (CSTR) in early January when the shares were trading at $50 a share. The shares are up more than 10% since then. Almost all the attention in this space is devoted to Netflix (NFLX), which is experiencing faster revenue growth but also has nosebleed valuations (just under 140x this year's consensus earnings). Coinstar is a cheap stock and it prospects are improving. As such, the stock warrants an update.

Here are some recent positives for Coinstar:

• The consensus earnings estimates for FY 2014 have gone up some 8% over the last three months.
• B. Riley had a piece in Barron's today stating stock could rise 40% to $80 a share. The investment firm states investors are missing how big a market the rental DVD space encompasses.
• The company finally launched its streaming service.
• Coinstar floated $350 million of debt at 6% recently. The

I recently examined Coinstar's (CSTR) quarterly and annual reports and found a few reasons why I believe Coinstar provides an interesting opportunity for investors. Coinstar has three lines of business (as described in their 2012 10-K Filing):

1. Redbox Movie Rental kiosks - "…Operates approximately 43,700 Redbox kiosks, in 35,800 locations, where consumers can rent or purchase movies and video games and, in select markets, purchase tickets for events. Coinstar also shares its revenue from the Redbox kiosks with the retail locations, making these kiosks a pretty cheap source of income for commercial establishments. "
2. Coin Counting kiosks -"… Owns and operates approximately 20,300 coin-counting kiosks (approximately 17,300 of which offer a variety of stored value products to consumers) in 20,100 locations, where consumers feed loose change into the kiosks, which count the change and then dispense vouchers or, in some cases, issue stored value products, at the

Redbox parent company Coinstar (CSTR) was mentioned heavily in the news this week. The company launched its Redbox Instant service nationwide on Thursday. Investors and analysts continue arguing whether the service will hurt Netflix (NFLX). Today, I offer up several other highlights from Coinstar and why you should go long shares now.

Redbox Instant

In a partnership with Verizon (VZ), customers can now utilize Redbox Instant to watch movies on television, tablets, and smartphones. Customers are offered a one month free trial before they begin paying a monthly subscription. Monthly rates range from $8 to $9 depending on whether customers choose regular DVDs or Blu-Ray DVDs. Along with a monthly subscription to stream movies, customers get four free physical discs from the company's popular kiosks.

Redbox Instant offers only 4600 streaming movies to start with. This is significantly lower than the amount of viewing options offered by Netflix and