Netflix Q4 results

Netflix announced their fourth quarter results, disclosing a 36% increase in profits, and a 31% increase in subscriber base (now over 12 Million) and saw a positive market response of a 13.24% increase in their stock price.

Macro-level news

This week in class we have been talking about "Top-down" analysis (which by the way, we will typically discard in favor of bottom-up analysis). This article mentions that the futures price is indicating an increase in overall market value (for the S& 500), while we didn't discuss these instruments in detail, we have been discussing interest rates (which are expected to be unchanged in the Fed's policy statement due this afternoon), there is also some discussion of additional factors and their expected impact. Note that Apple is set to announce a new product (the tablet) this afternoon, I'll write about this event separately after it occurs. This related article Before the bell: Futures higher amid upbeat earnings also notes some interesting factors and raises some additional points relating to the (expected) turn-around in the housing market.

So given the level of the S&P 500 closed at 1,092.17 yesterday, if we are expecting some possible impact on the market will it be long-term or will it be short-term? What is your estimate of the level of the S&P 500 in the final weeks of class? Moving to our firm level analysis, what tools do we have to incorporate any expected returns on the S&P 500 index into calculating value of the individual companies we are following?