Samsung Misses Q2 Guidance, Shares Dip 3 Percent; So Who Sells Policies to Cover the Insurance Sector?; The Biggest Winner in this Week’s Dwight Howard Saga — Investors!

Samsung Misses Q2 Guidance, Shares Dip 3 Percent (Reuters)

Until recently, South Korean electronics titan Samsung had created a sterling reputation for itself within the smartphone industry for continuously crushing analysts’ earnings estimates. Perhaps that’s the reason for a significant decline in the company’s share price in the wake of announcing Q2 figures. At the time of this writing, they were down 3 percent for the day, and 17 percent since early June.  So, does this mean investors should start heading for the hills? “Not quite yet…” replied Jung Sang-jin, fund manager at Dongbu Asset Management. “Its growth is indeed slowing due largely to disappointing sales of the S4… Yet I think Samsung has some exciting stuff up its sleeves.”  Here’s to an entire quarter of Samsung sleeve madness.

So Who Sells Policies to Cover the Insurance Sector? (CNBC)

If you’re looking for a good gauge on the relative health of the healthcare industry as it readies itself for Obamacare, look no farther than its Fab Four: Molina Health (MOH), Cigna (CI), Aetna (AET) or WellPoint (WLP). Each is up 30 percent or more, for the year. Yet some investors and analysts now wonder if the president’s decision to delay the employer mandate provision of his Affordable Care Act will be the trigger for reclaiming the profits of those four companies. Count Les Funtleyder, a healthcare fund manager with Poliwogg, in the group of those concerned, “What it does is brings back to the fore the uncertainty…” And, if we, as investors can take away anything from this year’s market mania, it’s this: you can count on uncertainty to keep you guessing about the markets, regardless of when or how Obamacare is ultimately launched.

The Biggest Winner in this Week’s Dwight Howard Saga — Investors! (Bloomberg)

Industry insiders knew that this year’s biggest contest would go down to the wire, but few others knew that the “biggest contest’s wire wouldn’t arrive until weeks after the NBA’s season officially ended. And fewer still would know that actually signing Dwight Howard to a multi-year contract would be akin to the silver medal in all of this. That’s because the biggest competition here — the gold medal contest — comes down to a battle between two of the world’s largest telecom giants: Comcast and Time Warner Cable. You see, the Houston Rockets broadcast their games on Comcast, while the Lakers are on Time Warner. Whichever company adds Howard will put an even greater distance between itself and the rest of the industry, as potentially the next great international marketing chip. So, here’s to hoping no matter who wins the Howard Hustle we as investors clean up as well.