As Netflix struggles to come back from last week's earnings-related sell-off, one little-known foreign competitor is doing laps around the streaming giant.
China-based iQiyi, which made its Wall Street debut in March, has surged over the summer. Since the beginning of June its shares have rallied 30 percent, while Netflix is up just 3 percent.
July has been even worse for Netflix. It has dropped 7 percent, while iQiyi is up 2 percent.
Shares of iQiyi could see even larger rallies if the company continues to build out its customer base, said Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management.
"China is such a massive market that iQiyi could literally double its subscriber growth from 50 million to about 100 million in the next couple of years," Schlossberg told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Wednesday. "As long as it does that, irrespective of whatever earnings it has, it's probably going to be a growth darling."
IQiyi had just more than 60 million subscribers at the end of February, up from nearly 51 million at year-end 2017, according to its SEC filing.
"I think very much like Netflix if it can get the subscriber growth going, it's going to be a good stock going forward," said Schlossberg.
The surge by iQiyi out of the gate this year has Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, feeling more cautious on the stock.
"It's only been around since March so it's hard to get a really good feel for the chart, and to be honest with you, it did make a little bit of a lower high last month and now it's testing its 50-day moving average so you need to be a little bit careful but the stock has been acting very well," Maley said on Wednesday's "Trading Nation."
IQiyi hit its peak in mid-June, pulled back through early July and then hit a lower high in mid-July. It has been stuck in a tight range for the past week.
Maley is more interested in what's going on with Netflix's charts after its earnings-linked sell-off on July 17.
"What I'm going to be watching right now is the $344 level. That was the intraday low from last week and if you break below that level I think a lot of those momentum players are going to start heading for the exits," he said.
Netflix is currently 6 percent higher than the recent intraday low set last week.
