Alphabet third-quarter earnings release might not actually be the big event it's made out to be, according to one trader.
The tech titan is reporting earnings after the bell Thursday along with e-commerce giant Amazon. While the options market is implying a 5 percent move for Alphabet earnings, Susquehanna's head of derivatives strategy, Stacey Gilbert, says that from an options perspective, Alphabet is "quite boring."
"There is no real directional sentiment and investors seem to be less interested in the former big movers like Twitter, Tesla and Apple," Gilbert said Thursday.
The quarter's implied move of 5 percent in either direction for Alphabet is about 25 percent greater than the average move of the last four quarters. The company has an implied market cap move of $27.5 billion off of Thursday's earnings.
S&P Global Equity Chief Investment Officer Erin Gibbs agreed that Alphabet may not be the best bet for investors, as she is cautious about the internet software and services space as a whole. According to Gibbs, with almost half of the S&P 500 internet software and services group having already reported, good news may already be baked into the industry group.
"The stocks with the higher growth are all trading at higher valuations," wrote Gibbs to CNBC. "There aren't really any values in the group and you don't see as much potential upside when looking at target analyst consensus prices."
"You're paying for expected growth and these companies can disappoint with nasty downside," she added.
Other names in the sector include Facebook, reporting next Wednesday and eBay, which beat Q3 earnings but slumped about 6.5 percent in after-hours trading that day on weak holiday guidance.
Alphabet is down more than 2 percent this week in anticipation of earnings.
