Home Depot is the first of the big retailers announcing earnings this week when it reports Tuesday morning, and the company could see a larger move than normal.
The options market has priced in an implied move of 4 percent for the hardware and home improvement retailer, according to Stacey Gilbert, market strategist at Susquehanna.
"Comparable to the rest of what Home Depot typically moves, that's probably higher than we've seen over the last eight quarters on a close-to-close basis," Gilbert told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Monday. "The market certainly sees potential for movement heading into this report."
Over the previous four quarterly reports, Home Depot moved as much as 1.6 percent higher and 2.7 percent lower in the first session after the release of its earnings.
"In terms of sentiment, I would say it's probably slightly leaning more bullish than bearish here," added Gilbert.
Home Depot shares have been on the rise this year, though lacking in the kind of upward momentum that powered big gains for the stock last year. It is up less than 3 percent in 2018, compared with a 41 percent surge last year which was nearly double the gains for the Dow.
Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, sees the potential for more of the same price action after earnings, though is a believer in its long-term potential.
"It looks like it could continue to drift sideways," Wald said on Monday's "Trading Nation." "But, being long-term momentum trend followers, we side with the stock's long-term uptrend and we think it continues to move higher."
The most bullish signal to Wald is that its shares continue to trade above a rising 200-day moving average.
"As long as that's the case HD is going to maintain its spot on our S&P 500 buy list and we think the stock going to get new all-time highs," said Wald.
Shares of Home Depot have not hit a record since Jan. 29. It remains a 6 percent rally from that intraday high.
Home Depot is expected to post 26 percent earnings growth and a 6.7 percent increase in same-store sales for its July-ended second quarter, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet.
The report comes amid some trouble for home-related companies. The ITB home construction ETF fell 2.9 percent on Monday in its worst day in more than two months.
Disclosure: SFG is a market maker in the securities of HD.
