How to play tech earnings all week: 'Fast' pros
With several tech companies reporting quarterly earnings next week, the CNBC "Fast Money" traders shared their stock playbooks.
Monday after the market closes, Apple and IBM are scheduled to release results.
Based on future penetration of Asian markets, Apple stock appears to have a positive catalyst ahead, OptionMonster's Pete Najarian said Friday.
"I think that's going to be huge, he said, adding that he expected earnings to be "absolutely incredible."
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Brian Kelly of Brian Kelly Capital noted that Apple had traded well throughout the week's selloff in stocks.
"Their relative strength has been fantastic," he said. "The tape now has been so aggressive to the downside that I do think you're going to need a benign to up tape to really get an acceleration."
Stuart Frankel's Steve Grasso noted that Apple stock saw gains while the broader market sold off.
"It's inversely correlated to the market," he said.
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The reason?
"It's cheap," Grasso said.
IBM faces headwinds from shifting trends, even as its cloud-computing services were picking up steam, Tim Seymour of Triogem Asset Management said.
But that wasn't enough to make him a buyer.
"There's no reason to be very excited about this company," he said. "At best, you're neutral. And at worst, you're playing downside risk. I mean, you're playing where this thing breaks technical levels, and you could actually go after it.
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Najarian liked IBM.
"I look at it as a very safe play," he said. "It's not exciting. I don't see it back going up to $200 anytime soon, but I look at it as a safe play right now if someone wants to park it and get that dividend yield."
Kelly said investors needed to be careful of IBM's stock buybacks, using all of its free cash flow for its financial engineering.
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"I don't think you have to buy IBM into the print," he said. "If you see free cash flow starting to fall, that's going to be a huge problem for IBM."
Tuesday after the closing bell, Yahoo is set to report quarterly earnings.
Grasso, who owned Yahoo stock, said that investors were looking to see what the company would do with its cash following the initial public offering of Alibaba, in which Yahoo held a stake.
"Forty dollars is the line in sand for this one," he said. "I think you can still get long."
Thursday after the market close, Microsoft is expected to report earnings.
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Kelly said that the stock had been beaten up over the week, bouncing off the $42 level.
That means a lot of the bad news Microsoft faces could already be priced into the stock, he added.
"I wouldn't buy it ahead of earnings, but if you can't keep your finger off the 'buy' button, then use $42 as your stop," Kelly said.
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Najarian said that he was bullish on Microsoft's cloud plays.
"That's where they've got the margins. That's where they've got the growth. That's why I'm still excited about the stock," he said.