Tech stocks like Amazon and CrowdStrike will rip higher this earnings season, says Wedbush’s Ives. Here’s why.

And according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, the third-quarter earnings of tech stocks delivered over the next few weeks will be “an eye-opener” for Wall Street that will propel the sector up another 12% to 15% over the final months of the year.

“While the macro/bond backdrop is confusing for investors and the geopolitical situation caused by the terrorist attack on Israel has created a heartbreaking and nervous situation for the markets, we believe the tech universe is resilient and is poised for a strong earnings season ahead [which is] set to prove the doubters wrong,” says Ives in a new note to clients.

Indeed, Ives stresses that over the the past few decades it is just such periods of market nervousness that provide the best opportunity to buy top quality tech stocks; and then he gets a bit shouty, writing in capitals “THIS TIME IS NO DIFFERENT.”

Share price gains for tech are likely because the transformational growth around Artificial Intelligence, cloud, cyber security, and the rebound of digital ad dollars will create a springboard of growth into 2024 that is currently being underappreciated by Wall Street, Ives reckons.

In particular, he believes the impact of the AI cycle on the consumer internet sector “will be massive” and will begin with the cloud service divisions, such as Amazon’s AWS and Alphabet’s GCP.

A survey on generative AI conducted by Wedbush found that more than half of the enterprises interviewed see at least 20 examples of areas where they could use AI, while 80% of companies see more than 10 areas of use. As monetization of those uses grows this is “very positive for…the myriad of tech players globally that are heavily investing in developing Generative AI products/solutions for enterprises,” says Ives.

“AWS and GCP acquire AI-capable chips, build AI-capable service offerings, and sell those services into their respective installed bases. On this theme, we continue to like Amazon
AMZN,
+0.38%,
Alphabet
GOOG,
-1.00%,
and Meta
META,
-1.12%
as our favorite tech plays,” he adds.

Wedbush’s favorite tech names overall are Apple
AAPL,
+0.51%,
Microsoft
MSFT,
-0.38%,
Palo Alto
PANW,
+0.54%,
Palantir
PLTR,
+0.11%,
Zscaler
ZS,
-1.39%,
CrowdStrike
CRWD,
-0.35%,
and MongoDB
MDB,
-0.24%.
The table below shows a selection of Wedbush picks with price targets.

“The macro story is overshadowing the biggest technology revolution in the last 30 years with AI a “1995 Moment” and we believe the fundamental tech growth stories/use cases are accelerating and will be front and center in 3Q earnings season over the coming weeks,” says Ives.

Markets

U.S. stock-index futures
ES00,
-0.09%

YM00,
+0.07%

NQ00,
-0.36%
are lower as benchmark Treasury yields
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
dip. The dollar
DXY
is little changed on the day, while oil prices
CL.1,
+3.82%
jump and gold
GC00,
+1.13%
gains ground on concerns about escalating tensions in the Middle East..

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The buzz

U.S. economic data due on Friday include the import price index for September, released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, followed at 10 a.m. by the preliminary reading of October consumer sentiment.

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker is expected to make comments at 9 a.m..

Big banks JPMorgan Chase
JPM,
-0.23%,
Citigroup
C,

and Wells Fargo
WFC,
+0.13%
kick off the third quarter corporate earnings season. UnitedHealth Group
UNH,
+0.27%
and BlackRock
BLK,
-1.01%
will also deliver their numbers.

U.K. regulators on Friday gave Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
-0.38%
the go-ahead for the tech giant’s $68.7 billion acquisition of videogame holding company, Activision Blizzard
ATVI,
-0.05%.

Dollar General shares
DG,
-1.77%
are rallying nearly 8% in Friday’s premarket after the store chain said Todd Vasos is returning as chief executive having retired less than a year ago.

Shares of Cassava Sciences
SAVA,
-4.83%
are plunging 29% after the publication Science reported that an investigation accused a neuroscientist who often collaborated with the company of “long-standing and egregious misconduct”.

China’s consumer prices were unchanged for the year to September, while factory-gate prices fell 2.5%, data released on Friday showed.

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The chart

Global trade variables used as proxies for global manufacturing are pointing up, says U.S. strategists at Deutsche Bank led by Francis Yared. The team looks at Chile exports, Taiwan exports and South Korea semi conductor exports, which together, as the chart below shows, have proved to be a decent leading indicator of global manufacturing. “These variables are currently pointing towards a global manufacturing PMI comfortably above its long term average,” Deutsche notes.

And that may have implications for monetary policy, they say. “Given the relative importance of manufacturing in the various economies, if global manufacturing does recover as implied by this chart, the BoJ should be most impacted and should come under pressure to move away from ZIRP [zero interest rate policy] sooner rather than later,” says Deutsche. The ECB may need to resume its hiking cycle too, Deutsche reckons.

Top tickers

Here were the most active stock-market tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern.

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