Three stocks could be a buy ahead of their earnings reports this week

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Earnings season is heating up, with 55 S&P 500 companies and seven Dow members reporting their results this week.

So far this week, investors have gotten results from 13 S&P companies and three Dow components. Amid the waterfall of results, market watchers are recommending the names that look best positioned ahead of their reports.

Netflix, which is scheduled to report after the bell Tuesday, could see a huge move higher on its release, said Boris Schlossberg, managing director at BK Asset Management. While he’d take the long side, Schlossberg said he’d urge investors to buy puts to protect against downside in the stock.

“I think the market is going to be glued to its results, not least of which because the results here are going to have a big impact on the indices as a whole. Netflix, of course, can’t be measured by any kind of conventional valuations, and as always the focus is going to be really on subscriber growth,” he said Monday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.”

The price of buying protection against the stock is “worth the insurance” as the name typically sees large swings around its earnings releases. Shares of the streaming giant plunged in July after its report.

“Overall, I still think if they can execute well, it’s going to be a very big pop, and the shorts are going to go running for cover,” he added.

In other areas of the market, particularly in financials and industrials, the performance has been quite split ahead of earnings, pointed out Oppenheimer’s Ari Wald.

“It’s become a much more split tape here underneath the surface. As we’ve had this pretty meaningful sell-off in the market over the last two weeks, two questions we have to be asking ourselves is, one, where’s the opportunity and two, where is there still additional downside risk? To answer those questions, I think the opportunities are in stocks coming off of new cycle highs,” he said Tuesday on “Trading Nation.”

Within industrials, the firm’s head of technical analysis says investors should consider buying shares of rail company CSX, and avoiding United Rentals. CSX is scheduled to report Tuesday after the market’s close, and United Rentals is set to report Wednesday after the bell.

Within financials, he’d suggest buying up shares of American Express and avoiding Bank of New York Mellon, which he noted has made a series of lower highs throughout the year.

Bank of New York Mellon is scheduled to report Thursday before the bell, while American Express reports that day after the market’s close.