Shares of Activision Blizzard have soared 81 percent this year, and Oppenheimer technician Ari Wald says the stock’s about to fly even higher.
“Activision is a high momentum stock and it does warrant a buy rating in our work,” he said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.” “The thing with these high momentum stocks is they could do nothing for months at a time, but the longer-term strength ultimately continues higher and I think that’s what’s going on for Activision.”
While the video game maker has traded between $60 and $66 since July, Wald pointed to three key factors that he thinks will ultimately get the stock to break out.
“Our bet is that given the positive momentum, the rising 200-day moving average and top-down tail winds from a relatively broadly structured tech sector, we think it is more likely that you get an upside breakout than a downside break,” he added.
But not everyone is as excited about the gaming stock. Cowen’s David Seaburg, for instance, believes the shares have risen almost too far, too fast, and has already priced in some key events.
“[Our analysts at Cowen believe] that competition is heating up immensely, and 2018 growth assumptions are just too high and not achievable,” Seaburg, the firm’s head of sales trading, said on “Power Lunch.” “So he expects that the quarter will be fine, but earnings expectations are baked into the stock price here.”
In other words, “any pop on Friday morning out of earnings is a sell,” said Seaburg.
Despite falling Wednesday, Activision is still hovering near all-time highs ahead of its earnings report after Thursday’s close.
