The Nasdaq 100 is welcoming a few new additions to its exclusive club.
Next Monday, the tech-heavy index will add Palo Alto Networks, Airbnb, Fortinet, Lucid Group, Zscaler and Datadog and subtract CDW, Fox, Cerner, Check Point Software, Trip.com and Incyte.
Those latest inductees received the Nasdaq’s seal of approval, but what about investors? CNBC’s “Trading Nation” asked its traders on Monday for their favorite of the bunch.
Delano Saporu, founder of New Street Advisors, said Palo Alto Networks looks best positioned here.
“It has had an incredible year, but it still might be a good stocking stuffer if folks are looking to add to their IT infrastructure stocks,” Saporu said.
Palo Alto Networks has risen more than 50% in 2021, better than the broader market. The SKYY cloud computing ETF, which holds shares in Palo Alto, has climbed just 10%.
“The network security side of the business, the cloud security side of the business, and the security operations side of the business, all those segments hadn’t had less than 10 new major product releases over the last three fiscal years. That tells me that the company is doing a great job of keeping up with infrastructure and IT demands,” Saporu said.
He calls it a “market leader” in the space and a stock that should benefit from the “secular growth story.”
Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, does not expect the addition to the Nasdaq 100 to have a net benefit for any of the incoming stocks. However, one inclusion and removal pairing could give the index a boost.
“Probably the industry pair that I think ultimately ends up helping the index’s performance is the addition of Palo Alto and the removal of Check Point Software. I think Palo Alto ends up doing better relative to the market, breaking to the upside,” Wald said during the same interview.
