*By Carlo Versano* Broad stock indexes sputtered Monday, but tech investors looked ahead to one of the busiest earnings weeks of the quarter, anchored by reports from many industry heavyweights that were able to avoid overall weakness in the market. Microsoft ($MSFT) will kick things off with its latest quarterly results on Wednesday, followed by reports from a slew of top names like Twitter ($TWTR), Amazon ($AMZN), Intel ($INTC), Snap ($SNAP), and Google parent Alphabet ($GOOGL) on Thursday. Among the trends investors will be scouring for: continued strength in cloud computing, particularly from Amazon and Google ー two of the FAANG components ー as well as Microsoft. Growth in its cloud-based Amazon Web Services has been one of the biggest factors that powered Amazon toward a trillion-dollar market cap, which it reached briefly in the third quarter, and the transition to the software-as-a-service model has been one of the defining currents of the bull market in tech, from Adobe ($ADBE) to SAP ($SAP). Amazon will likely give an indication about its fast-growing advertising business, which is now a multibillion-dollar segment of its empire. Investors will also be searching to see if there is evidence that a simmering trade war between the U.S. and China is starting to impact revenues. Chipmakers like AMD ($AMD) and Intel (which report Wednesday and Thursday, respectively) are highly exposed to Chinese tariffs. We will get an update on the state of social media, with Twitter and Snap earnings. Unlike e-commerce, hardware makers or cloud companies, social earnings are mainly about one thing: active users. Snap has posted slower user growth over the past several quarters ー actually losing users in its second quarter ー as it faces continued competition from Instagram, and investors will be looking to see whether CEO Evan Spiegel has taken any steps to slow the company's huge cash burn. For Twitter, which has been aggressive in culling fake accounts and trolls, the question will be whether that has eaten into its daily active user growth. Next week, Facebook ($FB) and Apple ($AAPL) will round out the latest quarter of FAANG earnings.
