Shares of Facebook have outperformed all other social media stocks

Facebook (FB) is positioned for a jump after earnings this quarter. The set up looks so good, it may be too perfect. Assuming all goes well, when trading resumes on Wednesday morning after a positive earnings report, Facebook investors will have a roster of other companies to thank for this including Alibaba, Netflix, Tesla, IBM and Twitter. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg and his management team deserve a little bit of the credit too.

After what many considered a disastrous IPO, investors have largely been able to forgive and forget the extreme hit the share prices took right out of the gate. Since reaching its nadir two years ago FB shares are up over 350%, 42% this year alone. Despite the market’s recent dip, FB is making new 52-week highs (see chart below).

That track record is important to those investors who have currently been made nervous by the big drops this season from stocks like Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), IBM, Tesla and the recent miss of expectations by the nearest stock in the social-networking space, Twitter (TWTR). They won’t have patience for bad news and have likely even dampened expectations heading into the earnings report. However no one is anticipating seriously bad news from Facebook.

Option sellers are currently pricing in a seventy percent possibility of a five dollar move. This is not an unusually large move, and it has some interesting boundaries. On the downside this wouldn’t even bring the price of the stock to the level of previous price support. A positive move would gap the stock to new highs. Either way it would seem to spell the continuation of an upward trend.

This anticipation of a mild move by option sellers is a stark contrast to the option pricing yesterday before Twitter released its quarterly results. Options on TWTR shares priced in a high probability of a ten percent or greater move. This implies that Facebook investors are rooting for the company and its stock, not feeling the need to buy much protection through earnings.

Why not? Zuckerberg’s management of the company has led to seven quarters with no earnings misses. Corporate guidance has kept expectations in check, and the company has been teflon to bad news related to security concerns or user data studies by the company.