The calendar of earnings announcements this week has a notable slant towards large-cap technology stocks. Companies such as Microsoft Corp (MSFT), Texas Instruments (TXN), Apple Inc (AAPL), Facebook Inc (FB), and Google Inc (GOOGL) are just some of the top names that are set to release their latest quarterly results.

This sector has been a strong area of the market over the last several years and many investors likely have exposure to some of these individual stocks or an associated ETF. In fact, the number of innovative ETFs that offer varying degrees of exposure to these companies has continued to multiply in recent years.

The Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK) is still the biggest sector benchmark in terms of total assets. This market-cap weighted index has over $13 billion dedicated to 73 large-cap technology and telecommunication companies. All of the stocks in the list above are represented in XLK according to the size of their share float. AAPL is easily the biggest holding with more than 16% of the total asset allocation.

XLK has gained 19.66% over the last year compared to 16.96% in the broad-market SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY).

Read the full article on NASDAQ.com