About the EarningsEdge
Introduction
Earnings, or profits, drive stock prices. The market values a company
based on its current and anticipated future ability to make money. The
market takes the earnings pulse of a company four times per year when
quarterly reports are issued. When this information is released it can
often be a trend-changing or a trend confirming event because the
information is so vital to the market's perception of the vitality of
that company.
Chief Financial Officers at these companies have become adept at
managing their quarterly earnings numbers to present the company in its
most favorable light. They carefully manage the expectations of
analysts assigned to follow the company so that when earnings are
announced, they do not issue a disappointment. As a result, the
movements of stock prices in the days and weeks leading to and
following these earnings announcements may follow a predictable
pattern. Most companies stock price histories show random or
unpredictable movements around earnings dates. But some seem to repeat
the same pattern quarter after quarter, year after year.
MarketHistory.com's EarningsEdge is designed to help the stock trader
identify those companies that seem to have a consistent pattern of
movement before or after the earnings release date, based on the
history of earnings releases for that company. It combines a calendar
of expected earnings releases with a history of past earnings releases
in a way that lets you see if a pattern exists. We have developed a
special "Edge Index" indicator that shows where the edge is sharpest,
and how strong the signal is.
You can find companies releasing earnings today on the front page of
the EarningsEdge, and for each company we provide three different
views of past earnings releases. The first shows the last 12 quarters,
the second the last 6 quarters, and the third shows prior earnings
releases occurring in the month the company is scheduled to release.
Browsing different earnings release dates is simple - simply click on a
date in one of the calendar months at the top of the chart, or choose
one of the nearby relative dates such as [Tomorrow] or [Yesterday]. You can always go to the previous or next trading date by clicking on the
<< and >> links next to the current date.
You can also find companies you are looking for by typing the ticker
symbol into the Search box on the left hand side of the page. Make sure
the EarningsEdge button is selected.
The Edge Index indicators provide what you need to know about the
companies releasing earnings on a given date at a glance. For each of
the three different views there are two Edge Index icons, the one on
the left represents the price movement leading up to the earnings
announcement, and the one on the right represents the edge of the
stock's performance after the earnings announcement. The two icons are
separated by a vertical yellow line, which represents the earnings
announcement date. A green triangle (
) means that the stock
has a bullish pattern of movement; a downward pointing red triangle
(
) indicates a bearish pattern of movement; and a blue square
(
) indicates there is no significant edge one way or the
other. No icon means we do not have historical earnings data for that
stock.
Companies are listed in order of importance, based on a percentile
ranking of the dollar value of the shares traded in the last five
trading days. You can change the sort order of a list of companies
simply by clicking in the column header at the top of the list.
EarningsEdge Table
More information about the columns shown in the list of companies...
Ticker Symbol - The ticker symbol under which the stock trades.
Company Name - The name of the company.
Fiscal Quarter - The fiscal quarter of the company covered in their next scheduled earnings announcement
Verified Date - A check mark in this column indicates that the scheduled date indicated here is no longer a tentative date. Our prospective earnings date supplier uses automatic methods to determine from a wide variety of online sources when a company is scheduled to release earnings. This is backed up by human operators who validate these dates.
Release Time - Indicates when, relative to the market's open and close, the company is likely to announce earnings.
$ Volume Percentile - Stocks are ranked according to the relative dollar value of
the trading activity during the last five trading days. This is
calculated by summing the last five trading days of volume, and
multiplying by the average price. Stocks are then ranked on a
percentile scale. For example, a stock whose rank is 95 had a
transaction volume that exceeded that of 95% of stocks trading. Sorting
by this column puts the most "significant" stocks at the top of the
list.
Edge Index - The Edge Index is a proprietary indicator which lets you know, at a glance, if the movements of the stock price in the 30 trading days before and after historical earnings announcements show a consistent pattern. A green triangle pointing upward () indicates a historical bullish bias. A red triangle pointing downward () indicates a historical bearish bias. The vertical yellow line indicates the earnings release date.
We currently look at historical earnings announcements in three ways:
- 12q - how the stock has performed before and after the most recent 12 earnings quarterly announcements. Some stocks do not have such a long track record, so there may be fewer than twelve recent earnings announcements, and in some cases this may show 13 quarterly announcements.
- 6q - how the stock has performed before and after the most recent 6 quarterly earnings announcements. This should be considered less reliable than the larger 12 quarter sample, but it is provided to show if the company has vastly different performance in recent announcements than in the longer term view.
- Monthly - the monthly view looks at all the past earnings announcements that have occurred in the month of the currently scheduled release.
Disclaimer
EarningsEdge is compiled from sources we believe to be accurate, but
the nature of predicting when a company will release earnings is a
science combined with some amount of art, and the dates are always
subject to change at any time. Historical earnings dates are also
difficult to collect on a large scale, and so there may be inaccuracies
there. Before you risk capital on a trading idea presented here you
should perform due diligence on the data presented.
