The Investor’s Guide to Earnings Season

The Investor’s Guide to Earnings Season

Editor’s Note: The AI Earnings Predictor Summit is now available to watch on demand. Click here to tune in now.

Your first opportunity to make serious money in the stock market this year begins in just a couple of days.

With the start of earnings season.

It’s a cold, hard fact: stocks tend to make some of their biggest moves in the wake of quarterly earnings reports. Those initial moves can be positive or negative – and often feed into a prolonged rally or freefall.

On the bearish side of the coin, a company can report drops in sales or profits or, even worse, chop its outlook for “what comes next,” and send a stock into a quick decline.

And on the bullish side of the coin, there’s a “good/better/best” formula that’s easy to understand:

  • Good: a company beats forecasts on sales.
  • Better: that company beats estimates on profits.
  • Best: company leaders are so confident that they boost their forecast for sales and profits going forward.

Want proof? Check out these recent examples:

  • Bearish: Tesla (TSLA) fell short of earnings and revenue expectations last quarter; after that disappointing report on October 18, shares closed the week 16% lower.
  • Bullish: On November 29, Dollar Tree’s (DLTR) third-quarter results fell short of estimates – but with low expectations going in, and a “good enough” report, the stock ticked nearly 9% higher over the next two days.
  • The Bullish “Trifecta:” On November 9, Duolingo (DUOL) smoked third-quarter sales-and-profit estimates and raised its full-year guidance. After starting the week at $160.81, the stock zoomed 31% over the next four days, closing the week at an all-time high (and sustained that rally through the end of the year).

An Invitation to the “Earnings Season Party”

These are not just a few “cherry-picked” examples. These assertions are backed by a lot of research.

For instance, a classic white paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that that the days leading up to and following earnings announcements are characterized by above-average volume and wider price swings.

This gives the shares of a soon-to-report company something called an “earnings announcement premium.”

In layman’s terms: When many investors show up to the party to trade on valuable new information, things can get crazy – if not downright out of hand.

Personally, I never show up to a party empty-handed – be it for the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl, or earnings season.

In our famous Weekly Earnings Scorecard, we boil down all of our consumer sentiment data, along with macro trends, to deliver our proprietary Earnings Score – a simple -100 to +100 metric that lets us know if we should be bullish, bearish, or neutral heading into the earnings event.

Did we model this after a horse racing tip sheet inspired by a day at the track? Maybe. But you get the idea.

This is our high-level view of every company reporting earnings and the metrics that matter. View it as a “cheat sheet” for the company’s report.

We then take it a step further by implementing bullish, bearish, or neutral options trading strategies.

We love using these strategies because they allow us to take on an appropriate, clearly defined (and limited) amount of risk – without having to go long or short on a stock.

The risk/reward calculus can be downright magical.

We’re talking about a hefty payoff – with a very limited downside.

This is what earnings season is all about: Making informed decisions about whether a company will surprise to the upside or downside or simply meet expectations.

It’s what makes these opportunities so potentially lucrative.

A key part of the earnings trading process is to learn from what went right and repeat what worked well.

For the stuff that didn’t work in your favor, we make adjustments and avoid making the same mistakes.

I told you yesterday we’d have more earnings action to come. And this is just the beginning, folks…

Claim Your Seat for Our 2024 Earnings Kickoff Event (RSVP Now)

Our consumer insights machine got a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) upgrade over the last year – and we can’t wait to show you what it can do.

We’re talking about a system for spotting fast-cash trades that can bank you double- and triple-digit profits in a matter of days. All earnings season long.

So, next Tuesday, January 9, 2024, at 8:00 p.m. ET, we’ll be hosting our annual earnings kickoff event to get this profit party started in style.

We’re calling it The AI Earnings Predictor Summit – and I encourage you to go ahead and claim your seat here.

I’ll be joined by investing legend Louis Navellier for this epic team-up. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

Your invitation is waiting…

All you have to do is go here now to sign up.

We can’t wait to see you there.

And stick around because tomorrow, we’ll pull back the curtain on our “secret weapon” to spotting earnings moves and how we used our AI earnings algorithm to deliver an 80% win on Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) in less than 48 hours.

Stay tuned,

Landon Swan
Founder, LikeFolio

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