Earnings Day

Key term: earnings report

Of all the scheduled catalysts a company can have, none is bigger or more regular than its earnings report — the quarterly announcement of how much it sold, how much profit it made, and what it expects going forward. Every public company reports roughly four times a year, and the market treats each one as a genuine event.

Timing matters here. Some companies report before the market opens, giving traders the whole day to react to the news during normal hours. Others report after the market closes, which means the real reaction often shows up the next morning, sometimes as a large jump between one day's close and the next day's open.

Either way, the days around a report are jumpier than normal — even before the numbers are out, traders are positioning themselves based on guesses about what the report will say, which can move the price on its own. Once the actual numbers land, the price frequently makes its biggest move of the entire quarter within minutes.

When you're sizing up a matchup, checking whether either company has an earnings report landing on or near the game day is one of the fastest ways to spot which one is more likely to make an outsized move — in either direction.

In the daily game

The Next Earnings metric in the Game-Day Setup section tells you exactly how close either company is to its next report — the single biggest thing to check before picking.