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February 14, 2008 7:33 PM

Is there a website that shows me when companies are going to announce their quarterly results or do other things that usually affect their stock price?

I read financial news, and every day I see some news saying x company just announced something, and it's stock jumped 10% or fell 3000%. Are these announcements secrets or is there some website that will tell me things like:

In 5 weeks, apple will be announcing 4th quarter results
In 3 days, Airbus will hold a press conference on a boeing merger
In 10 weeks, Intel will release sales figures.

Some site that informs about upcoming significant dates without neccesarily laying value on these statements.

My idea is that if one knew well in advance, one could do research and basically bet one way or the other. Or ride the pre announcement trend.

posted by markovich to work & money (8 comments total)

My idea is that if one knew well in advance, one could do research and basically bet one way or the other. Or ride the pre announcement trend.

Everyone else has thought of this already, and it doesn't work unless you have insider information. Which is illegal to trade with, if you live in the US.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:46 PM on February 14

Yahoo! Finance earnings calendar. These events are very public and announced ahead of time. Also, stocks cannot fall 3000% (think about it- once it's down 100%, it's worth $0).
posted by Frank Grimes at 7:50 PM on February 14

Based on the efficient market hypothesis, if you assume markets are semi-strong or strong, you would not stand to gain from your proposed strategy.

... you may want to read a bit more about insider trading. It's not uncommon, but it is certainly illegal.
posted by fourstar at 7:52 PM on February 14

Read fooled by randomness instead, most money made in the market is made by luck.
posted by b1tr0t at 8:11 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

Companies (almost) always announce when they will release their earnings. Generally there is a 3-4 week period each quarter over which most companies will do this. For example, we are in the midst of earnings season right now.

For any given company I would check out their investor relations page to find out announcements about upcoming reports. For industries as a whole, the Yahoo finance earnings calendar mentioned above is good, and almost every professional (investor oriented) stock related site has a similar calendar.

Also, there are major conferences, put on by the sell-side where many companies will give their conference calls the same day/days. Again, this information is all publicly available well in advance.

Don't think you'll be able to do much better than everyone else though. Everyone investing large amounts of money (i.e large enough to actually move the stock price) does the same kind of research, and if people got it right all (or even most) of the time, you wouldn't see the large swings like we do now.
posted by langeNU at 4:12 AM on February 15

Second Yahoo finance for info on earnings calls and other important investor data for public companies. Even though as people said your pre-announcement bet wouldn't help one way or another, it's generally a good idea to be aware of when companies that you invest in or that affect the overall economy announce, and to keep track of exactly what they announce.

I would also suggest that you read Yahoo's Market Update page to get a feel for what announcements are made during the day and how they are affecting the overall stock market.

Also, specifically the reason why your plan won't work is that generally the expected announcement for a company is "priced in", so that if what is most likely to happen in an announcement really does happen, the stock won't go up or down. Analysts and the companies themselves set "earnings guidance" numbers, which help everyone come to a reasonable approximation of what kind of quarter it will be for the company.

The only time you see big swings is when something unexpected happens, such as a big outperform/underperform, or an surprise merger/acquisition. For example, if everyone expects Apple to triple their profits this quarter, and they only double them, their stock price will actually go down. This is very confusing for people who don't follow the earnings estimates, because Apple's press release will probably tout the doubling of their profits as a huge win. The kind of information that would help you bet on earnings reports is the kind of information that nobody except illegal insider traders would have, so it's very unlikely that you would have much success with it.
posted by burnmp3s at 6:42 AM on February 15

If you use Google Finance, add the symbols that interest you into your Portfolio section and you will see automatic updates like this in the Portfolio section.
posted by mattbucher at 12:22 PM on February 15

What everyone else said about such things likely already being priced into the market is accurate, but if you're still looking for such a site anyway, then earnings.com is probably what you want.
posted by tomwheeler at 10:23 AM on February 16