For those visiting this website who wish to learn about the stock market basics, general information such as this presented here now, and elsewhere, on the “lore” of the stock market, are useful as basic information to help understand how the market works, although quite separate from the more specific information on guidelines and trading rules posted in other articles on this site.

Earnings season
Earnings season, usually a period of increased activity in the stock market, refers to a period of about six weeks commencing a week or two after the end of each fiscal quarter. The importance of earnings season to market participants who are holding stocks, buying stocks, or selling stocks is significant — the last paragraph of this article sums up my beliefs on the subject.

At the end of each quarter
Every three months, many publicly traded companies announce their earnings-to-date and their forecasts for the future together with other relevant business performance matters that are of great interest and importance to the financial community.

Mostly starting after the quarters ending March, June, September, and December, and traditionally following the lead of the major aluminum producer Alcoa Inc., a flurry of corporate news releases and conference calls occur when other major companies, report financial numbers relating to their current performance and their prospects for the following quarters. Some companies report their figures at the end of different months, based on different fiscal year endings.

Earnings dates for companies can be found by entering their stock symbol in the lower box at top left side of this Earnings Calendar Source.

Expectations of “the Street” (Wall Street)
Ahead of time, forecasts are made by various stock market analysts on what those past earnings and future earnings might be and the forecasts are circulated publicly and are available as possible guidance to shareholders and other interested parties, whoever they may be. The positive forecasts can encourage buying stocks, but actual negative forecasts are less common. But they are forecasts, educated guesses you might say, the exact figures must wait on the official corporate announcements and not released before then.

Lots of market action
Earnings announcements create a lot of market activity, especially if they beat or fail to meet the values expected by the “market”, based on the forecasts made by analysts — even being off by a penny (one cent) can cause a big drop in price or a big gain. After earnings announcements, there are sometimes instances when stocks have seen a rise or fall in price by as much as 20% or more.

Earnings season is eagerly anticipated, awaited with the newspaper and television media ready to report, to analyse, or to perform a post mortem on the key results.

The importance of Earnings Season
After all is said and done, after the stock market’s reactions to geopolitical events or natural disasters or other external big news occurrences, it is earnings that drive the stock market — when good news on the earnings front prevail then the market will go up, if not, then down.

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