Reporting Season and Short-term Trading

Technical analysts who study the charts over many reporting seasons see something quite startling: the probability of an individual stock selection moving in line with the short-term technical indicators at the time of the company reporting is at best uncertain. This is because the updated fundamental news overrides the technical analysis. The fact is that the risk-reward scenario of holding a CFDs or Exchange Traded Options (ETO's) overnight when the company is about to report is unfavourable.

From experience, more short-term CFD share and option traders get hurt during earnings season than at any other time of the year.

Why?

There are several mechanics at work during an earnings release.

• Firstly there are the raw numbers themselves. Did they actually beat the estimates? Sometimes it appears as they have, but how’d they do it? If they did it on falling revenues, then they accomplished the feat by cost cutting or playing the currency spreads. None of them are indicative of great growth.
• Then we have the issue of just how much did they beat the estimates by? Quite often beating the estimates can be more a matter of creative accounting than a real estimate of business growth.
• Analysts Expectations Versus Market reality: Short-term technical analysis generally supports the jawboning of the analyst’s and their estimates. The CFDs or Exchange Traded Options (ETO's) trader sees the stock price moving with the expectations of the analysts, encouraging the trader to enter the trade. The next morning the company announces their earnings and “whack” the share price gaps down or falls quickly, despite the fact that they beat the numbers.
• Guidance: The earnings released is already old news as they represent the half-year that has already past. Fund managers and analysts are very interested in what the company is doing now and what they think they will do in the future. If the guidance is less than encouraging, the stock may well take a knock.

Past Experience: We can take a look back to February 2007 to see some practical examples of the effect of reporting season.

The aqua circle is the day before the company reported. The green rectangle shows the MACD. As you can see in the above chart that the share price gapped up considerably the day BHP reported.

Please note, unlike its counterpart, RIO, or the Resmed chart below, there was heavy "fundamental" and "technical" support for a positive BHP report, along with the share price being supported in a strong short-term uptrend. Many dedicated BHP analysts were also upbeat about BHP. As it was BHP, stunned the market with is buy back plan.

Practical Example 2

As you can see with Resmed (RMD) above, the share price fell drastically after reporting. Obviously the market reacted badly to the release. Again, as in the earlier BHP chart, the yellow circle indicates the day prior to the release of the report and the aqua circle is the report day.

From a technical analysis perspective, note the volatility prior to the release of the report, suggesting uncertainty in the market place. The RSI was displaying bearish divergence prior to the release of the report (yellow rectangle). The MACD (green triangle) was tumbling along showing no strong or "obvious" signs of future possible direction of the share price. Upon release of the report, the RSI and MACD followed the share price movement down and the yellow rectangle shows the RSI. Technically there was very obvious positive momentum shown.