Why Are Earnings Announcements So Important to Traders and Investors?

This Element is an excerpt from Trading on Corporate Earnings News: Profiting from Targeted, Short-Term Options Positions (9780137084920) by John Shon, Ph.D., and Ping Zhou, Ph.D. Available in print and digital formats.

Understand those crucial quarterly earning announcements: how they work, and how they impact stock prices.

Quarterly earnings announcement are the most salient, most anticipated, regularly-recurring announcement that companies make. They are the most watched piece of information that comes directly from the people that know the business the best. They are also considered the most reliable source of information, largely because companies are subject to strict SEC Rule 10b-5 rules…