Where do companies announce their earnings dates?

Check the company's investor relations page or its most recent press release. Companies usually announce the date and whether results come before the open or after the close, often with details for the conference call. Until that announcement appears, a date on a third-party calendar is an estimate based on when the company reported in past quarters.

What does the implied move tell you before earnings?

It is the size of move the options market is pricing for the report, read from the cost of the at-the-money straddle. It is an expectation with no direction attached. The stock can move less, in which case option sellers profit, or much more, and a gap bigger than the implied move is common enough to plan for.

Should you sell a stock before earnings?

It depends on the size of the position and whether you can accept a loss the size of the implied move or bigger. A long-term holder may keep full size. A swing trader with a tight stop often trims or exits, because a stop does nothing when the stock opens far below it.

Earnings Calendar Workflow: Planning a Trading Week Around Reports

Q: Earnings Calendar Workflow: Planning a Trading Week Around Reports

Each weekend, list the reports due next week for every stock you hold or watch, mark each date confirmed or estimated and before the open or after the close, and note the implied move from the at-the-money straddle. Then decide to hold, trim or exit each holding and set a reminder for the day before.

Sunday evening, before the week’s reports. The position list is open in one window and the calendar in another. This is the only time in the week when nothing is moving, which makes it the right time to decide what you will do on the morning a stock opens 8% lower.

The weekend routine, step by step

List every report due next week for stocks you hold or watch. Include the ones you plan to buy, since a new position opened the day before a report inherits all of its gap risk.
Mark each date confirmed or estimated. Note before the open or after the close. An after-close report puts the risk on the next morning’s open.
Write down the implied move. Take the price of the at-the-money straddle for the expiration just after the report, which is the at-the-money call plus the at-the-money put, and divide by the stock price.
Decide hold, trim or exit for each holding, based on the dollar loss you would take if the stock gapped by the implied move against you.
Set a reminder for the day before each report so the decision gets carried out while the market is open, with time to place the order at a sensible price.

Steps 1 and 2 take a few minutes per stock. Step 4 is where the work is.

Pricing the gap: a worked example

Take a hypothetical $80 stock. Its straddle for the first expiration past the report costs $6.00, and you hold 250 shares.

If your usual risk on a swing trade is a few hundred dollars, $1,500 is several trades’ worth of loss taken in a single opening print, before you have had a chance to read the release, hear the call or place an order, and the implied move is only the market’s central guess. A stock can gap by more.

So size to the gap. Say your limit for a single event is $500: at a $6 move that allows about 83 shares, so trimming to 80 shares keeps you in the stock with a loss you have already accepted. If even that feels wrong, exit. Look again after the report, once the chart shows where buyers stepped in. The earnings gap case study follows a position through exactly this choice.

What if you decide to hold?

Write the decision down with its numbers. Hold 250 shares through the report, accept a gap of about $1,500, and note what you will do at the open: sell if the stock opens below a named price, add nothing on the first day, review at the close. A plan written on Sunday is easier to follow at 9:30 on Thursday than one invented while the stock is already down 9% in the premarket and every headline is arguing about the guidance.

Some investors hold small positions through reports. Holding a large one by accident is the mistake the workflow exists to catch.

Where do earnings dates come from?

The company sets the date. It usually announces it on its investor relations page and in a press release, often a few weeks ahead, with the time and conference call details. Third-party calendars list many dates before that announcement exists, estimating them from when the company reported in the same quarter of past years, which is why a date you saw two weeks ago can move.

The results go to the SEC on Form 8-K. They are furnished under Item 2.02, Results of Operations and Financial Condition, usually with the press release attached and a call with analysts to follow. The reaction is its own subject: see what moves a stock after earnings.

Common mistakes

Trusting an estimated date. A company that reports a week earlier than last year catches you at full size with no plan, and the calendar that showed next Thursday will quietly update the morning after the gap.
Forgetting that an after-close report shifts the risk to the next open. Your stop cannot help until the stock is already trading at its new price.
Sizing by the stop and ignoring the gap.
Treating the implied move as a ceiling.

The earnings season checklist turns these into checks for each position, and the earnings topic page collects the related strategies and definitions.