It's that time of the year, a time when all attention is turned to the bottom line of corporate America. It happens every quarter and it always has a major impact on the direction of the market. And the bottom line almost always trumps everything else.
Of course there are other factors that impact the market including economic reports, geopolitical developments, Federal Reserve policies, as examples. But investors mostly care about the performance of stocks they own, including how they hold up in times of adversity, including market turmoil.
As an example, we issued a trade alert on one of the stocks in our "Candidate Tracker" that includes companies that beat earnings expectations and have strong charts. That stock was Apollo Global Management (APO) that crushed its earnings last quarter when it earned $0.98 per share versus $0.69 estimate. And it had revenues of $685 million versus estimates of $477 million. That is quite a beat and you can see in the chart below how the stock has performed:
We ended up with a very nice winner and you can see that even with the overall market struggling mightily at the moment APO has held up extremely well. This shows you the power of strong earnings even when the market is weak.
Of course if the market is in a free fall it becomes tough for even the best of the best to hold up. However, why not key in on those stocks with the strongest earnings and going forward guidance, especially when things are dicey?
We've currently got 200 stocks in our Candidate Tracker and as earnings season progresses we will be adding many more. If you would like to see a sample just click here.
Trading takes place all year long, no matter the market conditions. You're going to have your share of winners and losers. But you need to go out of your way to get whatever edge you can when things are so you might want to pay even more attention to earnings results this quarter than usual.
At your service,
John Hopkins
EarningsBeats.com
