Earnings Season

What is ‘Earnings Season’

Earnings season are the months of the year in which a majority of quarterly corporate earnings are released to the public. Earnings season is generally accepted as the months immediately following the quarter-ends of the year, which means that earnings seasons would fall in January, April, July and October. This is due to the lag between quarter-end periods and the time in which firms are able to release their earnings following their accounting periods.

Explaining ‘Earnings Season’

Earnings season is easily one of the busiest times of the year for those who work in and watch the markets, as virtually every large publicly-traded company will report the results of their last quarter. Analysts and managers typically set their guidelines and estimates to correspond to specific quarters or fiscal year ends, so the results reported by firms during earnings season often have a big role in the performance of their stocks.

Further Reading

  • Empirical Research on Earnings Management in the Fourth Season of China's Listed Companies with Loss [J] – en.cnki.com.cn [PDF]
  • Trends in park tourism: Economics, finance and management – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
  • Price-earnings changes during US presidential election cycles: Voter uncertainty and other determinants – link.springer.com [PDF]
  • Earnings management: A perspective – papers.ssrn.com [PDF]
  • Stock Price Discovery in Earnings Season – papers.ssrn.com [PDF]
  • A review of estimates of the schooling/earnings relationship, with tests for publication bias – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
  • Does earnings guidance affect market returns? The nature and information content of aggregate earnings guidance – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
  • Environmental proactivism and firm performance: evidence from security analyst earnings forecasts – onlinelibrary.wiley.com [PDF]
  • Compensation discrimination in the NFL: an analysis of career earnings – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]