thinkorswim has developed an interface dedicated to researching the effects that earnings announcements have on the prices of stocks and options.
Let’s face it: Earnings season is go time for the active trader. It’s a time to focus, point, and hit the button.
Each quarter, publicly traded companies are required to share fundamental information on the state of their business, most critically, on the earnings and revenue that the company produced. As this new information is released, a company’s shares will typically (but not always) make some sort of price adjustment to reflect the new data.
Such a price move might be up or down; big or small; immediate or delayed. For the active trader, an earnings release means two things—opportunity and risk—but finding these opportunities and managing the risks means they need the right research tools to understand the effects earnings announcements can have on stock and options prices.
TD Ameritrade clients can turn to the Earnings sub-tab in the thinkorswim® trading platform as a one-stop interface for critical information to analyze the price and volatility movements of a given stock around its historical earnings events.
Here’s a look at this suite of tools and how you might use it to help navigate earnings announcements.
The Earnings sub-tab is the blue light bulb icon nested under the Analyze tab. Once you're there, just type any stock symbol into the box in the upper-left corner. Figure 1 shows the main features from top to bottom, and how you might use them:
The sub-tab allows you to choose between three separate views. Depending on your trading objectives, you might opt for one, two, or all three of them.
Fit All is the default choice when you select the sub-tab. It allows you to see all the data in one view, which can help you see the big picture. Alternatively, you could look at the small view by selecting Zoom. This mode will show intraday (30-minute aggregation) data for the stock price and options volatility. How did prices react? Although past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results, looking at price movement during and after past earnings releases can certainly help you formulate your objectives.
Finally, the Compare tab allows you to overlay the most important price and volatility measures of each historical quarter. The different measures of volatility and pricing can be filtered using the checkboxes on the left side. There’s also a set of checkboxes to control which quarters are displayed. Quarters can also be filtered by whether they “beat,” “met,” or “missed” the consensus estimates from Wall Street analysts (see figure 2).
“Nifty tool set, but now what?” you might ask. The beauty of the tool is its flexibility, but here are a couple ideas to get you started.
Refer back to the chart in figure 1. Does anything jump out at you? Some traders might point to three quarters ago (FQ2 18 on the chart) and note:
An active stock trader might use this info to help make a more informed decision on the possible direction and magnitude of a reaction and might use the volatility info to set an entry or exit point.
An option trader, however, might look at the data to decide between strategies. Some options strategies, such as short calls, cash-secured puts, credit spreads, or iron condors, might be appropriate in a relatively high-volatility environment, whereas debit spreads and calendar spreads are designed for a low-volatility setup. Note that in figure 1, in the far right column—the upcoming earnings release—the implied volatility reading is sitting well above the historical.
There are plenty of ways to play earnings season. No matter what your objectives and risk tolerance, the Earnings sub-tab in the thinkorswim platform can be your focal point.