Earnings season is when stock analysts get to shine.
They head into the office early, standing by their desks for the earnings release. When it drops, usually around 7AM, they feverishly scan it for surprises, cross checking numbers against the set of forecasts they scratched into a spreadsheet a few weeks earlier. If there’s time, they may put in a quick call to Investor Relations to clarify a few points. Then they write up a “first take”, outlining all the differences versus the numbers in their spreadsheet, which they pass through compliance before blasting it out to clients via email. There’s not usually much time to give it a snappy title, so they may go with something like “First Take: In-Line Results”. If it’s an important stock, they’ll stop by the firm’s morning meeting to brief the salesforce on how the earnings look and what it all means. By now, they may be on their third or fourth coffee of the day.
And then the fun starts: it’s time for the quarterly earnings call.
The e…