3 Surprising Trends That Have Emerged This Earnings Season
Breathe, folks, because earnings season is coming to a close. Earnings season is the roughly six-week period where more than 90% of the United States' largest publicly traded companies report their financial results from their previous fiscal quarter. However, you could make a strong case that earnings season never truly ends, with at least a handful of publicly traded companies always reporting their financial results in a given week.
While you'd be strongly discouraged from allowing a single quarterly report to frame your entire investment thesis on a company, earnings reports are closely followed by Wall Street because they're key to helping investors properly analyze and value companies. For instance, the overall quality of earnings reports relative to expectations for the broad-based S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) can give us clues as to the health of the U.S. economy and stock market.
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Source: Fool.com