Pick any market. See its calendar.

The most documented anomaly in earnings is post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD): stocks that move decisively on a report tend to KEEP moving in that direction for one to three months, rather than instantly pricing everything in. You can see it in this dataset — the day-1 direction held at the one-month mark in the overwhelming majority of cases, and the day-1 verdict — from Amazon’s October 2025 surge to Meta’s post-report slide — told you where the next month was heading. The four scenarios above are the practical framework. The dangerous quadrants are the contradictory ones: a BEAT that sells off means the market is rejecting the quality of the beat — usually guidance — and those names (Palantir, Microsoft and Nvidia in this sample) continued falling for weeks. A MISS that rallies means expectations were already destroyed, and that washout has historically marked durable lows. In both cases the price reaction carried more information than the EPS line. Before the next report you trade, ask one question: what is positioning expecting? The reaction to the NUMBER is unpredictable; the reaction relative to EXPECTATIONS follows the patterns on this page.