What is earnings season and why does it move markets?

Earnings season is the stretch of weeks each quarter when the majority of publicly listed companies report their financial results. In the United States it kicks off roughly two weeks after each quarter ends — mid-January, mid-April, mid-July and mid-October — and traditionally opens with the big Wall Street banks before rolling through technology, healthcare, energy, consumer and industrial names over the following month.

Each report centres on two headline numbers: revenue (the total sales a company booked) and earnings per share, or EPS (net profit divided by shares outstanding). Analysts publish consensus estimates ahead of time, and the market reacts far more to the surprise — the gap between the actual figure and the estimate — than to the absolute number itself. A company can grow profits and still fall sharply if it misses expectations, and a loss-making firm can rally if the loss was smaller than feared.

Timing matters. US companies report either before the market opens (BMO) or after it closes (AMC). Mega-cap technology names such as Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet and Amazon almost always report after the close, and because of their enormous index weights their after-hours moves can set the tone for the S&P 500, the Nasdaq and global risk appetite before the next session even begins. For Indian investors this shows up in GIFT Nifty and in the ADRs of Infosys, Wipro and ICICI Bank overnight.

Beyond the headline beat or miss, three things drive the share-price reaction. First, forward guidance — management's outlook for the next quarter or full year — often matters more than the results just reported, because markets are forward-looking. Second, margins: investors watch whether rising revenue is translating into profit or being eaten by costs. Third, the earnings call, where management fields analyst questions on demand, pricing, capital spending and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence investment.

Volatility around individual reports is high, and options markets price in an expected move for each stock. Traders use the calendar below to plan around these events — some prefer to avoid holding a position through a print, while others treat the reaction as an opportunity. Whatever the approach, knowing exactly when a company you follow reports is the first step, and the upcoming-dates table on this page tracks the mega-caps whose results move the broadest indices.