Maybe it’s because there’s little volatility in the market, but this earnings season is proving a particularly jarring one in individual stocks.
That’s according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which looked at 67 companies that posted results and found their shares moved an average 4 percent after earnings this quarter, among the biggest reactions of the past five years. Commodity and industrial stocks have had the biggest fluctuations, said the report, which examined firms with liquid options trading.
With companies including Twitter Inc. and Mattel Inc. unveiling earnings Thursday and those from giants like Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. still to come, investors can expect a wild ride. Twitter and Mattel moved more than 8 percent on average following their last eight reports, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
And yet, with correlation among S&P 500 Index stocks near a record low, the swings are not showing up in the broader market. The Cboe Volatility Index is heading for its lowest quarterly average on record despite a 17 percent rebound this month through Tuesday.
Take a look at the S&P 500 companies reporting through the rest of the week that proved volatile on earnings in the past two years, and the fluctuations that the options market is pricing in:
| Company | Average Move After Last 8 Quarterly Earnings |
Options Implied Move |
|---|---|---|
| Mattel | 8.9 | 12.3 |
| Align Technology | 7.4 | 7.6 |
| McKesson | 6.8 | 5.5 |
| Wynn Resorts | 6.7 | 5.3 |
| Western Digital | 6.4 | 5.8 |
| F5 Networks | 6.0 | 6.4 |
| Southwest Airlines | 5.6 | 4.1 |
| TechnipFMC | 5.4 | 4.6 |
| Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. | 5.1 | 6.5 |
| O’Reilly Automotive | 5.0 | 5.4 |
| Gilead Sciences | 4.8 | 4.0 |
| Expedia | 4.6 | 5.5 |
| Amazon.com | 4.5 | 4.4 |
| Xilinx | 4.5 | 4.1 |
| Microsoft | 4.5 | 3.6 |
*Table includes only S&P 500 companies that had at least 1,000 options trading on average in the past 20 days.
