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Earnings dates and the weekend watchlist

Lesson 11 · about 9 min

A watchlist is not a list of stocks you like. It is a list of stocks with a specific setup forming, a specific trigger that would get you in, a specific price that would prove you wrong, and a specific date on which the company will release the one piece of news most likely to gap the stock 15% in either direction. If any of those four things is missing, the name is not on the watchlist yet.

Earnings dates first

Every candidate gets its next earnings date written down before anything else. Most brokers and charting platforms show it; free earnings calendars exist for the major exchanges. Confirm the date is confirmed rather than estimated, because estimated dates are frequently wrong by a week.

Then apply this rule table:

Days until earnings Treatment
Over 15 trading days Normal candidate; a typical swing trade will close before the report
6 to 15 Candidate, but plan to be out or reduced to a core position before the report (Module 5)
0 to 5 No new entry; the setup will resolve on the report, which is not a setup
Reported in the last 3 days Only the gap-and-hold setup applies (Module 4)

The point is not to avoid earnings forever. It is to avoid entering a position whose outcome will be decided by a binary event you cannot analyse from a chart. Module 5 covers what to do with a position you already hold when the date approaches.

For crypto and forex there is no earnings date, but there are scheduled events that behave the same way: protocol upgrades, token unlocks, central bank meetings, major data releases. Write them down in the same column.

Building the weekend list

The scans from the previous two lessons produce raw candidates. The weekend list is what survives the following pass, done one chart at a time:

  1. Regime allows it. Sector is in the top four; setup type is allowed by this week's regime label.
  2. Setup identified. One of the five setups from Module 4 is forming. Name it.
  3. Trigger defined. The exact price or event that gets you in: "close above $52.40" or "reclaim of the 20 EMA on a close".
  4. Stop defined. The price that proves the idea wrong, and the resulting distance in ATR terms.
  5. Target defined. At least 2R to the first obvious resistance or measured move.
  6. Earnings date checked. Over 5 trading days away, and noted.
  7. Liquidity floor. Average daily dollar volume above a level where your position is under 1% of it. For a $5,000 position, that means at least $500,000 a day; in practice aim for $5 million or more so exits are painless.

A name that passes all seven goes on the list with all seven fields filled in. The entire exercise for 30 raw candidates takes about an hour and produces 10 to 20 survivors in a healthy market.

WATCHLIST  week of ______      regime: AMBER (0.5x)

Ticker  Sector  Setup      Trigger        Stop     Target   R:R   Earnings   Notes
------  ------  ---------  -------------  -------  -------  ----  --------   -----
XXXX    Indus.  Pullback   close > 20EMA  $47.20   $54.00   2.6   Aug 12     tight, vol dry
YYYY    Fin.    Breakout   close > 88.50  $84.00   $98.00   2.1   Jul 30     NOT ALLOWED this week
ZZZZ    Energy  Reclaim    close > 200MA  $31.10   $36.00   2.4   Aug 20     watch only

The second row illustrates why the setup type matters: a breakout candidate in an amber week stays on the list but is marked as not tradeable until the regime improves. It costs nothing to track and saves you from entering it anyway.

Key idea: A watchlist entry has seven fields. If you cannot fill in the trigger, the stop, the target and the earnings date, it is a stock you like, not a trade you have planned.

Why 10 to 20

Fewer than 10 and you will start forcing trades on marginal names to feel busy. More than 20 and you cannot track the triggers in a 15-minute nightly check. In a green regime the list runs long; in red it may hold five names, all reclaim candidates, and that is fine.

Set price alerts on every trigger. The alert does the watching so you do not have to. When one fires during the session, the decision was already made on the weekend; you are executing, not deciding.

Maintaining the list during the week

The nightly check (Module 7) updates the list, but the rules are simple:

  • A name whose trigger fired and was entered moves to the open-positions sheet.
  • A name whose stop level was breached before the trigger fired is deleted; the setup failed.
  • A name whose earnings date has moved inside 5 days is marked no-entry.
  • Nothing is added mid-week unless it is a gap-and-hold candidate from that morning's earnings, and even then only in a green or amber regime.

That last rule is the one most swing traders break. A new idea on Wednesday is almost always worse than the ideas you evaluated with a clear head on Sunday, because you are seeing it after it has already moved.

Try it: Take your current scan results and run each through the seven-point pass. Time it. Note how many survive, and for each rejection write the point that failed. If most rejections are on point 3 (no trigger) or point 6 (earnings), that tells you which part of the scan to tighten.

Recap

  • Every candidate gets a confirmed earnings date before anything else; no new entries inside 5 trading days of it.
  • A watchlist entry needs seven fields: regime fit, setup, trigger, stop, target, earnings date, liquidity.
  • Aim for 10 to 20 names; fewer invites forcing, more cannot be tracked.
  • Set price alerts on every trigger so execution is separated from decision.
  • Do not add names mid-week except same-day gap-and-hold candidates in a favourable regime.

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Risk and reward on one tradeA price scale showing an entry with a stop two points below and a target six points above, so the reward band is three times the risk band.PRICETARGET 106.00ENTRY 100.00STOP 98.00REWARDRISK6.00 pointsthree times the risk2.00 pointsthe most you loserisk : reward = 1 : 3
Risk and reward on one trade. One trade on a price scale: the entry sits 2.00 points above the stop and 6.00 points below the target, so the shaded reward band is three times the risk band. The ratio compares what is lost if the stop is hit with what is gained if the target is reached.
Bid-ask spread in an order bookSell orders stacked above buy orders with a gap between the best of each.SELLERS (asks)50.0690050.051,40050.0460050.011,10050.002,30049.99800spread = 0.03BUYERS (bids)
The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.
Breakout and retestPrice stalls under one level, pushes above it, comes back to touch it from above, then continues higher.pricetimeold resistancenow support1price keeps stalling2breaks above3pulls back and retests it4and carries on
Breakout and retest. Price stalls under the same level several times, pushes above it, then drops back to touch it from above before carrying on. That touch is the retest, where the old ceiling is tried as a floor. A break that falls straight back under it is a false breakout.