Earnings season has begun with the release of quarterly results of the big banks and the first of the mega caps, Tesla (TSLA), this week. However, the slate doesn’t truly ramp up until next week and the week after. That is in terms of both the number of stocks reporting and their collective market caps. In the chart below, we show the cumulative market caps of Russell 1,000 stocks reporting each day from this week through the end of November.  As shown, next Tuesday is the single most important day by market cap thanks to both Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) reporting on the same day. That is followed by Meta Platforms (META) on Wednesday and Amazon (AMZN) on Thursday.  While AMZN makes up a massive portion of the market cap reporting next Thursday, it is also one of the busiest days of earnings season in terms of number of companies reporting.  That day, 126 Russell 1,000 members will release earnings. The only busier day will be the following Thursday with 129 stocks reporting. From there, earnings season will wind down but there will still be a couple more big reports like Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B) on November 6th then NVIDIA (NVDA) on November 21st.

In yesterday’s Chart of the Day, we highlighted some stocks that have historically been the top performers on Q3 earnings.  In a similar vein, below we show the Russell 1,000 members with at least three years of earnings history that have historically averaged the largest absolute daily move in reaction to earnings. For each stock, we also show its historical beat rates (% of time the stock has beaten consensus analyst EPS and sales estimates) and the percentage of the time that it has raised guidance.

As shown, BILL.com (BILL) tops the list as the most volatile stock on earnings with an average one-day change of +/-18.1%.  Across its 15 quarterly reports as a public company, BILL has beaten revenue estimates every single time and missed EPS estimates just once.  It has also raised guidance on 8 of its 15 quarterly reports.  In addition to BILL, some other stocks that have been extremely volatile on their earnings reaction days include Roku (ROKU), Trade Desk (TTD), Pinterest (PINS), Unity Software (U), AppLovin (APP), Wayfair (W), Netflix (NFLX), Etsy (ETSY), Under Armour (UAA), Twilio (TWLO), and Zoom Video (ZM).  This list is a who’s who of many stocks that both surged during the post-COVID bull market in 2020 and 2021 and then plummeted during the bear market of 2022.

The S&P 500 has fallen over the past week, and that has given sentiment reason to shift lower.  The latest sentiment survey from AAII showed only 34.1% of respondents reported as bullish this week, down from 40% last week. That 5.9 percentage point decline is the largest single-week drop in a month although bullish sentiment is still above levels from two weeks ago.

Even though bullish sentiment dropped, those losses did not flow into bearish sentiment. In fact, bearish sentiment also fell by 1.9 percentage points. On top of the 5.1 percentage point decline in the prior week, at 34.6% bearish sentiment is unchanged versus one month ago.

The larger drop in bulls versus bears did result in the bull-bear spread shifting back into negative territory. While not a wide margin, bears outnumber bulls.

Neutral sentiment came in with the lowest reading in a year last week implying increasingly polarized investor sentiment. However, the declines in both bulls and bears this week resulted in neutral sentiment to climb up to 31.3% which is the highest reading in three weeks and right back in line with the historical average.

The back half of September into the first couple of weeks of October saw jobless claims rebound off their lows.  Last week saw that rebound grow with a modestly upward revision to 211K. However, there was a substantial improvement this week with claims dropping to 198K and back below 200K for the first time since the last week of January. That compares to expectations for a reading of 210K.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, that improvement is even more impressive.  Claims totaled a meager 181K. For the comparable week of the year, the only years with lower readings were 1967 through 1969.  While the one-week move is impressive and indicates claims remain at historically strong levels, this time of year has historically seen claims drift higher into year’s end.

While initial jobless claims had a positive move, continuing claims are sending a conflicting signal.  After seasonal adjustment, continuing claims have risen for four weeks in a row and are now at the highest levels since early July.