At first glance, this may strike you as not being especially important. But in truth, this information can be vital. For every stock you monitor, carefully note the expected release dates, log them in any hard copy or electronic calendars you regularly use, and do likewise for dates four and two weeks in advance of scheduled release dates.

The release dates themselves are of great importance on Wall Street. The issuance of the formal earnings announcements, referred to in the Market Guide Reports as the flash report can immediately spark large stock price movements up or down depending on the investment community's assessment of the company's performance. For large companies followed by brokerage house analysts, the release will usually be followed by a conference call in which management discusses the information simultaneously with many analysts. (Depending on the time of day when the release is issued, the conference call will take place later that same day or the next day.) After the conference calls, key executives of the company typically make themselves available to analysts and investors for one-on-one telephone discussions.

There is much variation from one company to the next regarding the extent, if any, to which individual investors can get access to the calls, whether live, via subsequent tape playback, or via transcript. This is also an area of controversy, and practices in this area will probably continue to evolve over time. Try to get access to conference calls to the extent possible given the policies of the companies you monitor and your time constraints. But even if you don't participate in the live calls, it's still important that you carefully monitor the stock during that period. The stock's movements while the call is taking place and immediately afterward will tell you much about how analysts are assessing the information they are receiving. (Except when it is their turn to ask questions of management, conference call participants are in "listen-only" mode. During that time, they can and often do communicate directly with portfolio managers and traders.)

As important as release day is, the month or so before the release can be even more crucial. During this period, you should be alert for "pre-announcements" that can impact stocks even more dramatically than the actual earnings reports. (Our suggestion that you log dates two and four weeks before the release date is designed to remind you of this important period.) Often, nothing special will happen at this time. But as corporate executives get closer to finalizing the upcoming financial reports, they compare their own data with analysts' projections. If management becomes aware of a significant discrepancy, many will follow the increasingly accepted modern investor relations practice of issuing a written announcement (often followed by a conference call) telling the financial community that results are likely to differ significantly from consensus expectations.

The last few days before the release date are important even if there are no corporate pre-announcements, as analysts fine-tune their estimates. Sometimes, they can do this by communicating with management, but the extent to which this is possible varies from company to company. Many impose "quiet periods" (during which times they won't discuss financial prospects with analysts) one or two weeks before the release date. Even when companies do this, analysts do their best to refine estimates using other sources of information (e.g., industry data, interviews with competitors). Increasingly large share price movements during this period, especially if accompanied by above-average trading volume, can signal changing expectations even before those changes are formally issued by the analysts. This is why your closest stock monitoring should occur in the week before release date.