EARNINGS SEASON

The months of the year in which a majority of quarterly corporate earnings are released to the public. Earnings season is generally accepted as the months immediately following the quarter-ends of the year, which means that earnings seasons would fall in January, April, July and October. This is due to the lag between quarter-end periods and the time in which firms are able to release their earnings following their accounting periods.

Earnings season is easily the busiest times of the year for those who work in and watch the markets, as virtually every large, publicly traded company will report the results of their last quarter. Analysts and managers typically set their guidelines and estimates to correspond to specific quarters or fiscal year ends, so the results reported by firms during earnigs season often have a big role in the performance of their stocks.