This Week's Action Packed Earnings Schedule

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: We filtered out some of the key companies reporting earnings this week and highlight them below. On Tuesday the 17th, we get reports from JNJ, KO, MER in the AM and YHOO in the PM. Investors will be watching Merrill closely after the poor performance of some brokers in June.

Wednesday, MO, UTX and EBAY report, and on Thursday four key tech companies are reporting - MOT, GOOG, IBM and MSFT. Friday, the week finishes off with reports from Citi (C) and Caterpillar (CAT). Below we also provide the historical earnings miss and beat rates for each stock going back to 2001 as well as the average price performance on the first trading day following earnings.

click to enlarge

In terms of earnings reports, Friday marked the calm before the storm, as activity picks up next week. In the chart below, we show the normal distribution of earnings reports throughout a typical quarter. The red dot marks Friday, and as it shows, the big spike starts Monday and continues on through July 26th, when we can expect to see over 6% of all companies report in one day.

The next time things will get as quiet as they were Friday (in terms of earnings reports) will be at the end of August just as we are headed into Labor Day Weekend.