Do you take a vacation or break, use smaller lots, adjust your long-term portfolio, trade normally, anything special? Thanks.
I never put on a swing trade over earnings; I put on the trade leading up to earnings (high probability of success) or after earnings once I know the details and the sentiment of the result. This has been quite successful, although they sometimes turn into day trades when a strong momentum trend turns.
From the charts I've seen, that seems like a pretty good strategy. My main concern is blue chip earnings impacting other stocks in the sector if it is extremely good or bad. I would imagine this would be very difficult to avoid. I guess I'll start out cautiously, and learn about it from experience. Thanks, Greg
That's where trading a company with extremely strong fundamentals comes in handy. If the stock is dragged down as part of the sector because of an earnings miss or bad news on one player, chances are high a solid company will recover quickly. For example, say you bought STRA back in March after the nice market surge following the 3/17 lows. You're riding it up for a neat profit, then it tanks when one of the educational players reports some bad news. The news has no bearing A-rated cash cow STRA, so why worry? It rebounds quickly and continues to hit new highs. Or for a more recent example, look at rock-solid BLK tanking to $168 prior to earnings. Heck, they hardly budge when they MISS earnings. All they had to do was come close this week and you could be certain they'd be back at $210. Stick with day trading when trading companies with low relative strength, poor cash flow, and poor earnings growth, IMHO.