After looking at this earnings/news "roulette" for a while, one begins to think that there is a pattern, that you can go long on the good news, short on the bad news. Obviously its not that simple and the old saying "buy on the rumor, sell on the news(any news)" has alot of merit to it. From my experience its more of a mind game. You can not possibly know what to do with each earnings report because you don't have the time or resources to research each company that reports those earning and as a trader I don't think you need to. If the company reports its earning before the bell, the pre-market move in price is a good initial indicator of were the move might go. If the price goes too high in pre-market you can expect the initial move to be down when market opens(profitaking) and the opposite for when the prices drops too low in pre-market (value-buying). Is there any validity to what I am saying or I am just exhibiting typical patter searching behavior in a completely random market? I was wondering if anyone here is willing to share their experience with earnings/news tracking and if you have found any rules/theories that seem to hold true most of the time?
Focus on taking the trade signals generated by your "system" instead of looking for explanations of what has already happened.