- A week or a month at a glance — every reporting company on the day it reports, colour-coded by whether it lands before the open or after the close.
- Estimates beside the actuals, so you can see the gap rather than just the number.
- Earnings marked on the price chart itself, and a countdown on every stock page telling you how many days until the next one.
What is an earnings calendar?
An earnings calendar is a schedule of when public companies will report their quarterly results. It lists the date, whether the report lands before the market opens or after it closes, and what analysts expect the company to earn.
US companies report roughly every three months because they are required to: the quarterly filing is the SEC's Form 10-Q, and the press release announcing the results is usually filed alongside it as a Form 8-K. The reports cluster: a few weeks after each quarter ends, hundreds of companies report within days of each other. That period is called earnings season, and it is the noisiest stretch of the trading calendar. A calendar is how you see it coming instead of finding out afterwards.
What do BMO and AMC mean on an earnings calendar?
BMO means before market open: the report lands before trading starts that day. AMC means after market close: it lands after the closing bell, and the reaction shows up in the next session.
That distinction is the single most practical thing on the calendar, and it is the one most often skimmed past. A company reporting BMO on Thursday moves on Thursday. A company reporting AMC on Thursday moves on Friday — and if you are holding it, the news arrives at a moment when you cannot do anything about it until the market reopens. Some companies have not confirmed a time yet, which is usually shown as TBD.
Both windows exist because the exchanges have fixed hours — the regular US session runs 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern — and companies deliberately report outside them, so the market has time to read the numbers rather than react to a headline mid-session. Prices you may see quoted before the open or after the close come from extended-hours trading, which is thinner and can move much further on much less volume than the next regular session ends up doing.
| On the calendar | What it means | When the price reacts |
|---|---|---|
| BMO — before market open | Reported before the opening bell | The same trading day, often at the open |
| AMC — after market close | Reported after the closing bell | The next trading day |
| TBD | Date confirmed, time not announced yet | Unknown — check again nearer the date |
| Estimate | The average of what analysts expect | Nothing on its own; it is the yardstick |
| Actual | What the company reported | Read against the estimate, not alone |
What does estimate vs actual mean?
The estimate is the average of what analysts expect the company to report — the consensus drawn from the analyst research published on that company, most often stated as earnings per share. The actual is what it reported. The gap between them — not the actual figure on its own — is usually what moves the price.
This is why a company can announce record profits and fall. If the market already expected those profits, they are in the price before the announcement; what is left to react to is only the surprise. A company that earns less than last year but more than expected can rise on the same day. Read the two numbers together or the reaction will look random.
How do you actually use an earnings calendar?
Two ways, and they point in opposite directions. Some people use it to be in position before a report; others use it to make sure they are not holding something through one by accident.
Both need the same thing: knowing what is coming before it arrives. Check the week ahead for anything you hold or watch. Note the BMO/AMC timing on those names. If you are holding through a report, understand that the range of outcomes that day is wider than usual. If you would rather not, the calendar is how you find out in time to decide. None of this is investment advice — an earnings date tells you when new information arrives, not what it will say.
Is there a free earnings calendar?
Yes. Trade Together's earnings calendar is free and sits inside the dashboard — no tiers, no paywall, no credit card. It covers US equities and ETFs, colour-codes the before/after-the-bell timing, and shows estimates alongside the actuals once they land.
Two things we did differently, and one of them was a correction. Earnings dates get rescheduled more often than you would expect, so ours are refreshed by a job that runs every night rather than fetched once and cached — a calendar that is quietly a week out of date is worse than no calendar, because you will trust it.
The correction: the countdown on each stock page originally read 0 days for any company whose next date had not been announced yet. Technically true, entirely misleading — it looked like the report was today. Unknown and imminent are not the same state, and a number is the wrong way to say "we do not know". It says so in words now.
Where earnings show up outside the calendar
A calendar tells you when. A chart tells you what happened. On Trade Together earnings are marked on the price itself, so you can see how the stock reacted to each of the last several reports without leaving the chart.
That turns a vague memory into something checkable. "The stock dropped in May" becomes "the stock gapped down the morning after a weak report, and recovered it within three weeks." Every stock page also carries a countdown to the next date, so you never have to go looking for it. Read more about how to read a stock chart, or about reading the whole market as a heatmap when you want to see which sectors are moving during earnings season.
We have no testimonials. The platform is new and we are not going to invent any. What we have instead is the thing testimonials are a proxy for: every position opened through the app is priced and timestamped by us and written to a log that cannot be edited or deleted by anyone, including an administrator. Losses stay in. A member's own typed-in history is kept separate, labelled, and counts towards nothing anyone else sees.
Free, no credit card, no tier. Trading here is simulated, and none of this is investment advice.
Trade Together is not a broker and the trading is simulated — you are practising and comparing ideas, not moving real money. Earnings data comes from outside providers and dates can change; treat the calendar as a schedule, not a promise. Not investment advice.