Price movement behaviour before earnings announcements
This depends entirely on what the market guesses the news will be and how much of that guess has already been factored into the price. There is no general answer beyond that.  Note that this explains the apparently paradoxical responses where a stock good down on good news (the market expected better) or up on bad news (the market expected worse). In principle, the stock price should see no change in the days leading up to an earnings announcement, and then at the moment of the announcement, the stock price should move in the direction of the earnings surprise (relative to the market's belief of what earnings were going to be). In practice, stock prices tend to drift a little in the direction of the surprise shortly before the announcement and the associated price jump. This could be because smart investors were able to replicate the computations to predict the announcement or because information gets illegally leaked ahead of the announcement.  So I guess your bullet point B is a likely scenario. Note that hedging activity in the options market will not affect stock price one way or another.  Options transfer risk from one party to another but net to zero.  Intense hedging activity may be able to push up the price of options (increasing the implied volatility), but it shouldn't affect the price of a stock one way or the other. For this reason, bullet point A is not the case. Note that price behavior after the announcement is also interesting: it seems to take some time to reach the correct price instead of jumping directly to it as economists would predict.   This phenomenon is known as post earnings announcement drift.
Changes in implied volatility are caused by many things, of course, and it is tough to isolate the effect you are describing, but let's try to generalize for a moment. Implied volatility is generally a measure of how much expect uncertainty there is about the future price of the stock.  Uncertainty generally is higher in periods including earnings announcements because it is significant new information about the company's fortunes can make for significant changes in the price. However, you could easily have the case where the earnings are good and for some reason the market is very certain that the earnings will be good and near a certain level.  In that case the price would rise, but the implied volatility could well be lower because the market believes that there will be no significant new information in the earnings announcement. According to Active Equity Management by Zhou and Jain: When a stock pays dividend, the adjusted price in Yahoo makes the following adjustment: Let T be the ex-dividend date (the first date that the buyers of a stock will not receive the dividend) and T-1 be the last trading day before T. All prices before T are adjusted by a multiplier (C_{T-1} - d_T)/C_{T-1}, where C_{T-1} is the close price at T-1 and d_T is the dividend per share. This, of course means that the price before T decreases. No, it is just normal sideways action.  Think of this week kind of like October 14th - October 20th. It is a day traders week. If you're not day trading then either do after hours trading at the second of the news, or buy/sell on thursday (i'm bullish).  This is normal market activity. I wouldn't consider it out of the ordinary. When there is sideways action there is always good times to both buy and sell, if you realize it. For example, today is the perfect day to buy ... maybe when $SPX is 1240-1244. The indication is based on the average Buy-Hold-Sell rating of a group of fundamental analysts. The individual analysts provide a Buy, Hold or Sell recommendation based on where the current price of the stock is compared to the perceived value of the stock by the analyst.  Note that this perceived value is based on many assumptions by the analyst and their biased view of the stock. That is why different fundamental analysts provide different values and different recommendations on the same stock. So basically if the stock's price is below the analyst's perceived value it will be given a Buy recommendation, if the price is equal with the perceived value it will be given a Hold recommendation and if the price is more than the perceived value it will be given a Sell recommendation. As the others have said this information IMHO is useless. the implications are that the company's earnings per share may seem greater, (after the company buys them there will be less shares outstanding), giving wall street the impression that there is more growth potential than there really is. its an accounting gimmick that can work for a few quarters while the company evaluates how else to impress wall street Usually when a stock is up-trending or down-trending the price does not go up or down in a straight line. In an uptrend the price may go up over a couple of days then it could go down the next day or two, but the general direction would be up over the medium term. The opposite for a downtrend. So if the stock has been generally going up over the last few weeks, it may take a breather for a week or two before prices continue up again. This breather is called a retracement in the uptrend. The Fibonacci levels are possible amounts by which the price might retract before it continues on its way up again. By the way 50% is not actually a Fibonacci Retracement level but it is a common retracement level which is usually used in combination with the Fibonacci Retracement levels. "SECTION | CONTENT :--|:-- Title | ""High Profit Trades found with Candlestick Breakout Patterns"" - Stephen Bigalow Description | Originally presented on July 10, 2012.    For more information on Steve Bigalow's Candle Profit System for MetaStock visit http://www.metastock.com/products/thirdparty/?3PC-ADD-CPS  Everyone wishes they got into the fast moving stock that jumped up $25 in a month. Candlestick Signals not only identify these potential movers -- they help you identify if there is still time to participate in the move!  In this live webinar Steve will show you: Which signals produce the Breakout Patterns How to per... Length | 1:23:12           ****   ^(I am a bot, this is an auto-generated reply | )^[Info](https://www.reddit.com/u/video_descriptionbot) ^| ^[Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=video_descriptionbot&amp;subject=Feedback) ^| ^(Reply STOP to opt out permanently)" Graphs are nothing but a representation of data. Every time a trade is made, a point is plotted on the graph. After points are plotted, they are joined in order to represent the data in a graphical format.  Think about it this way.  1.) Walmart shuts at 12 AM. 2.)Walmart is selling almonds at $10 a pound.  3.) Walmart says that the price is going to reduce to $9 effective tomorrow. 4.) You are inside the store buying almonds at 11:59 PM.  5.) Till you make your way up to the counter, it is already 12:01 AM, so the store is technically shut. 6.) However, they allow you to purchase the almonds since you were already in there.  7.) You purchase the almonds at $9 since the day has changed. 8.) So you have made a trade and it will reflect as a point on the graph. 9.) When those points are joined, the curves on the graph will be created. 10.) The data source is Walmart's system as it reflects the sale to you. ( In your case the NYSE exchange records this trade made). Buying a stock is just like buying almonds. There has to be a buyer. There has to be a seller. There has to be a price to which both agree. As soon as all these conditions are met, and the trade is made, it is reflected on the graph. The only difference between the graphs from 9 AM-4 PM, and 4 PM-9 AM is the time. The trade has happened regardless and NYSE(Or any other stock exchange) has recorded it! The graph is just made from that data. Cheers. The intrinsic value of a company is based on their profits year on year along with their expect future growth. A company may be posting losses, but if the market determines there's any chance they will turn a profit one day, or be a takeover target, it assigns value to those shares. In normal times, you'll observe a certain P/E range. Price to earning ratio is a simple way to say the I will pay X$ for a dollar's worth of earnings. A company that's in a flat market and not growing may command a P/E of only 10. Another company that's expanding their products and increasing market share may see a 20 P/E. Both P/Es are right for the type of company involved. Earnings per share are not directly correlated to share price. NV Energy, the company you cited as an example, is an electric utility. The growth patterns and characteristics of utilities are well-defined, so generally speaking the value of the stock is driven by the quality of the company's cash flow. A utility with a good history of dividend increases, a dividend that is appropriate given the company's fiscal condition, (ie. A dividend that is not more than 80% of earnings) and a good outlook will be priced competitively. For other types of companies cash flow or even profits do not matter -- the prospects of future earnings matter. If a growth stock (say Netflix as an example) misses its growth projections for a quarter, the stock value will be punished. It is called the Monday Effect or the Weekend Effect. There are a number of similar theories including the October Effect and January Effect. It's all pretty much bunk. If there were any truth to traders would be all over it and the resulting market forces would wipe it out. Personally, I think all technical analysis has very little value other than to fuel conversations at dinner parties about investments. You might also consider reading about Market efficiency to see further discussion about why technical approaches like this might, but probably don't work. "The fallacy in your question is in this statement: ""The formulas must exist, because prices can be followed real time."" What you see are snapshots of the current status of the stock, what was the last price a stock was traded at, what is the volume, is the price going up or down.  People who buy and hold their stock look at the status every few days or even every few months. Day traders look at the status every second of the trading day.  The math/formula comes in when people try to predict where the stock is going based on the squiggles in the line. These squiggles move based on how other people react to the squiggles.  The big movements occur when big pieces of news make large movements in the price. Company X announces the release of the key product will be delayed by a year; the founder is stepping down; the government just doubled the order for a new weapon system; the insiders are selling all the shares they can. There are no formulas to determine the correct price, only formulas that try to predict where the price may go." "In addition to the information in the other answer, I would suggest looking at an economic calendar. These provide the dates and values of many economic announcements, e.g. existing home sales, durable orders, consumer confidence, etc. Yahoo, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal all provide such calendars. Yahoo provides links to the raw data where available; Bloomberg and the WSJ provide links to their article where appropriate. You could also look at a global economic calendar; both xe.com and livecharts.co.uk provide these. If you're only interested in the US, the Yahoo, Bloomberg, and WSJ calendars may provide a higher signal-to-noise ratio, but foreign announcements also affect US markets, so it's important to get as much perspective as possible. I like the global economic calendars I linked to above because they rate announcements on ""priority"", which is a quick way to learn which announcements have the greatest effect. Economic calendars are especially important in the context of an interview because you may be asked a follow-up question. For example, the US markets jumped in early trading today (5/28/2013) because the consumer confidence numbers exceeded forecasts (from the WSJ calendar, 76.2 vs 2.3).  As SRKX stated, it's important to know more than the numbers; being able to analyze the numbers in the context of the wider market and being aware of the fundamentals driving them is what's most important. An economic calendar is a good way to see this information quickly and succinctly.  (I'm paraphrasing part of my answer to another question, so you may or may not find some of that information helpful as well; I'm certainly not suggesting you look at the website of every central bank in the morning. That's what an economic calendar is for!)" Stock values are generally reflective of a company's overall potential; and to some extent investor confidence in the prospect of a continued growth of that potential. Sales over such a short period of time such as a single weekend do not noticeably impact a stock's valuation.  A stock's value has more to do with whether or not they meet market expectations for sales over a certain period of time (generally 1 quarter of a year) than it does that they actually had sales (or profits) on any given day. Of course, catastrophic events, major announcements, or new product releases do sometimes cause significant changes in a stock's value.  For this reason you will often see stocks have significant volatility in periods around earnings announcements, merger rumors, or when anything unexpected happens in the world that might benefit or hurt their potential sales and growth. But overall a normal, average weekend of sales is already built into the price of a stock during normal trading. In short, yes. Implied volatility will capture any expected upcoming material announcements. There is also supply/demand impact bundled in which may inflate an option price, and by extension increase implied volatility. OTM and ITM options are particularly predisposed to this phenomenon -- which is of course at odds with the traditional BS model assumptions -- the result is referred to as the volatility smile. Implied volatility is quoted as an annualised measure but isn't necessarily an annual value -- it will correspond to the option time period.