Stock prices going up BEFORE positive earninges report

[leto333]

If you mean buying a stock in anticipation of a good report because it is running up prior to the report? No, that is russian roullette, no one knows which way a stock is going to break on an earnings report, you should never hold a stock through an earnings report unless you are a long term investor.

You can do spread plays on that if you feel the price movement will be big enough to justify all the transaction costs of the spread, but that is a whole nother thing.

The best way to play an earnings run is to wait during the quarter for the uptrending stock to hit a low, this might be a week after earnings announcement, it might be a month after, and you want the low to be put in on due to broader market pressure, the whole index is down and your stock is suffering from that, if its hitting a low due to news specific to it, such as its ceo is arrested for cooking the books, its not a valid candidate. You can use bollinger bands, or trend lines(20, 30, or 50 day) to determine when the thing is hitting a low, or if its trading kinda flat, you can use a price point that it has touched and bounced up from several times before. using these areas allows you to know quickly when you are wrong and therefore reduce the cost to you of finding out if you are wrong, if they penetrate these entry points, you should be stopped out for a loss and you can move on to other candidates you are watching or continue to see if the stock will offer you another opportunity to enter at a low risk point.

It is not a strategy you want to try to execute without a lot of practice and a full understanding of what you are doing, which this post does not provide.