We are into the results season and these days, for equity investors, the results month is like being on a battlefield during an artillery barrage wearing fluoro orange. You never quite know when you’re going to get blown up.

We are into the results season and these days, for equity investors, the results month is like being on a battlefield during an artillery barrage wearing fluoro orange. You never quite know when you’re going to get blown up and this results season is going to take that risk to the extreme as companies report on the most unpredictable quarters in stock market history.

And its not just COVID-19 that creates the risk. Results seasons have been getting progressively more dangerous for a number of reasons. 

The first is continuous disclosure requirements which mean that a company can’t quietly feed a message into the market anymore. Instead, it has to dump it. When a company hasn’t said anything to the market for six months their results can easily surprise.

Before continuous disclosure, companies would feed changing expectations into the market through select brokers. They would ‘seep’ their guidance in, not crash it in. It was called “managing expectations” and this selective briefing method, far from being unfair, was seen as a company’s professional duty. But it is no more. Now listed companies have no choice, but to dump information in, either in a pre-results confession, or on the day of the results. Net result, they aren’t managing expectations as well as they used to, making the odds of a surprise much higher than they used to be.

The other volatility-inducing factor during the results season is high-frequency trading. High-frequency trading identifies and accelerates market activity, exaggerates it, and when it comes to the results season, if a stock was going to move one per cent on the news, high-frequency trading means it moves two per cent, or five per cent, or ten per cent.

The vanilla algorithms run by high-frequency traders are designed to detect other people’s orders moving in and out of the screen, even before they are executed. They also respond to executed trades and in so doing detect short-term price trends, in nanoseconds, and respond to them by placing their own orders in nanoseconds without any consideration for fundamentals.

The algorithms are also now electronically scanning the words of results announcements, no humans involved, and are picking up on adjectives and phrases like “profit warning” and “lowered guidance” or “raised guidance”. And they instantaneously start placing orders in response.

That algorithm activity is then picked up by the vanilla activity matching algorithms, and on the back of all that, a few years ago we saw big stocks WorleyParsons open down 21.8 per cent on the day of its results, only to bounce 11.5 per cent from the low before the end of the day. Company CEOs now get lessons on how not to “do a WorleyParsons”, how to phrase their announcements so as not to trigger the algorithms.

Notably, this all ‘ridiculous’ high frequency activity happens before any analysis is done by the brokers or the big institutional fund managers. Otherwise some sanity might prevail. But its not possible for the big funds to do the research, revalue a company and make their decisions, between 8:30am when the results are announced and 10am when they start trading the shares. But the prices gap anyway.

And don’t expect this situation to change, ASIC’s study into HFT concluded that while it may be exaggerating short-term price movements, HFT was not disrupting the integrity of the market or materially raising the costs of execution enough to ban it. It is here to stay, and the ASX have no interest in limiting it, because they are making money from HFT customers paying for high-speed data feeds with terabytes of information being provided by the exchange at a huge cost.

The bottom line is that results seasons are now high-risk periods for investors, and with a COVID quarter to report on, this results season is perhaps the most risky on record.

HOW TO HANDLE RESULTS SEASON RISK

Running the Marcus Today SMA, a $75m fund, we have had to adapt to results risk and have done so using this mantra – “If in doubt, get out”. If we have concerns about one of our stocks having bad results, especially if it is a mid-cap stock, we often sell it before results. We prefer to avoid big risks and come back later, than go into the results announcement with our fingers crossed. Here are some of the signs that set off the “Results Risk” alarm bells:

• Trending down into results.
• No recent guidance.
• Has disappointed on previous results announcements.
• Is operating against industry headwinds.
• Has been downgraded by brokers ahead of results.
• Is a volatile stock.
• Is a smaller/mid-cap stock.
• Has liquidity issues (will move a lot on a surprise).
• Is a popular trading stock.
• Is a “disaster” stock. Don’t bet on a resurrection.

Spotting stocks with low-risk results is the opposite. They are stocks that:

• Are trending up into results.
• Have recently put out guidance (de-risked).
• The share price rose on their last results/guidance/trading update.
• They are swimming with the tide (good industry trends).
• Have been upgraded by brokers ahead of results.
• Is a big well-researched stock.
• Has a history of good results.
• Has consistent earnings growth.
• Has consistent dividend growth.

GOLDEN RULE

It is much better to miss a bounce on results and buy after the company has cleared the air, than it is to step on a landmine. No company is safe this quarter; the market takes no prisoners these days, so caution rather than bravery will win the day. Far better you go to bed with no exposure than you go to bed worrying about some mid-cap results the next day.

After the results are out, that’s the time to jump on board, when the stock is de-risked for the next 3 to 6 months. Many uptrends will start the day of the results. And downtrends.

SOME RESULTS SURVIVAL TECHNIQUES

• Basic Vigilance. Find out when results are due for the stocks you are holding/trading. If you find a stock you hold is down 10% one morning after announcing results you didn’t know were due, it is a bit negligent. There are plenty of results calendars around. Marcus today has one.
• Check the announcement history. Go back and look at the latest earnings announcement, an AGM maybe, a trading statement. Hopefully it was recent. If it was the tone of these results is likely to be the same. Find out whether it was positive or not, if the share price went up or down, whether brokers upgraded the next day or not. It is unlikely a company that has seen earnings announcement running into results (good or bad) is going to disappoint, and there is an even better chance they will not disappoint. So check the recent announcement history.
• Avoid the bad ones – More than half the game these days is avoiding the disasters. Don’t bet on the unlikely, on resurrection, on a falling stock. Don’t swim against the tide. It’s not clever; it’s dumb. It’s a game of odds, not heroics.
• The share price trend is rarely wrong – Another very plain indicator of whether a stock is likely to surprise on the upside or downside is to look at the share price trend running into the results. The market is rarely wrong. Good stocks tend to do good things, and bad stocks tend to do bad things, and the results announcements are unlikely to turn the current trend on a sixpence. The low odds bet is to believe the current share price trend.
• Dividend stripping – The traditional trade is to buy big income-paying stocks some fifty days or more before the dividend ex-date. Usually, this allows income chasing investors to sell on the day it goes ex-dividend and still qualify for the franking under the 45-day rule. One broker published a chart last year showing that income stocks tend to outperform in the 50 to 70 days before the ex-dividend date suggesting you buy 50+ days out from the dividend and catch the statistically typical run to the results and the dividend. I have another technique, which is to wait for the results from the CBA or Telstra, and if they are any good to you can still buy the stock before the dividend in full possession of all the facts and catch the next 45 days rather than gamble on the pre-results trend. And if the results are good, quite often, the stock will trend up after the announcement anyway.
• Buy the bounces. Sell the shock drops. There is an academic study about shock drops and shock rises in share prices. The conclusion was that when it comes to shares, a stock that has a shock move up or down continues to move in that same direction for the next nine days. In other words, if a stock has a good set of results and pops up five percent, don’t say “I’ve missed it” just buy it because it is likely to keep going in that direction for a while. Sharp moves tend to start trends not end them, presumably because after a company announces good results, sentiment improves, not for a day but for a while. The research the next day will be upbeat. Brokers will raise target prices and recommendations over the next week; it takes a while for good news to be discounted. In other words, there is money to be made buying stocks after the results even if they have popped. You may miss the first day and the best day, but you’ll catch the next few days of the trend, and your risk is much lower than punting ahead of the results.
• Check the numbers – Fundamentals are an obvious starting point for ranking stocks on potential risk. Broadly speaking companies with consistent earnings and high regular return on equity are more likely to produce good/ low-risk results. The bigger well-researched companies with higher yields and regular/consistent (rather than high) ROE trends are the safest. The mid-cap/small-cap growth stocks and recovery stocks with no yield, high PEs, weak balance sheets, possibly loss-making concept stocks, are more risky.
• The share price trend going into results – One very good gauge of risk is the share price trend into results. Generally speaking, it is a good indicator if a company share price trends up into the results, it suggests the results will be okay. Of course, it is also a sign that expectations are high(er) so it can cut both ways. But on the basis that the market is usually right, uptrends and downtrends  ahead of results highlight stocks that the market is comfortable with (lower risk) and those it is worrying about (higher risk).

Traders will try and make money out of this results season. Investors will try and avoid the extraordinary risk.

Investors will also be buying individual stocks after they sound the “All Clear”. Why ‘bet’ on one of the most dangerous results seasons in history, when you can ‘invest’ with a lot less risk afterwards. We’ll leave betting on results to people far smarter, braver, luckier, or foolish than us.

MARCUS TODAY RESULTS CALENDAR AUGUST 2021

This calendar is a best endeavours guess – before relying on this calendar check the company announcements and websites.