4/15 Earns

I’m looking at these earnings announcements between today’s market close and the next trading day’s open.

I find KEY and MMR to be the most interesting, as they are both volatile and prone to earnings surprises.

I play them using options straddles, a structure where I buy a call and sell a put with the same expiration and strike price.

If the stock stays put, there’s a small loss. If it moves, as in an earnings surprise, there’s a big gain.

So, low risk/high reward. My kind of trade.

The atr% is the 14-day average true range stated as a percentage of price.

The score is the number of quarters, out of five, in which the company has reported an earnings surprise of 50% or more.

The abbreviations "pre" and "post" in the date column mean before the open and after the close, respectively.

sym	date	atr%	score
C	4/18 pre	2.2%	2
KEY	4/18 pre	2.9%	4
HAL	4/18 pre	3.0%	0
LLY	4/18 pre	1.0%	0
MMR	4/18 pre	4.2%	3