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Performance — The Drift Screener

Post-earnings drift across 1d, 1w, 1m, and to-next-ER. The real edge in our own data.

4 min·
Performance — The Drift Screener — illustration

Post-earnings drift — the tendency for stocks to keep moving in the direction of their earnings surprise for weeks after — has been documented in finance research since 1968. The Performance page is the screener that lets you act on it.

The question it answers

After companies report, which ones keep moving — and by how much, by sector, by quarter?

You get five core metrics for every cohort you slice:

MetricWhy it matters
priceChange1dInitial reaction. Mostly noise but sets direction.
priceChange1wFollow-through window. Weak hands sell here.
priceChange1mDrift window. Real PEAD lives here.
priceChangeNextErExtended drift to the next print.
epsSurprisePercentSurprise magnitude. Bigger surprises drift longer, historically.

The real edge, from our own data

Last 120 days, mid-cap and up, healthcare excluded:

Beat vs miss outcomes, 1d / 1w / 1m
939 beats vs 302 misses — the ~2pp day-1 spread is the headline edge.
StatusSampleAvg 1dAvg 1wAvg 1m
Beat939+0.79%+1.67%-1.18%
Miss302-1.30%+0.13%-2.73%
Inline46-0.26%+1.36%-2.93%

Two things to notice. First, the ~2pp day-1 gap between beats and misses is the headline edge. Stack it across a portfolio rather than betting big on any single name. Second, the 1-month numbers are negative across the board right now. This is a regime signal — the current market rewards beats short-term but sells them by week 4. That changes which trade you should run: more day-trade flips, fewer hold-the-drift swings.

How to slice the data

Three filter axes that compound:

Quarter — select a single fiscal quarter. Plus gets 1 year of history, Pro gets 3.

Sector — multi-select. Filter to Tech alone for sector PEAD; Tech + Comm Services for the AI-adjacent cluster.

Industry — multi-select, cascades after sector. Semiconductors, Software-Infrastructure, Specialty Retail, and so on.

Plus a toggle: includeIncomplete (still-reporting earnings vs final/settled only).

Three plays this page is built for

Sector momentum screen

On Performance, set the quarter to most-recent-complete. Look at the sector breakdown. The sectors with the highest 1m return are where the post-ER flow is going. Bias your next earnings trades toward those sectors. Current read: Energy +5.72%, Comm Services +1.38%, Utilities +0.97% — everything else negative on 1m. Energy is where the drift is paying.

The asymmetry check

Compare the beat row vs the miss row. If beats average +X% and misses average -2X% over a month, the tape favors beats and earnings trades are favored. If symmetric, the tape is rangebound and prints are getting faded. Right now the asymmetry favors avoiding misses more than chasing beats: misses dropping 2.7% over a month, beats only down 1.2%. Defense over offense on individual names. The Avoid Disasters flow walks through the protective side of this.

Find the sleeper sector

Sort the sector table by 1m return descending. Anything outside the top 3 is probably ignored by financial media. The Performance page surfaces these quietly. Last quarter, Energy was top and earnings trades in oil names paid far more than any tech beat.

How this connects to the rest of the product

Performance feeds back into every other page:

What's gated

Free: blurred teaser. Plus: full Pro access (grandfathered, 3 years of history + all sections). Pro: 3 years history + Trend Analysis + Compare Companies (side-by-side for up to 4 tickers). Manage your plan on your account page.

Honest limitations

The screener is descriptive, not predictive. It shows what happened after recent prints. Whether the pattern continues depends on the regime, sector rotation, and macro backdrop. Cross-check with the Market Model before sizing into anything based on what you see here.

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The Market Model

One number from 0 to 100 tells you what gear to be in. How the regime score works and how to act on it.

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Building Your Watchlist

Rules for what to track, how to compose by sector, and ten starter tickers if your list is empty.