Upcoming Earnings Reports
Upcoming earnings reports are scheduled for this week. On Tuesday, companies like Verizon and GE Aerospace report before opening, while Tesla and Intuitive Surgical are set for after closing. Wednesday’s pre-opening reports include Boeing and AT&T, with IBM and Chipotle after market close.
Thursday will see pre-opening reports from American Airlines and Merck, followed by Intel and Alphabet after closing. Friday wraps up with pre-opening reports from firms like AbbVie and Colgate-Palmolive.
The existing text outlines a forecasted pullback in major US stock indices before market open, driven in part by concerns regarding international trade tensions. Nvidia’s share price has slipped below the psychological 100 mark, pushing tech-heavy indices lower, while Netflix has outperformed after posting better-than-expected financial results. Futures data suggests notable point losses across the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ. In addition, the previous week’s declines across all three indices reinforce a broader downward bias, likely fuelled by earnings risk and macroeconomic headwinds.
Traders And Volatility
If we reflect on the week ahead, the earnings calendar is dense, and it points to several potential catalysts for volatility spikes. The upcoming earnings releases are weighted toward large-cap names across different sectors, most of which carry above-average options volume and open interest. What matters more now, however, isn’t the direction of these individual stocks, but rather the scale of potential moves and how implied volatility within those names might compress or inflate during respective announcements. It’s a ripe week for short-term positioning within equity derivatives.
We should keep an eye on Tesla and Alphabet reports especially, since both are known for historical surprise gaps post-close and typically see elevated implied volatility beforehand. There’s a tendency for options premiums to surge ahead of these results, often followed by fast theta decay if expectations aren’t completely upended. Traders hedging through weekly straddles or strangles may look for asymmetric setups where downside tails can be cheaply protected, particularly in sectors already under macro pressure.
What Drucker might notice is that the gap risk on broader indices increases when mega caps report mid-week. When IBM or Intel set the tone mid-week, there’s often collateral impact on index pricing, especially in the afternoon sessions leading into expiry cycles. Such names tend to draw dealer attention back toward the gamma profile of SPX and QQQs. In that context, even without major news, any re-calibration in delta exposure can make intraday ranges more extended than models may have typically predicted.
From what Reed’s team has delivered with Netflix, implied volatility had been mispriced into the event, suggesting IV crush post-earnings was more mild than anticipated. This behaviour might tempt some traders to lean toward earnings premium buyers in the coming days, particularly if current IV rank remains suppressed. Nonetheless, context matters, and not every tech name is trading with the same options dynamics.
We’ve noticed through recent flows that traders are increasingly positioning short volatility strategies further out on the term structure, perhaps expecting that recent macro data will keep implieds anchored even through earnings noise. This makes near-term expiries especially sensitive to binary surprises. While Friday closes might feel farther away early in the week, keep in mind that ABBV or Merck pre-bell reports often lead to substantial volatility in healthcare ETFs, which in turn feed back into sector-specific vol indexes.
With Johnson’s report pending late Tuesday and systemic options participants recalibrating exposure, directional bets should consider both realised volatility and broader cross-asset signals. Particularly if US fixed income markets continue to grind tied to inflation prints, correlation shocks can easily bleed into equity positioning. Meanwhile, flows in VIX futures and skew metrics suggest more traders are bracing for tail outcomes, rather than assuming a reversion to short-vol norms.
In this kind of week, the edges are often found during the quietest parts of the session. Between the open and the European close, liquidity can thin just enough to expose fragility in options books. When we’re observing the spreads compress or expand around these moments, there is often opportunity in IV percentile plays—especially in names that report later in the cycle. For instance, the reaction to Intuitive Surgical after Tuesday’s close could set the tone for how traders price the remainder of the week’s health-related earnings.
It’s not the headlines that carry the most useful signals now, but the way price reacts to those headlines, especially through the options lens. We’ve been watching second order Greeks more than usual—particularly vanna and charm—as they often give us a better edge on where price might grind during expiry-heavy weeks. Any gaps around Alphabet’s or Intel’s report will ripple into tech-focused index products, particularly if they’re underweighted relative to past cycles.
Be alert, and avoid lazily relying on historical outcomes. Structure matters, and earnings-season positioning is becoming as much about implied dispersion as it is about earnings themselves.
