Stocks to Watch

All publicly traded stocks report earnings at the end of each business quarter. Many will refer to these few weeks of time as “earnings season” with many stocks reporting their quarterly earnings each evening after the market closes or, in some cases, in the morning before the market opens. For many stocks this is an extremely volatile time for the stock’s share price. Stocks like Google may jump or drop $50 or more overnight. Your stock or options broker’s web site will have information available about which companies are scheduled to report, on which date, and whether the announcement will occur before the open or after the close of the market.

There are many ways to trade the earnings announcement. I will focus on the calendar spread in this article. A calendar spread (also known as a time spread or a horizontal spread) is created by buying an option in a future expiration month, and simultaneously selling a front month option at the same strike price. Calenda

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Investors are weary ahead of Bally Technologies (BYI: 30.50 -0.81%) releasing quarterly earnings on Thursday August 12, with shares down 2.94%.

The casino game developer will release its fiscal 2010 earnings after the market closes tomorrow, with analysts anticipating quarterly earnings of $0.56 per share on revenue of $202 million and full year earnings of $2.17 per share.

Bally reported that earnings were down 23% to $22.6 million during the previous quarter that ended March 31, however after adjusting for one-time items, Bally topped consensus estimates buy a penny hitting $0.52 per share.

Bally is currently trading below its 50 day moving average of $35.31 and below its 200 day moving average of $40.25, reaching its highest trading price for the month of $33.43 on August 2 and its lowest price of $31.51 on August 10.

State Street Corporation (STT – Analyst Report) reported its second-quarter 2010 results on July 20. Operating earnings for the reported quarter were in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. However, investors were clearly not buoyant with these results. As a result, the share price plummeted following the earnings release.   The overall response has been negative with respect to estimate revisions over the last 7 days as analysts covering the stock had sufficient time to absorb and consider the near-term fundamental downsides.   Let’s now cover the results of the recent earnings announcement, subsequent analyst estimate revisions and the Zacks ratings for both the short term and the long term outlook for the stock.   Earnings Report Review   Achievement of the estimates should be a positive for the stock price and this inspires optimism for a stable future. But t Full post…

With gambling revenues in Macau on the rise, the consensus among analysts is that Wynn Resorts (WYNN: 87.87 +0.39%) will report quarterly earnings tomorrow of $0.38 a share on sales of $977 million.

Wynn is expected to post quarter 2 financials before the market opens on Thursday July 29.

In the previous period, Wynn reported revenue up 23% to $908.9 million helped largely from strong gains in Macau. Net income for the period reached $27 million. Wynn beat analysts’ estimates of $0.17 a share with income excluding one-time items reaching $0.26 a share.

While Macau casino operations have seen a large increase in gambling revenue this year, the market peaked in May and may not have a significant impact to offset the revenue decline in Las Vegas.

Although shares of WYNN opened the market yesterday up $0.46, during the session dropped $1.11 to close at $87.53. T

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