Earnings
The profit a company reports, usually each quarter.
Earnings season is when listed companies publish results. Beating or missing expectations can swing a stock sharply.
Earnings are the profit a company reports, and listed companies report every quarter. The clustered weeks when most of them report is called earnings season. Each report shows revenue, profit, and usually guidance for the quarters ahead.
What moves the stock is not the raw number but how it lands against expectations. A company can post record profit and still fall if analysts expected more, or beat a low bar and jump. Guidance often matters more than the results themselves, because markets price the future. Earnings nights are among the few scheduled events that can gap a single stock 10% or more, so traders either plan around them or size down going in.