Earnings Whispers Review – Are the Paid Plans Worth It?

About Earnings Whispers

Earnings Whispers is a trading strategy and screening platform designed for traders and long-term investors who want to trade around earnings announcements. The company’s analysts come up with their own EPS estimates for hundreds of shares, and Earnings Whispers has been closer to reported earnings than the Wall Street consensus more than 70% of the time.

Since there are quite a few analysis platforms out there, you’ll likely want to learn more about Earnings Whispers before you make your decision. So, let’s dive right into this review of Earnings Whispers.

Earnings Whispers Pricing Options

Earnings Whispers has two distinct services: Investor and Trader. Investor costs $25 per month and is designed for long-term investors who want to use earnings to inform their investment decisions. Trader costs $129.95 per month or $299.95 per quarter. It includes all of the resources available through the Investor service, plus recommendations for short timeframe (one to several days) trades around earnings announcements.

The Trader service has a two-week trial available, which allows you to try out the Investor service as well.

Earnings Whispers Features: Investor

Whisper Report

The main resource that you get with the Investor service from Earnings Whispers is the weekly Whisper Report. This is a lengthy report (often more than 25 pages) that gives an overview of market conditions and identifies support and resistance levels in the S&P 500 index. The report also offers an analysis of sector trends and market-wide earnings trends. 

The report also highlights several dozen stocks for which Earnings Whispers is expecting an upcoming earnings surprise. Most of these aren’t given additional discussion, just a chart showing support and resistance trendlines plus forward earnings estimates. These are only moderately useful, as you’re still left to do a significant amount of research on your own.

However, the report does go into detail about several particularly strong plays based on Earnings Whispers estimates that differ significantly from the consensus earnings estimate. The report doesn’t suggest short-term strategies – you’ll need the Trader subscription for that – but it does offer a summary of analysts’ views on the company to offer insight into where it may be heading in the coming months to years. 

A+ Stocks

Earnings Whispers also keeps a model portfolio of what it calls A+ stocks. Think of these like Zacks top-ranked stocks or Motley Fool’s stock picks (but with Earnings Whispers’ criteria). These are stocks that the analysts at Earnings Whispers expect to drift higher following an earnings announcement. The time interval for trades in this portfolio is usually three to six months as opposed to a few days, since the stocks are held until the following earnings announcement.

Take the A+ grade with a grain of salt. At the time of writing, only 20 out of 31 A+-graded stocks had produced a positive gain. That said, the portfolio’s average gain only outpaced the S&P 500 by a few percentage points.  

Earnings And Guidance

Much of the remaining information available through the Investor service is publicly available. Earnings Whispers collates earnings results and guidance in calendar views. For stocks that Earnings Whispers analyzes, the Earnings Whispers earnings estimate is included with these past results alongside the Wall Street consensus estimate.

Earnings Whispers Features: Trader

Earnings Plays

The Trader service from Earnings Whispers is much more focused on giving short-term traders actionable intelligence. The resources available are often recommendations coupled with data, rather than just data for you to analyze on your own. 

The Earnings Plays is an excellent example of this. There are two types of plays that Earnings Whispers recommends:

• Before plays entail you buying the stock several days ahead of an earnings announcement, then selling it either immediately before or immediately after the announcement.
• After plays entail buying the stock immediately after an announcement and holding it for up to two days to capture the ensuing price movement.

Before and After plays can be either long or short. For After plays, Earnings Whispers assigns stocks a “Power Rating” to indicate how significant the move is expected to be. This is usually related to the difference between the reported earnings and the consensus earnings, along with guidance from the earnings call.

+5 Stocks

Earnings Whispers assigns a score from -5 to +5 for all of the stocks its analysts follow. This score describes the likelihood of a positive or negative gap after earnings are announced. All -5, -4, +4, and +5 stocks are collated for you to browse, and you can easily see the Earnings Whispers EPS estimate compared to the consensus estimate.

Not all of these stocks show up as Earnings Plays. However, you can use Earnings Whispers stock scores to develop your own short-term trades around earnings announcements.

Breakouts

Earnings Whispers also has recommendations for breakout trades. These recommendations focus on stocks that have a positive earnings announcement, a significant gap up, and a resistance break that signals additional potential upside. The nice thing about Earnings Whisper’s breakout guidance is that every recommendation includes a price target. Note that many of these are B- or C-graded stocks, so the expectation is that the post-earnings move will only take a few days to develop. 

Earnings Whispers Platform Differentiators

Earnings Whispers isn’t the only analysis platform that tries to beat the Wall Street consensus estimate around stocks’ earnings reports. But it is one of the only platforms that can claim a greater than 70% success rate.

In addition, the platform does a lot more than just compile more accurate earnings forecasts. It actually uses that data to recommend short- and long-term stock trades and estimate the likelihood that a stock’s value will drift up or down after earnings. The information that Earnings Whispers provides is highly actionable, especially if you’re using the Trader service. The Investor service holds back on making outright recommendations, although you can still use the earnings forecasts and detailed analysis in the Whisper Reports to make more informed trading decisions.

What Type Of Trader Is Earnings Whispers Best For?

Earnings Whispers caters to two different types of traders with its two service tiers. The Investor service is useful for long-term investors who want to establish discount positions around earnings announcements or get into a stock ahead of a price jump. The Trader service is best for short-term investors who want to realize short-term profits trading on price volatility before, during, or immediately after earnings announcements. The Investor service takes a bit more footwork and research on the part of long-term investors, while the Trader service offers more ready-made trading strategies and stock recommendations.

Pros

• Highly accurate earnings forecasts
• Weekly report with detailed stock analysis
• Multiple grading systems that are easy to interpret
• Highly actionable breakout and Earnings Play recommendations
• Investor service is relatively inexpensive

Cons

• A+-graded stocks have a mixed track record
• Trader service is very expensive