Many investors like to keep on top of certain events and trends that are known to move markets. Zacks provides a series of data feeds that can be used to create calendars for earnings announcements, dividend payments and economic reports as well as historical records for stock splits, analyst revisions and earnings guidance.

Expected Earnings Report Dates – Maintaining our core focus on company earnings, Zacks provides data feeds containing expected earnings report dates for most companies trading in the US and Canadian stock markets. Both company confirmed as well as estimated dates are available, with a flag showing which is which. Estimated dates are produced using a series of algorithms based on historical report date patterns tracked for each company.

Expected Dividend Dates – Zacks analysts closely monitor public news sources for announcements of upcoming dividends with announcement dates, ex-dates and pay dates. We calculate an Indicated Annual Dividend (IAD) amount, with associated yield ratios, based on regular cash dividend payments over the previous twelve months combined with recent announcements of changes in dividend policy.

Analyst Revisions – Zacks provides feeds containing recent revisions in both estimates and ratings by covering sell-side analysts who do not require entitlements. These are generally smaller brokerage and boutique research firms who are looking for publicity. Although bulge bracket firms are not included, this revision data can be indicative of broader changes in Wall Street sentiment.

Corporate Guidance – Often in conjunction with earnings announcements or a few weeks prior to the next earnings announcement, company management will issue guidance regarding future business performance over the next quarter and/or fiscal year. To the extent that these guidance figures differ markedly from current consensus expectations, the market can react strongly. It is not uncommon to see situations for example, where a company announces earnings for the prior quarter which outperform expectations then issues more pessimistic projections for the next fiscal quarter or year, and the stock immediately drops as a result of the guidance despite positive actual results. Zacks provides a historical record of guidance and related surprises to help investors get a handle on how this type of event affects stock price performance.

Economic Announcements – To help investors make sense of macroeconomic events which may affect whole sectors and industries as well as individual stocks, Zacks provides upcoming announcement dates and estimates for eighty-one separate macroeconomic measures from business inventories, consumer price index data, durable orders, housing starts, non-farm payroll figures to retail sales and many more.