Post-earnings drift · validated

The beats are still drifting

Stocks that beat earnings tend to keep drifting up for weeks. Post-earnings-announcement drift is a documented anomaly since 1989, and it holds on our own data: the top earnings-surprise names drifted about +3.4% market-adjusted over the 60 trading days after reporting, across 425 companies and every market-cap tier. That figure is gross of cost; the panel below shows what is left after you try to trade it.

These are the companies that recently beat and are still inside that window, ranked by how big the surprise was. The drift is an average over thousands of events, not a promise for any one name.

30 recent beats · in the 60-trading-day drift window · as of 2026-07-01

Gross looks great. Net is the honest number.

+17%/yr

Long-only top quintile, GROSS before cost. Beta-adjusted (FF5+momentum, t=4.3)

≈ 0

Long-only AFTER realistic cost. This is the version you can actually place

+22%/yr

Long-SHORT alpha, GROSS (needs shorting the losers; a retail reader cannot place this)

+3.4%

Top-quintile raw drift, 60td, market-adj (gross)

⚠The honest read. The +22%/yr figure is GROSS and long-short, so it needs shorting the worst-surprise names, which a research reader buying at their own broker cannot do. Long-only it is about +17%/yr GROSS (t 4.3), and cleanly not just momentum. Net of realistic trading cost the long-only version you could actually place is approximately zero: the per-event drift is small and capturing it needs frequent rebalancing in often-illiquid names. PEAD is a published, widely-known anomaly, not a secret. We surface it as research context, not a return to expect. The one earnings-adjacent signal that survives cost long-only in our data is the activist-filing drift (13D events, about +0.1 to +0.2% net per event over 5 to 10 days, t above 2.7), which is where our tradeable work actually leans. Research, not advice; you place any trades yourself.

Recent beats, still in the window

Reported	Ticker	Surprise	Days into drift	Tier
2026-05-28	PD Pagerduty Inc	+29%	23 / 60	★★★★★
2026-05-07	UPWK Upwork Inc	+29%	38 / 60	★★★★★
2026-04-30	BAND Bandwidth Inc-Class A	+28%	43 / 60	★★★★★
2026-05-05	EXPD Expeditors Intl Wash Inc	+28%	39 / 60	★★★★★
2026-05-07	TPR Tapestry Inc	+28%	38 / 60	★★★★★
2026-05-11	MARA Mara Holdings Inc	+26%	35 / 60	★★★★★
2026-05-01	BTSG Brightspring Health Services	+26%	42 / 60	★★★★★
2026-04-30	LLY Eli Lilly & Co	+26%	43 / 60	★★★★☆
2026-05-07	XYZ Block Inc	+26%	38 / 60	★★★★☆
2026-04-23	MXL Maxlinear Inc	+26%	48 / 60	★★★★☆
2026-05-06	SNAP Snap Inc - A	+25%	39 / 60	★★★★☆
2026-05-04	PINS Pinterest Inc- Class A	+25%	40 / 60	★★★★☆
2026-05-27	HEI Heico Corp	+25%	24 / 60	★★★★☆
2026-06-03	FIVE Five Below	+24%	19 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-05	BL Blackline Inc	+24%	39 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-27	BMA Banco Macro Sa-Adr	+24%	24 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-27	LC Lendingclub Corp	+24%	45 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-07	FUN Six Flags Entertainment Corp	+24%	38 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-30	CNX Cnx Resources Corp	+24%	43 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-19	KEYS Keysight Technologies In	+24%	30 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-28	SLDE Slide Insurance Holdings Inc	+24%	44 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-29	BIIB Biogen Inc	+24%	43 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-22	MOH Molina Healthcare Inc	+23%	48 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-04	ALSN Allison Transmission Holding	+23%	40 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-06	TS Tenaris Sa-Adr	+23%	39 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-04	VVX V2X Inc	+22%	40 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-29	VMC Vulcan Materials Co	+22%	43 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-22	KMI Kinder Morgan Inc	+22%	48 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-04-30	AAMI Acadian Asset Management Inc	+22%	43 / 60	★★★☆☆
2026-05-27	SNOW Snowflake Inc	+22%	24 / 60	★★★☆☆

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Post-earnings-announcement drift (Bernard & Thomas, 1989) is a documented market anomaly. Figures shown are from a market-adjusted event study on ~425 US companies (2014–2026) using earnings surprises from public sources; the long-short alpha survives a Fama-French 5-factor + momentum regression with Newey-West standard errors (t≈9.7). Past performance does not predict future results. "Surprise" is reported EPS versus the consensus estimate; near-zero-estimate outliers, where that ratio explodes, are excluded so the figures stay interpretable. "Days into drift" is approximate. Prior Moves is a publisher of research, not an investment adviser; nothing here is advice or a recommendation. Do your own research; do not invest more than you can afford to lose.