Earnings Season:
Finding the Best Stocks to Buy on Wall Street

July 17, 2008

How's that for a nice reversal? The Dow added 207 points today, and combined with yesterday's move, the index has tacked on 483 points in a little over 30 hours. It's no secret that the best stocks to buy helped lead that charge. Going back to the start of Ben Bernanke's testimony on Tuesday, the Dow is up over 600 points.

But there's even more good news for us: We're now in the heart of earnings season. This is when most of corporate America reports how well it did for the second-quarter. I like to think of earnings season as Wall Street's Judgment Day. Companies that do well will be richly rewarded, and are the best stocks to buy. But stocks that fall short of expectations see their shares cruelly punished. If you've followed my advice, you should own stocks that are about to be rewarded handsomely!

Earnings season is all about expectations. I'll give you a perfect example, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) reported this morning that its earnings plunged 53% for the June quarter. But as bad as that was, they actually beat expectations and the stock rallied.

What's as important as results is future guidance. To me, it's not enough to see a company beat expectations, it should raise its forecast for the following quarters as well.  For example, Nokia (NOK) reported sales and earnings that beat expectations, but the company also raised its forecast for the rest of this year. The stock responded favorably and that's always good to see. These are the numbers that will tell you what are the best stocks to buy.

In this week's issue of What's Working on Wall Street Now, I want to focus on next week's earnings reports and give you some pointers on what to look out for.