Steve Strazza highlights stocks showing both fundamental strength and technical momentum.
The Weekly Beat 📈
December 28, 2025
Earnings are the heartbeat of the market, and every week brings a fresh set of opportunities and risks.
With each report, we get new information on corporate health, investor sentiment, and where money is rotating.
In the Weekly Beat, we spotlight the most important earnings reactions from the prior week: the winners, the losers, and the surprises that moved markets.
Then we shift our focus to the week ahead, breaking down the technicals and fundamentals.
Whether it’s mega-cap leaders, niche growth stories, or the sectors most tied to the economy, we’ve got you covered on what traders need to know right now.
Following a mixed earnings report, Carnival $CCL had its best earnings reaction since Q2 2022. The top-line surged nearly 250% year-over-year, and the dividend was reinstated.
Despite beating the market's expectations, Lamb Weston $LW cratered 25.9% for its second-worst earnings reaction ever. Volumes rose 8% year-over-year, but price declines offset the increase.
There were no S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, so we wrote about one of our favorite retail names in the market. Its name is Ulta Beauty $ULTA, and it's making new all-time highs.
In their latest report, revenue jumped nearly 13% year-over-year, comparable sales accelerated to 6.3%, and gross margins expanded to over 40% as inventory discipline improved and shrink declined.
Again, there were no S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, so we wrote about another one of the best earnings reactions we've seen this quarter. After years of being consistently punished for its earnings events, Rivian $RIVN recorded its best post-earnings move in history on November 5 following a blockbuster report.
While most EV makers are fighting for survival on vehicle margins alone, RIVN is building an adjacent revenue stream tied to the industry's convergence toward software-defined vehicles.
Once again, there were no S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, so we wrote about one of the hottest materials stocks in the market. Its name is Alcoa $AA, and it's the largest publicly traded aluminum stock.
On October 23, AA posted its best earnings reaction in years after a big double beat. Since then, the upside momentum has accelerated with the price printing fresh multi-year highs.
What's happening next week 👇
We aren't going to lie to you; nothing is happening next week on the earnings front. It's set to be one of the quietest weeks of the entire year.
But there's something we want to share with you...
Over the years, we’ve quietly built something at The Beat Report that doesn’t exist anywhere else: a proprietary database tracking how stocks actually reacted to earnings, not just whether they “beat” or “missed.”
It’s the difference between accounting results and market truth.
And starting in January, we’re pulling back the curtain for the first time with the launch of our inaugural Beat Quarterly report.
To give you a taste of what’s coming, we’re starting with healthcare, a sector that quietly delivered one of the strongest earnings seasons we’ve seen in years.
The first chart tells that story immediately.
More than 80% of S&P 500 healthcare stocks delivered a true double beat in Q4 2025, blowing past expectations on both the top- and bottom-lines.
Misses were scarce, and mixed results were limited.
This wasn’t a narrow win driven by one or two mega-caps; it was broad, decisive strength across the group.
That broad strength sets the stage for the following two charts, where things get even more interesting.
Our Healthcare Top Beats ranking chart doesn’t measure raw price moves; it measures reaction quality.
These reaction scores capture how decisively the market rewarded companies after earnings, filtering out noise and volatility.
What stands out this quarter is the clustering at the high end. The leaders didn’t just beat, they triggered sustained follow-through, signaling real conviction from buyers rather than short-term relief rallies.
On the flip side, the Healthcare Bottom Beats chart shows just how isolated the laggards were.
A small handful of names absorbed the bulk of the downside reactions, while the rest of the sector avoided meaningful punishment. That kind of asymmetry, many strong reactions, few severe negatives, is precisely what healthy trends look like beneath the surface.
This is the lens we’ll be bringing to earnings going forward.
Not headlines or consensus narratives. But how the market actually votes with capital.
These three charts are just a preview. The full Beat Quarterly report goes much deeper, across sectors, styles, and themes, using Fusion Analysis to connect fundamentals, sentiment, and price behavior in a way traditional earnings reports simply don’t.
January is coming fast, and this is just the beginning.
We hope you enjoyed this special edition of the Weekly Beat!
-The Beat Team
P.S. Join Breakout Multiplier (annual) and get a FREE quarterly membership to Project X, Steve Strazza’s new fusion-analysis tool launching in January.
Project X combines fundamentals, earnings sentiment, trend, and momentum to spot emerging leaders early.
