Earnings season kicks off with financials in focus as the market looks for clarity after a fragmented quarter.
April 12, 2026
Editor's note: Financials just delivered a mixed earnings season, with strong winners on one end and brutal losers on the other.
What do you think this upcoming earnings season will look like for one of the most important sectors in the market?
Write us at [email protected]. We value your input and may feature your responses in a future post.
We’re now in the transition phase, where one earnings season fades out, and another begins to take center stage.
Last week, we saw isolated bursts of strength from outside the S&P 500, and yet another reminder that when expectations get it wrong, price moves fast… in both directions.
At the same time, leadership trends are becoming harder to ignore.
The biggest opportunities aren’t coming from broad index moves... They’re coming from individual names, specific sectors, and highly selective setups where the market is forced to adjust.
Now, we turn the page to a new earnings season.
It'll begin with the banks, and as always, they’ll set the tone for everything that follows.
But before we look ahead, it’s worth taking a step back to understand exactly what kind of environment we’re stepping into.
Here’s everything you need to know from the past week, and a sneak peek at what's coming next week.
There were no S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, so we highlighted one of our favorite recent earnings reactions outside of the S&P 500.
This came from LeMaitre Vascular $LMAT, a small-cap medical devices stock that just had its best earnings reaction ever. The company has tremendous leverage and is becoming more profitable as it scales.
Again, there were no S&P 500 earnings reactions to cover, so we highlighted Millicom International Cellular $TIGO, a $13.5B telecom operator focused on Latin America and Africa.
In the most recent quarter, TIGO delivered nearly 500% year-over-year earnings growth. That's not a typo... Nearly 500%! This is one of the most exciting growth stories in the communications sector, and shareholders are consistently being rewarded for the company's earnings events.
Following a double beat, Delta Air Lines $DAL rallied 3.8%, marking its 4th positive earnings reaction out of the last 5.
Delta just posted record revenues, up nearly 10% year-over-year, with broad-based demand across both corporate and leisure travel. And margins held up despite a massive spike in fuel costs.
After reporting a better-than-expected quarter, Aehr Test Systems $AEHR rallied more than 25%, gapping away to new all-time highs.
This was AEHR’s best earnings reaction since April 2025, and one of the strongest in its entire history. The pre-earnings drift was extreme (+23.13%), and the follow-through confirmed it.
What's happening next week 👇
The next earnings season is here, and as always, it’s the banks that will set the tone for what's to come.
We kick things off Monday morning with Goldman Sachs $GS, and from there, it’ll be a full-on information dump from the world's most important financial institutions.
Tuesday morning brings the heavy hitters, including JPMorgan $JPM, Citi $C, Wells Fargo $WFC, and BlackRock $BLK, all before the opening bell.
Then, on Wednesday, we hear from Morgan Stanley $MS and Bank of America $BAC, giving us a nearly complete picture of the U.S. banking system in just three days.
On Thursday, Charles Schwab $SCHW will give us a read on brokerage activity and retail participation. We'll also hear from Taiwan Semiconductor $TSM, arguably the most important chip manufacturer on the planet, which offers critical insight into global demand for semis and the broader tech supply chain.
Then Friday rounds things out with a handful of smaller financial names, putting the finishing touches on what should be one of the most informative weeks of the quarter.
This is where narratives are built, and more often than not, this is where trends either confirm… or crack.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s worth zooming out and asking a simple question. What did we actually learn from last quarter?
On the surface, the fundamental backdrop was… fine. Not great, not terrible. Just fine.
About 43.5% of financials delivered double beats, 30.4% came in mixed, and 26.1% missed on both the top- and bottom-line expectations.
That’s not the kind of clean, broad-based strength you typically want to see from one of the most important sectors in the market.
It was a mixed bag, one that reflects a market still trying to figure itself out.
And yet, if you were only looking at price, you might’ve walked away with a very different conclusion.
Despite the uneven fundamentals, we still saw some powerful upside reactions.
The best came from Willis Towers Watson $WTW, followed by Chubb $CB, and then Coinbase $COIN, names that absolutely exploded higher following their reports.
These were the kind of moves that remind you just how much opportunity exists when expectations are misaligned with reality.
But as always, the other side of the distribution tells the real story.
PayPal $PYPL posted the worst reaction of the quarter, getting hit with a brutal -6.8 score. Then Assurant $AIZ, S&P Global $SPGI, and State Street $STT weren't far behind with deeply negative reactions.
And importantly, it wasn’t just the fringe names taking damage... Some of the most systemically important banks in the world, including JPM and BAC, also saw negative reactions to their reports.
That’s the key takeaway.
This wasn’t a clean earnings season from financials.
It was fragmented, and it was unforgiving to anything that didn’t meet or exceed an already demanding bar.
Which brings us right back to this week.
Because now the bar has been set, and the market is once again about to decide who deserves higher prices… and who doesn’t.
Stay tuned.
That's it for this week. Thank you for reading!
-The Beat Team
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