Key Takeaways
In a typical month, there may be thousands of market happenings: earnings, dividends, economic reports and more
The TD Ameritrade calendar can help you sift through the information
There’s one thing that technical and fundamental investors can agree on: corporate and economic events can have a huge impact on the broader market and on individual trading portfolios. But between earnings, dividends, IPOs, economic events, stock splits, and investor conferences, there are hundreds if not thousands of scheduled market events each month. Even though a lot of those aren’t going to be relevant to every investor, it’s clearly no easy task to keep track of what’s going on in the markets from one day to the next.
That’s why we’re always working on new tools and resources to help investors stay on top of it all. One such resource is an updated full-page markets calendar that TD Ameritrade clients can access. Log in to tdameritrade.com and go to Research & Ideas > Markets > Calendar.
FIGURE 1: UNFILTERED DATA. To access the calendar, log in to tdameritrade.com and go to Research & Ideas > Markets > Calendar. From there, you can filter the calendar by information relevant to you, like your positions and watch lists, and see news and highlights for current and upcoming events. Source: TD Ameritrade. For illustrative purposes only.
Look familiar? With the most recent update, it matches the calendar on My Accounts Overview, but we’ve added features and new data to make it even better.
A Monthly View of Market Happenings
With the TD Ameritrade calendar, it’s easy to identify when events are occurring as well as a breakdown of the type. Since there can be hundreds of events on a given day, using the dropdown menu above the calendar allows you to filter them by watch lists or positions in any of your linked accounts.
From there, you can view All Events. Or, using the tabs at the top of the page, filter by one of these options:
- EarningsDividendsRatings changesSplitsIPOsInvestor conferencesEconomic events
Get the Finer Details
We wouldn’t leave you hanging without being able to get more than just a monthly view. On the right side of the calendar there are highlights related to the day and event type you’ve chosen. That same area will also have news related to the event with links to recent articles.
There are several ways to filter information depending on the type of event you’re looking at. For example, you can filter earnings by “Beat,” “Missed,” “Met,” and “Unreported.” For upcoming dividends, you can filter by current dividend yields that are greater than 3%, or less than or equal to 3%.
FIGURE 2: DIALING IN TO EARNINGS. The megaphone icon (circled in orange) indicates that there is an available conference call for that company. Click the icon to be redirected to the company’s page with information on how to access the conference call. Source: TD Ameritrade. For illustrative purposes only.
Accessing Earnings Conference Calls
There’s more to earnings than just the quarterly numbers. There’s a company attached to each of those shares you own, and listening to earnings conference calls is one way to monitor what’s happening at the businesses you’ve invested in. It’s also a way to potentially identify new investment opportunities you might want to research further. Either way, it can be worth tracking down the information for a company’s earnings call.
With the most recent calendar update, we made it easy to listen to earnings calls by including call-in information in each stock symbol’s row. The megaphone icon, shown in figure 2, indicates that a company has an available conference call. All you need to do is click the icon and it’ll take you to the company’s page with information on how to dial in.
But Wait, There’s More! Expanded Data
In addition to a redesign and added features, we’ve also added more data to the calendar. Now it’s easier to stay up to date on investor conferences, including summits, trade shows, business updates, seminars, workshops, and more.
FIGURE 3: INVESTOR CONFERENCES. Once “Investor Conferences” is selected from the tabs at the top of the page, clicking on a date will show summits, trade shows, business updates, seminars, workshops, and more. It also shows upcoming events happening in the next several days. Source: TD Ameritrade. For illustrative purposes only.
The economic events section has also been expanded to include more events, more details, and expected forecasts from Briefing.com, making it easy to keep track of everything from retail sales to labor reports. It also back-fills the actual results, so if you missed a report from yesterday, last week, or even last month, you can find it here.
FIGURE 4: ECONOMIC EVENTS. With the expanded economic events section, it’s easy to get a view of upcoming economic data releases that includes forecasts from Briefing.com, actual figures once the data is released, prior actual figures, and previous figures if the data is being revised in the new report. Source: TD Ameritrade. For illustrative purposes only.
No matter what type of investor you are, it can be useful to have a one-stop place to go to stay on top of market happenings. Whether you’re keeping track of upcoming earnings for stocks in your portfolio, or just want to make sure you don’t miss next year’s annual meeting of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, the new markets calendar covers it.
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