Earnings Blackout

earnings-blackout

You have a watchlist of 20 names. Which print this week? Which printed yesterday and might gap on follow-up news? Which are clear to trade without earnings-event risk? Run the scanner. One pass per ticker over Benzinga (or SEC EDGAR as fallback), one classification per ticker, one grouped exception report at the end.

This is the pre-trade hygiene check, not a full preview. For a single name's full sell-side preview (implied move, beat/miss history, peer reaction, drift), use earnings-drilldown. For the per-event windowing study, use event-study.

When to invoke

• Morning watchlist scan before the market opens
• Position-sizing check: which names in the book have earnings risk in the next N days
• Post-mortem: which name in the watchlist already printed and might have residual gap risk

What you need

• A watchlist (--watchlist NVDA,TSLA,AMZN,GOOGL,META,AAPL,MSFT)
• MASSIVE_API_KEY exported in the environment
• Optional: Benzinga earnings add-on for forward dates + consensus EPS (Tier A). Without it, the skill falls back to SEC EDGAR 8-K filings (Tier B, past-only).

Quick start

python3 examples/run-earnings-blackout.py \
  --watchlist NVDA,TSLA,AMZN,GOOGL,META,AAPL,MSFT \
  --window-days 7

Status buckets

Seven, returned in results[].status:

• blackout_imminent — earnings 0-3 days forward. Position-sizing decisions need to be locked in NOW.
• blackout_soon — earnings 4-7 days forward. Watching for IV ramp, positioning unwind.
• blackout_extended — earnings 8+ days forward. Only surfaces when --window-days > 7.
• just_printed — earnings 0-3 days past. Watch for analyst-day follow-on, guidance digestion, gap fill.
• recent_print — earnings 4-7 days past. Less relevant, ranked low in render.
• clear — no earnings in either the forward or past window.
• unresolved — the resolver returned nothing from Benzinga AND the SEC EDGAR fallback. Could mean the ticker has no 8-K with items 2.02 / 7.01 / 8.01 in the window, or that the CIK lookup failed. Surfaced explicitly rather than silently dropped.

Tiers

• Tier A (Benzinga): True forward calendar dates, consensus EPS, consensus revenue, expected release time (BMO/AMC/DMH).
• Tier B (SEC EDGAR only): Past prints only. No forward calendar (EDGAR is filing-based). No consensus EPS. Surfaces item_code and signal_strength (strong=2.02, soft=7.01/8.01) so consumers can weight conservatively.

The skill returns tier: "A" if any ticker resolved via Benzinga. tier_caveats[] lists what the user is missing.

Output

Always emits canonical JSON matching output-schema.json and a rendered exception report grouped by status (imminent first). See references/rendering.md for the rules and references/methodology.md for the two-tier resolver chain.

Reading

• references/methodology.md — Benzinga primary, SEC EDGAR 8-K fallback, item-code interpretation, CIK chain
• references/rendering.md — exception- report grouping rules