BRIGITTA MOON BOOKS: Earnings Season

First of all, let me just say, I love Earnings Season. It is the most exciting four times of the year in the stock market for me. If you're in a winning stock, the thrill can be likened to winning a jackpot at the casino. During earnings season some of your stocks may suddenly become high flyers and some may become duds while others just hibernate.

Just before the season starts I take the time to visit my favorite sites to research stocks that may have promise of a great future for my portfolio. I also hunt for those too expensive stocks that may fly high with a great earnings report. These high priced jewels occupy an option position in my portfolio. This way I can control 100 shares for a fraction of the price it would cost to purchase the 100 shares. My best purchase was buying an option in AAPl. The stock was $444 per share. I purchased the 610 call for $217 and watched it top out at $3,000. Now that AAPL is part of the DOW and post split I wonder if the stock will fly high again. Right now the stock is pretty much hibernating in my portfolio.

Here are my favorite sites I enjoy visiting when contemplating a purchase or a sell. I am a frequent visitor of Nasdaq.com Here I can check on the premarket and aftermarket activity. It's also a site which allows me to investigate the stock's value through Summary Recommendations, EPS Earnings Surprise Forecast, Momentum P/E, Ratio Earnings, Growth P/E & Growth Rates, PEG Ratio and Short Interest.

Another site I visit is Earningswhisper.com I visit this site to see if the whisper number is bullish or bearish. I'm also interested in the outlook information provided, Analysts' Recommendation, Analysts' Target and Visitors' Sentiment.

When I think about buying a dividend stock, I visit dividata.com Visiting this site allows me to view Upcoming Ex-Dividends, High Dividend Yielding stocks as well as the stock's dividend rating, years paying and dividend yield.

Let's not leave out Finance.Yahoo.com This was the first site I visited before their overhaul of their chart. The chart is not as beginner user friendly as they once were. With the old chart I was able to quickly check it for the information I needed such as a stock split. When you arrive at the yahoo page for the stock it displays the previous version of the site's chart which is pretty friendly but, as soon as you click a time period or the chart itself if becomes the unfriendly interactive chart. The active chart has it's pluses such as being able to compare the growth rate of stocks but I really prefer the previous version. They have succeeded at making their chart mirror a chart I can get in my Scottrade account. So now I only visit Yahoo Finance if I want to compare the growth of two or more stocks.

Each of these sites offers news updates. On the go when I want to keep up with my stock prices and news I have Seekingalpha.com on my phone. I downloaded the app which I really like and it's free. If you've seen my twitter feed I guess you can see how excited I was about the NFLIX move after it reported earnings; up $86.59.