How Much Do Mag 7 Stocks Move on Earnings? Five Years of Reactions, Measured

On February 3, 2022, Meta fell 26.4% in one session after its fourth-quarter report. Fifteen months later Nvidia rose 24.4% in a day on its May 2023 guidance, and in December 2024 Broadcom did the same. These are some of the largest companies in the world, yet on earnings day they move like small caps. We measured every Mag 8 earnings reaction from October 2021 to September 2026, 20 reports per company, using the release times companies file with the SEC. This page shows how large the moves are and how to handle options you hold into a report. For the structures themselves, start with options strategies for Mag 7 stocks.

How much do Mag 7 stocks move on earnings?

Across 160 reports, the Mag 8 stocks moved an average of 6.8% on the first session after earnings. More than half the reports (86) moved the stock over 5%, and nearly one in five (31) moved it over 10%.

The ranking is stable. Meta, Tesla, Broadcom and Amazon move most; Apple moves least. Microsoft and Alphabet sit in between. Each company’s own volatility explains part of the ranking, but not all of it. Tesla has the most volatile ordinary days, at 2.7%, yet its earnings day is only 3.2 times a normal day. Meta’s ordinary days average just 1.7%, and its earnings days average 6.4 times that.

Which Mag 7 stock moves the most on earnings?

Meta, by a wide margin. It averaged 10.9% across its last 20 reports, and half of those reports moved the stock more than 10%.

Two things in this table matter for options. First, the largest move is usually two to four times the average, so sizing for the average reaction leaves you exposed to the worst one. Second, recent reports have been big even for the steadier names: Microsoft’s two largest reactions of the five years, −10.0% and +15.5%, both came in 2026.

How big are earnings days compared with normal days?

Large enough to dominate the year. For every Mag 8 stock, its 20 earnings days carried 8% to 34% of all its daily price variance over five years. If those days behaved like the other 1,234, the share would be about 1.6%.

Meta is the extreme: a third of everything the stock did on a daily basis in five years happened on four days a year. For an investor writing options, this concentration is the key fact. A covered call or a short put that is open on those four days carries a risk it does not carry on the other 248. That is why most option sellers manage earnings separately rather than treating them as ordinary days with slightly more volatility.

Do earnings moves go up or down more often?

Neither: 82 of the 160 reactions were up and 78 were down. No stock was reliably one-sided; Broadcom’s 13 up moves out of 20 was the most lopsided, and Apple and Tesla had 9.

What happened after the first day was a little more consistent. In 93 of 160 cases (58%), the stock kept moving in the same direction over the next five sessions. Nvidia (15 of 20), Amazon and Microsoft (14 each) showed it most; Meta (8 of 20) more often reversed. With 20 reports per stock, that is a tendency, not a signal. It is the large-cap version of what researchers call post-earnings drift, and it argues against reflexively fading a big earnings move.

How does the options market price the earnings move?

Through higher implied volatility on the expiries that include the report. The price of the at-the-money straddle on the first expiry after earnings is the market’s estimate of the move, usually called the implied move. Our guide to straddles, strangles and earnings shows how to read it, and the expected-move formula converts implied volatility into a price range.

The useful comparison is implied against history. If the straddle on a stock prices a 5% move and the last 20 reactions averaged 7%, options look cheap for the event. If it prices 9% against a 5% history, they look expensive. On the Mag 8 the market is not naive: implied moves tend to sit close to each stock’s recent average, because traders run the same history we did. Edges, where they exist, are small.

Why do option buyers often lose even when the stock moves?

Because implied volatility collapses once the news is out, and the buyer needs a move bigger than the one already priced just to break even.

Take an illustrative Nvidia position at the October 5, 2026 close of $238.90: a 240-strike straddle expiring seven days out, priced at 70% implied volatility. It costs about $18.52, an implied move of 7.75%. The next morning, with the report out, implied volatility drops to 40%. If the stock has not moved, the straddle is worth about $9.82, a 47% loss overnight. It takes a move of roughly 7.7% in either direction to get back to $18.52.

Nvidia’s median reaction over five years was 5.3%. Buying that straddle at that price would have lost money on most reports and made it back on the few large ones. Our vega guide covers the mechanics of IV crush.

What should you do with covered calls, puts and spreads before earnings?

Decide position by position, before the report, whether to hold, roll, close or hedge. Do not decide the morning after.

• Covered calls. A call that expires after the report caps your gain on the day of the biggest move. Roll it to an expiry before the report, or write the next one after. Mag 7 names now list Monday and Wednesday expiries as well as Fridays, so there is usually one that ends just before the release. See rolling options.
• Cash-secured puts. Hold through the report only if you would be glad to own the shares after a gap down as large as the stock’s worst reaction: about 26% for Meta, 15% for Tesla.
• Short iron condors and strangles. These are bets that the stock stays in a range, which is exactly what earnings day tests. Close them before the report unless the position is a deliberate, sized earnings trade.
• LEAPS and poor man’s covered calls. The long call can stay, but its loss on a gap down is leveraged. Buy back the short call if it would cap a gap up.
• Concentrated shares. If a 15% gap would force a change of plans, hedge before the report, when it is cheaper to plan. A put spread or a collar will do it. After the report the implied volatility you pay will have fallen, but so may the stock.

How should you size a position that will be open over earnings?

Size it so that a repeat of the stock’s largest reaction of the last five years is a loss you would accept, not a loss that changes your plan. For Meta, that is a gap of more than 25%; for Apple, about 8%.

The average move is the wrong number to plan with, because options losses are uneven: a short put that is 10% out of the money loses nothing on a 9% drop and a great deal on a 20% one. Options position sizing sets out the method. In practice it means fewer contracts into a report than on an ordinary week, and defined-risk spreads rather than naked short options.

How do you find the exact earnings date and release time?

From the company’s investor-relations calendar first, then from the Form 8-K it files with the SEC on the day. Earnings releases are filed under Item 2.02, Results of Operations and Financial Condition, and EDGAR shows the exact acceptance time.

All eight companies release after the 4:00 pm Eastern close, so the stock reacts at the next open and the next session’s close is the one that counts. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla report three to five weeks after each calendar quarter ends. Nvidia and Broadcom run fiscal quarters that end later, so they report later; Broadcom has occasionally released before the open, as it did in May 2022. Check the date again in the week of the report, because companies do move them.

What should you check before a Mag 7 earnings report?

1. Confirm the report date and whether it falls before the open or after the close.
2. List every position on the stock, including shares, short calls, short puts, spreads and LEAPS, and the expiry of each.
3. Compare the implied move on the first post-report expiry with the stock’s average and largest reactions in the table above.
4. For each position, choose hold, roll, close or hedge, and act before the close on report day.
5. Size anything held through the report for a repeat of the largest reaction, not the average.
6. After the report, reset strikes and expiries for ordinary-week volatility, which will usually be lower.

Frequently asked questions

Key takeaways

1. Over the last 20 reports, the Mag 8 moved an average of 6.8% on the session after earnings: 2.6 to 6.4 times a normal day.
2. Meta (10.9%) and Tesla (8.6%) move most; Apple (3.1%) moves least. One report in five moved a stock more than 10%.
3. Four earnings days a year carried 8% to 34% of each stock’s five-year price variance, against about 1.6% if they were ordinary days.
4. Direction is a coin flip: 82 of 160 reactions were up. Trade the size of the move, not a guess at the direction.
5. Option prices already include an earnings move, and implied volatility collapses after the report, so buyers need a move larger than the one priced.
6. Before every report, decide for each position: hold, roll to an earlier expiry, close or hedge. Size anything held through it for the stock’s largest past move.

Sources and method

1. SEC, Form 8-K (General Instructions and Item 2.02) — Item 2.02, Results of Operations and Financial Condition
2. SEC, Form 8-K — what triggers an 8-K and when it is due
3. SEC, Search Filings (EDGAR) — earnings release filing dates and acceptance times
4. OCC, Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options — how listed options work
5. FINRA, Options — options risks

Earnings dates and release times are the acceptance timestamps of each company’s Form 8-K Item 2.02 filings on SEC EDGAR, converted to US Eastern time. We used the last 20 reports per company released from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2026, excluding Tesla’s quarterly delivery reports, an April 2023 Alphabet 8-K and Nvidia’s August 2022 preliminary revenue release, which were not scheduled earnings reports. The earnings move is the close-to-close change on the first session after the release (the next day for after-close releases; the same day for Broadcom’s pre-market release in May 2022). Prices are Yahoo Finance daily closes, split-adjusted. “Normal day” is the average absolute daily move on all other trading days in the same window. The straddle example uses Black–Scholes with assumed implied volatilities and is illustrative. Past moves do not predict future ones.