Investors hover around earnings' releases and predictions like moths around a candle.
And for good reason. For short-term investors it is vital to know whether earnings for the next quarter or two are going to have any surprises in either direction. For longer term investors a central goal is to predict the growth rate of earnings over a decade or more. It may be that predictions of future earnings can be made more precise by going beyond simple quantity to look at their quality and components. There is plenty of evidence that the growth rate of earnings is mean-reverting.