Prices of stock are based on future expectation of earnings. This is why you can have a company like Amazon have incredible earnings, but still have the share

Prices of stock are based on future expectation of earnings. This is why you can have a company like Amazon have incredible earnings, but still have the share price tank. IE, expectations were that they would have even more incredible earnings, but they were merely incredible. This is also how you can have companies that are on the verge of bankruptcy get huge stock gains if they defy earnings expectations. As such, expectations of future results are already priced into stocks. It's literally the stock price. Whether a stock moves up or down is based on the delta between reality and expectation.