This makes no sense if you tug on it just a little bit. Suppose a stock is trading at $100/sh and via analyzing these signals leading up to earnings next week, “most people” could correctly predict that it will pop to $105 after earnings. “Most people” would then logically be willing to bid at least $104.50 (and probably closer if they were more certain), meaning as soon as the information was out to most people, this $5/sh opportunity would be arbitraged away.

There are entire firms trying to squeak pennies per share out of the market. To think that some backlog of data that most people could plainly interpret would lead to a pop after earnings is very difficult to believe.