Earnings season is almost here. To help you get ready, my "Beginner's Guide to Earnings Call" walks you through a step-by-step approach for how to listen to and analyze a public company's quarterly earnings report. Then "Five Missteps to Avoid in Earnings Season" shows you how to avoid the biggest investor blunders when listening to earnings conference calls (widely referred to as simply conference calls).
Now, in this installment of The Finance Professor, let's focus on some recent conference calls and provide insight and commentary into the earnings results, the actual calls and the subsequent reaction. In the process, you will get a sense of how to distinguish between good, bad and misunderstood conference calls.
Bad: Merrill Lynch, Third Quarter of 2007
Oct. 24, 2007: In anticipation of the release of its quarterly results, Merrill Lynch (MER Quote) was expected to take a large writedown related to its credit 
markets portfolio. Expectations were for Merrill to take a $4.5 billion hit. Instead, Merrill took a $7.9 billion writedown.
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