TGT
Target Corporation
stock NYSE

Whenever earnings pricing comes up, it's always about the names the market gets wrong — I've posted those myself. So this time I went looking for the ones it gets right. Priced correctly on size, no consistent lean in either direction.
The sample: 120 liquid optionable US names, each with at least 15 earnings prints, 2,270 prints total from January 2007 through August 2026. A name counts as efficient if it clears two bars at once — median actual-to-implied ratio between 0.90 and 1.10, and an overpriced rate between 45% and 55%, basically a coin flip on which side the miss lands. Only 17 of the 120 make it.
|Ticker|Prints|% overpriced|Median ratio|Mean implied|Mean actual|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|TXN|19|52.6%|0.904|4.76%|5.32%|
|DDOG|20|50.0%|0.915|9.40%|9.97%|
|OXY|20|50.0%|0.918|3.91%|3.70%|
|AAPL|20|50.0%|0.929|3.25%|2.91%|
|ZS|19|52.6%|0.934|9.06%|10.47%|
|C|19|52.6%|0.951|3.19%|3.39%|
|TGT|19|52.6%|0.965|6.82%|8.91%|
|MRVL|19|52.6%|0.967|8.01%|10.60%|
|WDC|20|50.0%|0.969|5.49%|5.78%|
|NKE|19|52.6%|0.987|6.70%|8.07%|
|MSTR|19|47.4%|1.003|6.10%|6.73%|
|AMD|19|47.4%|1.024|7.05%|7.52%|
|PINS|20|50.0%|1.044|11.68%|12.82%|
|GOOGL|18|50.0%|1.052|5.41%|5.24%|
|CMG|20|45.0%|1.081|6.37%|6.99%|
|DIS|21|47.6%|1.087|5.61%|5.90%|
|ORCL|19|47.4%|1.087|7.01%|9.01%|
MSTR is the one that stopped me. People talk about this stock like it's a leveraged bitcoin warrant with an equity wrapper — and around its own earnings, the options market has sized the move almost perfectly 19 times in a row. Median ratio 1.003. Of everything in this dataset, the ticker closest to exactly 1.000 is the one with the reputation for chaos.
For scale: the extremes I've posted before (HUT priced ±27.2% and moved 9.1%, SHOP priced ±9.1% and moved 14.2%) are real, but only 26 of 120 names are that broken. 17 are efficient. The other 69 are just averagely wrong in a boring way. That's what a mostly efficient market actually looks like.
My guess on MSTR: it trades on bitcoin's realized vol every day, so its volatility is priced into the chain continuously instead of concentrating into an earnings surprise. The print carries almost no incremental information. That's the part I'm least sure about, actually if you've actually traded the MSTR earnings straddle, tell me if that's right?

I took two live trades today and finished down about **$16.68, roughly -0.47R**. Financially it was a small losing day, but the bigger takeaway was realizing where I actually want to trade.
My first trade was **TGT at 164.68**.
The daily, 4H and 1H charts were all above their EMA20s. TGT was breaking above a 164.19 consolidation area. On the 15-minute chart, price formed a doji near the breakout and then chose higher. On the 5-minute chart, I had a pin bar followed by a strong expansion candle with good volume, so I entered on continuation.
The trade never really worked. It reached about 164.85 and then the breakout completely failed and stopped me out.
The setup itself wasn’t random. The problem was **location**.
I was buying the first breakout through an important area, and my 1R target was already running into another resistance area near 166. In other words, I needed the market to keep proving that resistance would break just to get paid.
This has happened several times recently. First breakouts of important resistance may simply not be one of my stronger setups right now.
The more important moment came after the stop.
I was frustrated. Work and personal life have been stressful lately, and I recently quit smoking, so my patience hasn’t exactly been great. I had a very strong urge to take another trade immediately and “make it back.”
I didn’t.
After waiting for a while, I went back to the 1H chart and noticed something that suddenly seemed obvious:
**A lot of my stops are based on 1H structural invalidation, but many of my entries are far away from that 1H structure.**
If my risk is defined by the 1H chart, why am I not waiting for price to come back toward the 1H location before entering?
That led to my second trade: **AAPL at 325.05**.
AAPL was still in a bullish daily/4H EMA20 structure. More importantly, on the 1H chart price had pulled back directly into the **1H EMA20 and the bottom of the 324 area**.
That became my WHERE.
Then I moved down to the 15-minute chart. Price repeatedly tested the area, printed lower wicks and showed signs of buyers absorbing the selling.
Only then did I go to the 5-minute chart.
The first High 1 did not meet my volume requirement, so I waited. The next engulfing attempt also wasn’t enough. Eventually another continuation structure developed and I entered at 325.05.
Price initially dropped to 324.11, then rallied to 327.06.
At **1R, 326.69**, I sold 8 of 15 shares and moved the remaining 7 shares to breakeven. The rest was eventually stopped at entry.
Final result: about **+0.53R**.
The most valuable lesson today was not that AAPL worked and TGT didn’t.
It was the contrast between the two questions I was asking:
**TGT:** “Can this resistance break?”
**AAPL:** “Can this established bullish structure hold after pulling back to support?”
The second question fits my trading style much better.
So for now, I’m narrowing my process:
**Daily / 4H:** bullish permission
**1H:** WHERE — bullish EMA20 structure, preferably price returning from above into the EMA20 area
**15M:** WHAT — evidence of acceptance/support
**5M:** WHEN — precise execution
I’m starting with **1H EMA20 ±0.5 ATR as an observation zone**, not an automatic entry.
And I’m temporarily downgrading first breakouts of major resistance.
My current working principle is simple:
**I don’t need to chase a strong stock.**
**If it keeps going without me, that’s fine.**
**I want to wait for it to come back to my 1H EMA20 area and then prove that buyers are still there.**

My mother bought TGT at $100 per share and at first I laughed, but her money, she can do whatever she wants. She is up 60% on that position. I am redder than the devils dick with GOOGL.

Data point of one, but TGT offered a free Circle membership to me last year and I found myself ordering from there. The expiration is in a week, and I turned off auto renew...there's no streaming offered (walmart and instacart do), there's no student or other discount membership offered (unless you work there) and getting the rewards seemed...complicated. I called to see if there were other incentives, I spent 5000+ last year, nope.
Make of that what you will, I own no shares.

Whenever earnings pricing comes up, it's always about the names the market gets wrong — I've posted those myself. So this time I went looking for the ones it gets right. Priced correctly on size, no consistent lean in either direction.
The sample: 120 liquid optionable US names, each with at least 15 earnings prints, 2,270 prints total from January 2007 through August 2026. A name counts as efficient if it clears two bars at once — median actual-to-implied ratio between 0.90 and 1.10, and an overpriced rate between 45% and 55%, basically a coin flip on which side the miss lands. Only 17 of the 120 make it.
|Ticker|Prints|% overpriced|Median ratio|Mean implied|Mean actual|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|TXN|19|52.6%|0.904|4.76%|5.32%|
|DDOG|20|50.0%|0.915|9.40%|9.97%|
|OXY|20|50.0%|0.918|3.91%|3.70%|
|AAPL|20|50.0%|0.929|3.25%|2.91%|
|ZS|19|52.6%|0.934|9.06%|10.47%|
|C|19|52.6%|0.951|3.19%|3.39%|
|TGT|19|52.6%|0.965|6.82%|8.91%|
|MRVL|19|52.6%|0.967|8.01%|10.60%|
|WDC|20|50.0%|0.969|5.49%|5.78%|
|NKE|19|52.6%|0.987|6.70%|8.07%|
|MSTR|19|47.4%|1.003|6.10%|6.73%|
|AMD|19|47.4%|1.024|7.05%|7.52%|
|PINS|20|50.0%|1.044|11.68%|12.82%|
|GOOGL|18|50.0%|1.052|5.41%|5.24%|
|CMG|20|45.0%|1.081|6.37%|6.99%|
|DIS|21|47.6%|1.087|5.61%|5.90%|
|ORCL|19|47.4%|1.087|7.01%|9.01%|
MSTR is the one that stopped me. People talk about this stock like it's a leveraged bitcoin warrant with an equity wrapper — and around its own earnings, the options market has sized the move almost perfectly 19 times in a row. Median ratio 1.003. Of everything in this dataset, the ticker closest to exactly 1.000 is the one with the reputation for chaos.
For scale: the extremes I've posted before (HUT priced ±27.2% and moved 9.1%, SHOP priced ±9.1% and moved 14.2%) are real, but only 26 of 120 names are that broken. 17 are efficient. The other 69 are just averagely wrong in a boring way. That's what a mostly efficient market actually looks like.
My guess on MSTR: it trades on bitcoin's realized vol every day, so its volatility is priced into the chain continuously instead of concentrating into an earnings surprise. The print carries almost no incremental information. That's the part I'm least sure about, actually if you've actually traded the MSTR earnings straddle, tell me if that's right?

I took two live trades today and finished down about **$16.68, roughly -0.47R**. Financially it was a small losing day, but the bigger takeaway was realizing where I actually want to trade.
My first trade was **TGT at 164.68**.
The daily, 4H and 1H charts were all above their EMA20s. TGT was breaking above a 164.19 consolidation area. On the 15-minute chart, price formed a doji near the breakout and then chose higher. On the 5-minute chart, I had a pin bar followed by a strong expansion candle with good volume, so I entered on continuation.
The trade never really worked. It reached about 164.85 and then the breakout completely failed and stopped me out.
The setup itself wasn’t random. The problem was **location**.
I was buying the first breakout through an important area, and my 1R target was already running into another resistance area near 166. In other words, I needed the market to keep proving that resistance would break just to get paid.
This has happened several times recently. First breakouts of important resistance may simply not be one of my stronger setups right now.
The more important moment came after the stop.
I was frustrated. Work and personal life have been stressful lately, and I recently quit smoking, so my patience hasn’t exactly been great. I had a very strong urge to take another trade immediately and “make it back.”
I didn’t.
After waiting for a while, I went back to the 1H chart and noticed something that suddenly seemed obvious:
**A lot of my stops are based on 1H structural invalidation, but many of my entries are far away from that 1H structure.**
If my risk is defined by the 1H chart, why am I not waiting for price to come back toward the 1H location before entering?
That led to my second trade: **AAPL at 325.05**.
AAPL was still in a bullish daily/4H EMA20 structure. More importantly, on the 1H chart price had pulled back directly into the **1H EMA20 and the bottom of the 324 area**.
That became my WHERE.
Then I moved down to the 15-minute chart. Price repeatedly tested the area, printed lower wicks and showed signs of buyers absorbing the selling.
Only then did I go to the 5-minute chart.
The first High 1 did not meet my volume requirement, so I waited. The next engulfing attempt also wasn’t enough. Eventually another continuation structure developed and I entered at 325.05.
Price initially dropped to 324.11, then rallied to 327.06.
At **1R, 326.69**, I sold 8 of 15 shares and moved the remaining 7 shares to breakeven. The rest was eventually stopped at entry.
Final result: about **+0.53R**.
The most valuable lesson today was not that AAPL worked and TGT didn’t.
It was the contrast between the two questions I was asking:
**TGT:** “Can this resistance break?”
**AAPL:** “Can this established bullish structure hold after pulling back to support?”
The second question fits my trading style much better.
So for now, I’m narrowing my process:
**Daily / 4H:** bullish permission
**1H:** WHERE — bullish EMA20 structure, preferably price returning from above into the EMA20 area
**15M:** WHAT — evidence of acceptance/support
**5M:** WHEN — precise execution
I’m starting with **1H EMA20 ±0.5 ATR as an observation zone**, not an automatic entry.
And I’m temporarily downgrading first breakouts of major resistance.
My current working principle is simple:
**I don’t need to chase a strong stock.**
**If it keeps going without me, that’s fine.**
**I want to wait for it to come back to my 1H EMA20 area and then prove that buyers are still there.**

My mother bought TGT at $100 per share and at first I laughed, but her money, she can do whatever she wants. She is up 60% on that position. I am redder than the devils dick with GOOGL.

Data point of one, but TGT offered a free Circle membership to me last year and I found myself ordering from there. The expiration is in a week, and I turned off auto renew...there's no streaming offered (walmart and instacart do), there's no student or other discount membership offered (unless you work there) and getting the rewards seemed...complicated. I called to see if there were other incentives, I spent 5000+ last year, nope.
Make of that what you will, I own no shares.

Fucked up and sold my TGT leaps around 130. But at least I got in around 80 so it wasn't the worse thing ever.