LMT Earnings Reaction: How Defense Names Tend to Trade Post-Print

Defense Names Reaction Profile

Defense primes — LMT, RTX, GD, NOC — have a characteristic earnings reaction profile that differs from most cyclicals. The earnings-day moves are smaller on average (median |move| approximately 3%, vs 5-6% for cyclicals) because the revenue base is predictable multi-year contract work, not end-market demand. But the FOLLOW-THROUGH over 5-10 days is often LARGER than the earnings-day move itself, as sell-side analysts update multi-year free cash flow models rather than current-quarter estimates.

LMT's Current Analog Set

Searching LMT's post-earnings chart shape today pulls back a mix of LMT's own post-earnings reactions from 2022-2024 plus cross-sector matches from RTX and NOC (similar government-contract cadence). The analog cluster shows a tight reaction-day range (IQR [-1.8%, +2.1%]) but a wider 10-day range (IQR [-4.2%, +5.7%]).

That's the pattern to expect: a quiet initial reaction, followed by the real move in the second week as models get updated. Agent systems reading defense earnings often over-weight the first-day reaction; the analog data says the 5-10 day follow-through is the higher-information window.

• Reaction-day (day 0): median +0.3%, IQR [-1.8%, +2.1%] (n=20)
• Day +5: median +1.1%, IQR [-2.4%, +3.9%]
• Day +10: median +1.7%, IQR [-4.2%, +5.7%]

Cross-Sector Validity

Defense-only analog sets have a small-sample problem — at most you have ~16 quarters per name to work with. Cross-sector matches from embedding similarity dramatically expand the effective sample. Chart Library's pattern search finds analogs in utility names with similar multi-year contract visibility and banks with similar book-based analyst modeling cycles, because the chart SHAPE after a predictable-business-model earnings print has a distinctive signature that isn't sector-specific.