By Jacob Sonenshine

Anyone looking for promising stocks needs to look for those that can put up robust numbers in upcoming earnings reports.

The broader market will remain volatile. The three major U.S. stock indexes still haven't recovered all of their pre-Iran war losses, and rallies have run into waves of selling.

With earnings season beginning this week, even companies that beat profit estimates could see their stocks suffer if management teams refrain from providing guidance, given demand uncertainty amid higher oil prices and limited supplies.

That's why we're zeroing in on a handful of stocks. Evercore strategist Julian Emanuel has a screen of names that have beaten both sales and earnings estimates from analysts in all of the past eight quarters.

That's a great start, but from that list, we'll highlight the ones that don't have significant chunks of their businesses exposed to consumer demand or broader business spending, so as to avoid those that might not provide full guidance. We'll also show the ones that haven't reduced guidance more than once in the past eight quarters.

We'll avoid the stocks that have low short interest as a percentage of shares relative to the past two years. Short interest that's too low indicates that most have not bet against the stock recently, and is often consistent with strong momentum -- and a stock that might have run up too much into earnings.

Higher short interest means many have sold a stock short, so any business strength could force them to close their short positions by buying shares back.

These guardrails yield the following list of names: Nvidia, Microsoft, Adobe, software provider Workday, Intuit, maker of connectors Amphenol, medical device maker Boston Scientific, and Charles River Laboratories, a contract research organization for drug development.

Yes, some of these are companies that have dealt with intense scrutiny from Wall Street regarding their ability to compete with Anthropic's Claude tool and OpenAI's ChatGPT. But some software companies will emerge victorious. Even the ones that don't pan out in the long-term could still see their stocks pop after earnings.

Workday and Microsoft, whether long-term successes or not, have short interest in their 100th percentiles for the past two years. Consistent with that, their stocks are down 5% and 13% in the past month, respectively. Microsoft reports earnings April 29 and Workday reports May 21.

Adobe and Intuit have short interest in their 96th percentiles and have seen their stocks drop 9% and 19%, respectively, in the past month. Adobe reports June 11, while Intuit reports May 21.

Overall, the best strategy for these stocks is to buy all or almost all of them. Buying just one or two means taking on more single-stock risk. It's difficult to know which individual names will see business-specific concerns crop up on earnings, but buying all means getting exposed to a group that, overall, has a high likelihood of providing earnings and guidance that can lift their stocks after earnings.

Give these names a shot.

Write to Jacob Sonenshine at jacob.sonenshine@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 13, 2026 11:41 ET (15:41 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.