Volatility aside, what have we learned from earnings?

Published Thu, Jan 28 201611:47 AM EST

Everyone is watching oil and China and forgetting a very important earnings season is going on, which has revealed trends that may dictate the individual stock winners and losers for the rest of 2016. CNBC Pro checked in with earnings expert Christine Short of Estimize, a crowd-sourced earnings platform that often accurately predicts profits for companies better than the Street. We wanted to find out the trading angles that have emerged from these reports. In her own words, here are some of the developing trends: "FANG stocks, which ended 2015 up an average of 83 percent, seemed to hold the most promise for the new year, and boy have they delivered so far this earnings season. Only Netflix and Facebook have reported at this point, but both easily surpassed Estimize's EPS expectations, which were above the Wall Street consensus." "Even more importantly, both companies beat expectations for engagement, i.e.: subscribers for NFLX and MAUs [monthly active users] for FB. Amazon is up tonight, and the Estimize community is looking for a 3-cent beat on the bottom line. Revenue estimates have been climbing ahead of the report as well, up 3.5 percent since the Q3 release." " Alphabet (formerly Google) is the last piece of this puzzle, set to release results next week. However, estimates are more muted for this name. Currently the Estimize consensus stands at $8.16 for GOOGL, a penny below the Street." "Airline reports have been a mixed bag thus far, and there is a serious disparity being noticed. While domestic discount airlines have been crushing expectations on the top and bottom-line ( JBLU , ALGT , LUV ), larger international carriers are getting hammered by the stronger dollar ( UAL , DAL ). Discount domestic airlines that fly to very few, if any, international destinations, do not have to contend with the stronger dollar impact." "Meanwhile, currency headwinds have been such a drag on multinational airlines, that several large carriers have decreased the volume of international routes. American Airlines reports tomorrow before the bell, and I'd expect to see this trend continue. The Estimize community is currently calling for EPS of $1.97, only a penny higher than the Street, and revenue of $9.7 billion, a drop of nearly 2 percent since the Q3 report." "Energy and Materials companies are the ones everyone is loving to hate this quarter, and understandably so, as commodities took an even deeper plunge in the fourth quarter. However, estimates for some of these names have come so far down that some of these companies managed to surpass the low bar set by analysts." "Case in point: United States Steel . The Estimize community was calling for a loss of 83 cents before the firm reported on Tuesday, a number that dropped drastically into the report, but was still 2 cents higher than the Street's expectation." "U.S. Steel ended up beating by a whopping 58 cents, with a top-line beat of $77 million. I'm not saying all the news was good. 2016 guidance was pretty ugly, but for the fourth quarter analysts were too conservative. As such, I'll be looking out for Chevron 's report tomorrow as well as other companies that might follow this pattern." "Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the U.S., is expected to post EPS of 56 cents vs. the Street's 49 cents. I'd expect this number to drop a bit more before tomorrow's release. The CVX report will give us a better idea of what to anticipate from Exxon 's earnings release on Tuesday."

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

CNBC Pro checked in with earnings expert Christine Short of Estimize, a crowd-sourced earnings platform that often accurately predicts profits for companies better than the Street.

We wanted to find out the trading angles that have emerged from these reports. In her own words, here are some of the developing trends:

"FANG stocks, which ended 2015 up an average of 83 percent, seemed to hold the most promise for the new year, and boy have they delivered so far this earnings season. Only Netflix and Facebook have reported at this point, but both easily surpassed Estimize's EPS expectations, which were above the Wall Street consensus."