Are Monthly Machine Retail Sales The Most Important Metric For Caterpillar Investors?

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) shares fell 1.2 percent on Thursday after the company reported disappointing July machine sales numbers. Monthly machine sales reports are one of the most important data points for Caterpillar investors.

While most investors have to wait until quarterly earnings reports to get a sense of a stock’s business performance, Caterpillar investors get a monthy update in the form of an 8-K SEC filing near the 20th of each month. Caterpillar’s filing includes three-month rolling retail sales statistics broken down by segment and global regions.

Benzinga went back and looked to see how much Caterpillar stock moves on the day of these monthly reports compared to how much if moves on the day of quarterly earnings reports.

On the days of Caterpillar’s last four earnings reports, the blue chip stock averaged a relatively large 3.2 percent move. In that same time, Caterpillar’s stock averaged just a 0.9 percent move on the day of its 12 monthly sales reports.

In fact, Caterpillar’s stock never moved more than 1.6 percent on the day of any of its last 12 monthly sales reports.

While these monthly reports provide key insight into Caterpillar’s business, they don’t seem to provide much of a trading opportunity in the market. Caterpillar’s beta of 1.6 indicates that it can certainly be a volatile stock at times. However, don’t expect much of a move off of its monthly sales reports.