Target Earnings November 18, 2026: TGT on 93 Report Days Since 2003

Target reports its third quarter on Wednesday, November 18, 2026, before the open, with the conference call at 8:00 AM ET, confirmed on its investor events page. It is the stock that moves on report day: across all 93 quarterly reports since August 2003, 48 closed up and 45 down, the median move was 3.5% in either direction, 30 report days moved at least 5% and 11 at least 10%, against a median daily move of 0.9% on every other day. November is its weakest and wildest month, with 14 of 23 November report days closing down, a median move of -2.3%, and four of the ten biggest report days in the whole record. And the opening gap tells you the day: of 41 report-day gaps of 3% or more, 40 finished on the same side.

This page is the full record behind our retail-week hub, which carries Target's report days since 2010, extended back to 2003 the way the Walmart page and the Home Depot page did. The figures come from every Target earnings 8-K on EDGAR and Yahoo Finance adjusted daily bars, read on November 13, 2026, with Walmart, Costco, the XRT retail ETF and the S&P 500 measured on the same days. Nothing here predicts what the stock will do on Wednesday; it says what it has done, and how rarely a stop-loss has mattered on these mornings.

What Target guided, and what analysts expect

Target raised its year twice. In March the new guidance for 2026 was net sales growth around 2 percent, an operating margin about 20 basis points above 2025's adjusted 4.6 percent, and GAAP and adjusted EPS of $7.50 to $8.50, with Q1 EPS "flat to up slightly" from $1.30 (March 3 release). In May, after first-quarter net sales grew 6.7 percent with comparable traffic up 4.4 percent and EPS of $1.71, the sales range moved to "around 4 percent" and the EPS range stayed (May 20 release). In August, after net sales grew 5.3 percent and comparable sales 3.8 percent on a 3.6 percent rise in traffic, it moved again: full-year net sales growth "in a range around 5 percent," an operating margin "in a range around 6 percent, including approximately 90 basis points of benefit from Q2 tariff refunds," and GAAP and adjusted EPS of $9.90 to $10.90, "which includes second quarter tariff refund benefits of approximately $1.65"; excluding the refunds, the midpoint rose $0.75 (August 19 release). Second-quarter EPS was $4.11 against $2.05 a year earlier, with $1.65 of that from the $994 million of IEEPA tariff refunds booked as a reduction of cost of sales.

The comparison quarter is a weak one. Third-quarter 2025 net sales were $25.3 billion, 1.5 percent lower than 2024, comparable sales fell 2.7 percent, operating income fell to $948 million from $1.17 billion, and GAAP EPS was $1.51 with adjusted EPS of $1.78 after severance and asset charges (November 19, 2025 release). That report was Michael Fiddelke's first as incoming chief executive; the stock closed down 2.8% and set its 52-week low the next day. For this quarter, TipRanks shows an EPS forecast of $2.07 against last year's $1.78, with Target having beaten its EPS forecast in each of the last four reports, by $1.76 in August (TipRanks); Benzinga carries $2.08 and revenue of $26.37 billion (Benzinga). The company has said it expects to grow net sales in every quarter of 2026, and the guidance excludes any further tariff refunds.

All 93 reports at a glance

The record divides into three Targets. The 2003 to 2009 reports were quiet: 26 report days, a median swing of 2.4%, a median gap of 1.4%, and not one 10% move. The 2010s were the good decade, 24 up and 16 down with a median move of +0.8%, and the big moves started: the 2017 and 2018 November drops of 9.9% and 10.5%, the 2019 pops of 20.4% in August and 14.1% in November. Since 2020 the stock has become a different instrument: 27 report days, 12 up and 15 down, a median move of -2.8%, a median swing of 5.2% and a median gap of 4.7%, with seven 10% days in six and a half years. The last fifteen reports, since 2023, have a median gap of 6.7%, the largest of any stretch in the record, and the move after the open has typically added to it, +1.7% open to close.

Three of the four largest report days in Target's history are since 2022: -24.9% on May 18, 2022 (gap -24.3%, the S&P 500 down 4.0% the same day), -21.4% on Nov 20, 2024 (gap -17.4%, then another 4.9% lower from the open to the close), and +17.8% on Nov 15, 2023 (gap +13.8%). The largest gain of all came earlier, +20.4% on Aug 21, 2019. Of the 93 report days, only 11 moved less than 1%, so a report day that behaves like an ordinary day is the exception, not the rule.

Every November report since 2003

November is the Q3 report, the one that comes with holiday guidance, and it is Target's worst month: 23 November report days, 9 up and 14 down, a median move of -2.3% against +0.3% for the full record, a median swing of 4.1%, eight days of 5% or more and five of 10% or more. Four of the ten largest report days in the whole record were Novembers: -21.4% in 2024, +17.8% in 2023, +14.1% in 2019 and -13.1% in 2022. Since 2016, six of the ten November reports closed down, and the last seven have all been Wednesdays.

Two Novembers explain the stock's reputation. Nov 20, 2024: a cut to full-year guidance opened the stock 17.4% lower, and it kept falling, closing down 21.4%, the worst November and the second-worst report day in the record; it was 6.9% higher five sessions later and 7.2% higher after twenty. Nov 15, 2023: a profit beat opened it 13.8% higher and it closed up 17.8%. The year between those two, on Nov 19, 2025, was the quiet one, -2.8% on a -2.4% gap, yet it marked the low: the next session's close of $83.68 was the 52-week low, and the stock has risen 92.3% since.

The after-report drift in November leans up, which is less a Target fact than a seasonal one: 13 of 23 November report days were followed by a higher close five sessions later, median +1.8%, and 12 of 23 twenty sessions later. What the S&P 500 has done in every Thanksgiving week since 2016 is the backdrop for the days that follow this report.

The gap holds: 40 of 41 big gaps finished on the same side

Target's gaps are large and they stick. 41 of the 93 report days opened 3% or more away from the prior close, and 40 of them closed on the side they opened on. The one exception is the most recent report: on Aug 19, 2026 the stock opened 3.1% lower on the tariff-inflated quarter, then rose 7.6% from the open to close up 4.3%. All 21 gaps up of 3% or more held to the close. Across every gap, the median open-to-close move was -0.1% after a gap down and -0.4% after a gap up, which is to say the session after the open usually did little either way; the day's result was decided at 9:30.

That is the practical point for anyone holding Target into Wednesday with a stop-loss. A stop order becomes a market order once a price is touched; on a report day the first touch is the open, and twenty of these 93 opens were 3% or more below the prior close, three of them more than 16% below. A stop set 3% under Tuesday's close would have filled near those opens, wherever they were. How often the whole market drops 1%, 2% or 3% in a day puts those numbers in context; our test of trailing stops on every 10% mover of October 2026 shows what a gap does to a trailing stop in particular.

The run-up before the report has told you almost nothing

Some stocks reverse their run-in on report day; Home Depot does, and Walmart does. Target does not, in either direction. After a 5%+ run-up, 9 of 20 report days closed up with a median of -0.4%; after a 5%+ slide, 7 of 17 closed up with a median of -2.8%; in between, 32 of 56 closed up. The correlation between the run-in and the move is +0.04, which is noise. What the run-in does change is the size of the move: the median swing was 4.2% after a run-up and 4.1% after a slide against 2.9% when the stock arrived flat, so a Target that has already moved into the report tends to move more on it, not back.

This report arrives after a run of +3.4% in twenty sessions, inside the flat bucket, but on a very different year: the stock is up 70.3% in 2026 and 92.3% from its November 2025 low, which is the strongest twelve-month run-in to a November report in the record. Four days in 2026 have moved 5% or more, and only one of them, +6.7% on Mar 3, 2026, was a report day; the other three were a -5.4% day on May 11, 2026, +5.3% on Jun 24, 2026 and +5.6% on Nov 4, 2026.

Walmart, Costco and the retail ETF on Target days

Target's report moves its neighbors less than you would guess from the headlines. Costco closed the same way as Target on 65 of 93 report days, with a correlation of +0.48 and a median move of 0.7%; Walmart only 53 of 93, +0.37; the XRT retail ETF 57 of 81, +0.49, with a median move of 1.4% that includes Target itself. On Target's thirty 5%+ days the pattern is the same: Costco followed 23 times with a median move of 0.6%, Walmart 20 times with 1.0%. The S&P 500 moved a median 0.51% on these days, against 0.9% for Target on an ordinary day, and went Target's way less than half the time. A Target print is a Target event; Walmart's own report comes the next morning, and its 93 report days have their own shape.

What happened in the weeks after

Target's report days have not been dead cats or launch pads in aggregate: 53 of 93 were followed by a higher close five sessions later, median +0.8%, and 56 of 93 twenty sessions later, median +1.6%, which is a mild upward lean rather than a pattern. The big days split the same way. After the 15 drops of 5% or more, the stock was higher twenty sessions later 8 times, median +1.9%; after the 15 gains of 5% or more, 12 times, median +3.0%. The two giant drops went opposite ways: after -24.9% in May 2022 the stock was still falling a month later; after -21.4% in November 2024 it was 7.2% higher. What a dead cat bounce looks like, measured on the index, is the general case.

The last three reports show the new pattern in miniature. Mar 3, 2026, the first under Mr. Fiddelke's strategic plan: +6.7%, most of it after the open. May 20, 2026: a 5.5% gap down on a quarter that beat, finishing -3.9%. Aug 19, 2026: a 3.1% gap down on the tariff-refund quarter, reversed to +4.3% by the close, the only reversed big gap in 93 reports, after an 11.0% run-up into the print. Three reports, three directions, every one of them a 4% to 7% day.

Where Target stands going in

Target closed at $160.90 on November 12, 2026, up 70.3% for the year, 3.4% higher than twenty sessions earlier, and 92.3% above the 52-week low of $83.68 set on Nov 20, 2025, the day after last November's report. The 52-week high is $169.89 on Aug 24, 2026, five sessions after the August report, so the stock enters this one 5.3% below that high and 39.6% below its record close of $266.39 on Nov 16, 2021, the day before the November 2021 report. The November 2026 stock market calendar has the rest of the week around it: Home Depot and Disney on Tuesday morning, Lowe's and TJX alongside Target on Wednesday, the Fed minutes that afternoon, Walmart on Thursday.

For the earnings-season question in general, whether the S&P 500 tends to rise during earnings season is measured since 2000. This page is about one stock on one morning, and the honest summary of 93 of those mornings is that the move was large, decided at the open, unrelated to the run-in, and followed by nothing in particular.

Where JorgAI fits

JorgAI is software that runs the rules you set in your own brokerage account. It does not forecast a report. What it does with a day like Wednesday is apply the limits you chose: an optional earnings rule that keeps the auto-trader from opening a new position in a stock with a scheduled report inside your window, so Target is skipped on Tuesday rather than held into an 8:00 AM print; a daily spend cap and a position cap that bound what any single day can cost; and exits placed at the broker as orders, with the knowledge that a stop under a gap fills at the gap. Every setting is explained in the settings glossary.

To see those rules run on a simulator before you connect a broker, start on the free plan; there is a $100,000 demo account inside that needs no broker. When you are ready, connect your brokerage account and the same rules run there.

Quick answers

When does Target report Q3 2026 earnings?

Wednesday, November 18, 2026, before the market opens. The conference call is at 8:00 AM ET, per Target's investor events page. Its last seven November reports were all Wednesdays.

How much does Target stock move on earnings?

A median of 3.5% in either direction across 93 report days since 2003, and 5.2% since 2020. Thirty report days moved at least 5% and eleven at least 10%; the record is -24.9% in May 2022 and +20.4% in August 2019.

Does Target usually go up or down after earnings?

Close to a coin flip overall, 48 up and 45 down, but November leans down: 9 up, 14 down, median -2.3%. Since 2020, report days have a median move of -2.8%.

Does the opening gap hold on Target's report days?

Almost always. Of 41 gaps of 3% or more, 40 closed on the same side as the open; the one reversal was August 19, 2026, which opened 3.1% lower and closed up 4.3%.

What did Target guide for 2026?

As of August 19: full-year net sales growth around 5 percent, an operating margin around 6 percent including about 90 basis points from tariff refunds, and GAAP and adjusted EPS of $9.90 to $10.90, including about $1.65 of second-quarter tariff refund benefits. Analysts expect about $2.07 to $2.08 of EPS and $26.37 billion of revenue for Q3, against $1.78 and $25.3 billion a year ago.

What happens to a stop-loss on Target's report day?

It fills at or near the open if the open is through your price. Twenty of the 93 report days opened 3% or more below the prior close, and three opened more than 16% below. Position size, not the stop, decides what a gap costs.

How we put this together. Every Target Form 8-K with an Item 2.02 or the earlier Item 12 on EDGAR from August 2003, 105 filings, each one read: nine monthly sales releases through 2012, the preliminary second-quarter release of August 5, 2014 and the February 10, 2026 pre-announcement that results would match guidance were set aside, and the November 2004 report, released on the morning of November 11 with both 8-Ks filed the next evening, is counted on November 11. That leaves 93 quarterly report days, every one with a release before the open. Moves are close to close on dividend- and split-adjusted daily bars from Yahoo Finance; the gap is the adjusted open against the prior close; peers and the S&P 500 are measured the same way on the same days. The 2010 onward cut gives 67 report days where the retail-week hub gives 68, because the hub counted the February 2026 pre-announcement; the hub's other Target figures hold (36 or 37 up, 31 down, 3.9% median swing, 26 of 5%+, 11 of 10%+). Company figures are from the releases on EDGAR and the events page, read November 13, 2026; the stock level is the November 12 close. After the report prints, this page is rewritten with the result and the reaction.

The figures in this article describe what a stock did on past report days and are not a prediction or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. JorgAI is software that carries out the rules you set in your own brokerage account; it is not an investment adviser. Trading involves risk of loss. Target is a trademark of its owner; JorgAI is not affiliated with or endorsed by Target Corporation.