MJSD

What Is MJSD?

The term MJSD refers to an acronym that stands for March, June, September, and December. These are the final months of each quarter of the fiscal year (FY). They mark the end of the period when companies can release earnings and dividends reports.

These months also represent the period of reporting interest, along with the expiration of certain financial derivative contracts such as futures and options. Quarterly reports and annual reports are also filed during these months by publicly-traded companies.

Understanding MJSD

A quarter is a single three-month period that makes up a company's full fiscal year. Each quarter is represented by the letter Q along with its corresponding place in the year—the first quarter is called Q1, the second quarter is called Q2, and so forth. Although many companies use the actual calendar year—January to December—as their fiscal year, not all companies follow that trend. In fact, the fiscal year for some companies and organizations run during a different 12-month period.

For instance, Adobe's (ADBE) fiscal year runs between December and November. Meanwhile, the fiscal year for nonprofits generally runs between July 1 and June 30, while the U.S. government's fiscal year runs between October 1 to September 30.

Regardless of when the fiscal year begins and ends, the end of each quarter is marked by the same months—March, June, September, and December. Together, these months make up what the industry commonly refers to as MJSD—the most important months of any fiscal year. That's because these months mark the end of the reporting period, during which companies release their quarterly earnings reports.

Companies release their full-year or annual earnings report in addition to the quarterly one during the fourth and final quarter of the fiscal year.

Each earnings season generally begins one or two weeks after the last month of each quarter. In other words, investors should look for the majority of public companies to release their earnings in the early to middle of January, April, July, and October. It is important to note that not all companies report during earnings season because the exact date of an earnings release depends on when the company's quarter ends. As such, it is not uncommon to find companies reporting earnings between earnings seasons.

MSJD also represents the months during which all publicly traded companies must file quarterly reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These are referred to as 10-Q reports. Each 10-Q contains the public company's unaudited financial statements and information about the company's operations for the previous three months or the quarter. 

The SEC requires companies to file 10-Qs following each of the first three quarters of the year and an annual report, known as a 10-K, which includes all of the quarters, to be filed after the end of the year.

Special Considerations

Investors and traders also know the MJSD series well, as many options and futures—especially indexes, interest rates, and currencies—expire during these months. But not all futures have a regular quarterly expiration. For instance, agricultural futures contracts may follow a harvest cycle rather than a financial reporting cycle and energy futures, including crude oil, have monthly expirations all year long.

The symbols for these expirations don't match the MJSD letters, largely because several months start with the same letter. The expiration month codes are as follows:

• F: January
• G: February
• H: March
• J: April
• K: May
• M: June
• N: July
• Q: August
• U: September
• V: October
• X: November
• Z: December