Which Tech Titan Stocks had the Strongest Earnings this Week? Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM or Netflix?

Earnings trends are extremely important when evaluating stocks. At Wall St. Cheat Sheet, we view increasing earnings quarter-over-quarter as a simple way to gauge whether costs and the business model are stable. Then we like to analyze whether the company is outperforming peers in the sector. This is what we call the “E-Squared” investment analysis (‘E = Earnings Are Increasing Quarter-Over-Quarter’ + ‘E = Excellent Relative Performance Versus Peers and Sector’).

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Here’s your Cheat Sheet to how the top 5 tech titan stocks rank via earnings trends from this week:

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL): Current Price $439.88

These annual results from Apple are the stuff of corporate folklore. In five years, revenue quadrupled and EPS jumped 6.5 times. The company’s shareholders were surely happy.

Next, our CHEAT SHEET investing framework asks us to drill down to the recent quarterly data:

Interestingly, Apple’s quarterly results from December 2011 through September 2012 were on the decline — but that’s mostly due to industry cyclicality. Revenue fell 22% and EPS cratered over 60% during this period. It’s another matter that revenue and EPS headed for the moon in the last quarter of 2012, but it’s a lower number year-over-year.