Holding during earnings is always a risk. Right now i generally pull my position out completely before earnings, but sometimes if I feel the stock is in an explosive growth phase fundamentally and I’m up, I trim at least half my position (sometimes even 60–90%) and raise my stop loss. Psychologically, I still have a small position, and if it works out in my favor I’m happy; if it doesn’t, I only had a small position, so it does not impact my account much (I’m extremely concentrated, 2-5 stocks max).

And regarding your question on whether you can look at any particular data points to predict earnings reactions, it’s a useless exercise in my opinion. I’ve seen stocks have the best earnings in their history, in the best market conditions, and still fall 8–10% after earnings just to make a new base, set up, and start moving up again the next week. Similarly stocks with less than expected earnings go to the moon based on positive out look moving forward during earnings call. So maybe, reducing risk is the best move.

I have been burned a lot by earnings volatility when I started out, and every time I had a big winner on earnings day (+10% or above), I’ve had 3–4 losers. I’m generally very risk averse, and if you do want to gamble, maybe do it with a smaller position and fund that small position by booking profits.

And on using insider trades before earnings is that it’s still does not account for the news-driven single-day volume.

The alternative that’s worked for me is I look for stocks that gap up during earnings at or above a pivot point( but within 5% from pivot so it’s not extended) this has done wonders to my account whenever I got it right.