Rehearsed and Vague: When Two Signals Appear Together

When an executive leans on rehearsed talking points while staying vague on substance, the combination is easy to miss in real time but stands out when measured at scale. Across 165,182 earnings-call transcripts read by an AI, 378 calls — about 0.2% — matched this pattern of high scripted delivery paired with low informational content. Anyone who follows calls closely knows the type; this study sizes it and shows what else tends to travel with it.

The profile shows confidence (4.65 to 7.21) running well above candor (3.61 to 6.86), a gap that fits the rehearsed-and-vague label. Co-occurrence is striking: "The Question Left Hanging" appears on 100% of these calls versus 48% of the base, a 2.09 lift, and "Scale-Dependent Advantage Claims" shows a 1.72 lift. Meanwhile, "Calls That Resolve Doubts" and "Guidance Worth Underwriting" are entirely absent. The trend is the sharpest signal: the pattern was rare for a decade, then jumped to 0.6% of calls in 2024 and 4.41% in 2025.

These fields come from AI reading of transcripts and are noisy; the 2024–2025 spike may partly reflect how the model reads modern call language rather than a real behavioral shift. Return figures here are descriptive history from a 22,449-call sample, not a trading signal — our own forward tests failed to confirm directional prediction, and language models partially remember famous stocks' histories, contaminating any backtest. Treat this as a description of a pattern, not an edge.

Behavior profile

Guidance actions in this group

What travels with it

Share of calls by year

Recent examples