It's been a long, hard slog for investors in Bank of America (BAC 2.06%) since the financial crisis. But last year, we began to see a number of green shoots, leading shares in the nation's second largest bank by assets to more than double. The big question now is, where will they go from here?

While we'll never know definitively what the future holds for B of A, much less any company, we'll know a lot more when it reports earnings on Jan. 17. To help you parse through all of the inevitable noise that's bound to reverberate on that day, in the video below, bank analyst John Maxfield identifies the three most important things you'll want to watch for when B of A reports.