[cbloom]

Yeah, this is definitely something I've learned, that the market is "stupid" in that events which they should totally know are coming are not correctly built into the stock values. So many times I see some news that makes it obvious a certain stock is going up and down and I think "everyone sees that news it must be built into the stock", but then it just keeps going. Like, just as a random example, when Halliburton got the Iraq contract you just know it's making a fortune, and the stock went up a tiny bit immediately, but it didn't go up anywhere close to the proper amount and as the actual profits were announced it just kept going up and up, even though 2 seconds of analysis would've predicted that was going to happen.

So, anyway, don't pass up on a trade because "it should already be compensated for". In general I find stock prices react very strongly to concrete announcements after the fact but do not react properly to things that obviously are coming.