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Don’t bother asking. Whatever you’re thinking about, the market thought about it three quarters ago. Think Apple is about to crush earnings? Priced in. Think Tesla is secretly working on a flying car? Priced in. You work the night shift at Wendy’s and discover the Frosty machine is powered by a miniature nuclear reactor? Believe it or not, priced in. You really think some random piece of information has escaped the attention of millions of investors, hedge funds, algorithms, insiders, analysts, economists, and one unemployed guy with twelve monitors in his bedroom?
The market knows.
It knew you were going to read this post before you opened Reddit. Your future salary, your next impulse purchase, the car you’ll buy in six years, the three subscriptions you’ll forget to cancel, and the exact number of times you’ll order food because you’re too lazy to cook are already sitting somewhere inside a discounted cash-flow model. Nothing surprises the market. Aliens land tomorrow? Priced in. The moon explodes? Priced in.
Scientists discover that the entire universe is actually running on a Dell laptop in some higher-dimensional office cubicle? The semiconductor exposure was priced in years ago. Your thoughts are not alpha. Your predictions are not unique. Somewhere, some quant has already converted your entire personality into a factor and backtested it against the S&P 500. So before you ask whether the next iPhone, election, recession, rate cut, product launch, scandal, breakthrough, apocalypse, or heat death of the universe is “priced in,” save yourself the trouble.
Yes. It’s priced in.