It's priced in at the confidence level the market has. If you're more confident than the market then it's an opportunity to make money. (You also have to be right, of course.)
"Don't even ask the question. The answer is yes, it's priced in. Think Amazon will beat the next earnings? That's already been priced in. You work at the drive thru for Mickey D's and found out that the burgers are made of human meat? Priced in. You think insiders don't already know that? The market is an all powerful, all encompassing being that knows the very inner workings of your subconscious before you were even born. Your very existence was priced in decades ago when the market was valuing Standard Oil's expected future earnings based on population growth that would lead to your birth, what age you would get a car, how many times you would drive your car every week, how many times you take the bus/train, etc. Anything you can think of has already been priced in, even the things you aren't thinking of. You have no original thoughts. Your consciousness is just an illusion, a product of the omniscent market. Free will is a myth. The market sees all, knows all and will be there from the beginning of time until the end of the universe (the market has already priced in the heat death of the universe). So please, before you make a post on wsb asking whether AAPL has priced in earpods 11 sales or whatever, know that it has already been priced in and don't ask such a dumb fucking question again." [0]
Counter point: beginning of 2021, for weeks I was wondering why the markets were not reacting to Covid.
Only when travel restrictions were introduced, and only when they were introduced to the US, the market started taking notice.
Does the market extrapolate future earnings and macro economic trends, sure. Do some people have secrete insights beyond that? Sure. But I'd say the market as a whole is pretty stupid and reactive.
Agreed, I was trading VIX futures calls and /ES puts around that time and was equally mystified that markets were as frothy as ever. It was definitely a very wild time to be speculating.
efficient market theory is astrology for males, in a world where astrology and trading was gendered.
the commonality being that neither produce peer reviewed reproducible results.
nothing is priced in. things can be undervalued with known public information. market appetite can also further overvalue something with a new normal for price to equity ratios.