Oftentimes in investing, all of us think we have figured something out. We think we know that a growth company is going to achieve great results going forward. Or we think a value stock will turn things around. And we think we can profit from it. But there is typically one major problem with that approach: the market has usually figured it out too. And this idea applies to much more than investing.
Consider the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars in the 2023 season. While they finished with a respectable 9-8 record, what’s more telling for bettors was their performance against the spread. A team’s actual win-loss record matters to fans, but for those placing bets, it’s the team’s performance relative to expectations—represented by the point spread—that determines success or failure.
This principle is one of the most misunderstood aspects of investing: the relationship between a company’s performance and its stock price. The market excels at pricing stocks based on future expectations. Consider the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla). While some investors might balk at their seemingly high valuations, these companies have consistently delivered results that exceed market expectations, leading to higher future expectations and, consequently, higher stock prices.
Contrast this with traditional retail stocks. Many trade at remarkably low valuations due to persistent concerns about e-commerce disruption. These stocks appear cheap using conventional metrics, but there’s a reason for their low valuations—the market expects their businesses to face continued challenges.
As Michael Mauboussin, a noted investment strategist, astutely observed:
“The single greatest error among investment professionals is the failure to distinguish between knowledge of a company’s fundamentals and the expectations implied by the company’s stock price. If the fundamentals are good, investors want to buy the stock. If the fundamentals are bad, investors want to sell the stock. They do not, however, fully consider the expectations built into the price of the stock.”
This insight reveals that current market expectations are already baked into every stock price. The common assumption that companies with strong fundamentals are automatically better investments than those with weak fundamentals is flawed. Success in investing requires not just holding a different view from the market (the easy part) but being correct about that differing view (the challenging part).
This dynamic explains why value investing has historically been effective. Value stocks typically represent companies facing significant challenges—that’s why they’re cheap. However, the market often overestimates these problems, creating opportunities for patient investors willing to wait for market perception to align with reality.
Growth investing faces its own expectations-related challenges. The market frequently overestimates the future potential of growth companies, creating a cycle of rising expectations that becomes increasingly difficult to meet. While exceptional companies like Microsoft or Nvidia have managed to exceed expectations consistently, most growth companies eventually struggle with this burden.
Even the most successful companies aren’t immune to the expectations game. Take Apple or Amazon—their continued success isn’t just about delivering growth, but about exceeding increasingly demanding market expectations. Each earnings beat raises the bar for future performance. Their impressive runs won’t likely end because they hit specific valuation levels, but rather when they can no longer meet or exceed the market’s escalating expectations.
Investment success, therefore, involves three key steps:
- Understanding current market expectations
- Identifying where these expectations are incorrect
- Developing a strategy to profit from these misaligned expectations
The first step is relatively straightforward. The latter two present significant challenges that even experienced investors often struggle with. While we might be naturally inclined toward overconfidence in our ability to spot market misconceptions, maintaining a realistic perspective about the difficulty of this task is crucial.
The market’s efficiency in pricing expectations means that genuine opportunities for outperformance are rare and require both insight and patience to exploit. Success in investing isn’t about finding “good” or “bad” companies—it’s about finding instances where the market’s expectations don’t align with future reality, and having the conviction and patience to profit from these disconnects.
