The biggest foible with playing the stock market is the delusion that stock prices rise and fall on financial reports, technical data, estimates of performance, Etc.

But they don't. Not ever.

They rise and fall on people's emotional reaction to all of those things, as well as their emotional reactions to other even less tangible stuff like whether the like Musk, whether they think he's an incompetent manager (hello Twitter fiasco), Etc.

OK. Sure. This means financial reports play a part - it's just not the part people assume. They assume people with calculators and statistical knowledge are taking measured reviews of what the price has done historically, what the company's profits are, and calculating estimates of likely performance in the future.

I mean, some people are doing this. But even for them it inevitably ends up being a crap shoot, because most of the people buying and selling stocks are doing it based on panic or excitement.

It's way harder to predict what will send people into a panic, versus predicting profit performance. Some might even argue that statisticians are even worse at predicting stock prices, because (stereotypically) they are less attuned to human nature, and more attuned to cold, hard facts - which humans rarely respond to.

And people panic over everything. Just like they get excited over nothing.

Stock prices move on emotions. Not numbers. Not science.