There is money to be made trading on "multitudes of people" and their awareness of technology. At least there has been in the past. The best example I can think

There is money to be made trading on "multitudes of people" and their awareness of technology. At least there has been in the past. The best example I can think of is when 3com spun off Palm. On the opening day of trading Palm had a larger market cap than 3com even though 3com still owned 80% of Palm. The market was demonstrably irrational at the end of the 90's and it's unlikely such extreme situations will happen again, but there's still something there. EDIT: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." is a famous aphorism and markets are frequently irrational in ways that you can't necessarily profit from. The difference in 1999-2000 was that the market was actually insane. It was fairly easy to find stock prices that were mathematically impossible. Along with trading opportunities that offered large reward with almost no risk. That's the part that won't happen again.