This all looks like some kind of simple analogy to explain the factor model. The overall idea is that the price of a stock is explained by information (price,

This all looks like some kind of simple analogy to explain the factor model. The overall idea is that the price of a stock is explained by information (price, earnings, estimates, whatever...). If you then try to reduce the dimensions of this information, you could find various underlying drivers of the stock price. One could do that with a PCA, but the sheer amount of data, potential high collinearity between them, and difficulty of then making sense of the resulting coefficients is not practical. So traditionally the drivers are explained by carefully crafted factors defined by economists, and it works rather well. Some of these factors exist since a long time, and have proven to be persistent across decades. Interestingly, most of these factors are not tied to companies themselves (idiosyncratic) but rather on whole groups of stocks. Beta, country, sector, explain the vast majority of stock price movements. Your first quote seems to sort of describe fundamental factors (quality, value). The underlying idea being that fundamental indicators of the company (price of the stock versus amount of assets, versus earnings, etc), while compared one against each other, should tell you which stocks will perform better than others. These factors have proven to be less and less predictive in the last 20 years, with "value" even being notoriously a "bad bet". It's cyclic though, and we could expect (and it starts to be the case since some month now) a come back. Your second quote seems to describe more technical factors, such as momentum/reversal. The main idea being that there is inertia and correction in the way stock returns fluctuate. If a stock performs well, it will continue to do so, until some correction happens and it will revert to its short term mean, then it will restart, etc. Funds focused on these strategies are often labeled "CTAs" or "trend followers". The last part of the quote seems to describe well more modern factors, such as those found in "behavioral finance". The underlying idea being that actors of the stock market are humans, and as such are not fully rational and exhibit bias. If you understand these biases, you can benefit from them.