Pure DD are the Due Diligence details of an acquisition (cashflow projections, product roadmap, receipts/debts, IP value, employees) . If you are buying on those details (e.g. what the company says about their own views of the market/products/customers/suppliers) without looking more broadly (e.g. macro tech or econ etc) outside of what the company selling that business (and for whatever reason doesn't want it) believes then you're in a fools game. Not only are they incentivized to sell you on the highest price with cherry picked numbers/concepts, but they are the VERY MBAs who couldn't make that business work. They are looking for a fool too, and you better know why they think they're doing better than you!

I assume you know this since you're in the DD business for the long haul, but there are plenty of people who "just want to get the deal done", because that's how they get paid, ABC (always be closing).

>Which implies they aren't just looking at quarterly performance....

In contrast to saying that smart money was looking at quarterly performance (only the poor CFOs and retail investors do that), you will see my reference to supplier/customer pipelines, as well as, HFT. So yes, smart money has priced FANG as monopolies, which is a much larger view than quarterly revenue/profits and likely influenced more by private insight than public announcements.