The thing about that kind of thinking is that if you think it, then it is almost certainly true that institutional investors think it too, and then the stock price is already appropriately high.

Amazons PE ratio is something like 100 which is extremely high, Google and Apple are both in the ~15 range. People are already valuing Amazon much much higher compared to it's earnings than other major tech stocks.

Wouldn't a developer understand the significance of such an announcement better than an institutional investor?

They have people whose entire job is solely to understand the significance of announcements like this, if developers understood better then they would just hire developers. Either that is true, and they hired developers whose entire job is to evaluate the impact of things like this, or else developers aren't as good at predicting the effect of announcements like this. It would be extremely foolish to assume that people wielding literally billions of dollars are too stupid to ask the right people before deciding how to value something.

I agree with your main point. But it's worth noting an interesting trend is developing. Amateur analysts are regularly outperforming professional analysts when it comes to tech stocks. http://seekingalpha.com/article/315207-apple-analysts-perpet... http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/02/bloggers-vs-pros-on-a...

Tech stock. Singular. AAPL.

I think it's possible that a full-time analyst understands less than someone who practices. Your comment in general smells of the EMH.

My point is only that any given nonexpert very rarely outperforms an expert in any field. If you are a nonexpert you should always temper your beliefs; if you thought of it then why haven't the experts? Sometimes they will have thought of it but not executed for some reason, but something that seems simple and obvious usually seems that way because it actually is.