I work at a hedge fund. The people who evaluate companies aren't traders, they're called analysts. A lot of them have MBAs from highly ranked programs, but aside from that they have fairly diverse backgrounds. One of the guys who works with health care companies is an MD. One of the guys who works with tech companies was a VC. They have almost limitless resources for research, meaning that they read a lot of third party analysis. They meet with company management. They talk to people at other funds and exchange ideas. We also have a team that does proprietary quantitative analysis to supplement the fundamental process. And of course analyzing companies is a (more than) full time job for the analysts.

Hedge funds struggle to outperform the market. The vast majority of amateur traders underperform it by a lot.