Welcome to the weekend, one and all, and a three-day weekend at that! As a reminder, we won't be publishing a newsletter tomorrow - Friday - because markets are closed and there won't be anything to talk about. I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about on Monday though, with terrorism, the presidential election process, and economic uncertainty all kicking up a dust cloud this week. Before we get to today's main event I want to share with you something recently passed along by one of the Elite Opportunity subscribers. Robert wrote of the service: "I have been an EO Member for almost a year - and what a year it has been with periods of uncertainty followed by huge up and down swings. Even those "experts" at the big hedge funds have struggled to show gains. So I really appreciate what John Monroe and his team at Elite Opportunity do. John will sit patiently on the sideline, waiting for things to settle out, then make a call when he sees an opportunity - and I have seen him make the right call time after time, always providing guidance on targets and stops to manage positions. While he keeps one eye on macro level issues for context, he doesn't let them distract from day to day market actions that provide trading opportunities. If you are looking for solid research and guidance to trade in these turbulent times, I highly recommend John Monroe and the Elite Opportunity Team. " Robert's comment pretty much jibes with the things I've said about the Elite Opportunity service time and time again... picking the right stocks is only half the battle. The other half is knowing when to pull the trigger. Also, using short-term techniques to make long-term picks or using long-term techniques to make short-term trades just doesn't work, even though many investors and most other newsletters out there do exactly that. As Robert explains, the EO service is different in that John understands and separates the long-term and the short-term, getting more out of the market as a result. It's all just a matter of understanding how things really work for stocks, and understanding the shortcomings of using the mainstream media as a source of guidance for your portfolio. And it's not the kind of thing you're ever going to learn from a book or a class. It's only learned from real-world experience, and John's got plenty of that (as he's proven over and over). So, here's my advice. We're now starting a three-day weekend. Most of you will have plenty of time over the course of the next couple of days to spend some time however you want it. I suggest you sign up for the Elite Opportunity newsletter - even just a short-term subscription - and check it out; your membership immediately gives you access to all the archives including the most recent editions of the EO newsletter. Look at it. See the value it has. Check out all the calls John and his team have made. I think you'll see exactly what Robert was talking about. Here's how, or just cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEO/v1/ No Company Is Infallible Most of the time we don't care a thing about saying "I told you so." One of the reasons is simply that, though we're right more often than not, until we've reached absolute perfection with our market calls and opinions about individual companies, there's no need to get on our high horse. Every now and again though, there comes a time when we do want to bang our own drum, if only because there's a bit of a lesson to be learned in doing so. This is one of those times. I doubt any of you will remember it because it's been so long ago, but back on August 29th of 2011 - when Tim cook was taking the helm of Apple (AAPL) from Steve Jobs - we were concerned it marked the end of Apple as we knew it. Our specific conclusion? "Three years from now, Apple is just another garden variety consumer technology player." That outlook was largely based on something else we said in that edition: "Mr. Cook, while your (Apple's) technology is at least slightly more functional (though perceived as much cooler) than the competition, know that when you're leading the pack, EVERYONE else is gunning for you. That makes it tough to be number one forever, especially if you don't continue to out-innovate your peers. No offense, but not too many people see you pioneering the next great technology. And, even fewer see you successfully unveiling it in such a condescending/smarmy way that people have to have it. Try wearing a black turtleneck though - that seems to help." Truth be told, we caught a lot of flak for saying what we said. There were just a bunch of people convinced Apple was infallible, with or without Steve Jobs, simply because it was the quintessential name in consumer electronics. Well, in the meantime we've started to see several opinions all more or less saying the same thing we said back in 2011. For whatever reason though, a commentary posted at Business Insider earlier in the week pretty much said (in no uncertain terms) Apple had become exactly what we said it would become a little over four years ago. The commentary - in response to the recent unveiling of yet-another version of the iPhone - opened up with "Apple has finally become an ordinary tech company," but the clincher was: "There was no "one more thing." There was no visionary new product. There was no amazing new technology in all the existing products that made you hate your current Apple device - or your Windows or Android phone - and immediately place an order for the new one. There wasn't even a lot of cheering and hooting and hollering from the audience." It was the first time I can recall anything in such close agreement with our thesis. What Julie Bort was generous in not pointing out is that this is the first time in the modern era Apple is failed to create hysteria. I get it though.There are only so many times you can revamp, upgrade or repurchase the same basic product before people stop caring. There are certainly those people out there who will say our prediction was that Apple would hit a wall after three years, but the company didn't that wall until four years after we voiced our concern. Here's a spoonful of reality: Apple actually did hit the innovation wall three years after we voiced our concern. It's just that nobody was able to admit it until now. The moral of the story? Just because you don't like the assessment doesn't mean it's not true. It's more than possible for any company, regardless of its pedigree, to fall off the pedestal with consumers as well as investors. That looks like it's starting to happen with Apple and its customers, and clearly this is not just our opinion. Investors will follow that lead sooner or later. That's not to say AAPL is a bad stock. It's a fine stock. It's no longer a must-have stock though. Other people are starting to say so too. In any case, I suppose we should at least have a small discussion about the broad market before we wrap things up for the week... Stuck in The Middle Just as I feared, traders aren't sure what to do right now so they're not doing much of anything... at least not with any real conviction. The market started the day out rather deep in the red, following through on Wednesday's weakness, but by the time the closing bell rang stocks were back to break-even levels. It's very much a "stuck in the middle" situation. The chart of the S&P 500 below makes this pretty clear. The approach toward a key resistance line put a rounded-top into motion earlier in the week, but the bears couldn't seal the deal. All it took was a mere threat of reaching a key support level around 2015 - where the 20-day and 200-day moving average lines are about to converge - and the bulls were wading back in again. None of this can come as a real surprise, nor is this particularly telling. This is how and where the market SHOULD stagnate. The question is, when and where and how will it un-stagnate? The good news is, the answers are on the chart. The bad news is, one of the possible answers is bullish, and the other is bearish. There's no need to try and make something out of nothing when there's just nothing worth making. Let's table the discussion until next week, when the market is more likely to show us something worth seeing. Today's volume was once again pretty pitiful, so the action was rather meaningless... much like Wednesday's dip.