Two weeks ago, when Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) was trading between $106 and $107 per share, I told you to expect a rise by mid-month.

To me, it sounded like a no-brainer.

The company was about to release the seventh iteration of its iconic iPhone, and despite rumors (it hadn’t been officially launched yet) that the evolution would be one of the most underwhelming yet, it was clear that Apple fanatics would swarm around the device the same way that two-legged, pre-adolescent female mammals once swarmed around Justin Bieber.

Now that the device has officially hit the shelves across the globes, my not-so-old prediction is proving true.

Yesterday, on the eve of the commercial launch, Apple shares crossed the $115 mark — still $17 shy of their all-time highs, but a healthy 6% gain over pre-launch prices.

So my question is, did you listen?

Trends Are Like High School Cheerleaders: Maybe Dim-Witted, But No Less Influential

If you didn’t, I won’t take it personally, but I would like to use this example as an illustration of just how fickle and downright illogical the investment community can be — and how easy it is for the cool-headed, patient trader to make bank off these trends.

Apple, the biggest tech brand in the world, and arguably the most over-hyped, releases a device that just about every tech analyst alive today has already stated is substantially behind competing offerings from the likes of Samsung and HTC.

It releases this device with few notable improvements. Sure, the camera is better, but they’re always getting better; sure, it’s got a wireless headset, but it doesn’t come with one included; sure, it’s got more data capacity, but the most basic version of the Galaxy Note boasted the same capacity two years ago.

The iPhone 7 is water-resistant, a major improvement over the utterly water-soluble 6, but it can’t survive full, long-term immersion in water.

The Galaxy S7 can, for a full three minutes in five feet of water; it can even take pictures while underwater, making it more viable underwater than you, the user, unless you’re wearing an aqualung.

And on top of all these apparent technical deficiencies, the Apple fanatics themselves weren’t as excited about this one as they were about each of the preceding models.

The lines for purchase, in Europe and here in the States, have been reported to be shorter than before — surely a sign that Steve Jobs’s onetime super-product is definitely losing steam.

You Can Do the Work of a Supercomputer

Still, shares go up, adding more than $30 billion to the company’s market cap in just several trading sessions, just because this underwhelming device happened to come with a glowing logo in the shape of a bitten apple.

Are you starting to get the picture?

When you think about Wall Street hedge funders and analysts predicting gains, you probably imagine them pouring over wall-sized arrays of screens, containing hundreds of glowing charts and thousands of numbers, and trying to make sense of it all.

In the end, however, the only thing that matters amounts to nothing more than the world’s most conspicuous popularity contest.

It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t have to… But it can make money.

So the next time you hear about an upcoming event from a company that the universe of consumerism has embraced, just know this… Tapping into profit doesn’t take rocket science.

Until next time,

John Peterson
Pro Trader Today