The Beige Book is due out at the top of the hour and markets are clearly waiting to see it. The consensus is The Fed sees signs of economic activity slowing down. Here are a few other important things to keep on your radar when the information hits the wires:

Bad weather – look for mention of harsh weather conditions leading to a slowdown in economic activity. See how this affects energy-related trades, especially crude oil.

Cheap oil – watch for a mention of Texans taking a hit on these low oil prices

Strong dollar, aka cheap oil – watch oil

Here are the key short term levels in oil:

My book of ice cubes is sitting on a salty sidewalk on a sunny day. Despite the hard bounce on the indices and despite my stocks only being down a few percentage points from entry, my call options are taking a fucking hammer to the dome.

The only logical presumption is that the numbers being relayed to me by the brokerage are fake—some kind of attempt to shake my bones up. BUT KNOW THIS, I have endured worse and kept my cool for the sake of objectivity.

There are some odd cross currents. The inventory build in oil was enormous which is quiet bearish, yet our first level of support held. The forsaken ones, BABA and GPRO are rallying.

You may think your homie Raul is putting a hurt on the Nasdaq this morning, what with the way its whipping around. I will have you know, I am not, I am merely watching. There were some early signs that I should back off right at the open and I obliged. I have much work to do before I can trade days like this with conviction.

This is day two of a weak morning, and day two of a strong rebound. We are coming into a seasonally strong period to close the week and the Beige Book is coming up today while the monthly NFP is on the horizon. I am quite long, and in sandwich mode until more information is made available.

Top picks: DE and GPRO **dodges incoming tomatoes**

After seven attempts lower from the highly trafficked VPOC, the market is now for a third day drifting up and away from the scene.

The $51 level has been the scene of responsive buying twice in recent history. Early on my primary expectation is for buyers to probe above the recent high and target $51.545. Otherwise a second scenario would be sellers whacking prices lower to start the return to MCVPOC $49.10.

Here’s a picture of the intermediate term traffic jam:

When prices go up, our job is to determine whether the market has done a good job finding sellers. If it has, then it can trade lower. Today we opened gap down, and had a sharp move lower which may have looked somewhat alarming on the surface.

Structurally, sellers had a lay-up profile structure to work with, the “zipper” aka single prints left behind yesterday. There was certainly some higher time frame selling this morning, but it was almost instantly met with higher time frame responsive buying. Now we have a battle.

I was rendered useless mid-day by allowing the optometrist to dilate my pupils. It didn’t seem like a big deal while I was at Costco (aka heaven) but when I returned home I could not see any of the numbers or words on the screens. Talk about some perspective—be grateful for your sensory abilities.

Oil went for a slow grind higher overnight only to be smacked down early this morning. The responsive seller took action ahead of yesterday’s high $51 and pushed us right back to the LVN at 49.84.

I sincerely hope that as I continue to track this commodity you begin seeing the value behind viewing market behavior like an auction. The compliance to value is oil has been nothing short of impressive these last several weeks.

This week has been no exception—the confluence of value area high and micro composite high volume node around $51 was the key reference point for the reversal.

The thick ‘gravitational pull’ of the micro composite point of control continues to behave like a magnet for price down at $49.13.

The Gaussian curve formations show the levels.

Heading into today my primary expectation is for sellers to use this early momentum to target the MCVPOC at $49.13. The level I am more interested in for signs of responsive buying is $48.875, the value area low of 2/26.

Levels are below:

Let’s not kid ourselves—chasing momentum has been a selective endeavor. One cannot simply spray and pray for 1 or 2 winners. That game is break even, at least the way I am playing it. But the winners can still pay down the losers and pay the trader who is refined and selective and has some clear expectations.

If you’re finding the market is not hitting your mark, perhaps temper your expectations just a tad.

I am often working a new idea. When you spend a big chunk of your time objectively observing the minutia of an auction you develop subtle insight into it. It is divine, but often you have to develop new tools and strategy as you go because what works one week is tapioca pudding the next.

Some people go mad over the uncertainty of it all. But if you develop some core fundamentals, boulders, then build around them you can express yourself creatively and see immense benefit.

My newest avenue is working 8:30am data announcements. Like this morning’s Personal Consumption figures. The market is often docile before stocks open, yet you know there is an elevated likelihood for news to bring in order flow. Therefore, you sit and watch for a setup to try and grab onto a wave before it flows in.

A few times this leads into trading through the open with a position on which will spur even more order flow. If you have some confidence trading the opening swing, you can earn an honest living by 10am.

Then, if you choose, you can spend the rest of your day roaming the streets collecting cans, explore other business opportunity, talk with family and friends, etc. Life choices become are real necessity, not just something you dreamed about from your prison cell (cubicle).

If I can make more money in 2 hours then I used to make in a week, why work the entire day? That’s just greed.

There will be no exuberant, headline grabbing action from a name like Deere. However, there just aren’t many that can run like a Deere.

Therefore, I started a new position in DE, looking for the long overdue $100 roll.

The article below is from last week’s Weekly Strategy Session. We also caught a nice chunk of this move in Google live in the 12631 trading room:

Let’s revisit the 4 pillars of technology and add in some of the supporting cast members.

To recap, during the 01/19/15 Strategy Session we began looking at shares of Amazon as a “tell” to the durability of momentum stocks. It had a bearish technical setup to start the year and many short-term traders were leaning short. The stock started to “work” for shorts only to sharply reverse back into its consolidation pattern and then gap-and-go higher on earnings.

Then on 02/02 we looked at the potential “failed auction” in shares of Apple. In essence, this technical setup is the opposite of what was occurring in Amazon. On the surface, Apple was making new highs in an uptrend. But, it briefly took out the prior high and then had a fast move lower. Therefore, we hypothesized it may do the opposite of Amazon and punish short-term traders who took the obvious long. It did not. Instead it turned out a strong week for the bulls.

Last week our attention was on Facebook. It was up to bat for the bulls and managed to hit a proverbial double, gaining over 5% on the week.

Following this logic, Google is the next pillar to have on watch. If you recall, the four pillars of technology is a naming convention Google Chairman Eric Schmidt used during a 2012 Bloomberg interview.

From a year-to-date performance standpoint, Google is still slightly outperforming Facebook. But from a rotational point of view, Google is quite a bit behind some of the other marquee names. Check out the year to date performances of these hot money stocks:

Nasdaq 5130.52 aka the all-time high. Let’s see how we navigate the millennial mark but, we’re this close, why not poke above and see if anyone’s home?

A big chunk of my weekend was occupied bringing all of my Nasdaq statistical studies up to date. Traders inside the Pelican room see me rattling off this data throughout the day. It helps me think through the actions of the market to talk through the cold data occurrences real time.

Weekly Strategy Session members, I posted the results of these studies today. You can find this type of in-depth analysis as well as a broad contextual feel in this week’s report—truly a sweet deal if you’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts with the behavior of the market.

Anyhow, it is time for me to accomplish something a bit more tangible. It is universally unacceptable for one to center all their efforts on the intangible.