The Market On Wednesday

  Good morning. It is a very cold 23 degrees and it is now sunny in the Upper Hudson Valley. Sunshine is expected and the temperatures are supposed to gradually increase over the next week till we are back in the 50s. As the CNN headline indicates, 50% of the country is covered in snow, but good. We are clear here, no snow. Pictures from Buffalo NY indicate that parts of the area got hit with 5 feet of snow. That is incredible. Chalk it up to extreme weather conditions and bizarre changes as a result of global warming. Extreme is the new normal.

  At 8:25 a.m. ET futures are ever so slightly lower, and the price of oil per barrel is up moving toward $75 per barrel. The market is poised to open in the flat range.

  One might suspect that the release of Fed notes from October this afternoon might cast a spell on the markets. In my opinion of all the economic pushes and pulls in our economy, the movements of the Fed are right up there. The Fed is of course the bank of last resort, when all else falls to crap, the Fed is the last backstop. I believe people don't understand that and the suggestion to dismantle the Fed at this point is ludicrous. That idea would place the fluctuations of the economy directly into the TBTF banks. It might seem like that is how things are now and to a certain extent they are, but it is the Fed that carries the biggest gun.

CNN: Stocks: 5 things to know before the open

The Fed will publish minutes from its October meeting at 2 p.m. ET.