This week is shaping up to potentially provide some extreme drama as soon as tomorrow for the broader markets. While the media points to an all-important jobs report tomorrow morning, I'll point again today to what we believe is far more important than tomorrow's jobs numbers. Remember, corporate earnings continued to perform throughout weak jobs ever since the markets bottomed in the spring of 2009, yet the media continues to emphasize how important the jobs numbers are every month. Last time I checked, the markets have sold off since September even with improving jobs numbers, so that takes care of that. Jobless Americans can't stay unemployed forever. As a matter of fact, I think the current administration has given the unemployed far too many free weeks of fun in the sun without having to suck it up and find work. I've always said, if you give people an out, they'll take it, so let's not be so surprised about how many people are or aren't unemployed in this country. The real story right now is in the charts. If anyone thinks the markets aren't really all that efficient or that charts don't matter, think again. Some of the biggest brains on Wall Street rely on charts to help them make decisions when it comes to entering or exiting the markets and individual stocks. And, I'm not surprised at all to see exactly what we've seen all week. Here's why... When this market finally found a bid on the heels of the post-election selloff, it has continued to move higher in an orderly fashion only pulling back at very logical resistance levels. With Monday's open still being the week's high for the NASDAQ COMP, the NASDAQ 100 and the S&P 500, the DOW did manage to make a new high for the week yesterday before selling off a bit into the close. If you're curious as to why the DOW experienced so much strength yesterday compared to the other three indexes mentioned here, it simply needed to catch up. The DOW found a way, via yesterday's strong mid-day move, to put itself right where it's brothers and sisters are. The DOW had been slightly lagging the other indexes, but like I said above, the markets are very efficient. You heard me all last week continue to point to where the indexes would stall, and that's pretty much exactly where they've stalled to this point. Stay with me here, this may get confusing. That's not an insult to you, it's only my concern to explain it well enough so that when I read this back to myself, even I can understand it. Ha. Anyhow, I've included a daily chart of the QQQs below for your review. The QQQ is one of the most liquid ETFs in the markets, which tracks the performance of the NASDAQ 100, stocks like Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) just to name a few. Everything appears to be setting up for a pretty good technical confirmation that could very well determine whether or not this market wants to go higher from here or not. I've circled the same confluence area I've shown you with other indexes over the last few weeks. I've also drawn the same resistance levels I've continued to point to ever since the markets hit bottom last month. I said last week that key confluence area might be broken to the upside before the markets would reverse course and pull back. That's exactly what happened. I used a red arrow in this chart here pointing to that. I also used a black arrow here pointing to the 5/8 retracement level, which if this market goes higher, will likely serve as the next key resistance point to spur another potential pull back. So far so good? Earlier this week and even again yesterday, once the indexes started pulling back, I mentioned we would need to see the indexes get back above the 3X3 DMA (blue line) within three daily bars if there was a good possibility the markets would want to go higher. Low and behold, yesterday was the first day it ended up below the 3X3 and today is the second. I used a green arrow to point that out here. So, what marks tomorrow on the heels of the jobs report? The third bar right on point. Coincidence? Nope. The indexes are so efficient that they've put experienced traders perfectly in a position for an either or scenario. In the best interest of speculation and forward thinking analysis, I like what I'm seeing so far today with the QQQs, the problem is we haven't seen today's close yet, and it's extremely important. What we're seeing so far today is what I refer to as railroad tracks. Today's move up has almost perfectly matched yesterday's move down. If we can get a strong move up into the close and close back above the 3X3 today, that bodes well for the bullish argument, which means the QQQs could be gunning for that 5/8 level of roughly $67.03. If we don't close above the 3X3 today, then tomorrow or Monday at the latest will be the day of short-term reckoning. With that being said, let's assume the QQQs don't close above the 3X3 today. If that's the case and the markets open lower on the jobs report tomorrow morning, there exists the possibility it catches short sellers by surprise and moves higher leaving them behind. If the QQQs close below the 3X3 today and tomorrow, it's not going to do much for the bullish short-term argument. If you didn't close out your index put options on yesterday's low, or even today's low, I'm not quite sure what you're looking for. The profits for a very short-term trade like that should have been very good for the timeframe. In my opinion, as you can tell, jobs isn't the issue. The markets are playing a very technical game right now to keep investors guessing and I suspect it's working with most of them. However, I'll reiterate, should we get a close above the 3X3 today on the NASDAQ indexes, that may be the only clue we need to anticipate the markets moving higher yet again. If for some reason the indexes close below the 3X3 today, then tomorrow will mark the most important day so far this month toward determining which way we'll go. Whatever you do, I wouldn't get wrapped up in how the media interprets or starts to spew on the jobs data, as much as I would focus on how the markets want to technically react to it, and more importantly where it closes both today and tomorrow. That's going to tell us a lot more about what the smart money is doing than the jobs report will. Some people like movies to lose themselves in a good thriller suspense story. I guess we prefer charts over movies.