All eyes were on the Fed this week. It's a new world when you feel as if the Fed has a quad mandate—forget about the dual mandate. Now, we have all become used to the Fed commenting on equity markets and consistently talking about oil prices. Add that to full employment and price stability and it sounds like the central bank is a jack of all trades. I can't help but feel that Chair Yellen is extremely concerned at the lack of inflation, no matter how many times she tries to explain it away with falling energy prices. That fear of deflation sure does explain why gold can't rally for any extended period of time. I was chatting with a portfolio manager and he asked what I thought about the market direction higher or lower. My response was this has been a spectacular run in equities, but I think it's time for either sideways grinding or lower action. It's just getting too silly to think we can only go north in the markets. I freed up some cash in the last couple of weeks. I trimmed some positions and sold out of some completely as well. I am more than happy sitting out with some dry powder for the next dip that no one sees coming. What makes me nervous is that one by one the market has become numb to bearish stories. Greece seems to have no effect and ISIS, Ukraine, etc. doesn't seem to matter either. Complacency is occupying Wall Street these days. Many professional traders are baffled with this market, thinking one direction but getting another. The market is similar to playing golf in that you never feel as if you mastered it, but you get enough right to keep you coming back to play another day. Read More Cashing out: Selling by CEOs, insiders surge Here are four plays that may weather a pullback by the market: It seems to me that multiple bullish angles still exist for Apple such as the iPhone upgrade cycle, Apple Watch and Apple Pay. Carl Icahn recently threw out a $200 price target that will probably act as a magnet for the name sooner than many think. Google ramping up its own pay service to compete with Apple just seems so smart to me. Google has to leverage itself the same way Apple has done. Maybe returning cash to shareholders is another way they can steal some of the Apple thunder. And the last move that's interesting to me is the 15 percent selloff in Southern Co . Rates rising ever so slightly, if at all, are not going to be competition for utilities like Southern that have a dividend yield greater than 4 percent. If you're long this market, you've been right. But remember, no one ever went broke taking a profit. Always have exits in mind when buying a stock. Discipline is what separates great traders from good ones. Steven Grasso is director of institutional sales at Stuart Frankel. Follow him on Twitter @grassosteve . D isclosure : Grasso is l ong Apple, Google, Southern Co.
