As we'd anticipated, the market had a weak session. It was quite the trading range early in the morning when the indices vacillated back and forth. In the afternoon they rolled over in a 3-wave decline that took out the morning lows, particularly on the S&P 500. Finally, late in the session the indices made nominal new lows, even on the NDX, but in the last hour they snapped back. That last-hour snapback rally failed at the 2 day declining tops lines and moving averages, and in the last 15 minutes they rolled back over again.

Next on the day the Dow was down 49, the S&P 500 10 1/4, and the Nasdaq 100 8 3/4. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) managed to gain 41 cents.

Advance-declines told the negative story, with almost 2 1/2 to 1 negative on New York and a little better than 3 to 2 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was decidedly negative, by a little worse than 2 to 1 negative on New York on total volume of about 1 1/4 billion. Nasdaq traded about 1.7 billion, and had about an 11 to 6 negative ratio on up/down volume.

TheTechTrader.com board ended with the majority of stocks not far from the flat line, but also with several point-plus gainers and losers. On the plus, the leader was e-Future Information Technology (EFUT), which ran hard in the morning, consolidated, and broke out on several other occasions, and closed up 6.06, a gain of over 50% today. That's our Chart of the Day.

Among other point-plus gainers, Sigma Designs (SIGM) soared again today, setting more new all-time highs, closing at 52.18, up 3.20. JA Solar (JASO) in the mostly strong solar group, closed up 2.44. Portfolio position Cree Inc. (CREE) was up 2.31 today on 4.7 million, to close at 34.32.Chindex (CHDX) advanced 1.26 to new multi-month highs.

Among fractional gainers, portfolio position Vicon Industries (VII) snapped back 40 cents, Research Frontiers (REFR) 56 cents, and GigaMedia (GIGM) 72 cents.

On the downside today, China Medical Technologies (CMED) led the way down, off 2.26. Cepheid (CPHD) got hammered in the afternoon and lost 1.05.

The big loss of the day was VASCO Data Security (VDSI) on a downgrade. It lost 3.02 today on 2 1/2 million shares.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices continued their pullback in an orderly fashion, but accelerated later in the day and took out some important initial lows. The market is still holding in a corrective-looking pattern over the last couple days off the big spurt we had following the post-FOMC announcement.

We'll see if they can hold this consolidation and break out to the upside, or whether they're going to extend it a little more to the downside before they're ready to do that.

Harry Boxer is a technical consultant to many Wall Street hedge funds and large institutional traders, and author of TheTechTrader.com, a real-time diary of his day, swing and intermediate-term trades. For more of Harry Boxer, sign up for a free 15-day trial to his Real-Time Technical Trading Diary, or sign up for a free 30-day trial to his Top Charts of the Week service.