The indices had an interesting session after a very strong early run was followed by an afternoon slide on the post-FOMC announcement. They ended mixed at the close.

The day started out with a big gap up. They ran hard and reached 1814 1/2 on the Nasdaq 100 and over 1116 on the S&P 500. Neither of those were new 2009 highs, although right near them. They then backed off, retested, bounced, but couldn't get through, and then rolled over in the afternoon. They got quiet just before the FOMC announcement, after which the indices trended steadily lower the rest of the afternoon, taking the Dow into negative territory, but the SPX and NDX managed to stay in the plus column.

Net on the day the Dow closed at 10441.12, down 10.88, but the S&P 500 managed to close up 1.25 to 1109.18, and the Nasdaq 100 up 2.61 at 1800.82.

Advance-declines were positive by nearly 2 to 1 on New York and nearly 3 to 2 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 6 to 5 positive on New York on total volume of about 1.1 billion. Nasdaq traded just under 2.1 billion and had a little less than 2 to 1 positive volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly higher, but the vast majority of gains were given back in the last few hours of the session.

Goldman Sachs (GS) was up 2.64 to 165.38, as financials were generally firm, but JP Morgan (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) closed up just small fractions.

The Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) was up 1.40 at 72.21, and junior biotech Achillion Pharmaceuticals (ACHN) gained 1.04 to 3.19 on 9 million shares, although it closed nearly 70 cents off its earlier high.

New portfolio position Sourcefire (FIRE) advanced 1.68 to 25.50 on 1.1 million traded.

Those were the only point-plus gainers on our board today.

Other gainers of note, portfolio position Rambus (RMBS) jumped 37 cents to 22.64, about 50 cents off its high, and NetList (NLST) was up 31 cents to 6.03 on nearly 9 million, although again that was 45 cents off its high. Genco (GNK) added 40 cents to 24.04.

Harry Boxer is a technical consultant to many Wall Street hedge funds and large institutional traders, and author of TheTechTrader.com.