The indices had a down day today, and the Fed announced a quarter-point rate hike, but the response to that was extremely muted, considering the response we've seen on prior occasions.

The day started out with the indices moving down with lower pre market futures. But they quickly held at yesterday's lows on the Nasdaq 100, even though the S&P made slightly lower lows.  For the next couple hours the market meandered in a very tight, narrow range, as would be expected before the Fed announcement, and then the indices popped right after the Fed announcement but sold off and then bounced around, ending up down on the day.  They were pretty much down on the day for most of the session, other than for a brief period right after the Fed announcement.

The Dow was down 33 1/3, the S&P 4 1/4, the Nasdaq 100 2 2/3, and the SOX down a little bit more than 4 points. 

Techincals were negative but not by much.  Advance-declines were negative by 17 to 15 on New York and 17 to 12 on Nasdaq.  Up/down volume was 10 to 7 on New York, with 1 3/4 billion traded.  Nasdaq traded 1.9 billion with about a 10 to 9 negative ratio.

So, a slightly lower day today, and a muted response to the Fed announcement of the quarter-point rate hike.

TheTechtrader.com board was mostly higher today.  Whatever losses there were, were very fractional.  The gains were led by IVAC, up 1.79 on more than 2 1/3 million.  Evergreen Solar (ESLR) advanced 96 cents on 6 1/2 million, Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) 1.64, Convera (CNVR) 1.76, and Dynamic Materials (BOOM) 1.27.  Those led the gainers today.

Other gainers of note, Forward Industries (FORD) was up 81 cents. One of our recent Charts of the Week Brillian Corp. (BRLC) was up 40 cents.  Novavax (NVAX), coming back on big volume today, was up 51 cents on 41 million shares, but at one point was up more than a point.  Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) was up 60 cents.

On the downside, Kendle International (KNDL) lost 46 cents and Cutera (CUTR) 49 cents.  Rediff.com India (REDF) was off 23 cents, and all other losers were down less than a dime.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, even though today was a down day it can be considered a consolidation day after the last two-day rally, and the market did well to not break support and not give back much of the gains at all.  So, from a technical perspective, it was a potentially bullish consolidation day today.

Good trading!

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.