Despite the fact that the stock market indices were up it was a very choppy road. They popped at the opening, pulled back and tested support, and when that was successful they rose sharply. They fell short of yesterday’s highs. They then backed and filled, consolidated, and moved up to new session highs with about an hour and forty five minutes to go. At that point the FOMC announcement came in, no surprise, but the indices still sold off on that news, and sold off sharply, moving into negative territory. But in the last 20-25 minutes they snapped back into the plus column.

Net on the day, the Dow closed up 47.98 at 11,474.54, reaching 11,514 at the high. The S&P 500 was up 1.13 at 1241.59, about 5 points off its high. Nasdaq 100 was up 5.14 at 2212.59, with a high of 2220.42, 8 points off its high.

Despite the gains the advance-declines were about 360 issues negative on the New York Stock Exchange and positive by only 48 issues on Nasdaq. So, a very mixed picture. Up/down volume was 5 to 4 negative on New York with 925 million shares traded. Nasdaq traded 1.85 billion and had a 5 to 4 negative ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly lower, but there were quite a few gainers as well. Leading the way, Genoptix, Inc. (GXDX) was up 3.00 to 20.98, Amgen Inc. (AMGN) 2.65 to 56.76, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) 2.00 to 48.93, American International Group, Inc. (AIG) 3.25 to 51.77, Covidien plc (COV) 1.72 to 45.11, and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ONXX) 1.04 to 34.54.

Lower-priced stocks did well, with Cypress Bioscience, Inc. (CYPB) up 96 cents to 5.75, a 20% gain, and Exelixis, Inc. (EXEL) 39 cents to 7.20. MannKind Corp. (MNKD) advanced 77 cents to 8.46, BSD Medical Corp. (BSDM) 1.54 to 5.28, a 40% gainer today, and Senomyx Inc. (SNMX) up 1.09 to 7.70, a big gain there as well. Solta Medical, Inc. (SLTM) rose 52 cents to 3.00, a 21% gainer.

However, on the downside, large-cap stocks took it on the chin. Acme Packet, Inc. (APKT) lost nearly 5 points, down 4.98 at 51.10. Cree Inc. (CREE) dropped 3 to 67.52, Coinstar Inc. (CSTR) 3.09 to 60.98, Goldman Sachs (GS) 2.15 to 167.33, OmniVision Technologies Inc. (OVTI) 2.30 to 29.23, and SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) 1.55 to 30.22.

In addition, Motricity, Inc. (MOTR) continuing its recent drop, was down 1.06 to 21.28. Gold Resource Corp (GORO) fell 1.00 to 27.20, E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. (DANG) 2.09 to 27.06, Youku.com Inc. American Deposit (YOKU) 68 cents to 29.72, Amtech Systems Inc. (ASYS) 1.81 to 23.15, Acacia Research Corporation (ACTG) 2.04 to 26.63, and Apple Inc. (AAPL) 1.38 to 320.29.

That’s just a small example of some of the losses on our board today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up sharply in the morning, consolidated midday, tried to breakout late afternoon, and then rolled over hard after the FOMC meeting, only to bounce in the last 20 minutes to salvage gains on the session.

Still, with negatively diverging advance-declines and up/down volume, I’d be very careful going forward here, as the market appears to be tired and in need of a pullback retest. Perhaps it’s ready to rollover here.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

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