The markets had a very solid session today, but the path was quite interesting. In the morning they moved up, pulled back, retested and then had a very strong early morning rally that reached up to initial resistance on two different occasions and failed. Around 11:15 or so the markets started pulling back in a slow, tedious manner and did so through the lunch hour. In the afternoon they attempted a rally that failed rather quickly just before the FOMC news was released.

After that the market gyrated around but took a sharp hit to new session lows on the NDX, but the S&P 500 was successful in testing its morning lows, and held. After an hour of bouncing around and stabilizing they had a late rally in the last half hour probably on end-of-month window dressing that put the S&P at a session high, but the NDX was trailing miserably at the close.

However, all the indices were higher today with the Dow up 74, the S&P 500 up 10 1/4, the Nasdaq 100 8 1/4 and the SOX up more than 8 points.

The technicals were very strong today with advance-declines positive by 3 to 1 on New York and 2 to 1 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was positive by nearly 5 to 1 on New York with nearly 2 billion traded. Nasdaq traded 2 3/4 billion with about a 2 1/2 to 1 positive ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was very narrowly mixed, except for Apple Computer (AAPL), which dropped 1.45 today. There were no point-plus gainers on my board. Broadcom (BRCM) advanced 69 cents, and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) 71 cents. DXP Enterprises (DXPE) gained 46 cents, although that one had some negative news after the close and went down a couple points.

On the downside, EBAY gave back 40 cents, 51job, Inc. (JOBS) lost 67 cents, Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) 33 cents, and LMI Aerospace (LMIA) 36 cents.

Despite today's rally many stocks I follow did not participate much, so I'm not trusting this rally. However, the S&P and Dow closed positively and at session highs on the S&P. We'll see if there's a follow-through tomorrow, or, again, if this was just window dressing that reverses itself.

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.