today's market action

Although the averages were able to crawl into positive territory as the afternoon wore on, a wave of late selling ensured yet another mixed close to a lackluster and low volume trading session. Also, materials and energy stocks were the laggards while tech, especially big-cap tech names that led this market last year, attracted some tentative buying interest.

This relationship is likely the result of investors anticipating that a hawkish Fed will fuel the nascent rebound in the greenback, but many are not so confident that the transition is going to be as smooth as hoped. The relative strength in names like GOOG, AAPL, RIMM and MA is encouraging, but we’re going to have to wait until the Fed is out of the way before we can get a better sense of how these new themes are going to develop.