The Little Index That Could

We’ve been dancing around the 1,100 mark on the S&P 500 for about the past five weeks, but every time we get a little too far above this level, stocks seem to bleed back toward the 1,100 support line.

As the year comes to an end, it will be interesting to see if “the little index that could” manages to push past its current trading range, or if it falls back toward its short-term moving average.

We didn’t get much clarity from the Federal Reserve as to which way the index will go, as the Federal Open Market Committee announced today that it was holding interest rates at its current record-low levels.

In the Fed’s all-important statement accompanying the decision, the Committee pledged to keep rates at current levels for an “extended period” in an effort to keep the economic recovery going.

This news was pretty much what Wall Street expected, and that leaves the direction of stocks over the short term a completely open question.