NEW YORK - US STOCKS ended mixed on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve decided to maintain virtually zero interest rates and offered no leads about any change in its aggressive pump priming efforts.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 23.05 points (0.28 per cent) to 8,299.86, erasing early gains on the back of higher orders for US durable goods.

The tech-dominant Nasdaq rose 27.42 points (1.55 per cent) to 1,792.34 while the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 added 5.84 points (0.65 per cent) to 900.94.

The blue chip Dow succumbed to selling pressure after the Federal Reserve's policy making panel decided on Wednesday to maintain its aggressive effort to lift the US economy out of recession and held its base rate near zero, traders said.

'The downward move followed the latest FOMC policy statement,' analyst at Briefing.com said.

Concluding a two-day meeting, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee, as widely expected, left the base federal funds rate in a range of zero to 0.25 per cent.

The Fed offered no indication it would ramp up or scale back its effort to pump more liquidity into the financial system, an effort that began with a pledge this year to buy up more than US$1 trillion (S$1.5 trillion) in US government and agency securities in an effort to push down interest rates.

Stocks were in positive territory before the Fed statement, buoyed by a government report that showed orders for US long-lasting manufactured goods surging unexpectedly in May.

The Commerce Department said durable goods orders rose a seasonally adjusted 1.8 per cent in May from April. Most analysts had projected a decline of 0.9 per cent.

The report 'helped boost sentiment, soothing some concerns that the recent rally in the equity markets may have gotten ahead of the economic reality,' said analysts at Charles Schwab in a note to clients. -- AFP