We had an extremely volatile session today, and boy was it wild and wooly! The indices managed to close to the plus side, only because of a late snapback rally.

The day started out with a very big gap up on pre-market futures that were hugely higher on positive actions by some of the world banks and the Fed as well to ease credit pressures. The indices opened sharply higher, had a brief additional spurt to the upside, and reached key overhead resistance at 2130 NDX at 1510 S&P 500. They then came down steadily in the morning, and accelerated sharply lower when they broke morning support into mid-day, retesting the lows and partially filling the opening gaps. They then had a steady move back up in early afternoon that reached right to key intraday resistance at the declining tops lines and moving averages, but failed there. Then they plunged over the next hour to take out yesterday's lows and then some, stabilizing with about 45 minutes to go and then moving sharply higher in the last 15-20 minutes, in particular.

The Dow today had a 380-point range. After all those gyrations, the indices managed to close up 41 on the Dow, up 9 on the S&P 500, and up 17.6 on Nasdaq 100. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was up 2.40 today. But there were certainly a lot of swings in between.

Advance-declines managed to edge out losers by about 355 issues on New York and by about 220 issues on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 9 to 7 positive on New York and about 14 1/2 to 8 positive on Nasdaq.

Total volume was just under 1 3/4 billion on New York and over 2.2 billion on Nasdaq.

TheTechTrader.com board was all over the place & volatile, but there quite a few point-plus gainers. They included Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) up 3.24 to close at 33.06 on 4 1/2 million shares, and breaking a 2-year declining tops line and long-term downtrend line. A key day for that stock. DryShips (DRYS) in the shipping sector advanced 3.03, Excel Maritime (EXM) 2.65, and TBS International (TBSI) was up 92 cents.

Canadian Solar (CSIQ) advanced 1.59, Solarfun (SOLF) 1.40, Ascent Solar (ASTI) 70 cents and Evergreen Solar (ESLR) 68 cents in the solar energy sector.

Recent portfolio addition Emcore (EMKR) jumped 2.04 on 4.7 million shares, the heaviest volume in 5 months, and broke out to new 18-month highs.

Cardica (CRDC) snapped back 60 cents and portfolio position LUNA snapped back 49 cents.

Point-plus losers included Hoku Scientific (HOKU), which got hammered 2 points off its high, but came back a bit on the close, still down 1.24 on the day on more than 4 million shares, on a downgrade from Piper Jaffrey. That was the only point-plus loser on our board.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices did additional technical damage today despite the big gap-up. After the large opening, the indices sold off steadily for the rest of the session, until the last 40 minutes when they snapped back with a vengeance. It was a volatile day, but only a nominal up-session at the close despite the large opening up-gap.

It was somewhat disappointing, but at least they saved the day with the late rally. Let's see what the next couple days bring in terms of whether we get a follow-through to the upside or downside. Right now the jury is still out on what the direction is.

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.