It was a brutal down-day today, following up on yesterday's late pullback, as the indices closed near the lows for the day going away, with the Nasdaq 100 breaking 2-day support right near the close. The day started out with a bounce to the upside, but it failed rather quickly. They had a sharp sell-off that held the lows on the Nasdaq 100, but took them out on the S&P. The snapback rally failed at resistance, and then they worked their way lower for the rest of the session despite some intermittent rally attempts.

Net on the day the Dow was down 307, the S&P 500 40, and the Nasdaq 100 30. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down 5.67.

The technicals confirmed the negative action today, with advance-declines 27 to 5 negative on New York. Nasdaq was 23 to 7. Up/down volume was nearly 10 to 1 negative on New York with 2.2 billion traded. Nasdaq had about a 4 to 1 negative ratio on heavy volume of 2.8 billion.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly red, with only a couple gainers today. Shippers were strong for most of the day. They did give back a chunk of their gains in the afternoon. Excel Maritime (EXM) closed up 1.62. Recent Chart of the Day VRUS gained another 2 points early in the morning, getting up to 36.44, but backed off in the late afternoon sell-off and closed at 34.78, still up 88 cents. INCY gained 48 cents. Portfolio position QSC gained a nickel.

The ETF short instruments, of course, were positive today, with the SDS, up 3.47 and the QID 1.43.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, other than the few intermittent rallies the indices trended low for most of the day, particularly the blue chips, with the Dow and S&P putting pressure all day on the Nasdaq 100. They finally pressured the NDX to new pullback lows late in the session.

Tomorrow is options expiration day, and the President is going to be speaking about an economic stimulus package which could act as a spur for the indices, but we'll have to see how it goes. In any case the trend has been sharply lower & remains so. The Nasdaq 100 is now down 300 points, or 14%, since December 26. The S&P 500 is down 170 points, or 11%, in that same period of time.

So we're getting long in the tooth on the downside, and way overdue for a sharper snapback rally. This could come as early as tomorrow or Monday, and probably no later than mid-week next week.

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.