The stock market had an extremely negative day today, as the indices gapped down huge at the opening, went sharply lower after that, and then spent a couple hours backing and filling and trying to consolidate. But they turned out to be nothing more than bear flags. They did have a mid-day minor breakout on the Nasdaq 100 that had no follow-through or confirmation from the S&P 500, and when that occurred the indices rolled over again, stair-stepped lower the rest of the day, and spiked to the session low with about 10 minutes to go. Only a very late snapback prevented them from closing right at the lows.

Net on the day, it was a very negative session, with the Dow down 316, the S&P 500 37, and the Nasdaq 100 49. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) fell nearly 10, or nearly 3 percent.

The technicals were extremely negative, with advance-declines on New York 27 to 4 negative, just under 7 to 1. On Nasdaq it was a little less than a 4 to 1 negative ratio, with 23 1/2 to 6 1/2 on the negative side. But it was much worse on up/down volume on Nasdaq in particular, where 2.2 billion shares traded to the downside, versus 248 million on the upside, or about a 9 to 1 negative ratio. New York was about 17 to 1 negative on total volume on 1 2/3 billion.

TheTechTrader.com board, as you can imagine, was mostly negative. However, two of our portfolio holdings had a stellar day, both Chinese stocks. China Natural Resources (CHNR) by mid-afternoon was trading just under 29, up more than $5, near our trading target, and then closed at 26.30, still up 2.64, but giving back half the gains in the final 90 minutes. China Finance Online (JRJC) gained 4.21, and closed only 60 cents off its high, so a much better performance there and on very heavy volume of 6.8 million shares.

Portfolio position Nextwave (WAVE) had a sharp last half hour snapback, closing up 51 cents, or about 10%, on the day on 714,000 shares. That's strong volume for that stock.

On the downside, there were many point-plus losers, starting with DryShips (DRYS) down 2.86, TBS International (TBSI) 2.18 and Excel Maritime (EXM) 1.12, all in the shipping sector. Cree Inc. (CREE) dropped 2.75, Cepheid (CPHD) 1.34, Chindex (CHDX) 1.99 and Aluminum Corp. of China (ACH) 2.20.

In addition, MBI fell 1.09 in a weak financial services sector, along with ABK down 66 cents, and WM down 93 cents.

Solar stocks continued weak, with Solarfun (SOLF) down 50 cents, JA Solar (JASO) 90 cents, Canadian Solar (CSIQ) 65 cents, and Ascent Solar (ASTI) 44 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, it was a very negative session today, breaking down through moving average and lateral price support on the hourly charts on both the NDX and S&P, and came all the way down to test last week's lows near the 1740 area on the Nasdaq 100 and near the 1326 area on the S&P 500. But the late bounce brought them off those lows by a fraction.

However, the indices closed very negatively, and basically they're right on key rising bottoms support going back going back 4-5 weeks now, so any move below this level could trigger a very steep slide, perhaps much worse than we saw today.

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.