The markets suffered their third straight down-day and ended poorly at the lows for the day going away after cracking session support late in the afternoon.

The day started out with a move lower from the get-go and a fairly decent sell-off that took the indices to new session lows. They did stage a sharp mid-morning rally that took the NDX back from near 1788 up to about the 1809 area, a more than 20-point move. The S&P did even better percentage-wise, rallying about 17 points from 1329 to 1346. But they failed to take out resistance, rolled over, retested the lows, and then bounced mid-afternoon. That bounce also failed at resistance, and then they took out session support lows late in the session and closed at the lows for the day going away.

The Dow was down 120, the S&P 500 ended down 15.36, and the Nasdaq 100 39.79. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down 5.

Technicals confirmed the negative day, with advance-declines better than 3 to 2 negative on both New York and Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 3 to 1 negative on New York and about 4 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Total volume on New York was over 1.4 billion, and Nasdaq traded just under 2 billion shares today.

TheTechTrader.com board was mixed but generally higher. Point-plus gainers included many of the junior solar energy stocks, which were very strong by mid-day, but they did give back a lot of their gains during the late afternoon sell-off, but still ended up on the session.

Ascent Solar (ASTI), for example, was up 2.05, but traded 1.65 higher earlier in the session. Solarfun (SOLF) at 13.36 was up 1.90, but traded about 80 cents higher than that earlier in the day. Akeena Solar (AKNS) at 7.32 was up 1.25, but about 65 cents higher earlier in the day.

So, profit-taking sliced off a chunk of the gains, though most managed to stay in the plus side. However, JA Solar (JASO) was up just 24 cents on the day and closed more than 1 off its high. Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) up 56 cents was nearly 2 points off it high. Emcore (EMKR) did close up 25 cents today, nearly 50 cents off its high.

Other stocks of note, DryShips (DRYS) in a strong shipping sector was up 1.57. But Excel Maritime (EXM) was the star there today at 32.03, up 3.31. TBS International (TBSI) managed to gain just 27 cents.

GeoResources (GEOI), one of our Charts of the Week, gained 54 cents today. Portfolio position Origin Agritech (SEED) gained 25 cents, but about 40 cents off its high, and Chindex (CHDX) reached up near 40 today, closing at 38.89, up 90 cents. Clearwire (CLWR) managed to stay strong, particularly in the afternoon when the market was dropping back, closing at 15.08, up 89 cents on more than 2 million.

On the downside, Lehman Bros. (LEH) continues to give back a big chunk of its snapback gains from last week, closing at 38.71, down 3.78 in the generally weak financial services sector which include WM, at 10.53, down 97 cents, MBI down 74 cents and ABK down 33 cents.

Other losses of note, Rambus (RMBS) gave back 1.76 from yesterday's big post-court decision gain, and portfolio position DCR lost 40 cents on the big rise in oil today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices vacillated back and forth, holding the lows for most of the session, but cracked late in the day, taking out initial support in the morning and secondary support in the afternoon. But the overall patterns show that the indices are now pulling back to their breakout points, and the bulls would do well to make a stand here, otherwise much steeper retests may be in order.

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.