The markets had a surprisingly strong session after yesterday's sharp losses. The indices were strong from the get-go, then had a steep early pullback that retested the lows but held, and then rallied back up to new session highs on the S&P 500, but the NDX at that point trailed miserably. On several occasions, they tried to punch through key overhead resistance but couldn't and they rolled back in the early afternoon, first bounced and then thrust to new session snapback highs, pulled back with about 15 minutes to go, but closed strongly right near the session highs.

Net on the day the Dow was up 127.83 to 7969.56, the S&P 500 up 17.69 to 850.08, and the Nasdaq 100 up 19.69 at 1329.06. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was up just 0.48 to 240.67.

Advance-declines were positive by 4 to 1 on New York and by about 3 to 1 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 7 to 1 positive on New York on total volume of 1 2/3 billion. Nasdaq traded 2.4 billion and had a better than 4 to 1 positive volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly higher today, except for the ultrashorts. The UltraShort Financial ProShares (SKF) at 60.30 was down 10.15, the UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) at 27.25 was down 6, the Direxion Financial Bear 3x Shares (FAZ) at 9.15 down 2.48, and the Direxion Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) at 49.14 down 2.92.

Among stocks on the downside, there were just fractional losses. Agricultural and chemical stocks had a difficult day, with Potash (POT) down 86 cents to 82.54, Mosaic (MOS) down 45 cents to 38.88, and Agrium (AGU) up just cents to 39.09.

On the plus side, financials led the way, with Goldman Sachs (GS) rebounding 7 points off its low, up 5.35 for the day on 24.7 million. JP Morgan (JPM) was up 2.84 to 32.53 on 113 million, and Morgan Stanley (MS) up 1.13 to 24.65.

Apple (AAPL) was up 1.26 to 121.76, and Research in Motion (RIMM) advanced 1.93 to 67.03.

Wells Fargo (WFC) joined the party in the financial sector, up 1.81 at 18.81. Bank of America (BAC) was up 74 cents at 8.76, on 860 million shares. Hartford Financial Services (HIG) also was up 1.04 in that group.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices did very well today to hold, and rallied back to test the declining moving average on the hourly charts, but may be forming head and shoulders-type tops. We'll see how it goes tomorrow, as several major banks including MS and WFC, will be reporting.

Harry Boxer is a technical consultant to many Wall Street hedge funds and large institutional traders, and author of TheTechTrader.com.