The indices saved the day with a late rush, but with a half hour to go they were unchanged on the session and vacillating back and forth.

The day started out with a move down. They rallied back to resistance, failed and rolled over to new lows, and then bounced again and made lower highs and then hit the session lows by mid-morning at around 1321 NDX and 835 SPX. That was followed by a steady rise back up toward the highs, a pullback mid-day that looked bullish in terms being of a corrective pullback, and then a rally to new highs on the SPX but failing to do so on the NDX. That brought a late afternoon sell-off, but they turned it around with a half hour to go and spiked them back up again. So quite the schizoid/paranoid market today.

Net on the day the Dow was up 70.49 to 5967.06, the S&P 500 up 8.37 at 851.92, and the Nasdaq 100 up 8.69 to 1344.41. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX), however, ended down 1.72 on the day at 249.36.

The technicals were positive by about 3 to 2 on advance-declines were on New York and 2 to 1 on up volume over down volume, on total volume of less than 1.6 billion. Nasdaq had a more than 600 negative plurality of decliners over advancers, but up/down volume managed to stay about 7 to 5 positive on total volume over 2.4 billion.

Most of the stocks on TheTechTrader.com board were narrowly mixed, but there were several point-plus gainers and losers. On the plus side, Goldman Sachs (GS) gained 2.32 to 122.81. Apple (AAPL) added 3.89 to 125.40, and JP Morgan (JPM) was up 1.31 to 33.21 in a generally a strong financial sector. Wells Fargo (WFC) led the way there, up 1.91 to 20.09 on 206 million. Bank of America (BAC) gained 56 cents to 8.82 on 558 million.

Other stocks of note, Research in Motion (RIMM) gained 1.07 to 68.27, and Amazon (AMZN) was up 1.41 to 80.61.

On the downside, the ultrashort ETFs had the biggest losses today. UltraShort Financial ProShares (SKF) was 4.62 to 59.41, UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) was down 2.85 to 26.20, the Direxion Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) down 1.25 to 48.50, and the Direxion Financial Bear 3x Shares (FAZ) dropped 1 to 8.91 on 270 million shares.

In addition, AKAM fell 1.02 to 19.58 Potash (POT) was down 1.37 to 79.62, and SunPower (SPWR) also lost 1.37 to 25.93.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices came down sharply in the morning and rallied back nicely in the afternoon. Despite a late afternoon sell-off, they came on again into the close to finish at the highs for the day going away, just above initial key resistance on the SPX but right at it on the NDX. We’ll see if we get an upside follow-through tomorrow, but the indices are still in a tentative consolidation mode.

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