The markets had a down day to start the week, but it wasn't too severe. The day started out with a down move on sharply lower futures, but they immediately started rallying and went into a 5-wave ally on the Nasdaq 100 that saw it jump from 1357 up to 1385 inside of the first hour. The S&P 500 didn't quite cooperate. Despite the fact that the NDX went to new rally highs, the SPX did not, moving from 856 to 868. They rolled steadily over mid-day, retested the lows and bounced in the last hour, but did not break the support lows.

Net on the day the Dow closed at 8025, down 51.29. The S&P 500 at 857.51 was down 8.72, and the Nasdaq 100 down 3.34 to 1369.94. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down 2.85 at 250.80.

Advance-declines were a little worse than 2 to 1 negative on New York and around 2 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 3 1/2 to 1 negative on New York on total volume of 1.4 billion. Nasdaq traded just under 2.2 billion and had about a 2 to 1 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mixed but mostly negative, other than the ultrashorts, which had a positive session obviously. But there were no big losers.

Leading the way on the downside was Potash (POT) down 2.33 to 81.68, and Mosaic (MOS) at 38.97 down 1.99.

Wells Fargo (WFC) was down 1.10 to 20.30 in a weak financial sector. Goldman Sachs (GS) lost just 40 cents, but was about 4 points off its high. JP Morgan (JPM) dropped 60 cents 32.78, and Morgan Stanley (MS) fell 70 cents to 21.26.

Best Buy (BBY) dropped a point today at 38.27, Amazon (AMZN) lost 1.54 to 83.12 and SunPower (SPWR) fell 1.37 to 24.04.

Foreign ETFs were weak, with the iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF (EWZ) off 1.52 to 42.95, and the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (FXI) down 1.43 to 30.89.

On the plus side, the UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) was up 2.49 to 26.15, the UltraShort Financial ProShares (SKF) up 2.88 to 59.58, and the FXP Ultrashort China Index up 1.67 to 21.47.

Portfolio position Dendreon (DNDN) jumped 1.47 to 21.55, ahead of potentially big news expected on Wednesday, and portfolio position Synnex (SNX) was up 39 cents to 19.78.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up sharply in the morning, down midday and bounced back a little bit in the afternoon, but still closed lower on the day. This rally is certainly getting long in the tooth, but they have not broken support yet.

We'll see if we can get a turnaround Tuesday that reverses the trend tomorrow.

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