The markets on Tuesday experienced a tough grind. They chopped lower in the morning, went to new pullback lows and then reversed around the 11 o’clock hour. Then they went into a slow steady upward chop for most of the session, reaching the afternoon highs with about 10 minutes to go, but rolled over in those last 10 minutes to closed mixed on the day.

Net on the day the Dow was down 16.71 to 8322.30, the S&P 500 up 2.40 to 895.08, and the Nasdaq 100 down 2.15 to 1424.46. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) fell 94 cents at 253.66.

Advance-declines were negative by about 155 issues on New York and by about a 3 to 2 negative ratio on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 7 to 5 positive on New York on total volume of 1.2 billion. Nasdaq traded 2.1 billion with nearly equal up & down volume.

TheTechTrader.com board was very mixed, with several point plus gainers and losers. The financials were positive today and kept the market afloat, with Goldman Sachs (GS) up 4.18 to 141.19, Morgan Stanley (MS) up 1.07 to 27.70, and JP Morgan (JPM) up 70 cents to 33.57. Wells Fargo (WFC) firmed 40 cents to 22.91, and Bank of America (BAC) was up 29 cents to 12.23.

The ag/chem stocks rebounded from recent losses, with Potash (POT) up 4.81 to 92.08 and Mosaic (MOS) up 1.58 to 43.85.

The U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) on a snapback in crude oil gained 1.16 to 37.41. The iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF (EWZ) was up 77 cents to 57.

On the other hand, the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (FXI) was down 27 cents at 35.81, and the UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) lost 41 cents to 21.84. However, the the Direxion Small Cap 3x Bear (TZA) was up 53 cents to 25.57.

So a mixed picture in the ETF sector as well.

On the losing side, Rambus (RMBS) got hammered after announcing downward guidance on earnings and a secondary, closing at 14.85, down 2.98 near the low for the day.

OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals (OGXI) got hammered below 20, closing at 19.42, down 1.77. LFT at 24.15 was down 1.18, and Apple (AAPL) lost 3.36 today to 134.01.

Dendreon (DNDN) fell 99 cents to 22.55, PMTI 91 cents to 15.05, and TIVO gave back 38 cents to 10.12.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, they were down in the morning, chopped higher from the late morning on to move some of the indices back into the plus column, but a very late sell-off brought the Dow and NDX to the negative column. So the markets closed mixed on the day in what looked like a bearish consolidation before more possible downside.

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