The indices had an up-day but were sharply higher in the morning and gave back the vast majority of their gains by the end of the session. The morning rollover continued into afternoon, and the indices moved steadily down into the close at the afternoon lows.

The day started out with a gap up, and the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) moved sharply higher to just under 1500, reaching 1498. The S&P 500 (SPX) at that point reached right near 932. Both indices made nominal new rally highs, but after economic news came out the indices started selling off.

Net on the day the Dow still managed to close up 57.06 at 8504 and change, but was about 76 points off its high. The S&P 500 was up 4.01 at 923 and change, about 8 points off its high, and the Nasdaq 100 was up 4.09 at 1481.30, about 16 points off its high. So, the vast majority of gains were given back by the end of the day.

The technicals managed to stay positive by a wide margin. There were 2220 issues up and 770 down on New York, and about 18 issues up for every 8 down on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was less than 2 to 1 positive on New York on total volume of 1 billion shares. Nasdaq traded just under 2 billion and had a better than 2 to 1 positive volume ratio.

Most stocks on TheTechTrader.com board were narrowly mixed. There was only one point-plus gainer on our board, which was new portfolio position OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals (OGXI), up 1.35 at 23.23 on modest volume.

On the downside, the Direxion Small Cap 3x Bear (TZA) dropped 1.21 to 21.54, and Potash (POT) dropped 2.15 to 90.90.

Fractional gainers and losers were very narrowly mixed, with no other issues to speak of today on our board.

With the afternoon sell-off, the indices on the hourly charts closed at the rising moving averages and lateral price support near 1480 NDX and just above 920-21 support on the SPX.

So we’ll see if they can stem the afternoon downtide here and resume the rally, or whether they do roll over and make a significant crack of the trendlines, moving averages and support levels.

We do expect a low volume day tomorrow and to get some institutional meandering, and don’t expect too much trending to happen until after the holiday.

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