The indices suffered a down day today, but came sharply back in the last hour to pare the losses and close with only minor losses.

The day started out with a gap down and a bounceback. But that failed and they rolled over, created double bottoms and tried to rally but then rolled over to new lows on the day, and slightly took out initial support on the S&P 500, held it on the Nasdaq 100, When that occurred they rallied back in a 3- wave advance in the last couple hours, closing not too far off the highs for the day.

Net on the day the Dow was down 26 at 9070.72, the S&P 500 down 4.47 at 975.15, and the Nasdaq 100 down 5.86 at 1599.60.

Advance-declines were negative by 3 to 2 on New York and by about 8 to 5 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 6 to 5 negative on New York on total volume of about 1 Ã,¼ billion. Nasdaq traded about 2.1 billion and had about an 11 to 9 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was largely negative for the most part, but there were some big gainers.

Elron (ELRN) was up 2.07 to 6.70. But the biggest gainer was Inovio Biomedical (INO), up 2.44 to 3.18 on 32 million shares, a gain of 330% in one day.

Biotech Targacept (TRGT) gained 96 cents to 11.93, and portfolio position China Green Agriculture (CGA) 69 cents at 10.73. Those were the outstanding gainers today on our board.

Goldman Sachs (GS) lost 1.10 to 159.44, Mosaic (MOS) 1.62 to 49.23, and Potash (POT) 1.28 to 92.08.

Yingli Green Energy (YGE) was down 1.04 to 13.75. Canadian Solar (CSIQ) lost 58 cents to 14.32 in a weak solar sector.

Other losers of note included DryShips (DRYS) down 26 cents to 6.53, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) 53 cents to 10.24, Ariad Pharmaceuticals (ARIA) down 45 cents to 2.35, and Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ) down 67 cents to 5.91.

In the ETF sector, the iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF (EWZ) lost 1.33, and the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (FXI) 1.61. The U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) lost 2.29 to 33.47, as oil was down more than $3 today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, a choppy session but a lower one for most of the session was trimmed back with a 3-wave rally in the last couple hours to have only modest losses today. The indices still remain in 5-day consolidation phases with support in the 1575-80 zone on the Nasdaq 100 and at the 966-70 zone on the S&P 500. On the upside, resistance is in the 1605-09 area on the NDX and up in the 982-3 zone on the SPX.

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