The markets snapped back today and failed to follow-through to the downside, but at the end of the day, despite the rally, the indices did nothing more than retest the resistance zones and breakdown points.

The day started out with a gap up. The indices then backed and filled for the first hour and appeared to be consolidating bullishly. That resulted in a strong upside surge into the early afternoon. The indices backed off to retest and when they failed to follow through to the downside, moved back up and made new session highs near 1589 NDX and 991 SPX. Both of those levels are at or very near key resistance points. In the last 10 minutes they backed off those levels.

Net on the day the Dow was up 82.60 at 9217.94, the S&P 500 up 9.94 at 989.67, and the Nasdaq 100 up 21.61 to 1586.50. The technicals were positive by 4 to 1 on advance-declines on New York and by 2 Ã,½ to 1 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 5 Ã,½ to 1 positive on New York on light total volume of 980 million. Nasdaq traded 1.7 billion and had about a 4 Ã,½ to 1 positive volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly higher, led by Goldman Sachs (GS) up 3.23 to 160.48, and Potash (POT) up 2.60 to 92.72. The Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) snapped back 3.11 to 68.08, the iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF (EWZ) up 1.30 to 58.96, and the U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) up 1.34 at 36.86, as oil snapped back today.

American International Group (AIG) jumped 1.13 to 24.55, and Mosaic (MOS) was up 1.56 to 52.68. The iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (FXI) gained 90 cents to 40.03, China Green Agriculture (CGA) snapped back 77 cents to 13.35, and Canadian Solar (CSIQ) added 57 cents to 16.09.

Radian (RDN) gained 67 cents to 7.87.

On the downside, the ultrashort ETFs got hit a little bit. The Direxion Financial Bear 3x Shares (FAZ) dropped 1.39 to 27.26, the Direxion Small Cap 3x Bear (TZA) 63 cents to 16.26, the UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) 31 cents to 13.18, and the Direxion Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) down 71 cents to 27.00.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, they were up in a 5-wave advance today that reached key overhead resistance and then they backed off in the last 10 minutes. We’ll see if that’s significant or not, but certainly the set-up is there for sharply lower prices if the indices fail at these levels. This is a key point for the indices, and we’ll see what we get tomorrow as we move towards the end of the week into options expiration.

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