The indices had a downday on Tuesday, giving back some of yesterday’s big gains. The day started out with a move to new snapback highs on the S&P 500. At that point, the Nasdaq 100 failed to take out the highs, creating a negative divergence. They sold off quite sharply after consumer sentiment information came out. Then the market bounced, rolled over, and made their session lows in late morning until lunch.

A snapback rally ensued, taking back about half the losses, but then they rolled back over in the last couple hours and faded into the close. Net on the day the Dow was down 47.16 to 9742.20, the S&P 500 down 2.37 at 1060.61, and the Nasdaq 100 down 6.92 to 1717.67.

Advance-declines ended slightly negative on New York by a little more than 100 issues and negative on Nasdaq by 457 issues. Up/down volume was flat on New York on total volume of a little less than 1.2 billion. Nasdaq traded more than 2.7 billion and had a 4 to 3 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board as result was mostly negative, but most were just marginally negative. However, Sequenom (SQNM) got slammed to 3.46, down 2.20 on 58 million shares, after announcing the firing and resignation of several key employees, including their CEO and CFO. The Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) dropped 1.31 to 83.73.

On the plus side, Goldman Sachs (GS) was up 1.08 to 183.58, the only point-plus gainer on our board. Other gainers of note, CIT Financial (CIT) was up 53 cents to 2.20, a big percentage gain there, and DryShips (DRYS) gained 43 cents to 6.81 on 33 million shares.

The ultrashorts were slightly positive, with the Direxion Financial Bear 3x Shares (FAZ) down 28 cents to 20.42, the UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) 29 cents to 9.53, the the Direxion Small Cap 3x Bear (TZA) up 18 cents to 11.75, and the Direxion Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) up only 8 cents to 21.18.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, they were down in the morning, up mid-day, and back down in the afternoon, closing negative on the session. The overall look still has the feel of a potential top being put in place.

This is also a key support area for NDX and SPX, so we’ll see if they get a downside follow-through or if they manage to hold support and rally back again.

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