We had an up-day, but the indices gave back all or most of the gains in an afternoon slide. But they again recovered in the last hour to close up on the session.

Net on the day the Dow was up 20.86 at 9885.80, the S&P 500 up 4.70 at 1076.19, and the Nasdaq 100 up only 1.87 to 1729.63, about 13 points off its high for the day.

Advance-declines were 16 to 13 positive on New York and 14 to 12 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 2 to 1 positive on New York on total volume of a light 927 million shares. Nasdaq traded about 1 3/4 billion and had a less than 9 to 8 positive volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly narrowly mixed, but there were some outstanding issues. On the plus side, RINO International (RINO) led the way, up 1.70 at 25.30. Wells Fargo (WFC) exploded through 30 for the first time this year, up 1.07 to 30.28, a new 2009 high.

Dendreon (DNDN) on rumors of a drug deal was up 1.25 to 28.73 on nearly 6 million. Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) was up 1.79 to 88.21, as financials were strong.

Those were the only point-plus gainers on our board.

Among other gainers, the U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) was up 53 cents at 37.69 as oil firmed. A123 Systems (AONE), a relatively new issue, added 70 cents to 22. Portfolio position India Globalization (IGC) advanced 30 cents to 1.99.

On the downside, the only point-plus loser was DepoMed (DEPO), which got hammered on poor Phase III drug trial results down 2.39 to 3.97 on more than 10.6 million.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, they gapped up, ran hard in the morning, and just fell short of the previous 2009 SPX high but failed, and we now have a near double-top on that index.

Will today’s late comeback be significant, or is it just a technical snapback before they go lower?

That remains to be seen. We’ll see if tomorrow turns out to be a turnaround Tuesday or not.

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