The markets had a very unusual session and ended mixed but narrow, but underlying technicals told a different story.

The day started out with a sharp move up off the lows that tested the Nasdaq 100 mid-to-late October highs. The S&P 500 fell about 5 points short, getting up to 1096.42, the previous high being over 1101. Then they rolled over quite sharply, went to new session lows on the SPX, but the NDX failed to confirm and did not make new lows. That caused a snapback rally. The indices moved back steadily, retested the highs, fell a little short, and then rolled over in the last hour only to bounce in the last 5 minutes.

Net on the day the Dow was up just 20.03 at 10,246.97, the S&P 500 down 0.07 at 1093.01, and the Nasdaq 100 was up 4.77.

Despite that, decliners led advancers by 490 issues on New York and by more than 900 on Nasdaq. Very negative divergence on the underlying technicals, belying the positive action on most of the indices.

TheTechTrader.com board as a result of all that action was very mixed with very few point-plus changes.

Leading the way to the upside was American International Group (AIG), up 1.41 to 37.59.

The only point-plus loser was Revlon (REV), which gave back 1.09 to 13.70 after its recent big surge.

Other than that, there were only fractional movers. On the upside, China Automotive (CAAS) gained 84 cents to 14.14, reaching 14.25, a new multi-year high

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) jumped 80 cents to 11.79 on 3.6 million shares. Human Genome Sciences (HGSI) added 25 cents to 28.55 and Sinovac (SVA) up 29 cents to 8.49 in a generally firm junior biotech group.

Rackspace (RAX) was up 48 cents to 18.80 on strong earnings. The Direxion Small Cap 3x Bear (TZA) despite the indexes being up actually closed up 23 cents today at 12.36.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, tomorrow’s going to be a very interesting session, as the indices stand precariously on the edge of the abyss in my opinion. We’ll see if we get a sell-off in the next day or two. Many technical indicators at this point are screaming sell.

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