The indices finally backed off as profit taking finally set in, but they started with a bang to the upside early on and hit nominal new 2009 highs before they began to back off in the morning.

At that point they began to stair-step lower in a nice orderly down-channel all day. I’m not sure if that means we’re getting the start of a significant down move just yet, but we’ll see if they can at least get downside follow-through in the next day or two.

Net on the day the Dow was down 93.79 at 10197.47, the S&P 500 11.27 at 1087.24, and the Nasdaq 100 down 9.81 at 1773.14. All those were higher in the morning, so we had a reversal day today, with the indices closing near the rising moving averages on their hourly charts.

Advance-declines were decidedly negative by 4 to 1 on New York and 3 to 1 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 6 to 1 negative on New York on total volume of just over 1 billion. Nasdaq traded just under 2.2 billion and had a 2 to 1 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly negative, but there were plenty of gainers. On the plus side, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on a settlment with Intel (INTC) jumped 1.16 on 162 million shares to close at 6.48.

China Automotive (CAAS) on strong earnings gained 1.63 to 16.25, but traded more than a point higher earlier in the session.

Nanometrics (NANO) continued its recent run, following through to yesterday’s breakout, up 1 to 9.86 on 1.6 million traded.

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

Among the fractional gainers, Sinovac (SVA) in the junior biotech group was up 73 cents to 9.59 on 5 1/4 million Revlon (REV) gyrated but closed up 59 cents to 15.10.

Genco (GNK) jumped 34 cents to 24.10, but traded as high as 25 earlier in the session, in a generally firm shipping group after the Baltic Dry Index advanced for the 10th consecutive session.

The Direxion Small Cap 3x Bear (TZA) added 70 cents to 12.76 and the Direxion Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) up 58 cents to 19.03.

On the downside, the Direxion Daily Small Cap Bull 3x Shares (TNA) was down 2.31 at 39.46. and Direxion Large Cap Bull 3X Shares (BGU) 1.17 to 54.77.

Goldman Sachs (GS) lost 1.37 to 178.48, Apple (AAPL) 1.26 to 201.99, and Protalix (PLX) 1.08 to 10.25.

Kongzhong Corp. (KONG) gave back 1.06 to 14.07, and the U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) 1.04 to 39.51 as oil weakened today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up early but down for the rest of the session in stair-step fashion, took out initial minor support, but held near secondary and more key price and moving average support. Important test tomorrow to see if they can hold or not.

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