The stock market indices moved higher in the morning and reached new rally highs but backed off sharply shortly thereafter. The rest of the day they bounced back and forth and vacillated in coil-type fashions, but were not able to make any progress either way, although a late afternoon test of support threatened to break but held.

Net on the day they closed very narrowly mixed, with the Dow up 12.85 at 10,624.69, the S&P 500 down just .25 at 1149.99, and the Nasdaq 100 up .62 at 1924.43.

Advance-declines were about 330 issues to the positive side on the New York Stock Exchange and negative by 260 issues on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 5 to 4 negative on New York and about 11 to 9 negative on Nasdaq.

So, a narrowly mixed day today, as the indices marked time and possibly some Friday profit-taking set in to balance out the buying.

TheTechTrader.com board as a result was narrowly mixed as well, but there were some outstanding issues today. Leading the way from a percentage standpoint today was Intellipharmaceutics Internatio (IPCI), which jumped by midday and closed at 4.14, up 2.62, a gain of 172% today.

Other point-plus gainers included RINO International (RINO), up 1.23 at 23.80, and China Agritech (CAGC), up 1.36 at 30 even in a firm Chinese sector.

Other issues of note on the long side, Dendreon (DNDN) jumped 74 cents to 36.75, tagging 37.09, a new all-time high this morning. Brigham Exploration (BEXP) in the junior oil sector was up another 40 cents to 17.54, and DJSP Enterprises (DJSP) 46 cents to 10.96. These were the more substantial fractional gainers.

On the downside, no issues were down as much as a point on our board other than NuVasive, Inc. (NUVA), off 1.10 at 44.10.

Other fractional losers included American International Group (AIG) down 88 cents to 34.23, the Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) off 55 cents at 89.20, and U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) down 54 cents at 39.51. Other than that there were very narrow fractional changes on our board today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices popped early on, backed off sharply and then meandered sideways for the rest of the session in a consolidative nature, holding the moving averages on the hourly charts and certainly showing no signs of wanting to cave.

We’ll see if they can extend them next week or whether they reverse them and turn them down, but right now the rally rolls on.

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