The stock market indices suffered a historic setback today in terms of the technicals, and in terms of points it was quite nasty as well. There was a huge gap down at the opening, followed by a short consolidation, which was followed by more selling. It did bounce in the morning, but then made lower lows and reached the session lows on the Nasdaq 100 during the lunch hour. At that point they had a strong 3-wave rally back, but failed at secondary resistance at 1840 on the NDX and 1095 on the S&P 500.

In the last hour they rolled over hard, actually closing at new session lows going away on the SPX and the Dow.

Net on the day, the Dow closed was down 376.36 at 10,068.01, the S&P 500 down 43.46 at 1071.59, and the Nasdaq 100 down 73.30 at 1800.12, and even the S&P 100 (OEX) lost 19.30 to 487.93.

The technicals were about as bad as I think I’ve ever seen them. Advance-declines were 20 to 1 negative on the New York Stock Exchange, and about 11 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 40 to 1 negative on New York and even worse than that on Nasdaq. Very, very negative, historical numbers!

Advancing volume on Nasdaq was 73.7 million, while declining volume was a staggering 3 1/4 billion. Total volume was about 3 1/3 billion shares traded on Nasdaq and about 2 1/3 billion on New York. So, nearly 5 3/4 billion shares were traded today on both exchanges, which is extremely heavy volume.

The tick got to -1411 on New York and -922 on Nasdaq. More importantly, after the afternoon rally failed, the indices rolled over and closed at or near the session lows going away. A very negative indicator for further downside tomorrow.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was mostly down today. Leading the way on the upside were the ultra-short ETFs, of course. The Direxion Daily Emrg Mkts Bear 3X Shares ETF (EDZ) jumped 7.87 at 61.23, and the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) was up 4.22 at 34.07. The ProShares UltraShort Real Estate (SRS) advanced 2.70 to 31.20, the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) 2 to 16.94, the Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) 1.75 to 17.05, the Direxion Daily Real Estate Bear 3X Shares (DRV) 1.18 to 8.79, and the Direxion Small Large Cap Bear 3X Shares 1.01 to 7.68.

A couple stocks on our board managed to gain fractions. Houston American Energy Corp. (HUSA) snapped back 35 cents from recent losses to 9.65. Hauppauge Digital Inc. (HAUP) jumped late in the session, although it did give back a piece of it, closing up 19 cents today at 3.29.

Leading the way on the downside today were multiple heavy-point losses in some of the big caps. Google Inc. (GOOG) dropped 19.42 to 475.01, Cree Inc. (CREE) 6.14 at 65.13, Apple Inc. (AAPL) down 10.58 at 237.76, and Amazon.com (AMZN) 4.88 at 119.71.

American International Group Inc. (AIG) lost 2.52 at 34.81, Akamai Technologies Inc. (AKAM) 2.32 at 37.63, Baidu Inc. (BIDU) 2.55 at 67.58, Goldman Sachs (GS) 4 at 136.10, and Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) 1.90 at 19.85. These were among many other point-plus losers today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices gapped down and got slammed early, managed to snap back a portion in the morning, but rolled over to set new lows before trying a 3-wave rally back. That was the strongest portion of the session. When that failed to break through secondary resistance, the indices rolled over hard into the close, and closed near the day’s low.

So, it was a very, very negative day indeed for the indices, closing near the crash lows of May 6th. There’s key support in this zone that if violated could lead to much more downside. So stay alert and make sure you have stops in all of your positions.

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