The stock market indices managed to eek out a gain at the end of the day today, only because of a late afternoon rally.

The day started out on the plus side and then sold off in a 3-wave decline by midday, reaching the session lows at that point. When further downside was unable to be attained, the indices tried the upside, tested the declining topslines, backed off there, but came on again and blew through them with a couple hours to go. They then stair-stepped their way higher near the afternoon highs at the close to put the indices back in the plus column.

At the end of the day, the Dow was up just 5.74 at 10.255.28, the S&P 500 up 4.45 at 1102.83, and the Nasdaq 100, however, was up 16.07 at 1895.66.

Advance-declines today were very positive by about 19 to 11 on the New York Stock Exchange, and by about 8 to 5 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 7 to 4 positive on New York on total volume of 1.2 billion. Nasdaq traded 2.1 billion shares and had about a 3 to 1 positive ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was mostly up today. Leading the way was Google Inc. (GOOG), up 12.23 to 505.60. Transocean Ltd. (RIG), a new portfolio position, jumped 2.76 and closed at 51.11 on 29 million shares. Coinstar Inc. (CSTR), one of our current favorites, was up 2.77 at 57.83, and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) gained 2.45 at 128.76.

Among other gainers of note, Xyratex Ltd. (XRTX) advanced 59 cents to 16.30, Solarfun Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (SOLF) 53 cents to 7.50, RINO International Corporation (RINO) 62 cents to 13.23, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG) 66 cents to 15.08, and Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP) 59 cents to 18.48 in a firm oil group.

In addition, Mindspeed Technologies Inc. (MSPD) jumped 60 cents to 9.65, Cree Inc. (CREE) 85 cents to 68.22, Cirrus Logic Inc. (CRUS) 35 cents to 14.93, Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) 68 cents to 76.66, and China Automotive Systems Inc. (CAAS) 45 cents to 18.94.

ETFs were very narrowly mixed today, with the Direxion Daily Emrg Mkts Bear 3X Shares (EDZ) up just 55 cents to 48.23, while the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) dropped 47 cents to 28.40.

Other losses of note, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) could not get in the plus column and was off 79 cents at 144.04. Delcath Systems Inc. (DCTH) backed off 41 cents at 15.54, and Apple Inc. (AAPL) lost 83 cents to 263.12.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up at the opening, backed off in a 3-wave decline in the morning, and then stair-stepped their way higher in the afternoon to close not far off the session highs. Positive day for the bulls and the rally off the lows extended itself today nominally.

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