The stock market indices spent Friday's session consolidating. After an early morning run up, they backed off, and then meandered sideways in coil-type fashion. At the end of the day some last hour firming brought the indices back into the plus column.

Net on the day, however, the Dow was up 16.47 at 10,450.64, the S&P 500 up 1.47 at 1117.51, and the Nasdaq 100 up 2.83 at 1913.48.

Advance/declines were positive by about 347 issues on the New York Stock Exchange and by just 208 issues on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 9 to 7 positive on New York, with 1.7 billion shares traded. Nasdaq traded just under 2 billion shares. It was quadruple witching options expiration, but the indices marked time while options expired. It should be interesting next week to see if they extend or not.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was mixed, but there were some point-plus gainers on the board. They included Transocean Ltd. (RIG), which continued its snapback from recent losses, up 5.18 at 54.61 on 34.6 million. Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) was up 1.62 to 74.09, and Apple Inc. (AAPL) up 2.20 to 274.07, reaching a new all-time new high at 275.00 today.

Other gainers of note, Cirrus Logic Inc. (CRUS) advanced another 82 cents to 17.82, Acme Packet, Inc. (APKT) 48 cents to 29.85, FSI International Inc. (FSII) 43 cents to 4.93, OmniVision Technologies Inc. (OVTI) 55 cents to 23.40, and portfolio position Uroplasty Inc. (UPI) 59 cents to 6.49.

On the downside, the only point-plus loser was Coinstar Inc. (CSTR), which dropped 2.34 to 48.95.

Other losers of note, VIVUS Inc. (VVUS) dropped 55 cents at 10.05, Westport Innovations Inc. (WPRT) 38 cents to 18.62, RINO International Corporation (RINO) 55 cents to 14.29, Delcath Systems Inc. (DCTH) 35 cents to 9.06, and Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP) 38 cents to 17.82.

The ultra-short ETFs were off, with the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) down 45 cents to 25.07, and the Direxion Daily Emrg Mkts Bear 3X Shares (EDZ) down 57 cents to 42.31.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up early, but backed off by mid-day, and then meandered in narrow ranges for the rest of the session as options expired on Friday. But the rally rolled on, although overhead resistance thwarted any additional advances, peaking out at around the 1121 range on the SPX and 1921 on the NDX.

We’ll see if they can make any progress next week, but it could be a volatile one.

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