The stock market indices started out the day with a big gap to the downside and made new pullback lows, but quickly turned it around and very sharply. The Nasdaq 100 rallied from 1801, holding that 1800 level, all the way up to 1834 before a pullback ensued in the afternoon that took back about 50% of the gains. The S&P 500 rallied from just under 1070 to 1082.60. They did back off again, but came on in the last half hour to close near flat on the session.

Net on the day, the Dow closed down just 1.14 at 10,302.01. The S&P 500 was up 0.13 at 1079.38, and the Nasdaq 100 up 2.71 at 1821.70.

Advance/declines were better than 3 to 2 positive on the New York Stock Exchange, and about 8 to 5 positive on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was dead-even flat on New York on total volume of a paltry 760 million shares. Nasdaq had about a 5 to 3 positive ratio on advancing volume over declining volume, and total volume was 1.6 billion.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was mostly narrowly mixed. There were two stocks up as much as a point, and two stocks down as much as a point.

On the plus side, Isilon Systems, Inc. (ISLN) gained 1.39 to 17.47, and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) 1.38 to 126.07. Low-priced Synutra International Inc. (SYUT) was up 1.97 at 14.25.

On the downside, Apple Inc. (AAPL) lost 1.46 to 247.64, and the Direxion Daily Emrg Mkts Bear 3X Shares (EDZ) was down 1.05 to 35.98. Those were the only point-plus changes today.

Other large fractional gainers of note included Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL) up 49 cents at 22.25, Valassis Communications Inc. (VCI) 83 cents at 32 even, Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) 46 cents to 18.78, RINO International Corporation (RINO) 55 cents to 14.88, and Dendreon Corp. (DNDN) 73 cents to 37.21.

ADTRAN Inc. (ADTN) gained 47 cents to 30.09, and Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ARNA), which had a nice session, was up 42 cents to 7.05 on 9.6 million shares today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were down sharply at the opening, rallied very sharply, reached their highs by late morning towards midday, and then rolled over, giving back a big chunk of the gains before bouncing into the close. Net on the day, however, they closed near the zero-line with just very small fractional changes.

I'm not sure what that means to the trend, but the overall pattern at this point is beginning to look more constructive, though still in a downtrend, and until that changes with a thrust to the upside that takes out key overhead resistance, right now at 1840 NDX and around the 1080 range on the S&P 500, we have to assume the trend is going to continue lower.

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