The stock market indices suffered a nasty spill in a very negative session today. They gapped lower at the opening, went down sharply in the morning despite a 15-minute bounce, and then rolled over hard to the session lows just before noon when they tagged 1811 on the Nasdaq 100 and 1070.66 on the S&P 500.

At that point they were steeply oversold intraday, and managed to stage a countertrend rally, more of a corrective-type move, that saw the NDX bounce back in a 3-wave move that took it from 1811 to 1830. The SPX at that point moved from the 1071 area to just under 1080, but resistance at 1830 NDX and 1080 SPX proved formidable, and they pulled back in the last hour and closed solidly negative today.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 144.33 at 10,271.21. The S&P 500 was down 18.53 at 1075.63, and the Nasdaq 100 down 27.80 at 1823.00 even.

Advance/declines were about 5 to 1 negative on the New York Stock Exchange and 4 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 12 to 1 negative on New York with total volume that crossed 1 billion today on some late volume. Nasdaq wasn’t quite as bad, but was about 5 to 1 negative with total volume of just under 2.1 billion shares.

TheTechTrader.com board was nearly all negative except for just a few issues, and obviously the ultra-shorts. Leading the way to the downside, Google Inc. (GOOG) lost 14.18 to 467.97, Apple Inc. (AAPL) 3.19 to 249.88, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) 2.08 to 127.57, Transocean Ltd. (RIG) 1.77 to 52.31, Goldman Sachs (GS) 2.15 to 147.05, Cirrus Logic Inc. (CRUS) 1.31 to 17.54, Cree Inc. (CREE) 1.49 to 58.23, BP Exploration plc (BP) 1.06 to 36.24, and Acme Packet, Inc. (APKT) 1.33 to 31.45.

Ultra-long ETF Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares (FAS) was down 1.29 to 19.18.

On the plus side, leading the way was the Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) up 2.76 at 37.26, the only point-plus gainer on our board.

Ultra-short ETF Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) gained 98 cents to 15.89, Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) 73 cents to 15.37, Direxion Daily Emrg Mkts Bear 3X Shares (EDZ) 74 cents to 35.65, and the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) 98 cents to 23.20.

In the Chinese sector, RINO International Corporation (RINO) advanced 53 cents to 16.85 and China Agritech Inc. (CAGC) 32 cents to 17.27, as several Chinese stocks managed to eek out gains today.

Today’s lows are going to be key levels to watch going forward as 1070-71 on the S&P 500 and the 1810-12 zone on the NDX appear to be key short-term support at this point.

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