The stock market indices ended the week on an up note, but the road to that finish was a choppy one. It started off with a little bit of a move down, then rallied immediately to test the highs in the morning. When that was unsuccessful, they backed off rather sharply to get to the new lows on the NDX, but held right at 1880.

At that point, the S&P 500 made a higher low, and they set off on an afternoon rally, which took the NDX from 1880 up to 1895 and the SPX from 1105 to 1100. In the last hour they backed and filled a bit, but closed positively on the day.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 47.53 at 10,462.77, the S&P 500 up 5.37 at 1109.55, and the Nasdaq 100 up 6.20 at 1892.34.

Technicals were positive today. Advance-declines were nearly 2 to 1 positive on the New York Stock Exchange. On Nasdaq, however, they were only 14 to 11 positive. Up/down volume was about 5 to 2 positive on New York, with total volume of less than 720 million shares, probably the low for the year. Nasdaq had a negative volume ratio of 9 to 7 with total volume of 1 2/3 billion shares traded.

TheTechTrader.com board was busy and active, but many of the stocks were narrowly mixed. There were actually more losers than gainers today on our board.

Leading gainers included Transocean Ltd. (RIG) up 3.52 at 58.82, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) up 2.06 at 142.44, and Goldman Sachs (GS) 1.25 at 150.39. Low-priced Blue Dolphin Energy Company (BDCO) jumped a substantial percentage today, closing at 3.00, up 1.27.

In addition, Medicines Co. (MDCO) was up 79 cents to 13.96, CommVault Systems, Inc. (CVLT) 51 cents to 26.85, China New Borun Corporation (BORN) 85 cents to 10.50, Oclaro, Inc. (OCLR) 54 cents to 13.38, and Dendreon Corp. (DNDN) 46 cents to 41.93.

All other stocks on our board were pretty much fractionally mixed.

There were no losers of a point or more, but some of the highlights of the losing sector were OmniVision Technologies Inc. (OVTI), down 44 cents to 19.41, and Cree Inc. (CREE), down 68 cents to 48.72, continuing its weakness. Cirrus Logic Inc. (CRUS) dropped 84 cents to 15.18, Acme Packet, Inc. (APKT) 28 cents to 36.06, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ARNA) 20 cents to 7.01, and China Green Agriculture, Inc. (CGA) down 22 cents to 8.55.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up in the morning, down mid-day to the session lows, and then rallied all afternoon until the last hour when they backed and filled, but were unable to break out to new highs.

The SPX appeared stymied at the 1110-1111 zone, while NDX had difficulty getting through 1895-1900 zone. Nevertheless, it was a strong week, as the indices ended near the highs for the week going away.

So we’ll see if we get any follow-through next week.

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