The stock market indices ended the day mixed and had kind of a sloppy session, starting out the day with a drop early on. They then bounced back, reaching resistance, but couldn’t get through, and then backed and filled for most of the afternoon in about a 5-point range for several hours on the Nasdaq 100 and about a 3-point range on the S&P 500.

Late in the day they backed off to pare back some of the gains on Nasdaq and increase the losses for the blue chips, which ended down today.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 37.24 at 11,406.84. The S&P 500 was down 2.60 at 1223.25, and Nasdaq 100 up 2.23 at 2188.94.

Advance-declines were about 16 to 13 negative on the New York Stock Exchange, and about 13 to 12 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was a little less than 5 to 4 negative on New York on total volume of about 890 million shares today. Nasdaq traded 1.8 billion and had a 9 to 8 positive ratio on advancing volume over declining volume.

TheTechTrader.com board was very mixed, but there were some outstanding point-plus gainers. SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) was up 3.00 to 34.88, IDT Corporation (IDT) 2.00 to 17.50, Motricity, Inc. (MOTR) 1.96 to 29.86, and Ebix Inc. (EBIX) 1.10 to 26.28. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) gained 1.22 to 171.99, and Apple Inc. (AAPL) 1.49 to 318.62.

Those were the point-plus gainers today.

Other gainers of note included Spreadtrum Communications Inc. (SPRD) up 64 cents to 16.73, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (JAZZ) 69 cents to 14.97, and LivePerson Inc. (LPSN) 70 cents to 9.88. Cree Inc. (CREE) jumped 99 cents to 55.48, and Aastrom Biosciences, Inc. (ASTM) had a strong session on nearly 5 million shares, up 57 cents to 3.40.

On the downside, losers of note included SIGA Technologies, Inc. (SIGA) down 30 cents to 12.92, Goldman Sachs (GS) 1.87 to 169.20, Dendreon Corp. (DNDN) 84 cents to 34.23, Isilon Systems, Inc. (ISLN) 64 cents to 27.31, and MIPS Technologies Inc. (MIPS) 57 cents to 14.47.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were down early, snapped back in the morning, and then went to sleep for most of the afternoon in a sideways pattern that smacks of consolidation.

We’ll see if they’re able to break to the upside tomorrow and extend the move or if we get a turnaround Tuesday and they start to come down. In any case, it was a quiet, sloppy day for the indices for the most part to start off the week.

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