The stock market indices had another up day to close the week, although they gave back a chunk of their gains in the afternoon part of the session when the indices pulled back in orderly channels. But it looked more constructive and consolidative. So it will be interesting to see what kind of follow-through they get up or down on Monday. Although the indices did back off at key overhead resistance and at key overbought levels this afternoon, we weren’t surprised to see the pullback and actually called it.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 50.03 at 12,220.59. The S&P 500 was up 4.14 at 1313.80, and the Nasdaq 100 up 4.27 at 2316.32.

Advance-declines were just under 2 to 1 positive on the New York Stock Exchange and about 3 to 2 positive on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was just a little less than 2 to 1 positive on New York, with total volume of about 800 million shares. Nasdaq traded just under 1.8 billion shares and had about a 10 to 7 positive ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mixed today, but there were plenty of gainers. Leading the way in terms of percentage gains was Body Central Corp. (BODY) up 4.70 to 23.20, Youku.com Inc. American Deposit (YOKU) 4.19 to 49.99, Silicon Graphics International Corp. (SGI) 1.83 to 19.49, ZAGG Incorporated (ZAGG) 1.04 to 7.41, LSB Industries Inc. (LXU) 1.31 to 39.28, and Astea International Inc. (ATEA) 1.83 to 5.83, a 45.75% there.

Among other gainers of note, Travelzoo Inc. (TZOO) jumped 4.17 to 60.94, SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) 1.39 to 42.01, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG) 1.03 to 27.30, and Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP) 1.15 to 35.28, in a generally strong oil patch sector.

Among large-cap stocks, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG) was up 5.76 to 256.74, Apple Inc. (AAPL) 6.57 to 351.54, and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) 2.14 to 162.18.

On the downside there were no point-plus losers except for Goldman Sachs (GS), which gave back 1.94 to 157.97, and the ultra-short ETF Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA), which lost 1.03 to 37.71.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices gapped up, pulled back, and consolidated early on. They then exploded mid-morning to reach the session highs just before noon, and then stair-stepped their way lower all afternoon to close near the afternoon lows, but above the session lows and certainly positive on the session.

A pretty good way to end the week considering there were prior gains in the last few sessions.

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