The stock market indices had another up day today, but the path was volatile. They opened higher, went to the session highs on the S&P 500 and morning highs on the NDX. They then came down in a 3-wave decline, broke minor support on the NDX, but held them on the S&P 500, and then rallied back to nominal new highs on the NDX but not the S&P 500. Then they pulled back down in the last 30-45 minutes, and then came on again and closed firm.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 45.14 at 12,605.32, the S&P 500 up 2.92 at 1343.60, and the Nasdaq 100 6.72 at 2369.67.

Advance-declines were nearly 3 to 2 positive on the New York Stock Exchange and just barely positive by 9 issues on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 4 to 3 positive on New York with total volume of a light 835 million shares. Nasdaq traded a little better than 1.7 billion shares and had about a 10 to 7 positive ratio.

TheTechTrader.com was particularly strong today. Leading the way today was SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) up 2.40 to 56.39, PetSmart, Inc. (PETM) 3.22 to 45.71, portfolio position Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) 1.85 to 28.20, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) 2.16 to 60.52, MAKO Surgical Corp. (MAKO) 1.51 to 30.10, BroadSoft, Inc. (BSFT) 2.12 to 40.69, and Amarin Corporation plc (AMRN) 1.30 to 17.87.

There were quite a few large fractional gainers today. Portfolio position Ultratech, Inc. (UTEK) was up 62 cents to 32.25, ServiceSource International, In (SREV) 43 cents to 19.68, Superconductor Technologies Inc. (SCON) 46 cents to 2.92, Syneron Medical Ltd. (ELOS) 77 cents to 13.06, and Cardiovascular Systems Inc. (CSII) 71 cents to 14.10.

In addition, Accelr8 Technology Corp. (AXK) gained 66 cents to 4.41, and Mercer International Inc. (MERC) 1.04 to 13.29.

On the downside, the only point-plus loser was Goldman Sachs (GS) down 1.50 to 139.34, continuing its recent weakness.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were up early, but then fell to session lows by midmorning only to snapback midday. A pullback in the afternoon resulted in higher lows, and then they rallied back into the close.

It was a consolidation-type session, but a positive one as we go into Friday’s session on another up day.

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