The stock market indices suffered more losses today. They tried to rally in the afternoon, but closed not far off the lows on Nasdaq 100 and just slightly above them on the S&P 500.

The day started out with a move just slightly higher, but the S&P 500 was much stronger than the NDX, which was soft. Then they sold off steadily until early afternoon when they rebounded to take back about half of the losses, but then rolled over in the last half hour of the session.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 25.05 at 12,356.21, the S&P 500 down 1.09 at 1316.28, and the Nasdaq 100 down 13.23 at 2303.55.

Advance-declines were about 16 to 14 negative on the New York Stock Exchange and about 3 to 2 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume ended positive on New York with total volume of about 850 million shares. Nasdaq traded about 1.8 billion shares and had about a 10 to 7 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mixed, but there were a lot of point-plus gainers today. Leaders included SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) up 3.45 to 57.86, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) up 2.86 to 60.67, and Global Crossing Ltd. (GLBC), one of our day trades, up 2.88 to 33.19. Sequans Communications S.A. Ame (SQNS) gained 1.62 to 13.35, Tele Norte Leste Participacoes S.A. (TNE) 2.24 to 18.79, Sify Technologies Limited (SIFY) 1.19 to 5.62, or 26.9%, Orsus Xelent Technologies Inc. (ORS) 64 cents to 3.06, and Westport Innovations Inc. (WPRT) 1.44 to 24.03. Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (QCOR) snapped back 1.37 to 22.29 today.

On the downside, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) lost 2.95 to 193.27, Apple Inc. (AAPL) 2.21 to 332.19, and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ONXX) 1.57 to 41.36.

The ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL) lost 1.67 to 17.92, and the ProShares UltraShort DJ-UBS Crude Oil (SCO) was down 2.02 to 45.26.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were slightly firm early on, but sold off steadily until early afternoon when they tried to bounce. In the last half hour they rolled over and closed near the session lows on Nasdaq-- not only the session lows, but multi-week lows. The S&P 500 is perched on the precipice, so to speak, as support in the 1313 1/2 to 1314 zone is just a couple points away from here.

We’ll see if they get any follow-through to the downside tomorrow or whether they can stabilize and rally back.

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