The stock market indices had an up day today, but sold off in the last half hour to take back some of the gains. The day started out lower with a bit of testing-type action. After a double-bottom, they rallied from midmorning to late afternoon steadily, taking the Nasdaq 100 from 2306 to 2332 and the S&P 500 from 1314 1/2 to over 1328. In the last hour, particularly the last 15-20 minutes, they sold off to take back a small chunk of the gains.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 8.10 at 12,402.76, the S&P 500 up 5.22 at 1325.69, and the Nasdaq 100 up 14.98 at 2325.93.

Advance-declines were nearly 21 to 8 positive on the New York Stock Exchange and 18 to 7 positive on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 3 to 2 positive on New York with total volume of about 830 million shares. Nasdaq traded 1.9 billion shares and had about a 15 to 4 positive volume ratio, or nearly 4 to 1.

TheTechTrader.com board had a very good day today, with several multiple point-plus gainers. Emergent BioSolutions, Inc. (EBS) was up 3.33 to 24.77, amd Clean Diesel Technologies Inc. (CDTI) up 3.70 to 7.60, or 95.8%, on 4.5 million shares, which is huge volume for this stock. VocalTec Communications Ltd. (CALL) was up 3.07 to 24.77, Ascena Retail Group (ASNA) 2.31 to 33.01, NetApp, Inc. (NTAP) 3.58 to 55.31, Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CBST) 1.54 to 38.30, and Quepasa Corp. (QPSA) 1.19 to 7.99.

Other gainers of note included MAKO Surgical Corp. (MAKO) up 1.66 to 34.66, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) jumped 1.48 to 60.51, NXP Semiconductors NV (NXPI) 1.33 to 28.55, Sequans Communications S.A. Ame (SQNS) 1.57 to 13.67, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) 2.74 to 195.00 even.

Those were the point-plus gainers on our board today.

On the downside there were only two losers, Apple Inc. (AAPL) down 1.78 to 335.00 even, and the ultra-short ETF Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) down 1.43 to 35.37.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were down early, backed and filled, tested, and when that was successful they rallied most of the rest of the session until about the last 15-20 minutes when they backed off into the close.

Still, the indices remains in a down trend, but rallied back up to overhead resistance.

We’ll see if they can pop through or whether they’re not done yet on the down side and their pullback channel will extend or not.

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