The week started off with a bang, as the stock market indices had very strong gains in very bullish fashion. The indices started out with a surge to the upside and rallied strongly. By mid-morning they consolidated in a flag, broke out, made new highs by mid-day, looped back to retest but held support, and then spurred in the afternoon. In the last couple hours they did back off, especially in the last 45 minutes when they rolled over pretty sharply to take back a good chunk of the gains, but still the Dow managed to close over 12,000.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 108.98 at 12,043.56, about 45 points off its high. The S&P 500 was up 11.65 at 1280.10, nearly 5 points off its high, and Nasdaq 100 up 35.18 at 2252.24, 11 points off its high.

Advance-declines were a little better than 2 to 1 positive on the New York Stock Exchange, and about 2 to 1 positive on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 4 to 1 positive on New York on volume of a light 820 million shares. Nasdaq traded 1.7 billion and had about a 13 to 4 positive volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was strongly higher today, with some large gainers as well. The biggest percentage gainer today was ICAgen Inc. (ICGN), which jumped 3.93 to 6.33, up 163%, by far the leader on the board.

Other gainers of note included EZCORP Inc. (EZPW) up 2.25 to 34.32, Fusion-io Inc. (FIO) up 4.97 to 33.70, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AMLN) up 85 cents to 12.68, and Caribou Coffee Company, Inc. (CBOU) up 87 cents to 13.84.

In addition, Apple Inc. (AAPL) was up 5.69 to 332.04, and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) jumped 8.70 to 201.25. Those were two stocks that certainly helped the market to move higher today.

SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) was up 3.51 to 57.27, LSB Industries Inc. (LXU) 1.74 to 43.17, MAKO Surgical Corp. (MAKO) 1.03 to 28.82, Nanometrics Incorporated (NANO) 1.45 to 18.31, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) 2.55 to 167.62, and Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP) 1.10 to 27.99.

Other percentage gainers included low-priced biotech Tiens Biotech Group USA Inc. (TBV) up 67 cents, or 65%, to 1.70. Servidyne, Inc. (SERV) gained 1.19 to 3.45, up 53%, and YRC Worldwide Inc. (YRCW) 48 cents to 1.60, up 43%. GSV Capital Corp (GSVC) advanced 4.30 to 14.57, up 42%. On the downside, the only point-plus losers on our board today was ultra-short ETF Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ), down 1.43 to 49.17.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices had a nice 5-wave move up today off the opening prices, with the NDX jumping from 2217 to 2263, and the S&P 500 jumping from 1258 to 1285. They backed off in the last half hour, but they still had a very nice start to the week with a breakout on the NDX above the recent highs. The S&P 500 still has a lot of work to do since it’s still trailing here with a bit of non-confirmation.

We’ll see if there’s a follow-through tomorrow.

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