The stock market indices had a soft session today, as a late afternoon pullback put them into negative territory. But they did do a good job of consolidating yesterday’s big gains. At the end of the day the technicals were positive by a small margin on the New York Stock Exchange, but negative by a small margin on Nasdaq. It was mixed for the most part, but many of the stocks we follow did great today.

The day started with a gap up, reaching the session highs on Nasdaq 100. They then stair-stepped their way lower in a 3-wave decline that reached 2385 from a high of 2412 on the NDX and backed off from 1330 1/2 to about the 1323 1/2 area on the S&P 500. They bounced, then pulled back and made lower lows on the NDX, but when they did not confirm on the S&P 500, they then rallied back up toward the session highs on the S&P 500 and to the rally highs on the NDX. However, they rolled over in a mini 5-wave decline into the close, and closed negative on the session.

Net on the day, the Dow was down only 15.51 at 12,571.93, the S&P 500 down .89 at 1325.84, and the Nasdaq 100 down 10.37 at 2387.80.

Advance-declines were about 16 to 13 positive on the New York Stock Exchange and about 3 to 2 positive on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 4 to 3 positive on advancing volume over declining volume on New York, with total volume a light 790 million shares traded. Nasdaq traded 1.88 billion shares and had about a 4 to 3 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com was active and mixed, but there were some major gainers today. Leading the way by far was InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) up 15.41 to 68.67 after discussions of a takeover by Google Inc. (GOOG). Apple Inc. (AAPL) was up 10.05 to 386.90 after trading as high as 396 and over 400 in the after hours last night on strong earnings. Goldman Sachs (GS) rose 4.26 to 132.75.

The percentage gainer of the day was Sino-Global Shipping America, Ltd. (SINO), up 2.66 to 4.43, a gain of 150%.

In addition, Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) jumped 80 cents to 28.69 on a contract with Toyota. ZAGG Incorporated (ZAGG) gained 74 cents to 16.06, GTX Inc. (GTXI) 37 cents to 4.68, Textron Inc. (TXT) 2.31 to 24.43, and Quepasa Corp. (QPSA) 2.80 to 9.93, or 40%.

On the downside, losers included International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) down 1.56 to 183.65, and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) 2.51 to 215.55.

In addition, ultra-short ETFs Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) was down 1.29 to 46.52.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, there were five distinct waves today, down on the NDX and sideways on the S&P 500, but the net on the day the indices lost some ground, but not too bad considering yesterday’s monstrous day.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

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