The stock market indices staged a monster rally today and closed at the session highs going away. A beautiful 5-wave rally broke through several layers of resistance and through the declining moving averages on the hourly charts as well as a move into those big gaps from last week.

It was about as good of a day as it could get. The volume could have been a bit heavier, but it was still a pretty good day today.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 322.11 at 11,176.76, the exact penny tick high for the day. The S&P 500 was up 38.53 at 1162.35, and the Nasdaq 100 up 84.54 at 2129.27, or about 4.1% today.

Advance-declines were better than 5 to 1 positive on the New York Stock Exchange, and 5 to 1 on Nasdaq as well. Up/down volume was about 8 1/2 to 1 positive on New York, with advancing volume of 1.70 billion over declining volume of 147 million. Nasdaq traded over 2.1 billion shares and had about a 6 1/2 to 1 positive volume ratio.

It was a very big day technically, and confirmed by the technicals as well.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was vastly higher. Nearly every stock on our board was up, except for two, Travelzoo Inc. (TZOO) down 1.34 to 32.83, and SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) down 89 cents to 33.58.

Leading the way today were the large-cap stocks, including Apple Inc. (AAPL) up 17.16 to 373.60, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) 16.01 to 193.55, and Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) 14.33 to 219.54. Google Inc. (GOOG) advanced more than 20, up 20.65 at 518.82.

In addition, other point-plus gainers included International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) up 5.34 to 164.32, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) up 2.92 to 52.99, and InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) 3.54 to 68.18.

Also included in the point-plus gainers were Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP) 1.69 to 27.35, Global Crossing Ltd. (GLBC) 1.53 to 26.82, Golar LNG Ltd. (GLNG) 1.51 to 31.13, Coffee Holding Co.Inc. (JVA) 1.37 to 16.28, LSB Industries Inc. (LXU) 1.61 to 35.06, MAKO Surgical Corp. (MAKO) 1.75 to 30.91, Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (QCOR) 1.36 to 27.16, Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) 1.01 to 22.96, VirnetX Holding Corp (VHC) 1.59 to 19.36, and Youku.com Inc (YOKU) 1.43 to 24.03.

Other large gainers today included Hansen Natural Corporation (HANS) up 4.95 to 84.75, Universal Display Corp. (PANL) 5.90 to 40.66, CROCS Inc. (CROX) 3.11 to 26.63, and OmniVision Technologies Inc. (OVTI) 2.41 to 26.01.

A couple low-priced stocks had big moves today. ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL) was up 1.03 to 11.83 and PowerShares DB Gold Double Short ETN (DZZ) up 49 cents to 4.34.

Ultra-long Direxion Daily Small Cap Bull 3X Shares (TNA) was up 5.13 to 41.00 even.

On the downside, the ultra-short ETFs got slammed. The Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) was down 8.18 to 50.10, VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX ST ETN (TVIX) down 6.26 to 57.41, Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) 5.06 to 45.37, and the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) was down 6.50.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were mixed at the opening, then spiked up early, pulled back mid-morning, had a strong rally into midday, pulled back early afternoon, tested the morning highs successfully, and then took off in a strong afternoon rally that closed them at the highs for the day going away.

Indeed, as good a day as we’ve seen in a while.

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