The indices had another down day, continuing the trend of this week. But they opened slightly higher before coming down and testing support. That held and they had a morning rally. The rally failed to take out substantial resistance, and they rolled over hard, selling off for the next several hours. They reached key 3-week support on the Nasdaq 100 near 1674-75 and near 1250-51 key support on the S&P 500. They did bounce late in the session when a strong snapback brought them off the lows, but couldn't get them into the plus column.

The Dow was down 55 ¼, the S&P 1 1/2, the Nasdaq 100 nearly 11 ½ and the SOX Index down 8 ½, which obviously was a big reason why the NDX was down as much as it was.

The technicals were mixed as the advance/decline ratios managed to turn positive by the close, by about 18 to 15 on New York and 15 to 14 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was positive by a half million shares on New York with a total of 1.6 billion traded. Nasdaq traded more than 1.9 billion with about an 11 to 7 negative ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly narrowly mixed. Just a couple issues stood out today. HURC hit a new all-time high today, exploding for 2.67, closing at 30, the high for the day going away.

TZOO was up 93 cents, VRTX 76 cents, and ATEA to a new all-time high, up 88 cents. JDMT was up only 43 cents at the close; however, after the close, Electronics Arts agreed to acquire them for 27, and the stock was trading up another 4 ¼ in the aftermarket.

On the downside, losers included NWRE off 70 cents, SWIR down 42 cents, and BOOM backed off 54 cents. The SMH was down 82 cents today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly patterns, key support was tested with about 90 minutes to go before the market staged a late rally.

Those levels will be watched carefully because a break below them would be a signal that a top is in & could result in substantially lower levels. Right now with trendlines and moving averages broken and moving averages rolling over, all snapbacks will be suspect and resistance may prove to be formidable.

1690 NDX and then 1700-02 NDX represent key overhead resistance right now. On the S&P 1259 and 1263 are the levels to be watched.

Good trading!

Harry Boxer is a technical consultant to many Wall Street hedge funds and large institutional traders, and author of TheTechTrader.com, a real-time diary of his day, swing and intermediate-term trades. For more of Harry Boxer, sign up for a FREE 15-day trial to his Real-Time Technical Trading Diary, or sign up for a Free 30-Day Trial to his Top Charts of the Week service.