The stock market indices had an ugly session today, although they started out with a pop to the upside with a gap up, and then a sharp run to test resistance. They failed at 2280 on the Nasdaq 100 and 1185 on the S&P 500. They came down, bounced, and made a 5-wave dramatic, sharp move lower near the session lows going away. The NDX dropped from 2281 down to 2221, a total of 60 points, and the S&P 500 dropped from 1185 down to 1150. The Dow reversed from 11,317, to 10,996.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 179.79 at 11,010.90, the S&P 500 down 24.32 at 1151.06, and the Nasdaq 100 down 32.71 at 2220.84.

Advance-declines were 5 to 1 negative on the New York Stock Exchange, and a little more than 5 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was extremely negative on New York, with declining volume of 968 million versus advancing volume of only 35 million, which was about a 25-30 to 1 ratio. Nasdaq traded 132 million up and 1.8 billion down. That was a dramatic negative ratio there as well.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was mostly lower, except for the ultra-shorts. The VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX ST ETN (TVIX) exploded for 9.03 to 81.15, the Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) jumped 5.32 to 51.41, the Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) rose 2.73 to 44.24, and iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) gained 3.09 to 50.73.

Both silver and gold had a good day today. The ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL), which we highlighted today, was up 2.25 to 17.18, and the ProShares UltraShort Gold (GLL) jumped 1.06 to 19.63.

Other gainers of note included InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC), which on some takeout rumors was up 1.74 to 53.23. Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (QCOR) advanced 1.56 to 27.27, and was 2 points higher during the day. Pandora Media, Inc. Common Stoc (P) was up 73 cents to 12.82.

There were very few other gainers of note on our board today, except for Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), which rose 5.50 to 229.71 after unveiling of its new tablet computer today.

On the downside, losers of note included Google Inc. (GOOG) down 10.50 to 528.84, Apple Inc. (AAPL), down 2.25 to 397.01, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) down 2.58 to 35.28, Brigham Exploration Co. (BEXP) 1.16 to 25.81, Travelzoo Inc. (TZOO) 1.04 to 23.68, SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) 1.64 to 36.16, Coffee Holding Co.Inc. (JVA) 1.38 to 8.60, Silicon Motion Technology Corp. (SIMO) 62 cents to 12.76, MAKO Surgical Corp. (MAKO) 53 cents to 37.90, VIVUS Inc. (VVUS) 59 cents to 8.10, and Goldman Sachs (GS) 3.23 to 96.32.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices jumped up in the morning, and then came down hard in a 5-wave decline, closing at the session lows going away.

It was a very negative day, indeed, for the indices. We’ll have to see what kind of follow-through it gets tomorrow, but today’s action is not a good sign.

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