The stock market indices had a topsy-turvy day and were down most of the session until the very sharp, late, snapback, short-covering rally brought them back from oblivion.

The morning started out with a big gap to the upside, and then reached 2260 on the Nasdaq 100 and 1175 on the S&P 500. They dropped very sharply, bounced, consolidated, and by midday they rolled over sharply again to take the NDX from 2260 down to 2160, a total of nearly 100 points in a 3-wave decline. The S&P 500 at that point dropped from 1175 down to 1140. In the last hour they came back from 2160 to 2197, almost 2200, on the NDX. That was a 40-point gain, and about a .382 Fibonacci retracement. The S&P 500 had about a 50% retracement going from 1140 to 1160.

Net on the day, the Dow, which had been under 11,000, was up 143.08 at 11,153.98. The S&P 500 was up 9.34 at 1160.40, but the Nasdaq 100 was down 23.16 at 2197.68, nearly 37 points off the low, and went down as low as 60 points at one point.

Advance-declines were 2 1/2 to 1 positive on the New York Stock Exchange, and 3 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 3 1/2 to 1 positive on New York. Nasdaq had a 5 to 3 positive volume ratio on advancing volume over declining volume, but the declining volume outnumbered the advancing volume today by 14 to 9. That’s about a 3 to 2 ratio. So, it was a mixed picture on Nasdaq, and a positive picture in the blue chips and the New York Stock Exchange.

TheTechTrader.com board was very mixed today, with more sharp losers than gainers. Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) was down 13.95 to 113.19, 5 1/2 points off its low as it had been down nearly as much as 19. Apple Inc. (AAPL) lost 6.44 to 390.57, 4 points off its low.

Chinese stocks got hit hard due to news of an investigation of accounting practices by Chinese firms. Youku.com (YOKU) lost 3.64 to 16.24.

Among other losing issues, Travelzoo Inc. (TZOO) dropped 1.38 to 22.30, SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) 1.35 to 34.81, Universal Display Corp. (PANL) 2.00 to 48.66, MAKO Surgical Corp. (MAKO) 2.51 to 35.39, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) 1.22 to 34.06, and InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) 3.45 to 49.78l.

In addition, the ultra-shorts got hammered. VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX ST ETN (TVIX) was down 2.97 to 78.18, Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) down 2.86 to 48.55, and Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) 4.84 to 60.51. All of those stocks were sharply off their lows.

On the upside, gainers of note included Thor Industries Inc. (THO) up 4.29 to 24.60, LG Display Co., Ltd. (LPL) up 93 cents to 8.65, and American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC) 58 cents to 4.46, 15%. Those were among some of the gainers on our board today.

Low-priced SIGA Technologies, Inc. (SIGA) was up 23 cents to 3.16, or 8%, on 1.8 million shares. Harbin Electric, Inc. (HRBN) gained 1.04 to 19.29. Tower Group Inc. (TWGP) advanced 1.05 to 23.26, and IDT Corporation (IDT) was up 1.26 to 21.05.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices had a very distinct, sharp gap up at the opening, followed by a strong 3-wave decline lasting most of the session until the last hour when the indices snapped back with a very sharp short-covering type rally.

That bounce came right off key support, especially on the Nasdaq 100, so we’ll see what kind of implications that has for the next several sessions.

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