The week started off with a thud as the stock market indices gapped down. They had a strong snapback early in the session on positive economic news, but that was it for the day. The indices then came down hard in a 5-wave decline, but at the end of the day when it looked like they were snapping back into the close, they suddenly reversed course in the last 10 minutes and got crushed into the close, finishing at the lows for the day.

It was a very nasty way to start the week.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 258.08 at 10,655.30, the S&P 500 down 32.19 at 1099.23, and the Nasdaq 100 down 54.14 at 2096.04.

Advance-declines were almost 10 to 1 negative with 291 up and nearly 2800 down on the New York Stock Exchange, and on Nasdaq they were about 10 to 1 negative with 239 up and 2383 down. Up/down volume on New York was about 30 to 1 negative, with 41 million up and 1.33 billion down, on total volume of 1.8 billion shares traded today. Nasdaq traded 2 billion shares, with 167 million up and 2.4 billion down, and had a 15 to 1 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was entirely negative except for the ultra-shorts, of course. We traded the ultra-shorts long, and VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX ST ETN (TVIX) hit our intermediate target, exploding to over 100 today, up 11.47 to 100.90, reaching as high as 101.34. The Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) was up 8.32 to 61.29, Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) 8.83 to 74.80, Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) 4.39 to 50.67, and iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) 3.47 to 56.84.

On the downside, Apple Inc. (AAPL) lost 6.72 to 374.60, Universal Display Corp. (PANL) 6.30 to 41.64, SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) 3.93 to 29.12, VirnetX Holding Corp (VHC) 2.61 to 12.38, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) 2.75 to 30.12, Goldman Sachs (GS) 4.47 to 90.08, InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) 2.03 to 44.45, and First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) 5.31 to 57.90. Those were among the many stocks down today.

It was quite a negative day on Wall Street. Climactic at that. We got a negative 1607 tick at one point, but the day closed very negatively and we’re likely to open to the downside tomorrow.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices gapped down, pulled back sharply, failed at resistance, and rolled over. After forming wedges they rolled over sharply midday, bounced around near the end of the day, tried to rally back in the last 10 minutes, but rolled over in the last 10 minutes, closing at the low for the day.

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