The stock market indices had a tough late afternoon sell-off based on rumors out of Europe that they are having problems with the large bailout that was supposedly in place. Yesterday’s big ramp to the upside was given back today, although the Dow didn’t do that badly. The Nasdaq 100 was led to the downside by Apple Inc. (AAPL), which dropped 23.62 andd closed under 400 at 398.62. That was definitely part of the battering today, but there were a lot of other stocks that took big hits as well.

The day started out with a move to the downside. They got right to support on the NDX and the S&P 500, and then bounced. At that point it took several hours to form the large wedge patterns, which looked promising on the S&P 500, but more negative on the NDX. They rolled over midday and came down hard, and stair-stepped lower into the close before they bounced in the last few minutes to close off the lows.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 72.43 at 11,504.62, about 35 points of the low. The S&P 500 fell 15.50 to 1209.88, only 3 points off its low. The Nasdaq 100 was down 48.06 at 2316.88, about 6 points off the low.

Advance-declines were 22 to 8 negative on the New York Stock Exchange, and 3 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was about 5 to 1 negative on New York, with total volume of 960 million shares traded today. Nasdaq traded over 1.9 billion shares and had a 15 to 4 negative volume ratio.

So, it was a tough day today.

TheTechTrader.com board had a few gainers despite the though market we had today. Travelzoo Inc. (TZOO) was up 1.26 to 30.78, Golar LNG Ltd. (GLNG) up 1.95 to 38.25, Apollo Group Inc. (APOL) up 3.41 to 46.74, and United Rentals, Inc. (URI) 2.16 to 23.22. Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) was up 47 cents to 15.94 late in the session on rumors of a Microsoft bidder.

The ultra-shorts were quite strong today. VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX ST ETN (TVIX) was up 7.37 to 62.58, and traded a couple points higher before the close. The Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) was up 2.15 to 38.58, the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) 2.87 to 45.87, the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) 2.24 to 51.04, and Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) 1.24 to 36.63.

Gold and silver were strong. ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL) was up 1.06 to 14.55, and the ProShares UltraShort Gold (GLL) was up 50 cents to 18.59.

Other than that it was pretty negative action today other than Apple‘s sharp decline. First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) lost 4.84 to 51.07, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG) fell 9.58 to 310.27, and Google Inc. (GOOG) was down 9.81 to 580.70, with Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) falling 12.35 at 231.53.

Other losers of note included InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) down 2.12 to 45.62, Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) 2.32 to 109.42, Rightnow Technologies Inc. (RNOW) 3.20 to 35.66, SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA) 1.30 to 31.54, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) 1.92 to 37.77, LSB Industries Inc. (LXU) 1.91 to 32.44, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)1.51 to 177.39, Goldman Sachs (GS) 1.46 to 100.79, and Aruba Networks, Inc. (ARUN) 1.59 to 22.21.

It was not a good day on Wall Street today. We’ll have to see what kind of follow-through we get tomorrow.

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