The indices had a slight down-day today, but a very distinct trend developed intraday with declining tops and bottoms and a very distinct down-channel. 

The day, however, started with a gap-up right to yesterday's highs and failed there, pulling back sharply in the morning, and then rallying just as sharply but failing to take out the high.  Then they stair-stepped down for most of the rest of the day. 

On two occasions in the afternoon they severely tested last week's lows, but held on the Nasdaq, making slightly lower lows on the S&P and Dow.  But in the last hour or so they bounced back again and brought the indices back off the session lows to close slightly lower.

The Dow was down 2 1/2, the S&P 500 down a little more than 2, the Nasdaq 100 down 9 1/4, and the SOX up 0.82.  But the SOX was some 7 points off the low and the chief reason why the markets came back with a late rally in the semiconductor stocks.

The technicals were to the downside by 18 to 15 on advance-declines on New York and 16 to 13 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 5 to 4 negative on New York with a total of about 1.9 billion traded.  Nadsaq traded 2.2 billion with about a 6 to 5 negative ratio.

Most stocks on the TheTechTrader.com board were narrowly changed except for two or three issues.  On the upside, Rediff.com India (REDF), recommended last night by Cramer, exploded on 13 million shares, up 4.13, and that was 2 1/4 off the high. 

The other big gainer in that same group was Sify Ltd. (SIFY), another Indian Internet portal, up 1.12 on more than 4 million shares.

Other stocks of note on the plus side, MakeMusic (MMUS) was up 40 cents, and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) up 34 cents.  One of our portfolio stocks, Radvision (RVSN), jumped 65 cents and near its all-time high. 

On the downside, the loss leader was Energy Conversion Devices (ENER), knocked by Herb Greenberg, down 6 3/4 on more than 5.7 million shares.

Most other stocks both up and down were just fractionally changed today.

In the alternative energy group, other than ENER, Evergreen Solar (ESLR) also dropped 50 cents, DayStar Technologies (DSTI) 45 cents, and DESC 47 cents.  So that group suffered today for sure.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the decline that's had been in place since mid-January continues.  If today's lows are taken out, we'll probably see a fifth wave down and perhaps complete the recent decline and set up a better snapback rally towards the end of this month or beginning of February.

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.