The market had another big day and terrific finish to the week.  The day started out with a huge gap-up based on some excellent earnings from some of the tech stocks, including Broadcom (BRCM), as well as some strong economic news.  So the market ran hard and fast in the morning.  The NDX and S&P 500 hit their highs for the session in the first half hour, and spent the rest of the day drifting lower, before edging back up in the last couple hours to take back some of the mid-day losses.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 98, similar to yesterday.  The S&P 500 was up nearly 10, the Nasdaq 100 nearly 20 1/2, and the SOX Index up another 14.37, but that was about 9 points off the earlier high.

The technicals were solid by 5 to 3 on advance-declines on New York and 17 to 12 on Nasdaq.  Up/down volume was 2 to 1 positive on New York with 1.9 billion traded and a little more than 2 to 1 on Nasdaq with 2.3 billion traded.  Heavy volume this week, that's for sure.

TheTechTrader.com board was very active and had some big winners and losers. On the plus side, China Resources (CHNR) was up 3.17 on 3 million shares.  Catuity (CTTY) dropped 2.08, Dynamic Materials Corp. (BOOM) jumped 1.82, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) gained 1.74, Rediff.com India (REDF) 1 and Neoware Systems (NWRE) 1.27.

On the downside, Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) got hammered again for 3.86 on 2.8 million and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) on news of a competitive drug was down 1.73.

Other gains for note, Sierra Wireless (SWIR) was up 59 cents, Smith Micro (SMSI) 81 cents, and Broadcom (BRCM) was up more than 11 points today on terrific news.

On the downside, a ton of energy stocks gave it back today. In addition to ENER, Evergreen Solar (ESLR) gave back 31 cents, DayStar Technologies (DSTI) 24 cents, and Distributed Energy Systems (DESC) 49 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, a significant high-volume breakaway gap occurred today taking the indices out above key short-term resistance.  The rally of the last two days has taken the NDX from 1670 to 1723 in just the last couple sessions, the Dow up a couple hundred points and the S&P having gained about 27.

But today's action was significant in that we gapped up on heavy volume and ran hard in the morning and then held the  gains for most of the session.

So, we'll see how it goes next week, if there's a follow-through or not, but today was what I believe a significant day technically.

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.