It was a very difficult session that ended mixed, but it looked a lot worse than that during the day. 

The indices started lower from the opening, with futures down before the opening, so they gapped lower.  They made lower lows, then snapped back pretty sharply for the best rally of the day, but failed right at the intraday moving averages.  They then went into a morning consolidation, but around the lunch hour they started selling off, took out the morning lows, went to the session lows at around 1, and rallied back, failed, and retested successfully. 

Over the last couple hours they managed to firm back up and put the Dow back into the plus column, but the other indices closed down.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 22 today, the S&P down was about 2.40 and the NDX down a little less than 9.  The culprit was the SOX, down more 15 points today, or 3 percent, which really hurt Nasdaq all session.

The technicals were very negative on advance-declines by 3 to 1 on New York and 2 1/2 to 1 on Nasdaq.  Up/down volume was about 2 1/2 to 1 negative on New York, on total volume a little less than 1 2/3 billion.  Nasdaq traded a little less than 1.9 billion and had a more than 3 to 1 negative ratio today.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly negative.  The loss leaders were Energy Conversion Devices (ENER), which gave back 2.30; Broadcom (BRCM), down 2.03; and Rediff.com India (REDF), 1.06.  Dynamic Materials Corp. (BOOM) dropped 1.15 and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) 1.05.

In addition, Sify Ltd. (SIFY) was off 79 cents, TradeStation (TRAD) 80 cents, and Evergreen Solar (ESLR) 83 cents.

On the plus side, there were fractional gains from Ionatron (IOTN) up 44 cents, Endwave (ENWV) up 30 cents, Staar Surgical (STAA) up 27 cents, and Versant (VSNT) up 17 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the three-day decline continued in earnest today.  Only late in the session did the three-day down-channel get broken with a takeout of minor resistance.  With the indices being oversold here on the oscillators, they now have a chance of a snapback rally.  We'll be watching resistance at the 1665-68 zone the NDX, for starters, and the 1277-79 zone on the S&P.

Support at today's lows must be maintained at NDX 1652-53 zone and the 1271 level on the S&P.

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.