It was an extremely negative, nearly climactic day on Wall Street to start the week. 

The day started out with a gap down and then a rally back to resistance that looked very corrective, and indeed it was, as before lunch hour the indices backed off again.  During the lunch hour they retested Friday's low, tried a bounce that was extremely feeble, and at that point rolled over and accelerated to the downside and sold off steeply for the rest of the afternoon, particularly on the blue chips.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 199, the S&P 500 23, the Nasdaq 100 35 1/2, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) down 14 1/4.

The technicals confirmed the extremely negative session.  Advance-declines were nearly 4 to 1 negative on both New York and Nasdaq.  Up/down volume was way worse than that, a nearly climactic 11 to 1 negative on New York on a total of about 1 2/3 billion.  Nasdaq traded around 2 billion, with a better than 7 to 1 negative ratio on declining volume over advancing volume.

To say the least, TheTechTrader.com board  was mostly red, but there were two outstanding issues today:  Cutera (CUTR), which gapped up strongly on the settlement of a major lawsuit and upgrades, and higher guidance, up 6.31 on more than 8 million shares today.  DXP Enterprises (DXPE) managed to buck the trend and was as high as up 4 points earlier, and closed up 1.47 on nearly 1 million.

Baidu.com (BIDU) advanced 43 cents, but was about 1 1/4 points off the high earlier in the day.

On the downside, however, the losses were broad.  Boxer Short and Chart of the Week (on the short side) Allegheny Technologies (ATI) was down 4.82, and the other short we highlighted in our Charts of the Week last evening, FreightCar America (RAIL), was down 3.78.

Other losses of note, Apple Computer (AAPL) was down 1.66,  Broadcom (BRCM) 1.12, Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) 1.23, Rambus (RMBS) 1.25, and Medifast (MED) 1.01.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the key to today's action was that once the indices broke key short-term support at 1600 NDX and 1280 S&P, the indices cascaded lower and took out 40-day moving averages on the hourly charts on the way down.

Next key support is around the 1565-68 zone on the NDX and 1260 zone S&P, which may be tested as early as tomorrow morning.  We'll see if they can hold the lows and stabilize.

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.