The indices had a narrowly mixed day today with the S&P 500 flat at the close and the Nasdaq 100 down just a small fraction.  Only the Dow managed to have a decent gain today, but even that was way off the earlier high.

The day started out with a move down to test yesterday afternoonââ,¬â"¢s lows.  That was successful, and they bounced around for about an hour there and then staged a strong morning rally that took out the 3-day declining tops line on the Nasdaq 100 but failed to do so on the S&P 500.

At that point they reversed and went lower for the rest of the afternoon. A last-hour snapback attempt failed at resistance and they pulled back near the lows for the day into the close.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 32 Ã,¾, the S&P 500 nearly dead-even flat, the Nasdaq 100 down 0.62.  The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down 3.13.

The technicals were negative by 9 to 7 on advance-declines on New York and about 17 to 13 on Nasdaq.  Up/down volume was 4 to 3 negative, with a total of just under 1.5 billion traded.  Nasdaq traded more than 1.5 billion, and had about an 8 to 7 positive plurality.  So, as you can see, it was a very narrowly mixed day today.

That reflected in TheTechTrader.com board, which was fractionally mixed with no stocks up or down as much as a point.  On the plus side, the leaders today were XING, which on nearly 11 million shares gained 87 cents, although that was nearly 2 points off the earlier session high.  The gain resulted from a tremendous earnings report earlier in the day.  BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) advanced 42 cents on news of more bird flu cases breaking out.  Baidu.com (BIDU) was up 40 cents, the GLD gold tracking stock up 85 cents, and Qualcomm (QCOM) up 52 cents.

On the downside, loss leaders were DXP Enterprises (DXPE) down 86 cents, Mikron (MIKR) down 59 cents, and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) 46 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the sharp rally today tested the 6-week declining tops line at the top of the intermediate down-channel on the Nasdaq 100, but failed there.  The S&P rally failed at yesterdayââ,¬â"¢s mid-day highs, and pulled back into close.

The symmetry of the potential head-and-shoulders bottoming patterns that may be developing are still in place, but they would need to start the rally from very near these levels.

Any further deterioration would set up a test of the pullback lows down in the NDX 1515 area and the S&P 1220 zone.

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.