To say the least, the market had an extreme turnaround Tuesday. The indices opened lower on sharply lower pre-market futures, tried to bounce in the first half hour, formed bear flags and went lower all day, accelerated in the afternoon, and with about an hour to go they bounced sharply but then backed off and took back about 50% of the rally in the last half hour or so.

Net on the day the Dow was down 415, the S&P 500 nearly 50, the Nasdaq 100 more than 74, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down nearly 15, or about 3 percent there.

The technicals were extremely negative. Advance-declines were negative by 29 to 4 on New York and by more than 10 to 1 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was even worse, with a more than 10 to 1 negative ratio on New York and a whopping 25 to 1 on Nasdaq, where 2.9 billion was traded on the downside and just 124 million on the upside. That was about as negative as they could possibly get.

TheTechTrader.com board was extremely negative, with all but one stock down. The gainer today was former favorite and previous Chart of the Week, Radio Shack (RSH), up 2.73 to 25.18 on 12.8 million, on earnings and upgrades.

But the downside was the story today, led by Home Inns & Hotels (HMIN), the Chinese hotelier, which got slam-dunked for 6.21 today on 2 Ã,½ million shares, leading the Chinese stocks lower on my board. The China Index was the chief cause for today’s decline, with a loss of more than 9% today.

Other stocks of note, portfolio position Aluminum Corp. of China (ACH) got hammered for 3.75, closing at 22.60 on 3 Ã,¼ million. Other stocks of note, Chindex (CHDX) fell 1.44, Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) 2.25, Global Sources (GSOL) 1.44, Sigma Designs (SIGM) 2.65, Qiao Xing Universal Telephone (XING) 2.31, and ONXX 2.15. Acorda Therapeutics (ACOR) dropped 2.07, CDC Corp. (CHINA) 1.18, ASIA 1.26, and the Qs (QQQQ) dropped a whopping 1.85 today, with the SMH down 1.13. It was a complete rout today!

The steep sell-off came with a technical bounce at the end of the day, but even that couldn’t hold, and the back of the 8-month uptrend has definitively been broken and should lead to more downside over the next several days to weeks.

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.