We had a volatile session, but net on the day at the end of the day the indices ended up near the zero line and mixed.

The indices started out with a strong surge to the upside in the first 10 minutes of trading. But, that was the high for the session. They then backed off, held support and bounced, but couldn’t follow through and then rolled over hard, particularly when the economic news hit, with the S&P making new lows for the week. However, when the NDX did not confirm that, they reversed and moved up steadily in a mid-day to mid-afternoon up channel that saw the indices reach up near the 4-day declining tops lines.

But that proved to be formidable resistance as well, as in the last 1 hour they backed off into the close.

Net on the day the Dow was up just 5.50, the S&P down 1.66, and the NDX up 0.64, a very narrow move for the that index. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) up just 0.86.

Advance-declines ended up 18 to 14 positive on New York, but 17 to 12 negative on Nasdaq, by more than 500 issues. Up/down volume was 8 to 7 negative on New York and 11 to 8 positive on Nasdaq. Total volume on New York was a little more than 1 Ã,½ million, and on Nasdaq a little more than 2 billion.

TheTechTrader.com board was narrowly mixed except for a couple issues. The star of the day by far was portfolio holding Dendreon, which on positive drug news from the FDA panel jumped sharply and exploded in pre-market hours , +300% to as high as 19.50 , before backing off just under 13 at the close . Still it was up 7.71 on 92 Ã,¼ million shares today, the biggest volume by far in the company’s history.

Other stocks on the plus side, NVE Corp. (NVEC) advanced 69 cents, and VYYO snapped back 41 cent.

On the downside, PRGX dropped 1.28, DXPE 1.20, and Acadia Pharmaceuticals (ACAD) 1.48. Those were the only point-plus losers on my board today.

Other stocks of note on the downside, Jones Soda (JSDA) backed off 97 cents, La Jolla Pharma (LJPC)lost 66 cents, and Ascent Solar (ASTI) 91 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the decline this week continued but was interrupted by an afternoon snapback, but they ended narrowly mixed, still within the confines of the recent down-channel.

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.