They certainly had a down and dirty decisive negative session today. But there were some early surprises. The market opened lower, went down sharply, and then rebounded even more sharply on the economic numbers, but they failed right at intraday resistance and then sold off twice as sharply. The NDX in just an hour or so dropped from 1912 to 1880. The S&P 500 dropped from 1529 to 1513. They then bounced, consolidated mid-session, but were unable to mount anything substantial , as they were unable to get through resistance at all, and sold off in a 5-wave decline for the rest of the session. Only a last 20-minute brought them off the session lows.

Net on the day the Dow was down nearly 85 points, the S&P 500 off 14 Ã,¾, and the NDX down nearly 30. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down more than 7 Ã,¾.

Advance-declines strongly confirmed the drop, negative by 27 to 6 on New York and by 22 Ã,½ to 7 Ã,½ on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was just as bad, with 2 billion shares on the downside and only 314 million on the upside on Nasdaq. That’s a 6 1/2 to 1 negative ratio. New York was a bit less severe, at 4 Ã,½ to 1 negative.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly lower. Chindex (CHDX), one of our portfolio positions, closed at 19.23, down 3.32, a devastating decline there. NVE Corp. (NVEC) dropped 2.21, Sigma Designs (SIGM) 1.19, and DXP Enterprises (DXPE) 1.37.

Other losing stocks of note, DG FastChannel (DGIT) fell 67 cents, FuelTek (FTEK) down 73 cents, Metabolix (MBLX) 84 cents, OSI Systems (OSIS) 85 cents, and Vasco Data (VDSI) down 70 cents.

On the plus side, Cypress Bioscience (CYPB) snapped back late in the session and closed up 95 cents on 8 million shares. That was about 1 Ã,½ off the low. Jones Soda (JSDA) was up most of the session, but gave back a chunk of it. It still closed up 34 cent on 4 million. Taser (TASR) closed at 10.07, up 53 cents on 7 million shares.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, definitive technical intraday damage was done today, as at least two layers of support were taken out.

Late in the session, the indices stuck their toes below the 4-week rising trendlines as well, but held lateral price support before bouncing late in the session.

So, is this the start of a new downtrend? Very possibly. We’ve had two consecutive down-days on the SPX & NDX, and the indices have dropped rather sharply since just mid-day yesterday, with the NDX having dropped 55 points top to bottom and the S&P 27 points.

They are perhaps short-term oversold and could bounce here, but it will be important to see what kind of bounce we get and what the bulls have left tomorrow and next week.

TheTechTrader.com is closed tomorrow ahead of the Memorial Day holiday, and we’ll see you on Tuesday.

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.