It was an interesting and volatile session, but at the end of the day the indices were just narrowly lower.

The day started out with a strong gap down, but the indices held and immediately started to rally. The rally accelerated in the morning and peaked out just after 11 o'clock, taking the NDX to a new rally high, past 1540. The S&P took out key resistance in the 1212-13, getting up to nearly 1216, about 1250 1/2.

At that point the indices went into a couple-hour consolidation, and it looked like we were going to have another strong follow-through in the afternoon. Indeed, the indices started to move after lunch hour, but when that rally failed and there was no follow-through, the indices sold off and reached the afternoon lows with about an hour and a half to go, and then bounced but couldn't extend it too far.

They pulled back into the close, with the NDX closing near the afternoon lows but the S&P held up a bit better.

Net on the day the Dow was down 18, the S&P 500 off 1/3 of a point, the NDX just 2 and the Composite 3 3/4, a very narrow day. But the SOX was down 7, or about 1 1/2 percent, and that kept Nasdaq from staying in the positive column today.

Technically, advance-declines were not too bad for a down day, about 17 1/2 to 15 on New York and 17 1/2 to 13 1/2 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was slightly lower to nearly flat on New York, with 1.5 billion traded. Nasdaq traded just under 2 billion, with about 1.2 billion to the downside, or about a 4 to 3 negative ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mixed, but there were some outstanding gainers today. BOOM went boom again, up 2.22 on more than 5 million shares. APLX exploded for 1.39 on 1.6 million, which is heavy volume for that stock, and DCAI advanced 1.13.

Other stocks of note, SLNK snapped back 42 cents, MDRX gained 45 cents, and MDKI jumped 50 cents today.

On the downside, the alternative energy stocks gave back some of yesterday's rally, with DSTI down 76 cents, ESLR 35 cents and ENER 34 cents. In addition, ANTP dropped 1.23 after an early run-up in the morning, and ZICA dropped 64 cents, breaking support today. MFLX dropped 68 cents.

In the large-cap sector, the SMH was down 49 cents, and BRCM down 52 cents.

Stepping back reviewing the overall patterns, despite the fact that we broke out to nominal new rally highs, they couldn't hold it and the pulled back in the afternoon.

The indices closed near the 6-day rising trendlines on the Nasdaq 100 and near trendline support as well as on the S&P 500.

So we'll see if they can hold them tomorrow and extend the rally or whether they take out support and come down and do some deeper retesting.

Good trading!

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.