We had a bullish day today and the indices closed not far from the highs for the day and near key overhead resistance. If they break through here, the market can have a very substantial rally, but the battle of the bulls and bears continues.

The day started with a very nice gap up. They flagged and then moved higher, hit the morning highs just before 11 and sold off over the next three hours but in a very corrective manner, taking out minor support but holding the morning up-gap and then reaching the session lows just after lunch hour.

At that point they started a rally that took the NDX back up slightly through the morning highs. The S&P as well, but they couldn't follow through and they backed off just a bit into the close.

Net on the day the Dow was up 63 3/4, the S&P up 6.80, the Nasdaq 100 16 1/4, and the Composite 19 1/2. The SOX was up more than 2 percent today, up 9.82, and that certainly helped Nasdaq.

The technicals were solid by 2 to 1 on New York and 3 to 2 on Nasdaq, but not as strong as you would expect, particularly on Nasdaq.

Up/down volume, however, was better by just under a 3 to 1 margin on Nasdaq. Total volume there was over 1.9 billion. New York traded about 1 2/3 billion with a 2 to 1 plurality of up volume over down.

TheTechTrader.com board had some exciting movers today. ANTP, a stock we followed that got hammered after a major run last year, snapped back with a vengeance, up 3.63 today on over 1 million shares.

The alternative energy stock group rocketed today. ESLR, one of our Charts of the Week Watchboard stocks, was up 1.28 on 8 million shares. ENER, another recent pick, was up 1.53. Another stock in that sector that we traded today, DSTI, was up 1.90, and FCEL rocketed ahead 1.05 and broke out to a new high.

Other stocks of note, EVST was up 1.04 and WPTE gained 1.82. IMOS, one of our old favorites, snapped back 52 cents today along with DDDC up 50 cents.

In the large-cap sector, the SMH was ahead 80 cents, led by INTC up 63 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the overall patterns, as we indicated earlier both the Nasdaq and S&P are up against KEY short-term resistance.

Tomorrow we'll be watching carefully the 1529-30 zone on the NDX and 1212-13 on the S&P 500 to see if we can punch through and test higher levels and continue the rally.

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.