The indices got hit very hard today, especially in the morning. After an early rally try that failed, the markets came down quickly. The NDX dropped from 1547 to 1524 in less than an hour. The S&P dropped from about 1212 to about 1202 1/2 at that point.

The indices then snapped back in a mid-day rally attempt that petered out during the lunch hour. In the afternoon they sold off again, bounced when they retested the lows, but failed to follow through on that rally and then made lower lows. A late-day bounce also failed at resistance, and they sold off right into the lows for the session and closed right near the lows for the day.

The Dow was down 80 1/2, the S&P 9 1/2, the Nasdaq 100 more than 12 and the Composite more than 26. The SOX Index was down 5 3/4.

The technicals were negative by 2 to 1 on New York and about 21 to 10 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was better than 2 to 1 negative on New York, with a total of about 1.5 billion traded. Nasdaq had about 1.85 billion traded, with about 1.5 billion of it to the downside, or about 5 to 1 negative.

On TheTechTrader.com board, the majority of stocks were down, of course. QLGC was down 1.11, BRCM 39 cents, and INTC 51 cents. They led the SOX and SMH lower, with the SMH down 51 cents on the day and the QQQQ down 51 cents as well.

In the small-cap sector, ATHR was up 1.14, breaking out to a new 8-month high. WPTE was up 51 cents, PARL up 56 cents, ESLR up 26 cents, and CRYP up 46 cents. Other than that, the gains were mostly fractional.

On the downside, FCEL gave back 62 cents, MFLX was down 99 cents, HLIT lost a quarter and SLNK was down 45 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the overall patterns, the significance of today's action was that they broke down through key price support and closed below the 40-day moving averages on my hourly charts, and it looks like we're going lower.

Beneath here, support to keep a close eye on is around 1500 NDX and around the 1192-95 zone on the S&P. It looks like they'll be testing those in the next day or two.

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.