The indices had a rough morning, but a snapback rally in the afternoon brought them back to retest resistance

The day started out with a move-up that was not confirmed by the NDX. Despite the fact that the S&P went to a higher high, the NDX did not, and the market had a sharp morning sell-off to new pullback lows below 1500 on the Nasdaq 100, getting down to around 1497. The S&P retested yesterday's late closing low successfully, just under 1192, and around mid-day they had a strong rally that brought the S&P and NDX to new session highs, just nominally above resistance on the SPX.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 85 1/2, the S&P 500 up 5, the Nasdaq 100 was nearly unchanged up 0.02, and the Composite was up only 1/2 point. The SOX was up 2 1/2 points today, but that was 5 points off the high.

The technicals were positive on New York by just 18 to 15 and negative on Nasdaq by 16 to 14. Up/down volume was 7 to 5 positive on New York and about 11 to 8 negative on Nasdaq on total volume of about 1.9 billion.

TheTechTrader.com board was more negative than positive today. The one outstanding highlight was recent Chart of the Week, World Poker Tour (WPTE), which snapped back 1.05 to 17 1/2. IMAX had a very strong session, on additional positive news, up 37 cents, although about 65 cents off the earlier high.

On the losing side, TZOO was down 1.61, ENER down 1.57, and PARL got hammered for 2.39. SLNK in a late sell-off was down 3/4, SIGM down 39 cents, MFLX down 50 cents, and CRYP down 44 cents. AIRT also lost 65 cents today.

Stepping back and reviewing the overall patterns, today was a snapback session after a couple days of declines, and we did some retesting but did not break out. Right now, strong overhead resistance is at the 1518-20 zone on the Nasdaq 100 and at around the 1200-1202 area on the S&P 500.

We'll see if this turns out to be nothing more than a snapback retest that fails or whether we can get a burst through here and take out the highs on the S&P 500. The Dow, by the way, today did make a new high for this rally, so that's diverging positively.

The NDX trails and is diverging negatively, so it's a mixed picture and the market still has something to prove.

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.