The market had a nasty down-day and broke the back of the recent 2 1/2 week uptrend without question. The day started out with a bump-up right to resistance that failed once again. Traders just threw the towel in at that point, as we had a very sharp sell-off that took the NDX from about 1534 down to 1512 in about 1 1/2 hours. The S&P in the same period went from 1204 to 1195. The next three hours were spent in a very shallow rising formation that looked like bear flags. They tried to break out mid-day, but failed and then the indices rolled over again and had a second leg down. A late bounce in the last half hour was followed by a sell-off in the last 15 minutes that took the indices to near the lows for the session at the close.

Net on the day the Dow was down 60 1/2, the S&P down 10.31, the Nasdaq 100 down nearly 26 and the Composite 34. Part of that had to do with the SOX Index down 2 1/4 percent today, or 9 1/2 points, pressuring Nasdaq all day. That was down early even when the indices were up.

The technicals were very negative by 2364 to 770 on Nasdaq, and 2157 to 1119 on New York, or about 2 to 1 negative. Up/down volume was nearly 3 to 1 negative on New York on total volume just under 1.5 billion. Nasdaq traded over 1.9 billion, with 1 2/3 billion to the downside, or about a 6 1/2 to 1 negative ratio there.

It was a negative day on TheTechTrader.com board as well. Loss leaders were BRCM down 1.20 and ENER down 1.21.

Other than that no stocks were up or down as much as a dollar. ARIA was down 60 cents, PARL 73 cents, and MIKR down 55 cents.

On the upside, there were just some very small fractional plus changes on AIRT, IMAX, WPTE and SIGM.

Stepping back and reviewing the overall patterns, the key to today was that the rising moving averages and trendlines were broken on both exchanges on my hourly charts, and key support was taken out at the 1520 range NDX and 1195 S&P, and they could very well come down for the next few days here.

But we'll see how support at NDX 1500-02, which held today, does tomorrow, and if 1186 or so on the S&P 500 can hold, as well.

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.