The market had a terrific start, reversing the decline of the last few days with a big gap-up in the morning, a result of the futures being strong before the opening. They ran even higher in the morning to the session highs on the Nasdaq 100, and then pulled back into the lunch hour.

Right at noon, the indexes began to firm back up and retested their highs. The Dow and S&P made just nominal new highs at that point. Nasdaq trailed rather badly, and when that occurred the market rolled over & declined, only interrupted by a mid-afternoon snapback that failed to get through resistance again.

Although it was an up-day, I'd have to say the close was disappointing. However, the indices did hold secondary support on the pullback and the intraday Fibonnacci retracements.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 92, nearly 50 points off the high. The S&P 500 was up 4 3/4, about 6 points off the high. The Nasdaq 100 was up just 10, 15 points off the high, and the Nasdaq Composite 17 points off the high was 11 on the day. So they gave back a good portions of the gains today. The SOX Semiconductor Index closed up 6.80, although it held most of its gains today.

The technicals were just a bit to the positive side on advance-declines but higher on up/down volume. Advance-declines were just 70 positive on New York ,300 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was a little more than 6 to 5 positive on New York on total volume of 1.1 billion. Nasdaq had about 1.5 billion traded, with about a 2 to 1 positive ratio on advancing/declining volume.

TheTechTrader.com board was mostly higher, but just fractionally so. In the large-cap sector, Broadcom (BRCM) was up 77 cents, the SMH up 54 cents, Intel (INTC) up 27 cents, and Microsoft (MSFT) 35 cents.

On the smaller-cap section, Nitromed (NTMD) was up 53 cents, World Poker Tour (WPTE) up 48 cents, Harmonic Lightwave (HLIT) 46 cents, and Energy Conversion (ENER) up 46 cents. Those were the leading gainers on my board.

On the downside, the leader was Spatialight (HDTV), which broke its 2005 low and got smacked for 42 cents to its lowest level since last August. Spectralink (SLNK) was down 28 cents, and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (KERX) fell 30 cents.

Stepping back and reviewing the overall patterns, the indices still have the makings of a potential bottoming-type pattern, but this afternoon's retracement must hold near current levels and we need to get a strong move tomorrow that takes out the highs in order to have a chance to finally reverse the 2005 decline.

Because right now the trend is still down and the market has yet to prove itself. I'll be watching key resistance levels in the 1505-10 zone on the Nasdaq 100, and the S&P 500 needs to get back over 1175 and then 1180 to convince me of an upturn.

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.