It was a very tedious, difficult day today. The Nasdaq basically traded in an 11-point range for most of the session. The day started out with a rally attempt that failed. The Nasdaq as well as the S&P went to new lows, but they were just nominal new lows, as the bears couldn't muster up any downside follow through.

Around 11 o'clock the market rallied back to resistance but again couldn't break through. The indices pulled back once again and retested on the NDX, but when the S&P made a higher low it turned & rallied to make a new high for the session, but failed to break through key resistance at 1193. The Nasdaq not only couldn't get through 1580 key short term resistance, it had problems at 1570. So the 1580 and 1193 levels are the levels I'll be watching to confirm when & if we have had a reversal.

Net on the day the Dow was up 25 with the S&P 500 up 4. But the Nasdaq was down 6 1/4 on the 100 and about 1 1/4 points on the Composite. The SOX was off 2 points.

It was a mixed picture technically today as well. Advance-declines were about 3 to 2 positive on New York and just slightly negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 3 to 2 positive on New York on more than 1.5 billion traded. Nasdaq traded a little less than 2.2 billion, with about a 4 to 3 negative ratio on advancing/declining volume.

TheTechTrader.com board was narrowly mixed. There were a few outstanding gainers. KVH Industries (KVHI), a stock we traded today, was up 81 cents. Zoltek (ZOLT) snapped back 40 cents. World Poker Tour (WPTE) was up 50 cents and Smith Micro (SMSI) 40 cents. Nitromed (NTMD) gained 75 cents, closing at the high for the day, and Nanogen (NGEN) was up 53 cents on some patent news.

On the downside, Taser (TASR) was down 1.24, and Spatialight (HDTV) got hammered for 1.67.

Other than that just fractional gains and losses.

Stepping back and reviewing the overall patterns, the 2005 decline continued on Nasdaq but finally reversed on the S&P and Dow. I'll be looking to see if Nasdaq can reverse and do some retesting of resistance and perhaps confirm the DJI & SPX advances, which I do expect may happen tomorrow.

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.