The stock market indices had a very difficult session, and got hammered, especially in the last 15 minutes, to close at the lows for the day going away.

The day started out with a big gap down and a very sharp sell off. They reached their mid-morning lows at 2172 Nasdaq 100 and 1164 S&P 500. They rallied back to 2185 NDX and 1171 S&P 500, but could not do much more than that. They came down hard, made nominal new lows on the NDX, but not on the S&P 500. That caused a late snapback, but it failed again at the midday highs, and rolled over hard, especially in the last 15 minutes, when the NDX dropped from about 2185 to 2166. That was 19 points in 15 minutes. The S&P 500 dropped from 1171 to 1162, 9 points in that same period of time, to close at the session lows going away.

It was a disastrous day for the indices.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 236.17 at 11,257.55, the S&P 500 down 26.25 to 1161.79, and the Nasdaq 100 down 49.89 at 2166.54.

Advance-declines were nearly 9 to 1 negative with 359 up and 2961 down on the New York Stock Exchange, and on Nasdaq they were 5 1/2 to 1 negative with 370 up and 2160 down. Up/down volume was 25 to 1 negative on New York with 37 million up and 840 million down and total volume of 875 million shares traded. Nasdaq traded 1.7 billion with 1.57 billion to the downside, and had a 13 to 1 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com was vastly lower, with only a few stocks up today on our board other than the ultra-shorts. They included Inhibitex Inc. (INHX), up 99 cents to 11.77. It was as high as 12.08 at one point on news about a drug approval. Transcept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (TSPT) jumped 73 cents to 7.34,

Energy stocks were up today. Royale Energy Inc. (ROYL) gained 57 cents to 3.86, on positive news today. Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. (YGE) rose 42 cents to 3.96, JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (JKS) 51 cents to 5.76, and First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) 78 cents to 41.58.

The ultra-shorts had a stellar day today. VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX ST ETN (TVIX) was up 5.21 to 62.21, the Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares (TZA) up 3.25 to 38.20, the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) 2.18 to 48.60, and the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) 4.10 to 54.83.

Leading the way on the downside, Apple Inc. (AAPL) down 9.52 to 366.99, Golar LNG Ltd. (GLNG) down 2.32 to 38.70, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) 3.36 to 177.95, Molycorp, Inc. (MCP) 2.10 to 27.69, 1.95 to 68.50, Universal Display Corp. (PANL) 1.93 to 40.75, Cheniere Energy, Inc. (LNG) 1.07 to 10.27, InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) 1.35 to 41.53, and Goldman Sachs (GS) 1.51 to 87.89.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were down sharply early on, managed to bounce midday and mid-afternoon, but ended the day with lows for the session going away.

They were down very sharply, and it was a very negative way to end the week, indeed. This was one of the worst weeks in months, although they are extremely oversold here and may have completed a 5-wave decline that could lead to a better snapback after the holidays.

Harry Boxer is a technical consultant to many Wall Street hedge funds and large institutional traders, and author of TheTechTrader.com.