YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: The stock market managed to fight back from an early sell-off, but it still logged its third straight loss.

Early action was decidedly weak as market participants responded to sizable losses abroad and ongoing concerns related to Greece's inability to reach a compromise with its creditors. Greece's struggles come as Europe's leaders gather again to discuss and finalize bailout plans.

Limited in both scope and quality, earnings reports did nothing to improve the mood among morning participants. In a similar vein, news that Pep Boys (PBY 14.93, +2.85) will be bought by Gores Group for $15 per share, which represents a premium of about 24% over the stock's closing price last week, made hardly a ripple in the broad market.

Economic data was limited to a 0.5% increase in personal income and no change in personal spending during December. Economists polled by Briefing.com had expected, on average, that income would increase by 0.4% and that spending would increase by 0.1%. However, core personal consumption expenditures increased by 0.2% during December, just as many had expected.

Amid the negativity of early trade the S&P 500 was quickly dropped for a loss of roughly 1%. That positioned the broad market measure for its poorest performance in more than a month, but support at the 1300 line helped stocks stage a steady rebound. The climb lost momentum as both the Nasdaq and the Dow struggled to extend their advance into positive territory, but stocks still settled well above their session lows.

Financials failed to participate in the stock market's rebound. Instead, the sector suffered a 1.0% loss, which makes it the poorest performing sector of the session. In contrast, tech stocks traded up to a 0.3% gain. Still, that wasn't as impressive as the 0.6% advance booked by telecom stocks after many of them had ended Friday at their weekly lows.

Although most stocks were able to improve their positions by day's end, traditional safe havens like the dollar traded with strength all session. The greenback eased off of its morning high, but still maintained a gain of about 0.5% against a basket of major foreign currencies througout the rest of the day. Meanwhile, buying among Treasuries took the benchmark 10-year Note up enough to trim its yield to a one-month low beneath 1.85%.

Most widely watched commodities were clipped today. That left the CRB Index to suffer a 1.2% loss. Among the CRB's primary components, oil prices fell 0.7% to settle pit trade at $98.76 per barrel, but natural gas suffered a 1.8% loss by settling at $2.71 per MMBtu.

As for silver and gold, the two precious metals finished with a 0.6% loss at $33.53 per ounce and at $1731.10 per ounce with a 0.1% loss, respectively.

Advancing Sectors: Telecom +0.6%, Tech +0.3%
Unchanged: Materials
Declining Sectors: Health Care -0.1%, Consumer Discretionary -0.2%, Industrials -0.4%, Energy -0.4%, Consumer Staples -0.5%, Utilities -0.5%, Financials -1.0%DJ30 -6.74 NASDAQ -4.61 NQ100 +0.1% R2K -0.8% SP400 -0.5% SP500 -3.32 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 860/1.65/1670 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1103/744 mln/1876