YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks staged a strong bounce after they had logged sizable losses for three straight sessions in reaction to a massive earthquake in Japan, subsequent failures at that country's nuclear facilities, and ongoing social and political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa.

Buyers stepped back into action today with a broad-based bid that took the Dow and S&P 500 up more than 1%. The Nasdaq also staged a strong gain, but lagged its counterparts amid weakness in Amazon.com (AMZN 160.97, -3.73), which descended to a new three-month low.

Energy stocks were leaders in the broader market. As such, the Energy Select SPDR (XLE 76.00, +2.25) spiked to a 3% gain. The sector was helped by a spike in crude oil prices, which settled pit trade with a 3.5% gain at $101.42 per barrel.

Despite the spike in oil prices, global delivery outfit FedEx (FDX 87.89, +2.61) was a top performer following its strong forecast, which overshadowed an earnings miss for the latest quarter.

Disappointing guidance from Guess? (GES 37.71, -6.16) overshadowed the retailer's upside earnings surprise for the latest quarter. Weakness in the stock caused retailers to trail the broader market. As such, the S&P Retail SPDR (XRT 47.99, -0.18) fell firmly.

A deluge of data was released this morning, but none of it was met with much of a reaction.

Initial weekly jobless claims for the week ended March 12 totaled 385,000, which is on par with the 386,000 initial claims that had been expected, on average, among economists polled by Briefing.com. Initial claims for the prior week were revised upward to 401,000.

Consumer prices for February increased by 0.5%, which is greater than the 0.4% that had been widely expected. The stronger-than-expected increase follows a 0.4% increase for the prior month. Excluding food and energy, consumer prices increased by 0.2%, which is more than the 0.1% increase that had been broadly anticipated. Core consumer prices also increased by 0.2% in the prior month.

The Philadelphia Fed Index for March surged to a 25-year high of 43.4, which blew out the Briefing.com consensus 28.1.

Leading Indicators for February increased by 0.8%, but that is less than the 1.0% that had been broadly expected. Industrial production decreased by 0.1% in Februay. It had been broadly expected to increase by 0.6%.

Commodities finished higher across the board today, led by a 5.4% rally in grains. May wheat surged 7.9% to close at $7.14 per bushel, while May corn ended limit up at $6.46, higher by 4.9%.

The Energy sector added 3.4%, led by a 5.7% rally in April natural gas, which closed at $4.16 per MMBtu. It notched highs at $4.16, its best levels in close to 1.5 months. This morning's larger than expected draw down in inventories acted as the catalyst to today's rally. April crude oil surged 3.5% to close at $101.42 per barrel, its best close in around a week. Today's session was substantially less volatile than the previous, evidenced by the absence of short volatile moves in prices. With the risk trade back for the time being, markets once again refocused on the Middle East.

Precious metals, which gained 0.2% on the day, were the laggard sector today. It was a relatively quiet session for the precious metal as April gold finished higher by 0.5% to $1403.80 per ounce and May silver ended lower by 0.5% to $34.25 per ounce.

None of today's data was able to help generate support for the dollar, which continued its descent against Japan's yen. The yen's rapid ascent to record levels against the greenback has stirred speculation about an intervention by Japan's Minister of Finance and central bank. DJ30 +161.29 NASDAQ +19.23 NQ100 +1.0% R2K +0.5% SP400 +0.6% SP500 +16.84 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1569/1.99 bln/1002 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2198/1.03 bln/806