YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: The S&P 500 faltered in the face of resistance near the 1300 zone during the early going. That left it to muddle along with a modest loss for the rest of the session as buyers sat on their gains from the prior session.

Although there is still headline risk related to the military action in Libya and the status of damaged nuclear facilities in Japan, the lack of deterioration of relative conditions in those countries has made them less threatening, for the time being, to market participants. That theme helped the major equity averages advance more than 1% yesterday. However, there wasn't any follow through this morning. The lack of early buying interest left stocks to slip into the red, which is where they spent the rest of the session.

Overall selling pressure was rather mild today. Declining share volume outpaced advancing volume by just 3-to-2 -- total share volume on the NYSE barely broke 800 million.

Corporate headlines drove action in a few individual names, but did little for the overall market. Walgreen (WAG 39.21, -2.76) slumped to one of its worst single-session losses in about nine months following in-line earnings results. Meanwhile, Express (EXPR 18.42, +1.02) hit a one-month high following news of its upside earnings surprise. Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY 26.29, +0.29) initially bounced to a one-month high in response to news that one of its drugs met a primary endpoint in a Phase III study, but the stock gradually gave back a chunk of its gain.

Renewed pressure against the greenback dropped the Dollar Index to a new 52-week intraday low, but the buck battled back for a flat finish.

No economic data of consequence was out today. Tomorrow brings the latest monthly new home sales figures, though. Also on tomorrow's agenda are weekly crude oil inventories and a speech from Fed Chairman Bernanke.

Commodities, save for softs, finished higher again, led by a 1.3% rally in energy commodities. May WTI crude oil surged 1.9% to close at $105.04 per barrel as unrest in the Middle East continued to push prices higher. The ongoing no-fly zone in Libya, more protests in Yemen and Syria, and renewed tensions at the Israel-Gaza border were the focus of the market today. April natural gas gained 2.1% to close at $4.25 per MMBtu, closing higher for the third time in four sessions. The possibility of increased demand from Japan, coupled with cooler-than-avg temps across some parts of the country, help nat gas trade to its best levels in 6 weeks.

It was an uneventful session for April gold, which ended just above the flat line at $1427.60 per ounce. May silver ended up 1% to $36.26 per ounce.

DJ30 -17.90 NASDAQ -8.22 NQ100 -0.2% R2K -0.5% SP400 -0.7% SP500 -4.61 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1051/1.65 bln/1540 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1262/822 mln/1703