YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: After falling for four straight sessions, the stock market has put together a string of three straight gains. The climb has been underpinned by the buy-the-dip mentality that traders have followed for the past couple of years.

Despite uncertainty about the future of monetary policy, the fiscal health of the eurozone states, growth and interest rates in China, and geopolitical tensions at various points across the globe, the tone of trade has turned decidedly upbeat during the course of the past few sessions. Participants have been confident that buying stocks following a series of losses will ultimately lead to gains, given that the market's resilience has made it quick to recover from any short-term setbacks ever since it bottomed in early 2009.

Strong earnings have been a source of fundamental support for the stock market's climb up from its bear market low, although it can be conceded that reports in recent weeks have had less of an influence over broad market action, given the lack of blue chips and bellwethers in the reporting lineup.

Microsoft (MSFT 25.67, -0.16) came out today to announced that it will pay $8.5 billion to acquire Skype. However, the stock failed to find favor. Evidently investors would have preferred different use of the firm's cash hoard, which included $7 billion in cash and equivalents and another $43 billion in short term investments at the end of the first quarter.

In other corporate news, Boston Scientific (BSX 7.02, -0.69) President and CEO, Ray Elliott, will retire at the end of this year. That announcement dropped the stock to a new one-month low.

Treasuries managed to limit their losses in the face of a stronger equity market. Their recovery came after session lows were set following solid auction results for $32 billion in 3-year Notes. The auction drew a bid-to-cover of 3.29, dollar demand of $105.3 billion, and an indirect bidder participation rate of 34.4%.

After advancing solidly this last Thursday Friday, the dollar has ended lower in each of the past two trading days. Today's loss was only about 0.2%.

June gold finished higher by 0.9% to $1516.30 per ounce, while July silver ended up 3.7% to $38.49 per ounce as the precious metals extended their bounce to a third consecutive session. Inflation and geopolitical concerns helped the precious metals finish higher. Both metals have continued their move higher in electronic trade.

In a move similar to that of yesterday's close, June crude oil, which closed higher by 1.3% to $103.88 per barrel, traded to its highest levels of the session at $103.95. Yesterday's news that the CME would raise margins on prices, effective at the close of business today, had little impact on trade. Instead, the surge in RBOB gasoline prices (stemming from possible supply disruptions due to the flooding taking place in the Midwest and South), coupled with geopolitical concerns, pushed prices higher today. June natural gas gained 2.2% to end at $4.24 per MMBtu.

Advancing Sectors: Consumer Discretionary (+1.3%), Utilities (+1.3%), Telecom (+1.1%), Financials (+0.9%), Tech (+0.9%), Industrials (+0.8%), Materials (+0.7%), Consumer Staples (+0.6%), Health Care (+0.6%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +75.68 NASDAQ +28.64 NQ100 +0.9% R2K +1.6% SP400 +1.1% SP500 +10.87 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1910/2.02 bln/648 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2448/831 mln/563