YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks finished on their session lows as Fed Chairman Bernanke's late day speech on his U.S. economic outlook pushed stocks to their worst levels of the day. In his speech, Mr. Bernanke restated the need for accommodative monetary policy. The Dow led today's decline, sliding 0.2% while the S&P shed 0.1%, and the Nasdaq finished with fractional losses.

Shares of International Paper (IP 29.78, +0.13) and Temple-Inland (TIN 29.49, +8.48) made headlines today after International Paper made a $30.60 per share bid for Temple-Inland following yesterday's close on Wall Street. The unsolicited bid was quickly rejected with Temple-Inland saying it "grossly undervalues" the company despite being a 46% premium to Monday's closing price. Other packaging/paper stocks such as Boise (BZ 7.89, +0.42) and Packaging Corp. of America (PKG 28.49, +1.66) saw a positive response to the news.

Materials finished as the best performing sector in the S&P 500, adding 0.3% for the day. Precious metals rebounded from their worst levels of the session and finished mixed at the close of pit trade with gold down $3.40 to $1543.80 and silver up $0.29 at $37.08. Gold miner Newmont Mining (NEM 52.94, -0.50) and silver miner Silver Wheaton (SLW 33.70, +0.05) finished down 0.9% and up 0.2% respectively.

Sprint (S 5.49, -0.11) was among today's biggest decliners early, but pared a good portion of its losses after being downgraded to sell from hold at Stifel Nicolaus. The reason for the downgrade is being attributed to Sprint's Network Vision and 4G strategy being more complicated, and potentially taking a lot more time and money than investors are currently anticipating. The stock closed lower by 2.0% on the news.

Despite a plethora of positive comments regarding yesterday's announcement of the iCloud, shares of Apple (AAPL 332.04, -6.00) finished among the worst performers in the technology space as they ended down close to 1.8%. The stock has been stuck in a range between $330 and $360 throughout most of 2011 and today's weakness brings the price within a couple dollars of the year's lower bound.

Treasuries finished the day at their best levels of the U.S. session as the solid $32 billion 3-yr note auction lifted maturities across the complex off their worst levels of the day. The 10-yr yield ended the U.S. session at 3.011% and eased just below 3.00% following Mr. Bernanke's speech.

The dollar index ended the day on its worst levels of the session, but was able to hold the 73.50 level. Traders remain focused on Thursday's Bank of England and European Central Bank interest rate decisions.

July crude oil settled a few cents above the unchanged mark at $99.09 per barrel, erasing all of its earlier losses. Reports earlier this morning indicated that Saudi Arabia would raise its production output by 500K regardless of the outcome of tomorrow's OPEC meeting. A separate report indicated that OPEC would hike production by as much as 1.5 mln bpd. Those reports caused prices to drop. Despite those reports, crude oil was able to recoup most of its losses to end right around unchanged. It was a quiet session for July natural gas, which closed flat on the day at $4.83 per MMBtu.

August gold ended lower by 0.2% to $1543.80 per ounce, while July silver ended up 0.8% to $37.08. Both metals sold off to their respective lows in morning trade. They spent the remainder of the session attempting to rebound off of those lows, with gold ending just shy of the flat line, while silver was able to close back in positive territory.

Tomorrow will see the release of the highly volatile MBA Mortgage Index at 7 a.m. ET, and the Fed's Beige Book at 2 p.m. ET. Watch for Treasury to issue $21 bln 10-yr notes in a reopening.DJ30 -19.15 NASDAQ -1.00 SP500 -1.23 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1522/1.67 bln/1027 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1803/741.8 mln/1159