YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Pessimism continues to prevail. In turn, the major equity averages settled with various losses in the latest round of trade.

This session's slide marks an extension of the selling interest that has governed broad market trade in recent weeks. Economic growth remains the primary point of concern among market participants.

The lack of encouraging comments from Fed Chairman Bernanke was widely blamed for the prior session's late slide. Selling interest carried over amid word that the World Bank cut its forecast for 2011 economic growth to 3.2% from 3.8%. On that very topic, Germany and France, the two largest economies in Europe, both reported sharp declines in their respective total trade balances for April. Meanwhile, the Fed's latest Beige Book indicated that economic activity generally continued to expand since the last report, but a few Districts experienced some deceleration.

Warnings from analysts at Moody's that the United Kingdom's AAA credit rating could take a hit added to the dreariness of the day's headlines, but helped the greenback garner support from currency traders. The Dollar Index was up about 0.5% at the end of the trading day. It is still down more than 6% this year, though.

Despite the dollar's strength, oil prices spiked from a morning loss to a gain of more than 2%. The energy component closed pit trade with a 1.7% gain at $100.74 per barrel. Oil's climb came in response to OPEC's decision to leave production targets unchanged. A surprisingly large draw in weekly oil inventories helped support oil's move higher.

Higher oil prices helped energy stocks trade with strength this session, although its gains waned into the close. As a group, energy stocks were up more than 1% at their session high, but they settled with a 0.4% gain.

Financials and tech stocks came to be the heaviest drags on broad market trade. Financials fell 0.9% while tech turned in a 0.8% loss. Widespread weakness among tech issues undercut the Nasdaq Composite, which trailed its counterparts for just about the entire session. Ciena (CIEN 20.29, -3.92) was one of the poorest performing issues among tech-related plays; its precipitous drop to a multi-month low came in response to an earnings miss and downside guidance. Weakness in the tech space has also led the Nasdaq Composite to underperform its counterparts today.

With stocks stuck in a funk, Treasuries continued their ascent. Buying in the space drove down the yield on the benchmark 10-year Note to a new 2011 low near 2.95%. Today's auction of 10-year Notes drew a bid-to-cover of 3.23, dollar demand of $67.8 billion, and an indirect bidder participation rate of 50.6%.

July crude oil settled higher by 1.7% to $100.74 per barrel. Today's gains were driven by news that OPEC had disbanded its meeting with no adjustment being made to their output production level. Heading into the meeting this week, there was heavy speculation that the cartel would raise that level, the only question was how much. Inventory data, also released today, helped crude push to its best levels at $101.89. July natural gas finished up 0.3% to $4.85 per MMBtu.

It was a somewhat uneventful session for precious metals, which spent most of the day chopping around the flat line. Both metals pushed higher in morning trade in the wake of crude oil's surge, but eventually moved back toward the flat line. August gold finished lower by 0.3% to $1539.40 per ounce, while July silver ended down 0.9% to $36.72 per ounce.

Advancing Sectors: Energy (+0.4%), Telecom (+0.2%), Utilities (+0.1%), Health Care (+0.1%)
Unchanged: Consumer Staples
Declining Sectors: Materials (-1.0%), Financials (-0.9%), Tech (-0.8%), Consumer Discretionary (-0.8%), Industrials (-0.8%)DJ30 -21.87 NASDAQ -26.18 NQ100 -0.7% R2K -1.2% SP400 -1.0% SP500 -5.38 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 679/2.09 bln/1920 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 784/1.01 bln/2217