YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: A bevy of data brought buyers back into the stock market today. Their support spurred the broad market to its best single-session percentage gain in almost two months.

A positive backdrop to early trade was established by solid gains abroad, which followed a flurry of economic numbers, including the latest price indices from China. Neither China's PPI nor CPI for May came with any negative surprise. They increased 6.8% and 5.5%, respectively. An increase of 50 basis points to the country's reserve requirement ratio was no surprise. Meanwhile, Japan's central bank announced a new lending facility intended to stimulate growth; the target interest rate remains at just 0.1%. Japan also posted strong monthly industrial production.

The positive tone of morning trade was further bolstered by domestic data, which featured a 0.2% increase in both overall producer prices and core producer prices for May. The consensus had called for such increases.

Retail sales for May proved more resilient than anticipated. Even though overall sales slipped 0.2%, that was softer than the 0.7% slide that had been expected among economists polled by Briefing.com. Excluding autos, retail sales actually increased by 0.3%, which is greater than the 0.2% increase that had been forecasted.

Corporate news flow continues to be limited, but Best Buy (BBY 30.13, +1.31) posted an upside earnings surprise, which complemented the retail sales report. Consumer discretionary stocks scored a collective gain of 1.7%.

Energy stocks outperformed for most of the session. They settled with a 2.0% gain. Other cyclical plays weren't far behind; materials stocks and industrial stocks scored gains of 1.9% and 1.8%, respectively.

Riskier issues were also fashionable. That helped both the S&P 400 and the Russell 2000 advance almost 2%. Still, financials found it difficult to match the broader market's rally. The sector settled with a gain of 0.5%, which is less than half of what the S&P 500 achieved.

Fed Chairman Bernanke noted in a speech today that the failure to raise the debt ceiling in a timely matter could result in severe market disruptions, but that was taken in stride by stocks.

Stocks petered out a portion of their gains inside the final hour of the session, but the downward drift was modest relative to overall advance, which helped more than 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 score gains.

Treasuries were never able to recover from selling pressure and concluded the day's trade near session lows. That left the benchmark 10-year Note to log a loss of almost a full point, which took its yield back up to 3.10% for a 10-day high.

August gold finished higher by 0.6% to $1524.40 per ounce, while July silver ended up 1.9% to $35.42 per ounce. Both metals traded higher today on a weaker dollar as well as concerns about inflation. In electronic trade, both metals extended their respective rallies as they traded to fresh highs.

July crude oil rallied for 2.1% to close at $99.37 per barrel, ending the session just shy of its highs at $99.44 per barrel. Better-than-expected econ data in the US, as well as China, helped crude oil trade back to near the $100 level. July natural gas finished lower by 1.4% to $4.58 per MMBtu, extending its pullback to a second consecutive session.

Advancing Sectors: Energy (+2.0%), Materials (+1.9%), Industrials (+1.8%), Consumer Discretionary (+1.7%), Tech (+1.3%), Consumer Staples (+1.0%), Health Care (+0.9%), Telecom (+0.6%), Financials (+0.5%), Utilities (+0.4%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +123.14 NASDAQ +39.03 NQ100 +1.3% R2K +1.8% SP400 +1.8% SP500 +16.04 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 2035/1.72 bln/593 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2543/915 mln/513