YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: The stock market advanced another 1% to conclude the second quarter on a strong note, but the effort wasn't enough to give stocks a quarterly gain.

Broad-based buying on thin volume has taken stocks higher every session this week. The S&P 500 now heads into Friday on track for a 4% weekly gain. Although the market has been benefiting from an upturn in sentiment, gains in the past four sessions weren't quite enough to prevent the stock market from logging a fractional loss for the second quarter. The loss comes after it had advanced more than 5% in the first quarter.

Strength in recent sessions has been widespread, but leadership has varied from session to session. Industrials were today's top performers. The sector ascended to a 1.7% gain. However, industrials fell little more than 1% for the second quarter.

Financials were leaders in the prior session, but in the latest round of trade they fell behind, as they had done earlier this week. As a group, financials advanced 0.4% this session. They actually fell more than 6% during the course of the second quarter.

The broad market's overall strength this week comes partly in response to a shift in sentiment. Prior to this week, market participants had watched stocks muster only one weekly gain in almost two months of trade. The market's steady descent during that time came amid concerns about the financial woes of Greece, which has made progress this week in shoring up its finances by passing an austerity plan and voting today to implement that plan.

Data have been somewhat mixed, though. Initial jobless claims for the week ended June 25 totaled 428,000, which is a greater tally than the 420,000 claims that had been widely expected. However, the latest Chicago PMI report reversed recent softening to hit 61.1, which is greater than the 54.0 that had been widely expected.

For the first time this week share volume on the NYSE came close to 1.0 billion. It has been depressed in recent days, given that a long, holiday weekend is on the horizon. However, the end of the quarter likely induced some window dressing and portfolio rebalancing that gave today's volume an added boost.

Following yesterday's austerity vote in Greece, it was a somewhat quieter session for commodities. August gold settled lower by 0.5% to $1502.90 per ounce, while Sept silver finished near unchanged at $34.76 per ounce. Both metals gave back modest gains from earlier in the session.

August natural gas finished higher by 1.4% to $4.37 per MMBtu. This morning's inventory data, which showed a slightly smaller-than-expected build, sent natural gas sharply higher. It put in highs at $4.42 but pulled back from those highs heading into the close. August crude oil had an uneventful session as it closed higher by 65 cents to $95.42 per barrel.

Advancing Sectors: Industrials +1.7%, Energy +1.5%, Tech +1.4%, Materials +1.3%, Consumer Staples +0.9%, Consumer Discretionary +0.9%, Telecom +0.8%, Financials +0.4%, Utilities +0.4%, Health Care +0.3%
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +152.92 NASDAQ +33.03 NQ100 +1.3% R2K +0.9% SP400 +0.7% SP500 +13.23 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1702/1.87 bln/674 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2205/995 mln/798