YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks closed in the middle of today's range as the strength found after the opening plunge waned in afternoon trade. The Dow saw the biggest decline, falling 0.7% while the S&P and Nasadq both lost 0.6%.

Oil & gas equipment & services co Baker Hughes (BHI 79.95, +0.05) beat on both the top and bottom lines and closed up 0.1% after it was able to shrug off a $0.16 per share loss on operations in Libya.

Pepsico (PEP 64.37, -1.39) saw more selling pressure today after being downgraded and removed from Goldman Sachs' Conviction Buy List. Weaker than expected demand in developed countries and rising commodity costs were highlights from the most recent quarter.

Apple (AAPL 398.50) touched $400 in early afternoon trade as momentum carried over from last week's blowout earnings. In just the past week the company has seen China Mobile (CHL 49.20, -0.16) and China Unicom (CHA 65.76, -0.98) announce plans to sell the iPhone 5 by the end of 2011.

Industrial stocks outperformed after Eaton Corp. (ETN 52.59, +1.43) and Roper Industries (ROP 87.13, +2.67) both topped estimates. Eaton announced EPS of $0.95 per share which topped the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.93 per share. Roper Industries saw solid gains on the back of strong earnings. The stock ended up 3.2% after announcing record sales of $708 million for the quarter, and raising its full year 2011 guidance to $4.20-4.30 per share, up from the $3.97-4.12 per share.

E*TRADE Financial (ETFC 16.52, +0.88) finished up 5.6% after the company's board of directors responded to a Citadel letter by saying it has retained Morgan Stanley to conduct a review of its strategic alternatives. Speculation has rival Ameritrade (AMTD 19.96, +0.35) making a bid for the company.

The dollar index ended with a modest loss, but was able to hold the 74.00 level for a third consecutive session. The euro eked out a small gain, but was unable to close above 1.44 resistance in quiet trade. Safe haven buying in the Swiss franc pushed it to a record .8020 per dollar.

Trade in commodities today was largely based around the ongoing budget talks. Over the weekend, Congress and the President once again failed to come to any sort of agreement on how to fix the crisis/raise the debt ceiling, and that lack of progress was felt in numous markets today, including commodities.

August gold finished higher by 0.7% to $1612.60 per ounce, while Sept silver gained 0.6% to end at $40.36 per ounce. Both metals rallied on the flight to safety. After gold traded to a new time high in the overnight session, the action was all downward from there after futures gave back over 12 points. Silver momentarily gave back all of its gains, trading into negative territory, but was able to bounce and close in positive territory.

It was a rather uneventful session for Sept crude oil, which settled lower by 0.7% to $99.20 per barrel. Futures spent the afternoon session chopping around the $99 area. August natural gas ended lower by 0.4% to $4.38 per MMBtu.

The 10-yr yield ended the day slightly elevated as light selling ran it back up to 3.00% by the close of trade in the U.S. DJ30 -88.36 NASDAQ -16.03 SP500 -7.59 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 605/1.57 bln/2006 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 577/760.9 mln/2470