YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: The stock market mustered its first gain of the week on Friday. The gain, although modest, came as participants moved to cover their positions following four days of concerted selling.

Action in the final session of the week was a bit boring, given the volatility of the preceding sessions. Stocks essentially spent the session chopping along in mixed fashion. The action came as participants displayed a sense of uncertainty regarding the market's treatment of headline risk related to tenuous global economic conditions and precarious financial conditions in Europe ahead of the weekend. Just last week traders were feeling more confident about those themes, resulting in five straight gains for stocks.

Following only the second weekly advance in almost two months, the risk trade was abruptly switched off at the start of this week. Traders showed disappointment over the lack of progress by Greece in establishing an austerity plan that would secure it financial assistance from the Troika. Reflecting the deterioration of financial conditions in the Eurozone's periphery, Italy had its debt downgraded by analysts at Moody's, but that decision really wasn't too surprising.

Sentiment really began to sour with the midweek announcement by the FOMC that it will purchase $400 billion of Treasuries with maturities of six years to 30 years, while selling an equal amount of Treasuries with a remaining maturities of three years or less, by the end of June 2012. The plan, labeled "Operation Twist" by traders, was generally in-line with what had been expected on Wall Street, but it seemed less than accommodative in light of the Fed's statement that downside risk to economic growth remain high.

Stocks responded to the Fed's statement by tumbling to a loss of almost 3%. Stocks then fell more than 3% the next day as selling pressure was perpetuated by aggressive selling abroad. Although the bloodletting eased on Friday, the stock market still suffered a weekly loss of 6.5%. That marks the seventh weekly slide in nine weeks time.

The resumption of the stock market's downtrend drove masses of traders into Treasuries. As a result, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Note dropped to a record low of less than 1.70%. It moved back above 1.80% on Friday, though.

The dollar also benefited from a flight to safety. Relative to a basket of major foreign currencies, the greenback climbed to a seven-month high, but wavered a bit in the final session of the week.

Precious metals continued their slide today. Specifically, gold prices closed pit trade at $1645 per ounce to log a 5.6% loss. That came on top of the near 4% loss that it had suffered in the prior session. For the week, gold prices shed about 9%. As for silver, it dropped a precipitous 16.5% today, settling at $30.56 per ounce. That extended the near 10% drop that it experienced in the prior session. Silver ended the week 25% below where it began.

Oil prices were down in the early going as participants looked to extend the energy component's prior session loss of 6.3%. The energy component was actually below $78 ahead of pit trade, but was able to settle at $80 per barrel to eke out a 0.2% gain. That's only about a half dollar below where it began the week. As for natural gas prices, they finished flat at $3.70 per MMbtu after a positive start to today's trade. Natural gas prices were down about a dime for the week, though.

Interestingly, gold failed to attract safety seekers. Instead, the precious metal was caught up in the sell-off that slammed other commodities. Gold prices finished pit trade on Friday at $1645 per ounce for a 5.6% loss, but for the week the precious metal fell about 9%. Overall, commodities fell almost 7%, according to the CRB Commodity Index. DJ30 +37.65 NASDAQ +27.56 NQ100 +1.0% R2K +1.4% SP400 +1.3% SP500 +6.87 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1750/1.98 bln/818 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1901/1.23 bln/1102