YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Data drove the major averages to fresh multi-month highs in the early going, but a loss of support left stocks to settle with losses. That made for a lackluster finish to September, which actually brought the stock market its best monthly performance since April 2009.

The tone of early trade was helped by the third estimate on second quarter GDP, which showed an annualized growth rate of 1.7%, up from 1.6%, and a 2.2% increase in personal consumption, up from the 2.0% that had been previously reported. Core personal consumption expenditures for the quarter were revised lower to reflect a 1.0% increase, rather than 1.1%.

Additionally, initial jobless claims for the week ending September 25 totaled 453,000, which is slightly less than the 457,000 initial claims that had been widely expected among economists polled by Briefing.com. The latest tally is down 16,000 week-over-week. Continuing claims fell 83,000 week-over-week to 4.46 million.

Stocks extended their opening advance to new four-month highs with the release of the Chicago PMI reading for September. It improved to 60.4 from 56.7. The consensus among economists polled by Briefing.com had called for a reading of 56.0.

The solid dose of domestic data helped participants look past a Moody's decision to downgrade Spain's debt and reports that Ireland's banking sector is in need of billions of new capital. Dour data out of Japan was also forgotten.

Stocks were able to push past formidable levels of resistance, but sellers started to apply pressure at the first sign of lost momentum. Selling accelerated as stocks slipped below their opening levels, but overall weakness remained relatively contained. In turn, the S&P 500 was able to make it out of September - a historically weak month - with a gain of almost 9%, its best monthly gain since April 2009 and its best September since 1939. For the quarter, the stock market gained almost 11%, which was its best since the third quarter of last year.

End-of-quarter portfolio rebalancing and window dressing drove trading volume to its second highest level of the month as almost 1.3 billion shares traded hands on the NYSE. Big banks and large-cap tech stocks saw the greatest trading volume, per usual.

Financials had shown leadership early, but failed to sustain their gains. The sector had been up as much as 1.8% before it settled with a 0.1% loss. Tech lagged broader market action and shed 0.6%.

The dollar failed to sustain a rebound that took it up from a fresh eight-month low to a 0.3% gain. It settled fractionally lower against competing currencies. The greenback gave up 5.3% this month 8.5% for the quarter, its worst quarterly performance since 2002.

Energy once again led the commodities sector higher, after it posted a 1.5% gain. Nov crude oil rallied for 2.8% to settle at $79.97 per barrel. Today's gains mark crude's sixth consecutive session of gains, a streak that has netted crude oil priced almost 8%. In fact, for the month of Sept, crude oil rallied for 11.2%, its largest month gain since May of 2009. Nov natural gas, on the other hand, shed 2.3% to finish at $3.87 per MMBtu. This morning's larger-than-expected build in inventories highlighted the bearish fundamentals surrounding natural gas.

Dec gold settled lower by 0.1% to $1309.60 per ounce, while Dec silver shed 0.7% to end at $21.82 per ounce. Both metals sold off heading into the afternoon, but were able to retrace some of their respective sell offs to finish well above their lowest levels of the day.

Advancing Sectors: Energy (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: Tech (-0.6%), Utilities (-0.4%), Consumer Staples (-0.4%), Industrials (-0.4%), Health Care (-0.3%), Materials (-0.3%), Consumer Discretionary (-0.3%), Telecom (-0.3%), Financials (-0.1%)DJ30 -47.23 NASDAQ -7.94 NQ100 -0.6% R2K -0.2% SP400 +0.2% SP500 -3.53 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1292/2.45 bln/1322 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1511/1.29 bln/1455