YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: An overnight drop in the dollar and some strong existing home sales data sent stocks to five-month highs, but technical resistance and a slide by financials caused the broader market to surrender a good deal of that gain.

The dollar dropped 1.0% overnight so that it traded at a 15-year low against the yen. Its weakness was widely attributed to the inability of the G-20 to devise a specific plan supportive of the greenback in global trade.

The decline by the dollar drove buyers to action in the early going. Their efforts were emboldened with the release of existing home sales for September. Sales reportedly surged at an unprecedented pace of 10% to an annualized rate of 4.53 million units, which is greater than the annualized rate of 4.25 million units that had been widely expected among economists polled by Briefing.com.

Buyers took the S&P 500 to its highest level since May, but it lost momentum as it approached the psychologically significant 1200 line. Resistance in that region caused some to sell.

An upturn in the dollar, which settled with a 0.5% loss, led stocks to surrender even more of their gains.

Financials failed to provide any sustainable support to the broader market. The sector was actually up almost 1% in the opening minutes, but finished with a 0.4% loss as bank stocks were backed down. Financials have been largely absent from the stock market's recent advances.

Utilities make up the only other sector to slide to a loss. They finished the day 0.3% lower.

Positive breadth helped keep the major equity averages in positive ground all session. Fading support left the stock market to finish at its session low, though. The rather underwhelming finish caused the Volatility Index to climb about 6% at the close.

Despite the broader market's downward drift, materials stocks still booked big gains. They advanced 1.7% as participants poured money into diversified metals (+2.2%) and fertilizer and agricultural chemicals (+2.2%). While basic materials stocks were strong, commodities were too. Commodities collectively gained 1.0%, according to the CRB Commodity Index.

Treasuries had been up nicely in the early going, but pulled back. Their slide steepened following results from a $10 billion auction of 5-year TIPS. The auction drew a yield of -0.55%, which is the first negative yield on record. It was widely expected, though.

Precious metals led commodities higher today after they rallied for 1.6%. Dec silver, which gained 2.1% to settle at $23.54 per ounce, was the largest advancing precious metal today. Dec gold closed up 1.1% to $1338.90 per ounce. Both metals spent the entire session trading in positive territory, but did close well below their respective highs as the dollar was able to trim some of its losses.

Dec crude oil settled higher by 1% to $82.52 per barrel. It gave up all of its gains heading into the afternoon session, but bounced off the unchanged mark to close in positive territory. Nov natural gas finished lower by 0.6% to $3.32 per MMBtu

Advancing Sectors: Materials (+1.7%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.6%), Health Care (+0.5%), Telecom (+0.4%), Tech (+0.3%), Consumer Staples (+0.2%), Industrials (+0.2%), Energy (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: Financials (-0.4%), Utilities (-0.3%)DJ30 +31.49 NASDAQ +11.46 NQ100 +0.4% R2K +0.6% SP400 +0.5% SP500 +2.54 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1599/1.76 bln/1043 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1793/1.01 bln/1181

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