YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks slipped after a choppy start to the session, but buyers eventually stepped back in to provide a broad lift. Their efforts picked up right around the time that trade in Europe wrapped up.

Sentiment this morning was initially imbued by renewed worries about financial conditions in Europe, where the region's major bourses traded with weakness once again. Once trade there was closed, the mood among market participants quickly improved. At about the same time the euro started to move off of its intraday low, although it was still down about 0.7% against the greenback at session's end.

The Nasdaq was able to outperform its counterparts with help from tech stocks. As a group, tech issues advanced 1.3%. Intel (INTC 25.34, +0.71) was a steady leader, but Dell (DELL 15.63, +0.31) also advanced nicely ahead of its quarterly announcement.

Wal-Mart (WMT 57.46, -1.43) weighed on the Dow for virtually the entire session. The stock's weakness came after the retail behemoth failed to produce the earnings expected by Wall Street.

An upside earnings surprise helped Home Depot (HD 38.07, -0.18) shares bounce at the open, but the stock failed to hold that move and never really recovered, not even amid the broad market's afternoon bounce.

Word of an oil leak at a rig run by Chevron (CVX 103.27, -2.90) and Transocean (RIG 47.86, -1.85) dragged down the pair's shares, as well as those of other oil and gas services players. Collectively, energy stocks logged a 0.2% loss, making them the only major sector that failed to score a gain.

Share volume was anemic for the second straight session. Yesterday it barely broke 700 million on the NYSE and today it failed to crack 800 million. Over the past 50 days share volume on the Big Board has averaged about 1 billion shares per session.

A substantial dose of data didn't even attract participants to the action. Overall, the reports were generally proved pleasing.

Retail sales climbed by 0.5% during October. A 0.4% increase had been generally expected. Excluding autos, sales actually increased by 0.6%, which is well above the 0.2% pickup that had been widely anticipated.

Producer prices for October fell by 0.3%, exceeding the 0.2% decline that had been commonly forecasted. Core prices were flat for the month, not too different than the 0.1% increase expected among economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey for November improved to 0.6 from -8.5 in the prior month. Many thought it would remain in negative territory by an incremental margin.

Business inventories for September were flat, contrasting with the Briefing.com consensus call for a 0.2% increase.

Crude oil rallied for 1.3% to close at $99.37 per barrel, its highest settling price in 16 weeks. Futures, aided by strength in equities and better-than-expected econ data, rallied through the afternoon to close just shy of session highs at $99.84. The sell-off in natural gas continued today, as continued above-avg temps across the country weighed on demand. Futures traded to their lowest levels in a year, at $3.39, and finished just above those lows at $3.40 per MMBtu, down 1.7% on the session.

It was a quiet session for gold futures, which ended higher by 0.1% at $1782.20 per ounce. Futures recouped morning losses heading into afternoon trade and spent the remainder of the session chopping around the unchanged mark. Silver finished up 1.2% at $34.46 per ounce. Silver gave up its gains in mid-morning trade after falling from session highs back to the unchanged mark. It was, however, able to recoup some of its earlier gains in afternoon trade.

Advancing Sectors: Tech +1.3%, Industrials +0.6%, Telecom +0.5%, Financials +0.4%, Consumer Discretionary +0.4%, Consumer Staples +0.4%, Utilities +0.2%, Tech +0.2%, Materials +0.1%
Declining Sectors: Energy -0.2%DJ30 +17.18 NASDAQ +28.98 NQ100 +1.1% R2K +1.4% SP400 +1.0% SP500 +6.03 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1712/1.68 bln/825 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1903/781 mln/1107