YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: A barrage of economic reports ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday brought about a strong, broad-based buying effort that helped stocks recover from the prior session's precipitous drop.

A very modest bid was made for stocks ahead of the open as market exercised caution after the S&P 500 fell 1.4% yesterday. Preliminary buying interest was partly rekindled by a rebound among Europe's major bourses after a strong business climate reading out of Germany helped overshadow the widening of yield spreads on the debt of countries in the European Union periphery.

Support picked up amid news that the latest initial jobless claims count fell 34,000 week-over-week to a two-year low of 407,000, which is less than the 442,000 initial claims that had been widely expected among economists polled by Brieifng.com. Continuing claims set their own two-year low at 4.18 million, down from 4.32 million in the prior week.

The improvement in jobless claims generally overshadowed disappointing durable goods orders data for October. Total orders declined 3.3%, which is worse than the 0.3% decline that had been widely expected. Orders less transportation fell 2.7%, which contrasts sharply to the 0.4% increase that had been expected by many. The rather poor orders readings for October come after overall orders for September increased 5.0% and orders less transportation increased 1.3%.

Less attention was paid to personal income and spending for October. Income increased 0.5%, which is slightly stronger than the expected increase of 0.4%. Spending increased 0.4%, but that was a bit softer than the 0.6% increase that had been expected. In the prior month income was flat and spending had increased 0.3%.

Once trade opened and stocks made a nice gap up, buying was further bolstered by the final Consumer Sentiment Survey for November from the University of Michigan. It improved to 71.6 after a preliminary reading of 69.3. However, enthusiasm for that report was offset by news that new home sales for October fell 8.1% month-over-month to an annualized rate of 283,000 units, which is less than the 314,000 units that had been broadly forecast by economists polled by Briefing.com.

Buyers took little time before they redoubled their efforts and sent stocks another leg higher. The S&P 500 spent the afternoon moving sideways and consolidating gains before moving to within reach of the 1200 line at the close.

In complete contrast to the prior session, more than 90% of the names in the S&P 500 staged gains. Airline shares made some of the richest moves. They advanced 3.7%, according to the Amex Airline Index.

A 2.6% gain made retailers relative leaders for the third straight session. Guess? (GES 50.12, +4.78) and Tiffany & Co. (TIF 61.33, +3.06) were standouts following their upside earnings surprises and forecasts. GES complemented its announcement with a special dividend.

Share volume was rather light as fewer than 900 million shares were traded on the NYSE. The low total precedes tomorrow's Thanksgiving holiday, for which U.S. markets will be closed before re-opening Friday for a half day.

Higher energy prices helped the CRB Commodity Index advance 1.6% after it had suffered three straight losses. The CRB is still down more than 5% from the two-year high that it set earlier this month.

Oil stood out among commodities this session. The energy component posted a 3.2% gain, even though crude oil inventories for the week ended November 19 had a build of 1.03 million barrels compared with the consensus call for a draw of 2.00 million barrels.

Natural gas prices overcame an early loss of more than 1% to finish with a 0.8% gain at $4.25 per MMBtu. Buying was helped by news of a greater-than-expected build of 6 bcf for inventories in the week ended November 19.

Precious metals had a lackluster session. Specifically, gold prices finished with a 0.3% loss at $1373.00 per ounce and silver prices settled 0.1% lower at $27.54 per ounce.

Advancing Sectors: Industrials (+2.1%), Consumer Discretionary (+2.0%), Materials (+1.8%), Energy (+1.7%), Tech (+1.7%), Financials (+1.6%), Health Care (+0.8%), Consumer Staples (+0.7%), Telecom (+0.5%), Utilities (+0.4%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +150.91 NASDAQ +48.17 NQ100 +2.1% R2K +2.3% SP400 +2.1% SP500 +17.62 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 2089/1.64 bln/556 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2489/829 mln/509