YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: For the second straight session the stock market was down sharply before it slashed losses. This time, though, stocks failed to finish near their highs for the day.

Continued concern that the financial troubles of less fiscally responsible countries in the eurozone periphery could spill into the broader global financial system caused yield spreads on the debt of Spain, Portugal, and their ilk to widen. To little surprise, analysts at S&P announced late that they have put Portugal's ratings on Credit Watch with Negative implications.

In order to trim risk market participants dumped stocks in favor of traditional safe havens like the dollar and U.S. Treasuries. The dollar settled with a 0.6% gain against competing currencies, but Treasuries ultimately surrendered most of their gains.

The early push against stocks sent the S&P 500 down more than 1%. Prior session lows were probed near the 1174 line, but support at that point held so as to provide stocks with a floor for a rebound.

Losses were cut further following the latest Consumer Confidence Index, which improved in November to a five-month high of 54.1 from 49.9 in October. The Index had been widely expected to improve to a more moderate 52.0.

Stocks set their highs for the day after President Obama expressed that the White House is currently involved in efforts to extend unemployment benefits. Efforts to extend the Bush tax cuts are also broadly believed to be underway.

Still, the S&P 500 never did manage to push into positive territory. That failure invited some late selling.

Tech stocks had the most adverse impact on trade. The sector, which is the largest by market weight, suffered the worst loss of any sector with a 1.4% drop. Weakness in the tech space proved especially damaging to the Nasdaq, which trailed its counterparts for the entire day.

Tech was also one of the poorest performing sectors of November. For the month it fell 1.8%, which was enough to drag down the broad-based S&P 500 to a 0.2% loss for November after it had set a two-year high earlier in the month.

Telecom was the only major sector to muster a gain. It advanced just 0.1%. It still logged a 1.4% monthly loss.

Worth mention, though, is that the materials sector completely erased an early loss of more than 1% to finish flat today. That was helped by precious metals plays after gold prices finished pit trade up 1.3% at $1386.10 per ounce and silver settled gained 3.2% higher at $28.21 per ounce. Materials stocks collectively gained 0.9% in November.

Commodities finished lower day, led by the 1.6% decline in energy. Jan crude oil dropped 1.9% to settle at $84.11 per barrel. A stronger dollar and weaker equities helped crude oil prices lower today. For the month of Nov, however, crude oil gained 3.3%. Jan natural gas had a rather uneventful session, closing lower by 0.4% to $4.19 per MMBtu.

Feb gold finished up 1.3% to $1386.10 per ounce, while March silver gained 3.2% to end at $28.21 per ounce. Both metals rallied on a flight to safety on worries about the widening debt problems in Europe.

End-of-the-month trade brought about an increase in trading volume, such that more than 1.5 billion shares were traded on the NYSE today. That makes for the biggest one-day total in two months.

Advancing Sectors: Telecom (+0.1)
Declining Sectors: Tech (-1.4%), Health Care (-0.8%), Financials (-0.7%), Consumer Staples (-0.5%), Consumer Discretionary (-0.3%), Energy (-0.3%), Industrials (-0.3%), Utilities (-0.1%)
Unchanged: MaterialsDJ30 -46.47 NASDAQ -26.99 NQ100 -1.3% R2K -0.7% SP400 -0.6% SP500 -7.21 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 857/2.32 bln/1784 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 994/1.53 bln/1948