YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks staged big gains for the second straight session as market participants continued to display an appetite for risk.

Today the S&P 500 gained more than 1%, which came on top of the prior session's surge of more than 2%. The combination of gains made for the stock market's best back-to-back performance in three months. The latest buying effort came even though market participants were initially disappointed by the failure of the European Central Bank to expand its bond purchasing program. To no surprise, though, the ECB did leave its target interest rate unchanged at 1.00%.

The euro made some sudden swings during a press conference from ECB President Trichet, but it eventually rallied against the dollar. The Dollar Index ended the day down about 0.7%, which made for its second straight loss since setting a two-month high.

Market participants were somewhat dismissive of news that initial jobless claims for the week ended November 27 totaled 436,000, which is up 26,000 from the prior week and greater than the 422,000 initial claims that had been expected among economists polled by Briefing.com.

However, the latest pending home sales figures provoked strong buying, especially among shares of homebuilders, which surged 4.7%. Pending home sales for October had been widely expected to remain flat, but instead spiked 10.4% month-over-month for their best move since record keeping began about 10 years ago. Pending sales were less impressive year-over-year as they tumbled 22.4%, but that was because of home buyer tax credits last year.

Financials attracted the strongest support of any sector this session. They spiked 2.6% as a group, but the biggest moves in that space were made by banking issues. As such, the KBW Bank Index bounced 3.9% higher. Before the start of December, the KBW fell more than 3% during a two-month span. During that same time the S&P 500 had advanced more than 3%. Many banks have been hampered in recent months by concerns about their exposure to the sovereign debt of Europe.

Retailers recorded a collective gain of 1.8%. In addition to broader market support the group was helped by a raft of stronger-than-expected same-store sales reports, which included Black Friday transactions. It is still too early to see how much returned purchases will eat into those sales, however.

Though market participants displayed an increased willingness to take on risk, small-cap stocks and mid-cap stocks didn't perform any better than the broader market. They advanced 1.1% and 1.3%, respectively.

Airline stocks sat out of this session's advance. As a result, the Amex Airline Index shed 0.5%. Despite its lagging performance today, airline shares are still collectively up 46% for the year.

Treasuries oscillated for most of the session before ultimately logging a loss. Amid its swings the benchmark 10-year Note's yield moved above 3.00% for the first time since July.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day for stocks. Given the heady gains of the past two sessions, market participants are likely wondering how the market will fare with the release of the latest monthly payrolls report. The latest factor orders figures and ISM Service Index are also scheduled for release tomorrow.

Commodities staged another strong advance today. The latest leg of gains was led by a 2.5% advance by industrials. Grains made up the only sector to decline as it logged a 0.5% loss that followed nice gains in the prior session.

Energy added 1.8%, thanks to continued strength in gasoline. Support for the energy component was shared by crude oil, which finished higher by 1.4% at $88.00 per barrel. That made for crude oil's highest close since October 2008. At its session high, crude oil hit $88.13 per barrel, which is close to its two-year high of $88.63 per barrel set less than one month ago.

Natural gas prices climbed 1.7% to $4.34 per MMBtu. The advance came in the face of a smaller-than-expected draw of 23 bcf for the latest weekly inventories. Natural gas prices initially pulled back toward the neutral line after the data was released.

Gold and silver had been up markedly before a late session sell-off caused gold to give back all of its gain and forced silver to slide back from its move higher. In the end, gold closed with a fractional loss at $1387.70 per ounce and silver settled with a 0.4% gain at $28.53 per ounce.

Advancing Sectors: Financials (+2.6%), Materials (+1.5%), Industrials (+1.5%), Consumer Discretionary (+1.3%), Tech (+1.3%), Energy (+1.3%), Telecom (+1.1%), Health Care (+0.7%), Utilities (+0.3%), Consumer Staples (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +106.63 NASDAQ +29.92 NQ100 +1.0% R2K +1.1% SP400 +1.3% SP500 +15.46 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1685/2.02 bln/960 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2125/1.12 bln/869