YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: The U.S. markets started the day with substantial gains and held steady for most of the day, but afternoon headlines regarding the potential for negative European outlook revisions from Standard & Poors knocked the wind out of stocks.

This morning, stocks began the day with gains alongside strength in European markets as borrowing costs declined sharply in Italy and Spain. This activity followed news Italy unveiled a new austerity plan and reports that the ECB is preparing an injection of EUR1 trillion for the EU through additional bond buying. Then encouraging headlines about agreement between Germany's Merkel and France's Sarkozy helped markets add to their gains after the open.

However, this afternoon the major market averages pared their gains after headlines indicated that S&P was placing Germany and France on ‘creditwatch negative.' This knocked equities back from their highs, and then another headline that S&P will place all 17 Euro nations on ratings downgrade watch sent markets to fresh lows.

Outside of the macro headlines, today's news flow was relatively light. Before the open, it was announced that SuccessFactors (SFSF 29.44, +1.66) would be acquired by SAP for $40.00 per share in cash, representing a 52% premium over its Dec 2 closing price and an enterprise value of ~$3.4 bln.

Gold ended lower by 0.9% at $1734.60 per ounce. Futures attempted to recoup morning losses but failed to break above the unchanged mark. They spent the afternoon session giving back that bounce and closed near levels seen in overnight trade. Reports that has warned Germany and the five other triple A members of the eurozone that they risk having their top-notch ratings downgraded as a result of deepening economic and political turmoil in the single currency bloc, have rallied the dollar and pressured gold, and silver, to fresh lows. Silver ended off 0.9% at $32.37 per ounce. Silver slowly gave back its morning gains to end in negative territory on the day.

Crude oil ended near unchanged at $100.99 per barrel. Futures sold off sharply on the back of the dollar rebound –spurred by the report about S&P’s warning. They put in lows at $100.24 but managed to bounce off those lows ahead of the close. Natural gas ended lower by 3.4% at $3.46 per MMBtu. Futures were weighed on by mild early-week weather.

In economic news, the ISM Services Index for November came in at 52.0, which is down slightly from the 52.9 that was posted in the prior month. It also failed to meet the Briefing.com consensus estimate of 53.4. Factory orders fell 0.4% during October, just as had been expected by those economists surveyed by Briefing.com. Orders for the prior month were revised downward to reflect a 0.1% decline.DJ30 +78.41 NASDAQ +28.83 SP500 +12.80 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1754/1.75 bln/778 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2377/893 mln/686