YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Financials finished off of their session highs, but still successfully led the broader market to another gain, which made for new two-year closing high.

The financial sector continued its December advance with a 1.1% gain today. It had been up 1.4% at its session high. Nonetheless, the sector is now up 10.9% month to date, while the S&P 500 is up a more muted 6.6% so far this month. However, for the year the financial sector is up 11.1% while the S&P 500 is up 12.9% to its best level since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.

Once again banks were behind the financial sector's ascent. Shares of diversified banks advanced 1.5% while shares of regional lenders tacked on 2.1% this session.

Buyers continued their foray into banking issues despite a dearth of news from the space. Among the more noteworthy headlines, Berkshire Hills (BHLB 21.00, -0.28) will acquire Legacy Bancorp (LEGC 12.65, +4.05) for about $13.00 per share, which represents a premium of approximately 50% over the prior session's closing price.

Data did little to move stocks. The third and final estimate for third quarter GDP indicated that the economy expanded at a 2.6% annual clip from July through September. The consensus among economists polled by Briefing.com had called for 2.7% growth after the previous estimate had indicated that third quarter growth totaled 2.5%.

As for personal consumption during the third quarter, it increased 2.4%. That is down from the 2.8% increase that had been reported previously.

November existing home sales increased 5.6% month over month to an annualized rate of 4.68 million units, which is on par with the 4.65 million units that had been expected, on average, among economists polled by Briefing.com. Though the broader market shrugged off that particular piece of data, shares of homebuilders were helped to a 3.1% gain after they had been down as much as 1.5%.

Walgreens (WAG 38.85, +2.02) was a top individual performer today. Better-than-expected earnings helped the stock book its best percentage gain in almost three months so that it set a fresh 52-week high.

Nike (NKE 86.95, -5.35) was also out with its latest quarterly results. The company posted an upside earnings surprise, but that was overshadowed by disappointment related to the athletic apparel maker's futures orders figure.

Outside of equities, the dollar had a quiet day. It was down only fractionally at the close.

Commodities saw mixed interest, but the CRB Commodity Index still mustered a 0.4% gain, which marked its fourth straight advance and took the CRB to its best level since 2008.

Commodities finished mixed again, with 4 sectors gaining and 2 declining. Livestock gained 2.7%, led by a 3.7% rally in lean hogs.

It was a very quiet session for precious metals, which shed 0.3% on the day. Feb gold ended lower by 0.1% to $1387.40 per ounce while March silver closed right around unchanged at $29.38 per ounce. Both metals spent most of the session chopping around the flat line.

Following this morning's inventory data, Feb crude oil spiked to a fresh 2-year high at $90.80. It pulled back from those highs throughout the afternoon to finish with a 0.7% gain at $90.48 per barrel. Jan natural gas finished up 2.6% to $4.15 per MMBtu. It found support at the $4 level and was able to trade higher throughout the afternoon to close just shy of its session highs.

Advancing Sectors: Financials (+1.1%), Utilities (+0.5%), Energy (+0.4%), Consumer Staples (+0.4%), Industrials (+0.3%), Telecom (+0.2%), Health Care (+0.2%), Consumer Discretionary (+0.1%)
Declining Sectors: (None)
Unchanged: Materials, TechDJ30 +26.33 NASDAQ +3.87 NQ100 +0.1% R2K +0.00% SP400 +0.3% SP500 +4.24 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1391/1.62 bln/1254 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1838/783 mln/1163