YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: The stock market staged an aggressive advance that resulted in its best single-session performance of 2012 and marked new multi-year highs. A positive tone permeated trade for the entire session, but buying didn't really ramp up until after the FOMC released its latest Policy Statement and financial giant JPMorgan Chase made an encouraging announcement.

To little surprise the FOMC opted to keep its fed funds target rate at 0.00% to 0.25% and maintained its outlook that low rates of resource utilization and subdued inflation are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the fed funds rate at least through late 2014. However, the idea that a steadily improving economy means that the Fed is less likely to offer additional monetary stimulus was met with some indecision, resulting in choppy trade for stocks. In contrast, the dollar pushed up to a nice gain against a collection of competing currencies while gold prices took a dive in electronic trade so that futures prices for the yellow metal were near $1670 per ounce.

Financials were steady leaders throughout the session, but the sector bounded to a gain of almost 4% after JPMorgan Chase (JPM 43.39, +2.85) announced that it has increased its quarterly dividend to $0.30 per share from $0.25 per share and also authorized $15 billion for repurchasing stocks. The announcement was taken as a sign of financial health ahead of results from the latest round of government stress tests, which will be released at 4:30 PM ET. Test results had been previously scheduled for release later this week.

The bullish bias to trade took the Volatility Index another leg lower. In fact, the euphemistically labeled Fear Gauge set a new multi-year low this morning.

With stocks looking so strong and volatility down, Treasuries encountered concerted selling. The action caused the yield on the benchmark 10-year Note to climb above 2.12% for a three-month high. Results from an auction of 10-year Notes failed to provide support. The offering drew a bid-to-cover ratio of 3.24, dollar demand of $68.0 billion, and an indirect bidder participation rate of 38.6%. For comparison, an average of the past six auctions results in a bid-to-cover ratio of 3.07, dollar demand of $67.2 billion, and an indirect bidder participation rate of 44.0%.

Retail sales results for February were released earlier today. They provided a positive backdrop to the action. Overall sales climbed by 1.1%, which is greater than the upwardly revised 0.6% increase booked in the prior month and narrowly better than the 1.0% increase that had been generally expected. Excluding autos, retail sales were up 0.9%, which bested the Briefing.com consensus call for a 0.6% increase, but it isn't quite as strong as the 1.1% increase experienced in the prior month.

Oil prices surrendered an early gain to trade with a sizable loss before rebounding to book a 0.4% gain by closing pit trade at $106.71 per barrel. Natural gas was also able to buck selling pressure on its way to a 1.8% gain at $2.31 per MMBtu.

Gold prices were under considerable pressure this morning, but the yellow metal managed to pare its loss so that it ended the day down just 0.3% at $1694.40 per ounce. However, sellers have redoubled their efforts in electronic trade to take futures prices down to about $1670 per ounce because commentary in the latest FOMC Policy Statement seemed to provide fodder for the argument that further monetary stimulus is unlikely. Silver was able to reverse an early loss to eke out a 0.1% gain at $33.54 per ounce, but like gold it, too, has come under renewed pressure in electronic trade. Silver was recently quoted at $33.10 per ounce.

Advancing Sectors: Financials +3.9%, Industrials +2.1%, Tech +2.0%, Materials +1.7%, Consumer Discretionary +1.5%, Health Care +1.4%, Energy +1.3%, Consumer Staples +0.6%, Telecom +0.6%, Utilities +0.2%
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +217.97 NASDAQ +5622 NQ100 +1.9% R2K +2.1% SP400 +2.0% SP500 +24.87 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1976/1.69 bln/569 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2496/907 mln/569