YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks managed to reverse modest losses in the first few minutes of trading to spend the rest of the day trading with impressive gains. There was some fleeting selling pressure heading into the close, but the effort was resisted and stocks finished near session highs.

Thanks to strength among retailers, consumer discretionary stocks(+2.9%) led most of the buying in the broader market. Retailers tacked on 3.8% after Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY 31.08, +2.69) reported better-than-expected first quarter earnings.

Home builder Lennar (LEN 9.19, +1.37) provided leadership to consumer discretionary stocks despite reporting a worse-than-expected quarterly loss.

Meanwhile, Nike (NKE 51.28, -1.74) was a laggard in the group, though it beat quarterly earnings expectations. However, the company indicated that global futures orders dropped 12% from the prior year.

All 10 major sectors in the S&P 500 were able to log gains of 1.0% or more. Financials had lagged for most of the session and even traded with a modest loss early on, but spiked into the close to finish with a 1.7% gain.

Bond markets also saw plenty of buying this session after a $27 billion auction of 7-year Notes saw better-than-expected results. The auction drew a yield of 3.33% and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.82. Buying at the long-end of the yield curve pushed the benchmark 10-year Note up more than one full point, sending its yield more than 10 basis points lower to just above 3.5%. The 30-year Bond was bid almost two points higher, which dropped its yield 11 basis points to roughly 4.3%.

This session's broad-based buying also extended into commodities, which helped the CRB Commodity Index climb 1.4%. Energy-based commodities saw particularly strong gains as crude oil prices advanced 2.2% to $70.15 per barrel in pit trading. Natural gas prices settled at $3.84 per contract, up 2.2% after weekly inventory data showed a smaller-than-expected build.

In economic data, initial jobless claims for the week ending June 13 totaled 627,000, which is more than expected and up from the previous week. Continuing claims crept up to 6.74 million. Though that is still off of its record high, it exceeded forecasts.

The final reading for first quarter GDP showed a 5.5% annualized decline, which is a slight improvement from the 5.7% annualized decline that was previously reported. The revision came from a smaller decline in inventories than previously reported, but personal consumption expenditures were revised downward to show a 1.4% increase.DJ30 +172.54 NASDAQ +37.20 NQ100 +2.0% R2K +2.9% SP400 +2.5% SP500 +19.32 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 2172/2.25 bln/517 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2460/1.23 bln/571