YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Despite plenty of potential catalysts for trade, the broader stock market lacked direction for the second straight session. Natural resource plays showed considerable strength, though.

Participants got a glimpse into the government's official nonfarm payrolls report, which is due Friday, via the latest ADP Employment Report. The ADP report stated that 84,000 jobs were lost in December, down from 145,000 job losses in November. Still, the December tally was a bit more than the 75,000 that many had expected.

The December ISM Service Index improved to 50.1 from the 48.7 that was registered in November. Though the latest index suggested that activity made a modest pick up, since it was above the 50 that delineates expansion from contraction, it was still a bit below the 50.5 that economists, on average, had forecast.

Neither the ADP report nor the ISM reading caused much of a stir among participants.

Reactions were also muted to the latest FOMC meeting minutes, which indicated that some members think more stimulus might become desirable. That did put pressure on the dollar, though; the dollar shed 0.2% against a basket of foreign currencies.

The dollar's drop provided an extra boon to commodities and gave the CRB Commodity Index a 1.5% gain. Oil prices climbed 1.7% to finish pit trade at $83.18 per barrel. Prices had been up as high as $83.52 per barrel, a fresh 52-week high. More impressive, though, is that the high came after oil prices rallied from a modest loss, which was induced by news that crude oil inventories for the week that ended January 1 increased by 1.33 million barrels. The consensus had called for a 1 million barrel draw.

Higher oil prices helped the energy sector climb to a 1.0% gain, which was second only to the 1.5% gain registered by the materials sector.

Steel stocks were leaders in the materials sector. They tacked on 3.5% amid better-than-expected earnings from Worthington Industries (WOR 16.73, +2.85), which put together one of its best single-session percentage gains of the past 52 weeks, and a few upgrades on sector players.

Agricultural chemical outfits Mosaic (MOS 65.57, +2.42) and Monsanto (MON 86.64, +1.63) managed to garner support, even though they both came short of Wall Street's respective earnings estimates for the latest quarter. Shares of MOS hit a fresh 52-week high, while shares of MON made it to a multimonth high.

Though natural resource plays made their way to marked gains, the broader market was weighed down by large-cap tech stocks, which dragged the tech sector to a 0.9% loss and caused the tech-rich Nasdaq to lag its counterparts.

Telecom was the worst performing sector this session, though. It dropped 3.0% as integrated telecom fell 3.3%.

Advancing Sectors: Materials (+1.5%), Energy (+1.0%), Health Care (+0.5%), Utilities (+0.5%), Financials (+0.4%), Industrials (+0.2%)
Declining Sectors: Telecom (-3.0%), Tech (-0.9%), Consumer Staples (-0.1%)
Unchanged: Consumer DiscretionaryDJ30 +1.66 NASDAQ -7.62 NQ100 -0.5% R2K -0.3% SP400 +0.5% SP500 +0.62 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1198/2.27 bln/1488 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1815/1.11 bln/1206