YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Sellers had their way with stocks for the entire session, causing the stock market to finish at session lows with its worst loss by percent in more than one month.

While all 10 major sectors in the S&P 500 suffered sharp losses, the selling effort was rooted in the financial sector. Financials finished 11.4% lower after Bank of America (BAC 8.02, -2.58) reported that its first quarter credit loss provisions totaled $13.4 billion, up almost $5 billion from the fourth quarter. The announcement provided an excuse for participants to sell bank stocks after watching them rally in recent weeks. Just last week bank stocks spiked after BB&T (BBT 19.79, -3.63) stated banks could still post profits while building reserves. To that point, Bank of America actually generated pretax, preprovision income of $19 billion, which exceeded expectations. Diversified banks finished 15.6% lower and diversified services stocks sank 15.9%.

Credit card companies were also out of favor. Their weakness stemmed from fear that tighter regulation may be in order. Consumer finance stocks dropped 15.0%.

Sun Microsystems (JAVA 9.15, +2.46) managed to make a gain amid the session's declines. The stock soared after Oracle (ORCL 18.82, -0.24) announced it will acquire the company for $9.50 per share, which marked a premium of more than 40% above JAVA's closing price last week.

The announcement comes after talks between IBM (IBM 100.43, -0.84) and Sun Microsystems faltered. IBM stated it has no intention to return to discussions with Sun Microsystems, according to reports.

PepsiCo (PEP 49.86, -2.27) announced it is doing some buying as well. PepsiCo will purchase remaining stakes in Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG 30.73, +5.53) for $29.50 per share and PepsiAmericas (PAS 25.04, +5.16) for $23.27 per share, which translates to respective premiums of roughly 17% over last week's closing prices. PepsiCo also announced better-than-expected first quarter adjusted earnings per share results.

With stocks dropping, investors sought the safety of gold. Gold prices closed at $887.50 per ounce, up 2.3%. Interest in gold was strong enough to help gold prices overcome a resurgent dollar, which climbed roughly 0.8%, according to the Dollar Index.

The dollar's bounce came about after ECB President indicated that more rate cuts may be in order for the European economy, though such cuts would come in measures of 25 basis points.

The stronger dollar weighed heavily on crude oil prices. May contracts finished 8.8% lower at $45.90 per barrel. DJ30 -289.60 NASDAQ -64.86 NQ100 -3.3% R2K -5.6% SP400 -5.4% SP500 -37.21 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 444/2.92 bln/2257 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 295/1.76 bln/2800