Continued buying helped the stock market march higher for the third straight session. More impressive was that steady momentum helped stocks close the session at new highs for the year.

The latest leg of the stock market's run came with broad-based support and gave the S&P 500 its best single-session gain in nearly one month.

Strength was most pronounced in the financial sector, which settled 3.4% higher. Multiline insurers (+5.9%), diversified banks (+3.1%), and regional banks (+4.9%) were the sector's standouts. Several widely-held financial companies attempted to win support for their shares by expressing expectations for their business and the financial industry at professional conferences.

Despite the impressive closing prices, stocks actually slipped in the first few minutes of trading. However, buyers quickly stepped in as stocks hit the unchanged mark after retreating from opening levels.

Initial gains were helped along by rallying overseas markets, which helped the Dow Jones World Index, excluding the U.S., advance 2.0%, its best single-session percentage advance in more than one month. The upbeat tone was kept intact by some generally solid economic reports, including an August Consumer Price Index that showed a 0.4% month-over-month increase, which was a tad higher than the expected 0.3% increase. Core consumer prices for August increased 0.1% month-over-month, but that was spot on with the consensus forecast. CPI data for August was much more tame than the August PPI data that were released yesterday. Meanwhile, industrial production for August climbed 0.8%, which exceeded the 0.6% increase that had been widely expected. Capacity utilization for August came in at 69.6%, which was slightly above the 69.0% that was widely expected.

Participants showed continued favor for commodities, which helped the CRB Commodity Index advance 1.8% as gold prices settled 1.4% higher at $1020.20 per ounce and silver prices climbed 2.5% to a new 12-month high of $17.43 per ounce. Oil prices jumped 2.2% to $72.51 per barrel. Not to be outdone, natural gas prices settled 12.2% higher at $3.77 per contract. Natural gas prices are now up more than 55% from the 7-year lows that were set earlier this month.

Adobe (ADBE 33.35, -2.27) was one of the few companies to recently announce quarterly earnings results. The company posted better-than-expected third quarter earnings of $0.35 per share and issued in-line guidance for the fourth quarter, calling for earnings from $0.33 to $0.39 per share. The company announced that it will acquire Omniture (OMTR 21.88 +4.56) for $21.50 per share in cash, which values the deal at $1.8 billion. Though participants pushed against shares of ADBE, large-cap tech still gained 1.4%, based on the Nasdaq 100.

In the face of strong buying in stocks and commodities Treasuries managed to limit losses. The benchmark 10-year Note finished a modest four ticks lower. It had spent part of the session in positive territory. DJ30 +108.30 NASDAQ +30.51 NQ100 +1.4% R2K +2.1% SP400 +2.0% SP500 +16.13 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1899/2.76 bln/792 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2543/1.58 bln/513