YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: Stocks looked as if they were going to trim losses amid some afternoon buying, but sellers redoubled their efforts late in the session to ensure that the stock market would log its third straight loss, which hasn't happened for three weeks.

Stocks initially looked as if they would firm up after sliding nearly 2% during the course of the previous two sessions, but the mood among participants dampened amid a surprise 2.4% drop in durable goods orders during August. Economists had expected a 0.4% increase. Excluding transportation, orders were flat, which missed the consensus forecast for a 1.0% gain.

Meanwhile, annualized new home sales figures for August came in at 429,000 units, which is a bit below the consensus call of 440,000 units. Though the sales rate was softer than expected, it still reflected a 0.7% monthly increase, but that didn't help stocks garner support.

Instead, broad-based weakness weighed on stocks for nearly the entire session. At their session lows, the S&P 500 was down nearly 1%, while the Nasdaq was down slightly more than 1%. Though the extent of their losses at session lows was similar, the Nasdaq lagged the other headline indices for most of the session, primarily due to weakness among large-cap tech issues. Large-cap tech was hampered by a rather conservative revenue forecast from Research In Motion (RIMM 68.91, -14.15) and the company's failure to quell concern regarding falling handset prices. Shares of RIMM responded by making their worst single-session percentage drop this year.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ 47.02, +0.15) also issued its latest outlook, which was in-line with the consensus 2010 forecast, but that won it limited favor.

Meanwhile, McDonald's (MCD 56.95, +0.83) helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average hold up better than its counterparts against the efforts of sellers for the second straight session. McDonald's won support by lifting its quarterly dividend 10% to $0.55 per share.

Despite support from McDonald's, the Dow still lost 1.6% since last week. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.0% this week, while the S&P 500 logged a weekly loss of 2.2%. Their collective losses made for the stock market's worst week since July.

Amid weakness in the equity market, Treasuries ticked higher. Gains were especially strong at the long end of the yield curve. As such, the 30-year Bond gained more than one full point while the benchmark 10-year Note tacked on 16 ticks. The 2-year Note slid three ticks.DJ30 -42.25 NASDAQ -16.69 NQ100 -0.9% R2K -0.5% SP400 -0.6% SP500 -6.40 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1145/2.38 bln/1520 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1358/1.20 bln/1633