The S&P 500 bounced 2.5% to score its best one-day percentage gain since December. The move helped fuel a strong weekly and monthly gain, but wasn’t enough to move stocks out of the red for the month.

A foray into stocks followed news that Eurozone officials have opened the door for Spain's banks to be directly recapitalized with bailout funds once Europe sets up a single banking supervisor. Moreover, Spain will not have to take on additional sovereign debt.

Market participants were also pleased to learn of a growth package worth 120 billion euros that will be aimed at boosting the European Investment Bank’s lending capacity.

The commitment of additional funds to address precarious conditions was taken as a positive rather than as a negative with implications for fiscal conditions. In turn, the euro rallied aggressively. By session’s end the euro was up 1.7% against the greenback.

Improved sentiment among market participants and a decidedly weaker dollar helped the case for commodities. In fact, the CRB Commodity Index rallied 4.6% for its best single-session spike in almost three years.

Crude oil was a primary driver of the CRB’s climb ahead of the EU's Iran oil sanctions set to begin on July 1. The energy component rallied 9.4% to settle at $85.02 per barrel, which translates into a 6.6% weekly gain.

With oil prices up and market participants willing to take on more risk, Energy stocks rallied to a collective gain of a little more than 3%. Still, they were slightly outperformed by Industrials and Tech plays; those two sectors each scored gains of 3.3%.

Utilities, which are decidedly defensive, encountered some selling after pushing higher in the early going. The sector was able to find support at the flat line before fighting to reclaim gains. It settled the session with a 0.6% gain, only a fraction of what the broad market scored.

Nike (NKE 87.78, -9.11) shares suffered a precipitous drop despite the decidedly positive tone to broad market trade. The stock’s slump came in response to a disappointing quarterly report. Ford (F 9.59, -0.50) shares also fell hard; the company’s latest profit forecast proved displeasing. A relatively soft forecast from Accenture (ACN 60.09, +3.46) was forgiven amid an upside earning surprise and broad market strength.

Personal income increased in May by 0.2%, which is slightly greater than the 0.1% increase that had been widely expected. However, personal spending stayed flat, instead of increasing by 0.1% as had been broadly anticipated. Core personal consumption expenditures were up 0.1% month over month. They had been generally expected to increase by 0.2%.

The June Chicago PMI reading of 52.9 came as little surprise since economists had generally expected a reading of 53.0 to follow the prior month reading of 52.7.

The only other item on the economic calendar was the University of Michigan's final Consumer Sentiment Survey for May. It eased down to 73.2 from the 74.1 that was posted in the preliminary Survey. Many had expected the reading to go unrevised.

In addition to encouraging news from Europe, participation picked up today as investment managers moved to rebalance and window dress their portfolios for the close of the quarter. For the second quarter the S&P 500 shed a little more than 3%. That was due to losses suffered in the past two months, offset partly by a 4.0% gain for June. The stock market’s 2.0% gain this week stands as its best performance since the first full week of the month

Nasdaq 100 +3.1%. ..S&P Midcap 400 +2.8%. ..Russell 2000 +2.9%.