3:30 pm : Natural gas futures continued their recent declines this session. Yet another build in natural gas inventories this morning led to the fourth consecutive session of falling natural gas prices. The January contract finished 1.8% lower at $4.46 per contract and is now down almost 14% in just four sessions. After hitting a session low at $75.54 per barrel, the January contract pared it losses and traded around the unchanged mark for the remainder of the session. It closed down 0.2% at $76.46 per barrel.

Precious metals hit session lows in the morning as the dollar index hit a session high. March silver futures hit a session low at $18.84 per ounce but recovered somewhat to close at $19.13 per ounce, down 1.0% on the session. Gold hit a session low at $1205.20 per ounce. February gold futures returned all the way into positive territory, however, and finished up 0.4% at $1218.30 per ounce. As the dollar index was much weaker overnight, gold futures reached a new all time high at $1227.50 per ounce before a recovery in the greenback took the futures down.DJ30 -21.91 NASDAQ +3.44 SP500 -2.66 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1164/1.62 bln/1483 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1428/800 mln/1564

3:00 pm : Stocks spent the past three hours trading in a narrow range along the neutral line, but recently slipped below that range to an afternoon low. Stocks still aren't back to their session lows, though.

The downward move comes as participants enter the final hour of today's trade. Market watchers continue to speculate whether stocks will make a sharp move lower or reclaim lost gains ahead of tomorrow's jobs report, which is a major trading event.