Market check: Stocks open mixed, bond volatility settles

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre reviews the opening hour trading trends across markets and sectors, particularly the EV space and consumer staple retailers.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Jared Blikre, he likes to keep an eye on that platform as well. Now he is doing it virtually instead of in person. And, Jared, so it looks like we actually are looking at a mixed open here this morning. Indications were looking a little bit uglier when we came in, and things have been steadily improving here. But, you know, as I pointed out earlier, it's thin volume times because it is pre-holiday here. But nonetheless, it's been very interesting in recent days as people try to assess what the heck is going on with this variant.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes, I think so. And probably, I think a lot of traders are just hoping that things finally settle down a little bit. And that seems to be what is happening. Of course, that means there's a violent price movement to the opposite side imminent. I'm kind of kidding.

So let's go to the-- let's go to the YFI Interactive where I am charting the five-day price action in the Dow. And you can see we've basically retraced half of what we lost. So 50% line kind of a target for new shorts. So we'll have to see what happens.

S&P 500 similarly situated. But we do have some bullish seasonal factors, which we talk about every single day. And you can see the NASDAQ still off about 1 and 1/2 percent over that time frame. I do want to get a check of the bond market. I'm going to go to my one month candlestick view here.

And it looks like bond markets have settled down in terms of volatility as well. We can see over the last three months that we've had a lot more price action in the past, but we are now pretty much in the middle of this range. And we could actually trade down and kind of settle in here for a few more trading sessions, perhaps, into the end of the year. Won't read too much into it.

That's a five-year T-note yield, by the way, down about one basis point today. The 10-year down about three basis points. And the 30-year down three basis points. So the yield curve is flattening just a little bit. US dollar taking out lows from yesterday. So just kind of been in a trading range over the last month itself. So nothing new on that front.

And let's get to some heat maps. So here's the NASDAQ 100. Stand out is Tesla kind of in the middle there. It's up 3%. JD.com is down 3%. But not a lot of big movers, and that's kind of nice to see indications of that lower volatility.

I do want to check out the pharmaceutical sector. There is an announcement coming, expected today on the Merck and Pfizer anti-COVID pills. So we could get some positive price action off of that just because there's not a lot else happening today. So want to be on alert for that.

I do want to check out the travel sector as well. That's under a little bit of pressure here kind of with that flattening yield curve kind of indicating not as much appetite for risk, at least in terms of the value sector. But you can see Trip.com down 4%, but Live Nation up 7%. I'm going to have to see if there's some news on that one.

I mentioned Tesla before. Tesla is up 3%. And looks like we got one mover down here. That's Luminar. Let's get a year-to-date chart on Luminar. You can see still down 50%, but up 4% today. Also want to check in on Ark. Now these are some of the Ark components, not all of them. But you can see aside from Tesla, really slipping into the red here.

Now I want to check out the last five days here in the Ark Fund because five days back, we had the Fed announcement that was kind of a let's get that behind us, and a lot of these names took off after that. So we are seeing some retention in gains among these names. As far as the potential Santa Claus rally, which really begins next week, continues into the first two days of January, what are we expecting there?

Well, who's to say? But we have seen some interest in the value stocks, although it's been quite the defensive setup lately. Guys?

BRIAN SOZZI: And, Jared, the month is almost over. Anything stick out to you?

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, I was looking at the YFI Interactive, and if I do a month-to-date view of the sector action, I think it's pretty telling what's going on in December because we see a lot of defensiveness in the leaders. Up in the upper left, XLP, that is staples-- consumer staples. That's Walmart. That's Coca-Cola. Those stalwarts. Those are in there.

And the top four here are real estate, in addition to staples, health care, and utilities. So traders have really been packing on the defense this month. It's been higher than average volatility for December. Really, usually, we don't get this kind of price movement, although we did one year ago. And in the lower right, I just circled consumer discretionary. That is the loan sector. That is in the red for the month.

And let me just take a look at the retail sector there. Some of the standout names to the downside. We got Wayfair down 16%. American Eagle Outfitters. That's down line 11%. Buckle. That's down 10%. And some of these stocks were really high flyers. Buckle, one of the best performing stocks in its class earlier in the year, but you can see it's really fallen out.

And one of the trends I've noticed lately, and this has gotten some analyst attention, is that the stocks that are performing well this month, well, they tend not to be-- they tend not to be the high-value stocks. So high-value stocks have really gotten hit. And if we take a look at the Ark Innovation Fund, you can see kind of a bifurcated market here.

We got Coinbase. That's down 16%. We were talking about that yesterday. Square down 13%. Tesla down 11%. So some of the high-value stocks really getting knocked back to reality.

And, finally, I want to take a look at what's happened at crypto so far in the month of December. And we can see Bitcoin just under a little bit of pressure there. Down 3 and 1/2 percent. Ether down 10%. But even crypto has kind of quieted down lately. Not seeing the huge volatile moves that we've seen at least previously several weeks ago, several months ago.

It seems like an eternity, guys. I got to tell you. I don't know about you guys, but spending the entire day in my house every day and night walking down to the New York Stock Exchange twice per day puts a different spin on things. Haven't worn shoes.

JULIE HYMAN: You need to-- I recommend a dog so that you will be forced to go outside and walk the dog. That's my secret in terms of working from home all day. Yes. But, yes, every-- time has no meaning anymore. Thank you so much, Jared Blikre.