S&P 500, Nasdaq open lower on heightened geopolitical tensions

All three of the major indexes (^DJI,^GSPC, ^IXIC) opened slightly lower on Wednesday, while oil prices (CL=F, BZ=F) continued to rise. Investors were rattled after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel. Israel has vowed to respond to the attack, raising concerns about tensions escalating even further.

Morning Brief Anchor Seana Smith and Yahoo Finance Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre break down the action at the open.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Morning Brief.

This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video transcript

As we open today's trading day.

Dow futures, though just above the flat line, it looks like the Dow is going to open in positive territory.

You got the NASDAQ calibrating right now as we ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange.

Of course, a big focus for investors this morning.

Is that a P print stronger than expected?

Ultimately, that could mean ahead of Friday's big jobs report.

And then we also had the rise in geopolitical tensions.

The Iran missile attacks yesterday just exactly the risk that the heightened geopolitical risk that obviously viewed as a potential risk here to the broader markets, as investors have seen.

We've seen a bit of a flight to safety here over the last 24 hours.

But take a look at the S and P here this morning.

You're looking at a loss of just about 2/10 of a percent.

Take a look at the Dow actually opening just below the flat line here, and the NASDAQ also under a bit of pressure this morning, I mentioned the, uh, the heightened geopolitical risk.

I wanna pull up crude right now.

Oil on the move to the up for the second day in a row, you're looking at gains of just about 3% here this morning over two day.

You saw a move here yesterday of about 5% so you can see that upward movement here in the price of crude just above 72 bucks a barrel.

And as we take a look at the equities market on a sector basis, some of that movement that we're seeing here this morning you've got energy, the only sector here in the green as we kick off today's trading day up just about 1% on the flip side, real estate and consumer discretionary lagging.

Let's get over to Yahoo Finance's Jared B for a closer look at some of these movers.

Jared.

Well, thank you, Shana.

Let's check out the S and P 500 right now, and you can see it's starting out on a little bit of a down note right here.

This is a two day chart.

I'll put the year to date up so you can still see that it's up 19%.

And in fact we just closed the last quarter up 20% and Ryan Dietrich had ran the numbers and has an interesting stat for us.

S and P 500 up 20.8% heading into October, could mean that we I only see some red with October lower seven of nine times when stocks were up 20% or more heading into this spooky month.

This isn't a bad thing, though, as Q four tends to still rally.

And we'd expect, expect this to play out again in 24 so we could see a little bit of a down draught this month.

This is one of the highest average V readings that we get, and that just means that it's kind of a crash season.

Not that it has to happen, but the markets are prone to that.

So let me get back to our charts here.

Give me a second and I'm going to check out the dollar because I've been watching that closely and we're seeing that jump a little bit.

This is a third day straight, and it's important because this could be forming a base that would allow it to launch higher to some of these highs that we've seen there earlier in the year and that would just be negative for stocks.

Potentially got to get to the sector.

Action looks like tech has flipped into the green, but energy leading consumer discretionary is lagging and sea.

It did an excellent job with crude oil.

I was writing about it in the morning brief.

I'll just Here is a three year chart.

If we are at the bottom end of this range, we got a potential upside here.

That's pretty big.

8085 maybe even 90.

Also, gold is consolidating your highs, but I also want to show our Bob gasoline futures, which actually dip below the $2 level and are just consolidating there.

But I think our Bob is going to be my leading indicator for energy.

It pops and it keeps above $2.

Well, I'm bullish below.

I'm bearish and, uh, got to check out China because China has been on absolute tear.

This is just what happened today.

I'm gonna show you the trailing month here, and just look at some of these returns.

I'll sort by returns.

Uh, we got one up almost 350% UXIN.

Then we have, uh, a number of these going all the way down to Jd.com on the right.

That's up 70%.

I'll close here just by showing our Aero Aerospace and Defence Board.

That is another sector where we've seen a lot of gains and here is what's happening today, given some of those back guys.