Markets open higher, Delta and Southwest stocks dip amid FAA delays

Yahoo Finance Live’s Brad Smith breaks down how stocks are moving after the opening bell.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: And here's the opening bell on Wall Street. And the nonprofit organization God's Love We Deliver is ringing the opening bell, as you can see, virtually and very festively on this Wednesday morning. In terms of what we're looking for stocks, as we just talked about with our last guest, really, a lot of investor focus is on tomorrow and tomorrow morning's CPI data.

Ahead of that, though, it does look like we are seeing some early gains for stocks this morning. So kind of this upward momentum that we've seen to start the year. The NASDAQ going into today's session with three up days in a row. So if it rises today, this could be a four-day winning streak for the NASDAQ, an index that sorely needs it, of course, if you're a bull.

BRIAN SOZZI: And Bath Beyond leading the market higher there, Brad. Party City, too, really powering that rally.

JULIE HYMAN: Eh, I wouldn't go quite that far.

BRIAN SOZZI: OK.

BRAD SMITH: Green, we'll leave it at that. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, so that also seeing some green on the screen. It's up by about 4/10 of a percent. Net positive for the past three days, up by about 6/10 of a percent there. NASDAQ composite, tech-heavy average out of the gate, you're seeing that higher there on your screen by about half a percent. Past three days has been pretty good as well. That's up a little more than 2%. 2.2%, we'll round that off to and be generous. And then the S&P 500, you're seeing that higher by about half a percent. Three-day period, 1.1% in gains there.

Let's take a look at some of the sector activity out of the gate this morning. You've got every S&P 500 sector, all 11 of them, call them green in positive territory. Real estate actually leading the charge here on the day. It's up by about 1.4% early in trade. The materials sector also, that's one of the bigger gainers on the day. That's up by about 1%, energy up 1%. And then all of the other 11 S&P 500 sectors in the green, too.

And then additionally, I just wanted to check in on some of those travel names, given the alerts and notification that came across earlier this morning. And it seems like some of those issues have now started to be abated. And we're just keeping a close eye on some of the airliners here on the day. You've got Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and American Airlines, all in negative territory right now. Also seeing if I can see some LUV here on the screen. That's down by about 1.7% for Southwest Airlines. So we'll keep close tabs on some of those airline operators, given the NOTAM, which is probably a new acronym that many of us will remember for at least the next 24 hours.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes, and-- or until we get on a flight again. And just a couple of updates from the Federal Aviation Administration, they say normal air traffic operations are resuming. The ground stop has been lifted, and they're continuing to look into the cause of the initial problem.

And I'm also seeing some headlines that the Senate Commerce Committee chair, Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, says that the commerce committee will investigate the cause of the FAA computer system outage that triggered those delays this morning. So-- because we don't know why it happened. Was it just, as we talked about with some guests at the top of the show, that they're old systems that need to be updated? Is it that there was something more nefarious going on? We just don't have that information right now.

BRAD SMITH: Well, in which case, it comes back to an allocation of funds in order for them to spend necessarily, in which case some lawmakers might need to just go look in the mirror, honestly.

JULIE HYMAN: Right, well, and Mike Boyd was also talking about expertise at the FAA. So that might be part of it.