Stocks close October lower, 3rd straight month of declines

Stocks closed October lower, clinching the third consecutive month of declines with surging bond yields playing a major role in the downturn. Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down the details of the market's October retreat, taking a closer look at sector sentiments.

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Video Transcript

- Jared, what do you got.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes, it was about the majors here. We have the NASDAQ, which was the worst office, the small caps, that really took the cake. And I'm going to go to the Wi-Fi interactive and plot this real quick. Then we'll get into some heatmaps and really see where the damage was done and where we saw some gains in the month.

Here's the Russell 2000 ETF, that's down almost 7%. And just take a look at the three-year chart. Just knocking on the door of these lows that we've had all the way back to last year. A little bit concerning. We were supposed to be positive this month according to history, but the bond market got away, got in the way, I should say.

Here's what's happening today in sector action. But let me just dial this in to the monthly frame over 22 days. Utilities in the lead here up 1%. Tech is a big fat zero, that's break even. But you take a look at the downside. We got energy down almost 6%. Consumer discretionary, that's retail 5 and 1/2. Materials, healthcare, and industrials, rounding out. Those down 3% or more.

And just taking a look at our leaders here. Only two things in the green. Crypto, we have Bitcoin ETF up here, that's up 27%. Huge rally late in the month. And then defense, this is a defense ETF, and aerospace too, I should say. What's really taking it on the chin here is cannabis. Cannabis down 21%, solar down 19%, Ark is down 11.7%.

And let's just go to the disruption trade here. Looking pretty nasty for the month. A lot of these guys on the bottom row down from 14% to 24%, including Roku down 15%. China really not looking that much better though. We got some green names in there. Just taking a look inside the semiconductors. Tech had a mixed month. I was just saying, tech was not as bad as it could have been this month, at least as far as its megacap cousins go. In consumer discretionary, and communication services, a little bit of green there. And a little bit more in software.

Let's move on to our next page where we have regional banks. Those took a pretty big hit. We haven't seen something like this since March. So looking ahead toward the month of November, just want to say, this is a real quick chart on seasonality. We tend to rally in the month of November, but not until the end. Seasonality failed us in October, we'll have to see if it takes us to the promised land in November and beyond.