Stocks open higher, pharmacy stocks mixed on COVID booster push
Yahoo Finance Live’s Brad Smith breaks down how markets opened on Monday.
Video Transcript
[AUDIO LOGO]
[WALL STREET BELL RINGING]
JULIE HYMAN: All right, we got the opening bell here on Wall Street on this Monday morning, after an up-and-down last week that actually ended up with stocks up on the week last week, although it didn't kind of feel like it. [CHUCKLES]
[CLAPPING]
Now, we have got what looks like potentially a mix to open this morning. We'll see if things end up opening in the green here as we get that opening bell.
[CLAPPING]
So as we take a look at the opening prices here today-- Sozz is laughing at the people.
BRIAN SOZZI: The Dream Finders, [INAUDIBLE] find me a home I can afford with a mortgage under 8%, please. Dream Finders, give me a ring. Give me a ring.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, well, that's--
BRIAN SOZZI: Hit me up.
JULIE HYMAN: Yes, yes, good point. All right, we've got stocks higher here. The Dow up about almost 150 points here as we get out of the gate. The S&P up about a third of 1%. The NASDAQ, little changed, [INAUDIBLE] just a tenth of 1%.
All of those things we were talking about earlier in the show-- earnings that are coming-- starting towards the end of this week and a lot of pessimism around them, inflation data and some other key economic data this week, and central bankers and other sort of economists and pundits meeting in DC. All of that is to be very much in focus.
Let's get over to Brad now. He is at the Yahoo! Finance Interactive. And I'm seeing a lot of green over there behind you, Brad.
BRAD SMITH: A lot of green. By the way, Sozzi, I'm in the same camp as you with the Dream Finders. We need to--
BRIAN SOZZI: Give us a call.
BRAD SMITH: --find out where those homes are at because right now it's been the dream deferred for some of us out there.
JULIE HYMAN: Aw.
BRAD SMITH: So we'll continue to watch that very closely. We're taking a look at the major averages-- well, the major sectors within the major averages of the S&P 500. And we're up across the board here on the day.
The S&P 500, you're seeing that up by about 3/10 of percent. And 11 out of 11 S&P 500 sectors beginning the day in positive territory. Oh, almost. All right, energy, that decided to slip into negative territory, barely. So we'll continue to watch that.
But largely more gainers than laggards. Of course, outsized here, almost higher across the board. We'll see what takes place with XLE. Seems to be in a little bit of a hyper waffle out of the gate here.
Taking a look at XLV, though. The health care select sector, ETF, or at least XLV, tracking the sector within the S&P 500. You're seeing that up by about a quarter of a percent. And here's where I want to dive into that. As we get into some of the colder months, especially in the northeast or northern parts of the US, you're gonna see more of that congregating indoors.
We're already seeing some of the campaigns from the major pharmacy benefits managers, and even up to the broader federal and state level, that are pushing for people to get vaccinated and making sure that they've got that opportunity to access the protections necessary in order to weather, once again, what is anticipated to be another critical time period of the year. Cyclically, it seems at this point, when people are congregating more, there's more of the spread of COVID. And so that's where we're gonna track some of the names like UNH, UnitedHealthcare.
But especially on the pharmacy benefits management side, CVS, some of the companies that have been able to administer so much of the vaccination process here in the US as well-- Walgreens, Boots Alliance-- and this is at a time where many of them, even in this last earnings season, they had started to kind of pull back some of the forecasts on how much they would continue to see on a revenue base from those vaccinations as well.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, definitely should be interesting how the flow goes--
BRAD SMITH: Yeah.
JULIE HYMAN: --going forward.
