Stocks open lower, oil rises as Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks stall

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down how markets opened on Thursday.

Video Transcript

[BELL RINGING]

JULIE HYMAN: So there we have the opening bell here this morning, and indeed, this lower open. And again, we got a CPI report showing the highest inflation in February going back to 1982, if you look at core, 1981 if you look at the headline figure. 6.6% increase in gasoline on a year over year basis. And we have since seen gasoline prices continue to move up, as we have been talking about, seeing high prices at the pump across the nation here.

So even as we saw that rally yesterday and we've got some back and forth happening in stocks on a day-to-day basis, there is still that backdrop that people are really concerned about this inflation issue. I want to send it on over to Jared Blikre here who's been watching all of the early action closely as well. Jared, what stands out to you as we get underway?

JARED BLIKRE: Amazon, you guys have got to see the YFi Interactive here. This is the exact opposite of what I was looking at yesterday afternoon, a sea of red, except for that big AMZN square. That's up 3 and 3/4 of a percent. Some comments on that, as well as share buybacks in general, if we have time later in the segment. But look at Apple. It's down 2%. Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Nvidia down 1%. Facebook down 2%.

Some of the outliers I'm looking at here are in the China stocks. So let's navigate over to that board. And with a few exceptions, we're seeing Tencent up 4%. For the most part, a lot of red here. Alibaba down 5%. Pinduoduo down 13%. I don't remember seeing any headlines on China specifically this morning that caught my attention. But nevertheless, tracking this.

And then also I'd like to go to the ARK Innovation Fund components and see what's going on there as an important sentiment indicator. Not seeing a lot of positive developments. Coinbase down 4%. Shopify down 3%. Let me go to the Sector actually and see if we can parse out something there. So in a reversal of yesterday, yesterday energy was down 3% or 4% when we got that crude oil crash. That is the only sector in the green today.

And if you take a look at the bottom right, XLK, that is a tech sector. That's down nearly 2%, followed by financials, communication services, and real estate. All of those are the under-performers. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the market here. And as far as the S&P 500 is going, I think it's in a pretty safe spot.

We opened up right where the buyers should theoretically buy if they want to. We have this nascent, nascent move that kind of started yesterday, best day for the S&P 500 in a couple of years. So we'll see if we can get any kind of traction in the first hour of trading here, guys.