Apple's WWDC, oil production cuts, Ford upgrade: Trending tickers

Apple's big headset announcement, Saudi Arabia's production cut, and Ford shares get an upgrade. Yahoo Finance live breaks down the trending tickers of the day.

Video Transcript

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SEANA SMITH: And that was a closing bell on Wall Street. Again, all three of the major averages ending the trading day in the red. You can see some of the losses extending to the downside here in the final 60 minutes. The Dow closing off just around 200 points. S&P briefly touched the highest level that we've seen in nine months but ended the day in the red, off just about 2/10 of a percent. Then NASDAQ also lower on the day.

Take a look at some of the bigger movers. And first up, we've got to talk about oil prices, closing the day higher after Saudi Arabia said that it has been a slash production, oil production, by a million barrels a day starting in July. The move is expected to help stabilize the oil market with prices tumbling last month on demand concerns. It did close higher but not by much. And Akiko, I think this may be caught some people by surprise, given the fact that we didn't see more of an upside reaction.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. I mean, when you think about the last cut that they had in the spring, it was sort of similar. But we did see it moved to the upside. Obviously, OPEC Plus wants to get it to above $80 a barrel. It did breach that level. But then it came back down. And that seems to point to what we're seeing looking ahead in terms of what the outlook is. It's about weak demand in the US and Europe but also the fact that the Chinese economy hasn't picked up as quickly as many had expected. That's where a lot of that demand could come from. So interesting to see the Saudis leading on that as well, probably points to where the economic outlook is right now.

All right. Shares of Ford Motor closing the day in the green following an upgrade to buy from neutral from an analyst over at Citi, citing positive demand trends and improved risk reward for the auto giant. Ford's sales grew nearly 11% year-over-year for the month of May. When you talk about a company like Ford, it is really about the two tracks that they continue to push on-- the gas-powered vehicles but also the EV pivot that still is losing money but really trying to gain market share.

SEANA SMITH: It certainly is still losing money. But we have seen some excitement around Ford's initiatives, its venture into EV. The products that they have available today, the F-150 Lightning, has been a very positive reaction from many of those customers. Some really questioning whether or not the pickup driver would be willing to move to an electric vehicle. It looks like at least in these early demand numbers that it is trending in the right direction. They also had that recent partnership with Tesla for their charging network. That is seen as a positive here for both companies.

But Ford does have this momentum moving in the right direction for the company. I think the big question, though, is who is going to be that big competitor to Tesla, and whether or not Ford has enough in order to get there, and the fact that the vehicle still cost so much.

AKIKO FUJITA: And the trucks are really the key, right? You talk about the F-150 Lightning, I keep going back to comments that we heard from Jim Farley very early on when they were getting the reservations in, how surprised he was about the new drivers that were coming in. It wasn't about the usual drivers who already own the gas-powered trucks but also those who are looking at EVs. So that's another thing to consider, I think, is we tend to think, oh, you just switch over from the gas-powered vehicle to the EVs. But others who are saying, look, now that I know it's a little cleaner, maybe I'm willing to get into the F-150 Lightning as well.

Shares of Apple closing lower well off earlier highs after the announcement of the Vision Pro headset. But there were plenty of other movers as well tied to the world developers conference. That includes Intel, Disney, and a name you may not know, Unity Software. That stock popping after Apple said it's working with a company on the headset. And you look specifically at Unity stock, on track for its second largest daily gain since debuting in 2020.

I mean, as Dan said, this is still a huge, huge test. But you've get developers software company like Unity on board there, gaming still is the very first application with technology like this. And if they can get third-party developers in there really churning out the content, that can mean huge upside.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah. That could certainly be the differentiating factor. Clearly, great news here for Unity. You can see that reflected in the stock price today. I think there's lots of questions just about how big of a hit this headset is going to be. Personally, it exceeded my expectations. I was pretty negative on this device going into the event today. They made it much more applicable to everyday usage than I was thinking a headset would be.

Just in terms of what it could do for sports viewing, it could take you essentially courtside to an NBA game. What it could do for entertainment, for some of the movies. We saw Bob Iger up on the stage talking about the partnership between Apple and Disney and the fact that Disney Plus is going to be available on this device day one when it does launch. So I think they did do a great job of laying out the use case. But whether or not this is the device that so many have been hesitant from at least when you take into account some of the VR devices out there, if this is going to be it, probably not given that price tag, but if it sort of paves the way to that mainstream adoption.

AKIKO FUJITA: I mean, one more thing to note here, because we're talking about other stocks that were getting hit, Intel getting hit on the back of the announcement for the M2 chip. It's worth noting, this is for the Mac Pros, three times faster than the old model under Intel. And remember, when they split with Intel, there were questions about how Apple was going to proceed. And this is just another step in moving in that direction.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah. Intel shares closing off just around 4 and 1/2%.