Biggest market movers at the close: Chinese stocks, Carnival Cruise Line, Nike, Crocs

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre highlights key tickers moving markets at the close of the trading session.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Minutes away from the closing bell, Jared Blikre has a closer look at some of today's big movers, Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: That's right. Chinese stocks-- and I'm not seeing any particular fundamental driver here, at least, not in the bigger sense, having a banner day. Some of our big leaders today are in the Chinese space. We got JD.com up 3%, Baidu up almost 5%, NIO up over 4%. I was just looking over our EV board, too. And when you look at some of the outperformers like XPeng, that's up 10%, again, getting back to some of those Chinese names.

And let me just show you what's happened over the last two months here. We've seen a big pickup in this space. And a lot of that has to do with easing restrictions from the Chinese government because of COVID. But nevertheless, this has almost been an asset class unto itself this year, as it's behaved quite differently from a lot of other things that we focus on.

Well, getting back to some of the US tickers, we want to take a look at Carnival Cruise Lines. It is up almost 5% today. And that is after reporting a fourth quarter loss per share slightly narrower than what the Street has expected. Also, they reported strong booking trends into year end. Vital Knowledge pointing out, however, quote, "It seems that every quarter, CCL posts lackluster results while speaking positively about demands and bookings and promising better things to come. This time around, it's right into that pattern."

So taking a look at year to date results for this stock, you can see it's been kind of a rocky road, ending right now, if it were to end, it would be down about 57%. And you can see, having made a lower low towards the end of the year in September, October, with some of the indices. Been kind of a rocky area for stocks.

All right, now we want to get to our apparel section, and that's where Nike. We've been talking a lot about Nike today, some banner earnings. You can see that stock is up 12%. Best day in months, and this is after showing that it can execute through a tough macro environment. NKE stock having its best day in a year and a half. Check out what shoe and apparel stocks are doing besides Nike today.

And here, let me sort by performance so we can see some of the winners here. Foot Locker up almost 10%, Puma up 9 and 1/2%, Crocs up 8%. So really a banner quarter for Nike. Just wondering what you're seeing, Dave. I know this is a stock that you follow closely.

DAVE BRIGGS: I was a little surprised by how good a day Nike had, just because they hadn't worked through the inventory issue. I don't know about you. I mean, it had stayed almost exactly where it was the prior quarter, but yes, the demand is there. The sales are there, and that's why you can see Dick's Sporting Goods and Academy and Lulu and Foot Locker, even though they're getting away from their dependence on Nike, the whole sector benefits.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, I think a lot of it also came from the earnings call, just in terms of the guidance there, what they're expecting to see, the type of improvement they are expecting to see, and inventory levels over the coming quarters. It was also interesting just looking at Wall Street's reaction, not so much the stock price, but really, what we have heard from analysts today because a number of them were very positive on the results, despite the fact that inventories-- inventory levels have remained so high.

Morgan Stanley raising their price target on the stock to $138 a share. Piper Sandler also raising its price target, citing some of the progress that the company has made to a, quote, "clean inventory position." So I think they still have work to do. That's the general consensus, but baby steps at this point.

DAVE BRIGGS: A lot of markdowns through the holidays, but a lot of those analysts like the digital side of the business. They could track exactly when and where and why their consumers are buying Nike.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, it's a really impressive story that they push to the consumer here, really finally paying off in helping in terms of their margins. Here is a look, by the way, of the entire Dow. And here's Nike down here with that 12% return. Caterpillar up over 2%. Also Boeing in the mix here. Pretty banner day for the value and cyclical stocks in this index. And with just a few seconds to go, let me take a look at the NASDAQ 100. I talked about some of the Chinese stocks, but also check out the chip stocks. AMD up 4%. Nvidia up 2 and 1/2%.