Nasdaq, stocks up ahead of Mag 7 earnings, oil prices drop

US stocks (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) are moving on up at Monday's session open, as five of the Magnificent Seven tech names report earnings this week: Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta Platforms (META), and Microsoft (MSFT).

The Morning Brief's Brad Smith and Yahoo Finance markets and data editor Jared Blikre check out market and sector gains following the opening bell, noting crude oil (CL=F, BZ=F) price reactions to Israel's escalating conflict with Iran.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

There.

You're taking a live look at the opening bell at the NASDAQ.

You've got the American Bankers Association doing a remote bell ceremony there, and then you've also got covenant at the NYSC ringing the opening bell.

There, take a simple CV LG.

OK, let's get to it here, taking a look at the Dow Jones industrial average as we begin today's trading activity fractionally higher to begin today's session.

We're seeing it up by about half a percent right now.

I gave you a look at the year a date here just so you can have a full Luke uh, full look Luke at what's going on.

It's up by about 11% over the course of this year.

Also the NASDAQ composite that's still holding on to gains of about 24% over the course of this year, up 7/10 of a percent.

So even despite snapping that longer winning streak that we had seen for some of the major averages here, of course, still holding on to some solid gains Right now we're up by about 22% year to date for the S and P 500 here today, out the gates we up by about half a percent.

Let's take a brief look at some of that sector activity, as we always do.

11 S and P, 500 sectors.

We've got them loaded up for you here, just one laggard and that's energy down bad.

1.9% right now.

All the other sectors, though, seem to be in positive territory and holding on to some gains to start.

Today's trading activity led right now by Oh yeah, you guessed the communication services.

That's up by about 1%.

And then, additionally, you've got consumer discretionary up by about 8/10 of a percent.

So with that, let's get on over to Yahoo Finance's Jared Blicker for a deeper dive at what's moving here at the opening cross.

Hey, Jared.

Well, thank you, Brad.

Since you left it here, I thought I'd just start with energy and come back to it.

That's down because of crude oil, having its worst day in a couple of years since 2022 has to do with an Israeli airstrike that was not as bad as feared.

But I do want to start with the broader markets here, and I'm going to go to the NASDAQ, where we are actually entering.

This could be the eighth straight week of wins for the NASDAQ.

Notable because we just said, Well, the S and P 500 They snapped their six week run there, and Brian Dietrich ran the numbers and he found that a year later, after the S and P 500 snaps a six week winning streak that it goes on to be up about 19 of 22 times.

That's the history there.

So strength begets strength, although there are a lot of there are a lot of worries about the election and what not and we seen sentiment dropping.

But nevertheless, you got to look at price action.

Price pays, and we are seeing the S and P 500 the NASDAQ maintaining crucial levels and sometimes even forging those record highs.

The NASDAQ really close there.

Here's the sector action once again wanted to go to Apple.

Now, Apple and the chart of the overall NASDAQ composite look very similar.

You have this kind of flag that's developed over the last few months and just waiting for a cat that makes it punch through to the upside or the downside, we'll have to see which.

But these things do tend to resolve themselves in favour of the longer term trend and in this case that would be up.

And I do want to take a look at crude oil.

You can see natural gas down a little bit more, 7% but crude oil down 6% to the lowest levels we've seen since September and that goes back.

Those levels probably hold for a year.

As I said before, there is a strike by the Israelis on a Iranian facilities not as bad as fear.

They avoided the nuclear facilities as well as some of their crude oil production refineries.

So on the back of that, we have just dropped to these multi year lows or thereabouts.

And so, with crude at a critical level, I got to think now the calculus is going to be what is going to be doing.

Perhaps they do meet over the coming week and no expectations in their current strategy are expected.

But things can change