Stocks mixed as ECB hikes rates, Italy’s Mario Draghi resigns

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

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Taking a look at the major averages here this morning, we are mixed at this point in time. We want to get on down to the New York Stock Exchange where Yahoo Finance's own Jared Blikre is standing by. He's got his eyes on a few things on Europe we'll start with perhaps after that ECB hike and a big resignation. Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: You bet. So Mario Draghi resigning in Europe from the Italian government. Really interesting. I got something I want to show you on the YFi Interactive here. This is Italian CDS on a two-year basis. This goes back to 2005, 2006. If you see a spike, that means risk is going up in Italy. What I just circled is a global financial crisis, a little bit more contagion right here, and then we had a huge fallout with the periphery states. Greece was leading them.

And Mario Draghi, when he was head of the ECB-- we know the name-- he said whatever it takes. And guess what? Risk fell back to about the flat line here. And you can see it perked up again in 2018. That's when global money markets were seizing up a bit as the Fed was doing-- what was it-- 50 B's quantitative tightening? And now you can see it's perking up again. So the effect for US consumers, this has a negative effect on the dollar-- actually a positive effect on the dollar. The dollars gets stronger because of contagion effects. That drives the gasoline prices up, commodity prices. So it does have effects for the consumer.

Now, let's get back to some charts here. This is the S&P 500 on a three-month basis. You can see just kind of ticking above this potential resistance area. It really doesn't mean much until we get above 4,200 and hold there. Let's get into some heat map action, starting with the sector action for today. Energy a big loser to the downside, down about 3% in the lower right of your screen when we get there-- There we go.

And then healthcare, discretionary, and staples, and tech-- well, tech just turned in the red-- those were in the green. And let's take a look at some of the leaders here. KWEB is in the lead. Those are Chinese stocks. That's up 2 and 1/2%, followed by IPO, Korean stocks, biotech. Yesterday was a constructive day, but you know what? Those meme stocks, meme stocks can't lead a rally, can they? Well, they're not leading today. That's all I got, guys.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well done as always, Jared Blikre. Thanks so much.