Stocks rise as investors anticipate Fed meeting, seasonal rally

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down how markets opened on Thursday following a multi-day selloff in the S&P 500.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Good morning. Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live, everyone. We are about 12 minutes inside of today's trading activity. Let's get on over to Jared Blikre, who's standing by at the YFi Interactive. Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes, Brad, standing on some modest gains for the day. Dow up about half a percentage point. But let's take a look at where we are in the week four days. We're down about 2%. And if you look at the NASDAQ, which is up just about barely today, that is down 4%, so almost twice that. And it just goes to show you the continued outperformance by the Dow. Even though it is in the red, it's by a little bit less amount. That continues into this week.

And all eyes now really shifting to the Fed announcement that we have next week, along with that CPI print. That's going to be key for determining future price action. For today, we want to concentrate on what's happening in the sectors. Energy is in the forefront. That's up over 1%, followed by industrials, materials, real estate, tech, all of those outperforming. Communication services, which houses some of the stocks like Meta, as well as Verizon and Netflix, for instance, that is down by 1/3 of a percent. Utilities down 18 basis points.

I want to go to the S&P 500 and show you what's been happening. I wrote about this in the "Morning Brief" today. We did have that big spike up last week, above the 200-day moving average. Got to close above, but then two days later, we're just sinking back below it. And so with those kinds of false breaks to the upside, I was taking a look at what happens historically. So we've come off that mark a little bit.

And just want to show you what the seasonal tailwinds look like. This has to do with the Santa Claus effect. Technically, this is only covering the last five trading days of the year, as well as the first two, but this is coming from the Market Ear over-- and quoting the Equity Clock. How is that Santa Claus rally doing? According to Bespoke, this is the worst first week of December, down 4.4% for the NASDAQ since 1975. So not off to the best start right now. If there is any Santa pattern, it should be kicking in soon, although returns aren't overly impressive.

NASDAQ and S&P 500 seasonality charts over the last 20 years. A little bit hard to see here. This is the S&P 500 over the 12 calendar months. Basically, we start going, like, up to the upside in March, April, and right now, we are at the point where seasonality should be kicking in. So if it's going to happen, should happen soon. But with no further ado, I don't think we really have a lot to talk about until that big CPI print next week, guys.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, we will continue to watch out for Santa. Jared Blikre, really good stuff. Appreciate it.