Sen. Rob Portman on SBA loans, coronavirus stimulus response

Ohio Senator Rob Portman joins Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith and Zack Guzman to discuss the coronavirus stimulus response.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Let's go to Jared Blikre now for a quick look where the markets settled out on this Friday. And also, Jared, a look at the weekly action in the market in a week that saw kind of a-- I wouldn't say euphoric, but enthusiastic finish to the month of March, but a less warm reception for April.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah. I think that kind of captures it. Overall, low volatility this week. And that can be a good thing.

So we see the Dow here down 360 points today. But we're going to check out the five-day price action. Here's what happened today. It sold off most of the day and kind of rallied into the close.

Here's what happened for the week. After we changed months here, yeah, it just kind of went downhill. It didn't have that tailwind of pension fund rebalancing, but nevertheless, we have been holding the lows here not only in the Dow, but the S&P 500 here at about 2,450, just kind of a level that traders are watching all the way down to 2,400.

But as we've been noting, Russell 2000, that has been in a defined down channel trend here and something we've got to keep an eye on. But a little bit of good news. The VIX is now below 50. We want to see it below 30.

But something else concerning is the 10-year T-note yield, which has dropped below 0.6%. And that's kind of been an important psychological barrier. And we could go lower. I think the absolute low is about 0.398% about a month ago.

But also moving on, we've got the US Dollar Index. Now here's something that's happened this week. It just kind of reversed to the upside. And that's a reversal of a trend that we saw in the week prior where we saw this record week that was down.

If we go back up to the highs, that's just going to put a lot more pressure on international markets, on emerging markets. And I think it's an indication that people are still looking for dollars out there, even though the Federal Reserve has unleashed unprecedented measures.

But let's take a look at our heat map-- see some individual companies. And we'll go to a five-day weekly look here. And we can see, not surprisingly, Chevron takes the top spot with oil up something like-- what is it? I don't know. 20, 30-- yeah, probably 35% for this week, followed by Walmart, which amazingly-- and if we go to a year-to-date chart here, it's actually green on the year. Not too many stocks can say that.

And then just going down the line we see a lot of staples. Caterpillar is interesting. But to the downside, Boeing just taking another 23% bath followed by American Express, United Technologies, JP Morgan. Financials really under pressure recently.

And then let's take a look at the NASDAQ as well. And in the green we can see a number of health care plays here. So we have Insight, Regeneron, Vertex Pharmaceuticals. And then we have some other members interspersed here. But to the downside, you look at it, and it's just clear that travel, hospitality is still getting killed, because United Airlines down another 30%.

You look at the year-to-date on this, and it's down 74%. So you just slice 3/4 of its valuation, which was already depressed at the beginning of the year. That's what you've got now. Marriott down another 25%. Wynn not far off, Expedia, and it goes on.

If we look at the sector action this week, we can see energy-- again, not surprising-- is in the lead. Followed by staples and health care. So kind of defensive, but that's what you would expect with stocks net down.

To the downside, utilities, that sector is just kind of interesting to me. Are people not going to pay their bills? That could be one reason why it's down. But it is definitely under pressure, along with real estate, and then financials again.

I think the big news on the week for financials when they saw a big selloff two days ago was when European and British rulemakers decided that they couldn't keep their dividends. And in the US, there is kind of a battle to keep them. And it looks like that's going to be the case, at least for the time being.

But an important story going forward, because, as you point out Myles, financial is a big part of the Russell 2000, which is definitely lagging.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah. Jared, just very interesting when you look at those corona-- I mean, I have a basket at Yahoo Finance I call corona travel. And that's the hotels and the airlines and all that. And those names were hugely bid during the fake bull market that we had last week.

Now, no one on this program made the mistake of saying the 20% gain in the Dow was a bull market. But that story was out there for a little bit.

And that was driven, really, what ultimately was shown to be short covering and kind of a panic rally there, because most of those names-- American Airlines, its 52-week low is $9.09. It closed at $9.39 today. These stocks are basically at their lows of the selloff, because reality is setting in that it is not going to be a pretty picture on the other side of this for a lot of these players.