U.S. dollar edges higher, Apple and Chevron stocks outperform in early trading

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre looks at the performance of the U.S. dollar over the course of the year and highlights today's market leaders in Apple and Chevron.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Welcome back to "Yahoo Finance Live" this morning, everyone. We've got major averages in the red right now to kick off a new trading week. Let's get more on today's tape with Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre, who's over at the YFi Interactive. Jared?

JARED BLIKRE: That's right, Brad. Beginning the week on a little bit of a down beat here. Dow and the S&P 500, each off about half a percent, the NASDAQ down about 1/3 third of a percent. Just wanna show you the five-day price action so we can see kind of where we are.

We had that big liftoff last Wednesday, and we kind of been treading water here. Now, Friday, it seems like it was kind of a ho hum day, but in the futures, in the morning at 8:30 AM, we got that big jobs print. Was a surprise to the upside, but hotter than expected. And guess what? Equities markets were able to claw back most of those losses.

Pretty notable, because if you take the last couple CPI reports, the S&P 500, the general market has been able to rally on those, along with the job stat. We do, in two weeks, have this big Fed decision, and right before that, we get another CPI rating. So that's gonna be key.

Here is the US dollar index. The dollar has been controlling, or at least, has been wagging the equities market for most of the year here. This is a three-month chart, and you can see, November was a big month of declines. Now, we are sitting below the 200-day moving average.

I'm starting to hear some rumbling, some questions on Twitter. Is this a false breakdown in the dollar, and also, a false break to the upside from its 200-day moving average in the S&P 500? Only a little bit of time is gonna take-- it's gonna take to resolve that. But

Mike Wilson over at Morgan Stanley, who's been pretty on par, spot on par with some of the calls this year has just said this rally needs to be sold. So if you're trying to navigate some of these twists and turns in the market, maybe we've gone a little bit too far, too fast. Here, we have energy in the forefront, OPEC plus finally deciding that they're not gonna do anything, not gonna upset the apple cart. We were talking about that a little bit earlier.

Energy up 1%. Aside from that, most of the sectors to the downside, trading to the downside, especially consumer ones. Consumer staples, consumer discretionary, those are each down more than 1%. So are the industrials.

So let's take a look at the Dow stocks. Dow has been outperforming the NASDAQ recently. And today, it looks like the NASDAQ probably doing a little bit better. Apple, on its side, Apple is up 1%. So is Chevron, IBM. But for the most part, looking at a lot of red here, guys, in the industrials.

BRAD SMITH: Jared Blikre, thanks so much.