Yahoo Finance

That is the opening bell on Wall Street. You've got Anne Juliett ringing the opening bell at the NYSE. And then you've got ER shares ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq. They get some funfetti on this Friday here. Where's Beromio?

Oh, I know you not dropping that joke on Friday.

I mean look, he might have got pushed off the podium up there, who knows.

He's probably an Nvidia shareholder. Tough week for him.

Yeah, well, anyway, taking a look at the Nasdaq, which has the Nvidia in it, as well as the S&P 500. They're not doing too bad here on the day, at least out of the gate. You're seeing the Nasdaq composite up by about 8/10ths of a percent. Let's populate this chart for you, just give you a look at how things have been going over the course of this week. Some bad candlesticks that you saw on Thursday here. I made the mark, so I'll just circle that, why not? And then additionally, you're taking a look at the S&P 500 that out of the gate, up by about half a percent. Not a good five-day look there that you've seen there.

I have time to touch something. Well, I'm going to touch it anyway. Let's see if it goes. Volatility index here. We've talked all, really all week long about how volatility has fallen down the market from that really high in the earlier month, really what that with stocks really essentially crashed. Market calms back, Brad. Market calms back. For now.

Yeah. Good riddance to the early days of August when volatility did spike to levels that we hadn't seen since the onset of the pandemic. Some levels that we hadn't seen even until since prior to that, as well. Some of those new all-time highs actually that we saw in the VIX. And then additionally here since you're hitting the one month chart.

No, it's fun. There's the peak. There's the peak. Early August, stocks really under pressure, and things have calmed back down on Wall Street, kind of digging it. There you go.

All right. Well, for more on today's trading activity out of the gate here, let's get on over to Yahoo Finances, Jared Bilkeri, who's standing by at what we call the big big. I tried to call it the Jumbotron. I've been, I've been voted down, Jared. Sorry.

Yeah, I like the big big. And I love a VIX analysis on a Friday morning here, especially as we head into a Labor Day weekend. This is, I think this was a pretty good week overall. You're going to see the major indices, they were in the red for the most part, but it could have been a lot worse considering that there's basically no volume and liquidity in the market right now. I'm showing the S&P 500 equal weight because that is an index that hit a record high only yesterday. And one of the things I've been tracking here is we have a lot of markets that are just kind of breaking out or on the cusp of breaking out. And we can go across the board here, and I'll get to some sector action in a bit. Real quick, just want to show you the US dollar heading up again, so that's a potential headwind for risk markets that we want to keep an eye on, but not any red warning flags just yet. Now here's the sector action. Tech is leading today, so is consumer discretionary, both of those outperforming energy trading to the downside. But let me show you what's happened for the week here. Financials, industrials, materials, those are the three leaders. And a lot of these sectors, including financials and industrials have been hitting record highs recently. And so I said some of these markets are breaking out, and also consolidating to break out. This is the former. This has broken out to the upside. That's XLF, and here's XLB. This is just barely breaking out, and I was actually trying to hit XLI, the industrial sector. That is breaking out as well. But a couple of markets I have my eye on that are about to break out. One is biotech, and let me show you a five-year chart so you can see what I'm talking about. This hasn't quite cleared an important resistance level. 150 is in there, but it's trying to get there. And if it were to cross that threshold, probably heading to record highs and potentially there beyond. Also want to track the IShares US Aerospace and Defense ETF, and this is something you can see. It's been a while in the making, but this is really accelerated to the upside. I'll dial this down to a year-to-date chart so you can see that. Finally, I just want to close on the retail sector, and let's see if I can find XRT there, down 2% today. But this is a year-to-date chart, and what strikes me is that this is just a lot of sideways action in here. And so this is not in that list of about to break out or breaking out. Guys?

Jared Bilkeri, thanks so much. Appreciate it.