Oil plunges as OPEC+ hikes output

Yahoo Finance Live's Brian Sozzi, Brian Cheung, and Julie Hyman review oil future holdings as they consider the influence of the Omicron variant and Russia's proposed output hike.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE HYMAN: We're just about 2 and 1/2 minutes until the opening bell on this Thursday morning, after a steep two-day sell-off that sent the S&P 500 to its worst two-day performance going back to October of 2020. So a lot of questions in this market, not only about the omicron variant and the effect it is going to have on global economies and global demand, but also about the trajectory of the Fed, about supply chains. There's still a lot of sort of lingering questions out there.

NASDAQ futures right now are off a little bit. Apple certainly a part of that after there was a report the company's telling its suppliers that demand for iPhone 13 phones is weakening. S&P now going a little changed after being higher earlier, you guys.

And I'm still continuing to watch oil really closely, and this on a report that Russia is talking about a production hike. OPEC-- the OPEC Plus nations have been meeting. You see oil down about 2 and 1/4%.

And, Sozz, just to get a quick comment from you on all of this, I mean, this-- you were talking about perhaps the relief. But it all-- you know, if you look at oil also, not just as a function of the supply that's out there but also as an economic indicator, it's been hit in the past few days by concerns that omicron is going to hit demand. In that sense, it's not necessarily a great thing when it heads lower, if it's for that reason and not for the supply reason.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, you watch. It's a matter of time, Julie. I have not seen these notes hit just yet from the Street.

But you will see this, that the plunge in oil prices over the past week and a half, two weeks on these concerns may be potentially signaling a sharp economic slowdown in the first quarter of next year. And I'm not seeing this stuff so far. But I'm telling you, I've been around this game long enough to know there are teams at these banks working on notes like this to try to understand and try to position people correctly ahead of what might happen to the economy, in large part because of this variant.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, and I think, too, that when it comes to oil, we just have to understand that the volatility could be happening ahead of what could be a very interesting dynamic in 2002 if the omicron variant does pick up and then further drags down on oil prices. But I think largely speaking, I think it does speak politically to likely some optimism inside the White House that releasing those reserves last week, which was the choice by the Biden administration, may have actually done its work to try to keep afloat the Democrats' hopes alive, at least for next year. But again, we'll see what the political ramifications of that might be.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE HYMAN: Right, and by the way, that was an authorization to release, right? So maybe this drop forestalls the need to do that. All right, we've got the opening bell here on this Thursday morning.

[BELL CLANGING]

And it looks like an ETF is ringing it here.

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

Looks like there's going to be some caps to clean up off the floor of the New York Stock Exchange--

BRIAN SOZZI: Ooh.

JULIE HYMAN: --this morning after the bell. Some celebratory hat throwing there by the bell ringers this morning. And as we get our open this morning, it looks like the S&P and the NASDAQ have not quite opened up yet, although I think the S&P actually is live. We're waiting for the NASDAQ to open up here. And we've got that lower open of about 4/10 of 1%, so really a divergence this morning between the Dow and the NASDAQ.