Stocks open lower on retail sales, oil holds steady after hitting 6-month low

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down the market open and moves in oil markets.

Video transcript

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BRAD SMITH: Welcome back to "Yahoo Finance Live" on a big day for the retail sector. Let's get down to Jared Blikre on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. We're seeing some declines early in today's tape, Jared. What are you hearing? What are you seeing down there on the floor?

JARED BLIKRE: That's right. Worth remembering that we had VIX futures expiration this morning. We also have options expiration, the monthly one, this Friday, and that has some significance here. I'm looking at the YFi Interactive. Haven't seen a bad start to a day like this in some time. But notice the NASDAQ isn't even down about 1% right now. Russell 2000 is down a little bit more than that, more than 1%.

I want to focus on the year-to-date chart that we have of the S&P 500. Now, yesterday, we just kissed the 200-day moving average. I haven't drawn it in perfectly, but it looks something like that. Important to note that it's still on the downslope. So until we get through that hurdle-- and it's a big psychological hurdle-- and use it as support, probably not going to bounce back towards those highs. In fact, the market has come so fast, so quickly-- so far, so quickly, that's about 20% in the S&P 500, 25% in the NASDAQ, could be due for a pullback. And all of this comes with options expiration in August.

And also, I should note, this is a very illiquid month known for its volatility spikes. And having said that, I just want to go to the VIX here. Let's see if we can pull up a VIX, hovering around 20. But we had been looking at a 35 handle only a few months ago. And we are right back down to potential support. So it would be natural for the market to turn at these levels. We'll have to see what comes of that, if anything.

BRAD SMITH: Jared, while we have you, there has been some downward pressure on crude oil prices. How are we looking today? And how are the majors holding up there?

JARED BLIKRE: Well, crude was the one bright spot. If we take a look at the YFi Interactive, we don't see that much positive price action anymore. A lot of these names had been in the green. But hey, Pioneer Natural Resources, they rang the opening bell here. And let me just show you, this is a typical chart for one of these oil companies. You can call them the wildcats. They were kind of wild on the open here.

But since 2015, a lot of these-- a lot of these smaller companies, even the majors, have been battered and bruised by volatile oil prices. Starting in 2015, went from $100 down to $30. Went all the way to negative $40 over the pandemic. That was something that blew my mind. But now we're trying to find some stabilization here.

Crude oil WTI has a handle of about 85 right now. And you think that's a pretty wide range when we go all the way up to 120, 130, those previous highs. Searching for a potential bottom right now. We had some comments from the Kuwaiti leader of OPEC+ right now. He's saying that we need to basically invest, invest, invest, and that's what I think needs to happen. Because if you like those Lululemon pants, guess what? Dead dinosaurs in them, not just going in your internal combustion fuel tank, guys.

BRIAN SOZZI: Thanks for reminding me there, Jared. My Lululemon pants made from dead dinosaurs. Jared Blikre, thank you so much.